TapperMike

You would? I think restringing the Pikasso would be a fiasco.

Kel, no links ever? My Life - Billy Joel http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3JFEfdK_Ls

Drivers Seat- Sniff and the Tears http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jr4wGFJrSss

Pink Cadillac - Bruce Springsteen http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29_RZ82aZ6A

Darn it, I missed my moment. Just for that Snowbird- Anne Murray http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCYmEp6AeCU

Or we could pull a 180 Winter Wonderland - Felix Bernard/Richard B Smith http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpyhWD5JOYQ

A keyboard player realizes sometimes early on that no matter how great a virtual instrument may be it can't compare to the real thing. Regardless of how amazing it may sound. They move forward using it because it's less expensive then learning and purchasing the actual instrument and they try to emulate in performance as best they can. Even Tuck Andress makes the assertion that while it may be great that he can combine various parts on to one guitar they would sound better coming from the original instruments. When I was younger and much more dedicated then I am today. I would lay down the rhythm guitars (plural) a keyboard sound then pick up my bass and play the bassline for a song, next try to lay down some drums (trust me I'm no Tom when it comes to drumming) then go back and play a melody, then come up with some solo's then mix it all down. It was a lot of work for a song. I don't have the time and patience for that anymore. Using band in a box gives me an idea for the "feel" of the song and scoring the chord charts is a breeze. All the parts in biab are evolving much like a band situation rather then simple repetitive loops. It's an improvisers and a composers dream for putting together ideas quickly. Everything can be easily ported to "Real Band" which is a daw similar to bigger names from which you can replace the parts with live recording or midi and has full vst/visti implementation. Not only is biab/real band a time saver in regards to composition, arrangement and performance it also makes for a great jazz backing band. As unlike other forms of music jazz is improvised by nature. In jazz settings All the instruments improvise (except for the melody) over the chord changes. It also is a great source of inspiration for developing different musical ideas and a great learning tool.

Hi. The "Real Instruments" are just that real instruments played by real musicians. The are loops. You can manually score everything if you send it to "Real Band" which is a daw that comes with biab. How do you mean "already made chords" All Chords are already made up, there are no new chords to invent. Yes if you manually want to score everything in "Real Band" you can. No if you manually want to score everything in Band in a Box manually you can't. It's designed for creating songs using chords and styles. Pick a style and then enter the chords. Band in a box will voice the instruments according to the chosen style.

Not all DAW's or midi based recording software are created equal. When recording to midi. As much has to do with midi resolution as using a proper sound library. While GPro has an amazing RSE engine and uses a pretty darn good Coyote Forte dxi for the other sounds it's really not the same as others bring to the table. Which is why many like Biab have moved away from Coyote to Sample Tank. It also has moved up to a "super midi" meaning extremely high resolution. With Band In a Box you chose a style (thousand and thousands to choose from) Enter chords and press play. BIAB will then generate a backing track with drums, bass, keys, guitar and or more for you. You can then record over the tracks or port them to midi for editing in a daw like Real Band which comes with BIAB. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JH4MDdmWuS0 I used to use biab for light scoring then overdub the tracks on to an external hard disk recorder. Now I'll only omit a few instruments and overwrite them. As a guitarist, bassist, ztarists I like to get my own playing in. BIAB gets my foot in the door as far as composing and arranging much much faster then if I had to score everything manually.

In the Year of the Cat - Al Stewart http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QM7LR46zrQU

Love the Steely Dan,... No Quarter - Led Zeppelin http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odY8nff3h0w

Destroy All Monsters - Your Gonna Die http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TXL8ocad_s Egad I dug deep for that one.

On a final note. I'm thinking of writing a series of articles on song(music) covering where most intro music theory leaves out and where real writing/arranging begins.

Anyway back to commercial jingles. There is a popular house hold air freshener that uses part of Here Comes my Baby by the Tremeloes and part of another song. Chase Bank also used "Here Comes My Baby" in a commercial but they paid for the rights. An odd hobby of mine is that when I'm sitting around watch a tv show. I listen to the background music in the show and in the commercials and try to figure out where I've heard them before. It's a huge distraction and shouldn't be done in the company of wives or girlfriends. I'll listen to it. think about it, rewind and listen again. Think about it a bit more and try to figure it out. I recall reading something from either Maslow or Berne (I can't recall which) in regards to a pianist that had a crisis of consciousness in regards to wring, improvising, performing. He had a wealth of material to draw from stored in his collected unconsciousness and had a lifetime of performance. To wit he concluded that "maybe it's not him doing anything" Muscle memory has a habit of going on autopilot after you've played a song years on end. You don't have to think about what you are doing you just play the song. If you are open to your collective unconscious you'll hear ideas that may or may not be your own and you just follow through. You may not realize if it's your own song or someone else's until it's out of you and others might not recognize the source either. Guitarists spend years working out "chops" that ultimately influence their playing style to the point they can't escape themselves. David Gilmour (Pink Floyd) put out a solo album and many were disappointed that it sounded too much like his PF stuff. He couldn't escape himself. The conclusion from the author was this.... The good news is you don't have to escape yourself. You don't have to be not yourself to write something new. (Ricky Nelson tried and failed miserably). And most importantly if you can't differentiate between what is truly and originally yours from what may be your mechanical (muscle memory) skill set, your technical knowledge. or your memories Accept that it's still coming from you, because it's all of the above that define your playing style and while you may be influenced by others it doesn't make you them or your material theirs.

Rudi, I'm addicted to band in a box because it's there visually with the chord chart, I can pull up the tab or notation or fretboard view in seconds and I've got the whole song right in front of me. But when I walk away or close the program my mind goes blank. I love the program and it's a crutch. You are in the position of playing a great deal of songs regularly as you play out often. All those songs are stored in your muscle memory so you don't have to think about them as much. 100 songs memorized will take a performer very far and they'll be less in wanting of learning new material. Older less used material seems to fade away. I used to be like that with my blues and rock cover bands. I got very very good at playing songs of others and the crowds really weren't interested in my originals. The thing is you....think. Many are too quick to absorb themselves with cell phones and facebook and what's on tv all outside distractions which block the "inner ear/inner voice" from getting a chance to get out. It's why when you have some free time sitting somewhere you can work out musical ideas where as others can't/don't. Allistar, There isn't one or two 12 bar blues progressions that the blues is written with. There are actually 60+ variations (not key not tempo or "style" but actually different ways to approach it. As well there are 16 bar blues progressions (rock this town - stray cats) 8 bar and even 9 bar blues progressions. That's not even including the Gospel/soul progressions that often find there way into blues settings. As well there are other devices aside from simple substitution to rewrite progressions. So if you find a commonality with another song in regards to the progression there are ways to rewrite it in a manner that seems less common. Progressions are not the only way to write music, even popular music. Progressions can be laid on after the fact if the melody is strong enough. Good melodies stand on there own without the need of supporting instruments. Writing music is much like writing a short story. There are plots and recurring themes. And sometimes it's not what you say as much as how you say it that makes the difference. That being said while some mathematicians speculate that given the limited number of combinations of our twelve tone system and metering all the songs that could be written may already have been. We just don't recognize them as such. I've brought this up in the past but I'll bring it up again. I used to be a studio musician. Mostly performing jingles and occasionally supporting a local "singer" on there way to fame, fortune or obscurity. The producer was the writer. The trick about jingles is make them "seem" like someone has heard it before. So it falls on the ears more naturally the first time out and is remembered by consumers more quickly. The way to do this is to take a song that may have been modestly popular and re write it. (key, progression, substitutions) so it doesn't sound like the original. Often one would juxtaposition two songs like the beginning of one and the end of another. It does take work and imagination but it's a cookie cutter operation and time is of the essence. ....More

This Time - Brian Adams http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYwdQqTU8Fk&list=PL2E447FEAC6BADC51

Truncated post Hear is the rest ...Sometimes what I thought was a great idea of mine turned out to be a cover of a song that I didn't realize until I hear it. Or at least very similar and in the process I'd get turned around and try to figure out the song. Then I'd do work arounds to make it sound different then the cover. The above methods of focusing mental energies playing songs with my inner voice and having the inner ear available for listening then trying to get what is in me helped the following: -Developing a better sense of relative pitch. -Made me less dependent on outside sources (reading/listening) in order to learn songs. -Improved my song writing ability as I was focused on what was in my head as opposed to outside forces. -Improved my improvisational skills

I'm a slow notation reader as I learned later in life and read music less now then I did in the past. Playing by ear doesn't make one remember more easily. I used to teach guitar and a lot of times it requires transcribing music. Usually it starts with getting one note or chord right then following (is the next note up or down, how far is it up or down) This is really about relative pitch. As much as I would transcribe I'd rarely remember what I had transcribed for others. Because....lessons are a half hour long and when that half hour is up I'd be showing a different student something else. When you read music you are listening with your eyes. When you hear music (and are trying to figure it out) you are reading with your ears. "Ear reading" actually takes considerably longer to figure out songs (even for a piss poor sight reader like me) then reading notation. Ear reading and Sight listening become a crutch. Because you have to see or hear the music in order to play it. To really memorize a piece walk away from hearing it and seeing it and try to remember what you played. It actually takes less time not more to really learn a song for life this way. This next tidbit comes from both Howard Roberts (famous jazz guitarist who started GIT and the other musicians Institutes as well as has a few guitars named after him and a great book - http://www.amazon.com/Inner-Game-Music-Barry-Green/dp/0385231261 We have outer ears and inner ears just as we have an outer voice or instrument an we have an inner voice or instrument. That song... the one that gets stuck in your head every once in awhile. That's your inner voice speaking to your inner ear. If you are consumed by outside sounds you can't hear the inside ones. Turn off the radio and think of a song you know. Imagine yourself playing it because, you are playing it via your inner voice to your inner ear. If you do this regularly melodies will seem to pop out at you. It may be someone elses song it may be "your song". Keep the song in your head don't turn on the radio. Try to play it again in your head. Then later tap it out. Don't be concerned with key or notes simply the rhythm. Then try to play it on your instrument. Don't worry if it isn't how you imagined it. Focus on what you imagined and work it out to something as close as possible. Sometimes through playing you find something better then you originally thought of. That's okay, be flexible. When I first found out about this. I turned off the radio while driving and though about songs I was trying to memorize in performance. I imagined playing songs I was trying to memorize. It cut down memorization time considerably and helped me to play the song "blind" faster then either "reading sounds" or Hearing notation because it reduced the crutch. I also used to keep a simple cassette deck with a built in mic near my bed. If an idea came to me I'd try and play it. One take then off to bed. When I'd wake up I'd listen to what I played and see if I remembered what I was thinking. It was rough but I got better at getting the idea in my head out. ...Sometimes what I thought was a great idea of mine turned out to be a cover of a song that I didn't realize until I hear it. Or at least very similar and in the process I

Crash Test Dummies - Supermans Song http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihUIPlLw2ZE

I used to play with 12's on my electrics and my fingers would stiffen up so I moved down to 09's which was fine at home but I'd break those things left and right when playing live. I'd get nervous and want to hit the strings as hard as I could. So then I moved back up to 10's But I was doing some heavy gigging 4 hour shows every weekend 3 hour shows on the weekdays and session work. I finally got more comfortable with playing where I could hit the strings "hard enough" with 09's and not break them. For me it was honestly deep breathing and always starting with something simple and well rehearsed that helped the most. With other guys it seems they have to kick off with something aggressive to work out the nervous energy then when that is released they can play more naturally.

I used to play with this guy.... Bobby Cole. He was a trad jazz lounge lizard who played keys and sang. The guy rarely played anything later then 1950. The rest of us all had to know our stuff cold. But Bobby would bring song books with him to gigs and play from them. He could look at the sheet but we couldn't. Which is funny because you'd figure that after 40 years of playing he might actually learn a song so he didn't need the sheet. I chastised him to no end about that and.. well... It was "The Bobby Cole Show" Everyone came to see him as he was a central figure in local jazz so I got canned. Thirty years later I too have developed a crutch. I can still remember many songs but if I learned them in the last 10 years it was usually with the help of Band in a Box. If I'm not in front of the software I can't play and sing the songs. Adding to that though I'm no longer playing out. There is something about having an end to your goal. That end being live performance which forces you to make yourself remember.

You don't own me - Leslie Gore

I had to think about this and see if I could move it in a different direction. April, Come She Will - Simon and Garfunkel http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xH-9H75A0Tk

You aren't going to go far in the music industry on your voice alone. Pick up an instrument. You don't have to be great at it but you should try to be good. Now is a good time to start playing one.

Here's a story I love to tell but it's not mine. A young woman goes to college and gets a Bachelor in Arts degree in music composition, performance, and education. She then goes off to teach music for a living. While still writing and performing in unknown bands. She meets up with an up and coming producer that gets her gigs singing jingles. One of those jingles dropped $40,000 into her pocket. Nice work for an afternoon gig. Soon other commercials follow and she relocates to California. Where her education and networking eventually pay off with bigger and bigger gigs writing for other artists. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheryl_Crow'> Yeah, she's pretty famous Those who prepare best for long term careers generally have better long term careers.