TapperMike

Wow John, You are a generous man.

Heart of the Matter - Don Henley

Ray of Light - Maddona

Kudo's for that one mate. Spirit in the sky - Norman Greenbaum

8 miles high The Byrds

Day Of The Eagle - Robin Trower

Baby Blue - Badfinger

Thank you for being a friend - Andrew Gold

The Logical Song - Supertramp

I knew this guy once,,,,, He used to get high during the afternoon and watch soaps. Then scream at the tv. But then after he chilled out and got some munchies he'd take pen to paper and use whatever he just saw as his muse. Christopher Cross (sailing, arthur's theme) once remarked that (not the gettting high) was the method he used predominately in song writing. As for listening to music from all sorts of places. I'm a terrible boyfriend just ask any ex. When the television is on I have guitar in hand and I'll rerun the commercial trying to figure out the song.

For those who don't know. I'm a huge fan of pg music's band in a box. The one thing it doesn't do is true auto accompaniment like your average arranger/workstation keyboard. There are others I've tried and become rather frustrated with such as OneManBand. None seem to do a decent job at channel splits. Instead they rely on keyboard splitpoints which drive me insane. As well I've got two ztars. I'd love to run both into my computer at the same time into the same host and be able to differentiate which midi device and thru which channel does what. I'm told midi accordianists face the same problems. Midi accoridans send bass through one specific channel, chords thru another and melody thru a third. Why can no company build a true multi channel, multi instrument auto accompany program?

If your sound card isn't supported you can still use asio4all As well steinberg has released a new asio driver which deals with many of the problems associated with windows. (multiple programs all wanting access to the sound driver) The link escapes me. Some hosts and software limit your ability to access different drivers. They only give you wmd (windows media diver/direct x) or asio. I've always experienced problems with asio using two host environments at the same time. Oddly everyone tells me asio is faster but I've gotten very very fast and stable results with windows media driver. Most newer software has bridges for 32 to 64 or 64 to 32 bit compatiblitiy. The one thing 98 shines is "stream from disk" which wasn't adapted in vista or windows 7. This drove me insane. I kissed away so many great sound libraries

House at Pooh Corner - Kenny Loggins

Don't Smoke In Bed / Peggy Lee

I'll see your Wild Eyed Southern Boys And raise you The Boys are back in town / Thin Lizzy The official song of spring break.

Apparently my wish has been answered. PG Music's Power Tracks now has a chord layer.

Yep, I'm digging this thread too. In your Wildest Dreams / Moody Blues

Eyes Without a Face / Billy Idol

My thoughts are,,, Sheilding does wonders. I used to work two jobs cooking both day and night. Both places had a no phones on the line policy. The day job the line was very well sheilded but not the night. No one on the line could get or make calls do to the interferance. The night job was a constant pain telling cooks over and over again no cells and no calls on the line. Ask, tell it didn't matter. Younger guys were glued to the phones. We tried firing a few and even when we'd tell the replacements what did happen and what would happen they still would be playing with the phones online. It was always a pain. Missed orders burned food longer then acceptable cook times. Finally we had to start shaking them down for phones before they could start. I think if I were a producer I'd either install jammers or heavily insulate the walls with aluminium/stainless steel. A buddy of mine was making money as an extra on Detroit 187. It was good money for...walking around in the background of scenes. He lasted one episode because he didn't turn off his cell when the camera was rolling.

Here is something I'm curious about. Quite a number of songs have been written using historical, literal or even tv and movie shows as a basis for the song. Have you ever taken your subject matter from a tv show or movie as a thought experiment or carried it to the next stage and completed the song,

A great deal of learning music requires just doing it. Social networking takes one out of the doing stage and into the talking about stage. I already participate in a few music boards some with theory forum. The easiest way to learn nothing is to ask a very pertinant question. You'll get more bad information then good, flame wars left and right and nothing concrete will be retained. The web is already a vast wasteland of mis information when it comes to musical development. And while I will admit that there is no shortage of good content on the web. Because I've been to some wonderful sites and seen some really great instruction on youtube etc people actually learn less when they have too much to decide on and can't take a path then stick to it.

Reminicient of Cutting Crew and Bon Jovi, Enjoyable, I liked the way you finished it

I'm curious to how many here actually map before they record. A long time back I was getting a lot of side work with the vegas acid community (before they were bought out by sony) doing guitar and bass overdubs. Some were horrendus to work with no key, no chord progressions written out and no notation. At least I could make some references to song form from the drum pattern layouts and get a clue by trascribing the existing parts. While markers are good for somethings like marking verse1 chorus2 prechorus, The aren't really good for identifying the actual progression. Sometimes I think track views should have a snap able layer/track that does nothing but show the chord name. So when your trying to record/play you can watch the track view and see what is around the bend.

I too am a strummer who tries to belt out a few la la la's for the melody when I write. I had a girlfriend who was a great note taker and she'd assume I was mumbling a specific lyric and she'd right it down then we'd go back to that lyric idea and flesh it out to words. edit I'm actually trying to move away from that practice. With the z I can play harmonies with my left hand and accompany melodies on the right....well it has the potential for that as far as my potential v my ability it's something I enjoy struggling thru. Which is why I'm relying on drum patterns in the background for a little rhythmic support then "Pad" the chords with my left hand while working out melodic lines on the right.

Oddy that is exactly why I started the topic. Most of us for common practice don't read aloud, when we are typing words. And even on a second read people don't often speak or monitor thier speaking behavoir as they would for public speaking. Use of lymric or iambic pentameter is thrown out the window. I'll often read lyrics with a basic beat and guitar or ztar in hand working out progressions, I'm less concerned with the note selection of the melody and more concerned about If I could sing it in time. Once I have a sense of the timing of the lyrics I'll go back and add the melodic direction. A good strong melodic line has both qualities of repetition and variation within that repetition. Ofen times I'll look at a verse try to sing it through see it as not working and wonder how much thought went into the actual sing ability of a particular phrase.