TapperMike

Hi Jan, Thanks for that. Here's an interesting story. One of the oddest gigs I've ever had was backing a beat poet. This was no hip hop gig or standard bongo drum thing. It was the most challenging spur of the moment thing I've ever pulled off and even then I wonder if I did. Anyway this poet would do readings and he'd want rock and roll accompaniment. He paired me with a bass player that I'd never met before and refused to give me any advanced information like the type of stuff he would cover. He'd wave us in and expect us just to go. His wave / count in wouldn't even slightly resemble the tempo that he would speak at. I'd start up a cover and tell the bassist who would have no clue. and I'd try to call the changes out to him. Nerve racking to say the least. Then the bassist would call out song titles to me (trying not to be to loud over the poet) And we tried to work them out. The bassist did not make it through the second set. The poet was totally digging what we were doing. He felt it hieghtend the drama of his reading. Fout gigs of that guy was all I could take. I could no longer ignore his speech rhythms (which is what he wanted) and I could neither give rhythmic direction nor recieve it from him. Apparently I was the longest running musician he ever had backing him up. Most never survived the first night. And so ended my career as a backup guitarist in avant-garde performance poetry reading. Now.... I can write a melody just fine without lyrics. However lyrics present certain challenges rhythmicly as well as opporitunities. Melody has it's own rhythm that isn't in exact lock-step with other instruments. If you can sing it even in a monotone voice It offers a rhythmic foundation to build melodic ideas from.

Boy this one is getting bumped up. I tried for many years to undo the harmony first structure we all know and love. I really tried to get that Stevie Wonder/ Paul McCartney thing where they would sort thru the melody and attach the harmony to it later. Tried and failed. Then there was a period where I was all about Charlie Parker http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Parker I'd try to mix things up a little but if I didn't here chord tones prominent in the melody it wasn't moving. I forgot everything I'd ever learned about the blues and rock, I was trying way to hard to be the next Steely Dan. There's more theory and theory thrown overboard in your average SD song then doans has pills. These days I can start with a melody but by the time I play my first note I've already established a key and the chord it will fit behind in my head.

It really depends on the pattern you have to work with I like simple patterns with simple variations in them. Usually the basic pattern remains the same. If' it's a shuffle it won't shift to a straight eight. If it's 4/4 It's not going to change to 5/4. There are endless exceptions to this rule. Pink Floyd's Money was written in 7/4 but the solo section is in 4/4 That being said there is an endless amount of rhythms that can be applied to a time signature. And simple things like purposefully missing a beat, changing accents can have a major effect on the feel of the beat. Usually the Hook calls for a dramatic pause this is caused by retarding the beat and/or reducing the instrumentation. Most times there is a huge variation in the chorus and the verse. But for the purpose of writing (not recording) I like to keep these within limits. Most times when writing or trying to arrange you'll let the chips fall were they may. A fill that surprises you when trying to follow a beat may do more to throw you off.

Well, I can't speak for my inner lyricist as I have none to begin with. I will say I used to carry rhythms in my head as that was the only place to put them or get them. My first drum machine was both blessing and curse. Even though I can keep a solid rhythm in my head while working on a song idea I always run to a drum pattern as soon as I get an idea.

If your method is working for you then, why fight it. I did have a few songwriting books that advised lyricists keep a few basic patterns on hand. A straight 8, a shuffle and an occassional waltz. Nothing two busy or exotic.

Yep, anything that keep or lays the beat down.

I always struggle with titles as most of my music is intrumental. SortOfLikeClaptonsOceanBlvdw/TomPettyInfluence is no name for a song.

Hi, Musicians are of course welcome to join in as well. How many of you non musicians work with a drum pattern in the background while developing your content?

I have four main vsti's of which have sufficient vst effects so I don't generally run separate effects anymore. 1. Proteus VX Unlike it's bigger brothers Proteus X and Emulator X It will run on Vista and Windows7. However you will need to install using right click run as administrator and access the vsti in the same manner. It has a wide assortment of sounds from the command station years. Some of them are really stunning. It takes forever to load because all the files load at once. The initial sculping is always pertaninent to the instrument. You can set your CC's once for one sound and then even if the character/scuplting changes the cc's will remain the same. 2. Korg M1 Legacy Edition Though not free it's a great cheap sound library based on the original M! and all the cards / later versions. It loads fast and is well organized (unlike proteus) It does have two (and only two) fx while not boutique fx they still get the job done. 3. OP-X Pro II I love this thing, Sometimes it's a moog, sometimes it's any variety of Oberhiem's, Sometimes it's a jupiter, or a prophet. It's got all those great 80's sounds. The videos and mp3's on the site really don't do justice to the quailty of the sound. It's amazingly flexable and the 1500 presets that come with it are great starting points if you want to use the sound as is or alter the sound. 4. Korg Wavestation Legacy Edition This is essentially the "AI" of Kronos, It's part FM, part additive but mostly 'wave shaping" synthesis. It's a bit heady for me I'll never understand all the features but I sure love playing the presets and playing with the presets. The only thing I really don't like about it is how it handles split. Splitpoint is determined by note value. Which is great if you are a keyboard player with only one keybed. But if you like working with more then one "manual" or are a midi accordianist or like me a ztarist. It's a pain. I would so much more prefer to determine voicing splits by midi channel. I do have a work around by using a host and bringing up two instances of wave station each with it's own channel. Then digging up the same preset on both instances and catering the layering/spilt. But I do find that rather boring. About my host Sure I have Abelton Live and Reaper and Sonar and Samplitude. But I make it a point not to open my DAW unless I'm going to record and I only record when I have something two record. I'm one of those old school guys who believes in working out solid ideas before hitting the big red button. But I digress. I'm using Cantible as my host. Unlike other hosts Cantible is a great live host. You can set up racks to channels and then sidechain or a million and one other things. Then save them as sessions, sub sessions and sets. this is great because after you've tweaked all your settings for the individual vst's and vsti's it saves the values in the parent host. So when it does come time to gig you don't have to trip over yourself remembering where you put each vsti, the fpx for the vsti's About the Rest I used to be one of those guys who would spend hours a day trying out free vsts and vsti's Some were good, some were great and some really weren't my thing or were just plain lousy. I've had enough problems with addiction in the past I didn't want to become addicted to downloads like I see on KVRaudio. First your are endlessly downloading vsti's, Then your endlessly trying them out. Then you forget what you have and download again. It pulls one away from making music. Better to keep a clean well organized tool box with just the right tools for the job then a junkyard of a few useful items lost in the sea of broken promises.

In many (but not all situations) dealing with compatiblity it boils down to permissions. When one installs it is advised that you do not attempt to simply "Ghost" meaning transfer the program files from one computer to another and cross your fingers. Instead ALWAYS install using right click run as administrator Even if you are logged into the computer as the administrator or you don't have multiple log ons. The second major issue with music software and Vista/Windows is Stream from disk. While it was available on 98, Vista and windows 7 don't support this. Stream "from" disk. means it bypasses the ram and heads straight for the processor. This is kind of a must if you have older sound libraries like Proteus X, DSF and earlier EWQL/Miroslav stuff. It broke my heart when I couldn't load the "Combinations" from modern synphony orchestra into Vista.

Hi, If you are recording digitally, It would be in your best interest to investigate vst plugins. Pretty much all daws allow for vst inserts and many have them pre included. Many are modeled after real world delay pedals and many more have features that you wouldn't be able to get out of a stomp box. Many vst effects are free.

Hi, You probably already know the story of Eric Clapton's "Wonderful Tonight" For those who don't. He got into a huge argument with his wife and was rather teed off. He wasn't in a forgiving mood whatsoever. He wrote it as the antithesis to what he felt at the time. So emotional catalysts can take you anywhere you want if you are open to that. You can use your emotional muse in many ways including venting, avoiding, and overcoming if they are negative emotions. Sometimes, we get a lot of gibberish which we can't understand ourselves. That's the way I right. I right lyrics, instrument in hand by mumbling along. The melodic phrasing is what I'm looking for. Sometimes I catch myself in a cliche. I think about it I have both a harmonic rhythm and a melodic rhythm and what sounds like scat because that's basically what it is. I record as quickly as possible. Then I break out the text editor and work out the rest of my ideas from there. Which saves me a lot of time over my old way which was to sit and scat my way through while trying to find words and then jotting them down. These days my focus is all on instrumentals. I'm less concerned with lyrics. Which makes it a bear to figure out a title for the song. When I dabbled in lyric writing I'd always try and pull a title out of my scribbles and scat. With a title you can build a song. It doesn't have to be the final title. Just a means to give direction to your context. Mike

I've been playing guitar going on 35 years now. Generally people find what works for them and then stick with that course of action. Unless they get super serious and find themselves going through teachers like water. I consider myself fairly versatile. I can: Flatpick all downstrokes like BB King Alternate flatpicking Sweeps and Rakes Hybrid with flatpick Travis style with thumbpick Thumpick only All the uke picking methods My own style of finger picking which is mostly flesh not nail Tap Two finger alternate bass playing Pop and Snap With all this up my sleeve and more techniques I've developed while playing the ztar which can't be applied to a guitar, The two things I can't do. Traditional classical right hand finger picking. I can simply not get my hand in that "Crane" position and make good contact with the strings. I can not extend my hand above the strings in that manner. I'm so used to playing live and loud and bracing the strings by curling my fingers more or the side of my palm. This young lady Mesmerizes me with how natural she makes it appear. Gypsy Strumming For basically the same reason. That type of strumming requires a loose "monkey paw type wrist. and twisting from the wrist back to the forearm. Not a windshield wiper motion. Every few years I pull those two out of my bag of tricks, Try for a few weeks then give up and move onto something else.

And I love her by the beatles.

The problem with drum loops isn't lack of availabiltiy. It's over availablity and not being suited properly. Drum loops are by nature too short and too busy. Unless by happenstance you get enough loops with similarity that you can build into a song for things like fills, breaks and....rests you'll be constantly searching out loops or being drained by the process of placing them in a usuable fashion that supports the song. Another thing to bring up is everyone wants to hit the big red button even when they aren't prepared for it. I have an expression "dawful" something that's awful becaus it was composed in a DAW. In my humble opinion timing and rhythm is important. Strong timing, good rhythm are by products of practice. focus and attitude. Some people don't feel they need to practice anything. Just hit the big red button and go. Honestly you should work out your compositions/arrangements before you record. I worked the big boards back in the 80's Bands that came in pumped and focused and well rehearsed though not over rehearsed always tracked better. Those with the "lets just get this done so I can go" usually put out crap. These days usually when a song is in it's infancy I'll try to work it through in OMB I'm just looking for a fit of chords and style. It forces me to work all the way thru the song. Then I'll do a mock up in band in a box. I'll define the chords work out alternative basslines. When I'm done with that stage and I know where everything is going to sit. Along with lots of practice I'll export my biab arrangement and open it up into something I can polish things up such as realband or cakewalk. I'll try out different vsti's for the midi tracks. I play guitar, bass and ztar currently. By now I've got my practice time down. I'll only strip away a few of the midi tracks like the bass one backing part and the solo. Sure I could strip them all away one at a time and add drum loops but....that gets back to my point about drum loops. And I want it to be still somewhat fresh all the way through. If I try to play everypart it will drain me to much. If you've (or I) have done everything write the music is already listenable even before mixdown. I'll wait a day before I tackle mixdown. I studied under the motown masters and the one thing they beat into my head is that for every hour of recording you should spend two hours mixing down.

Go back before it swallows you whole. Just kidding. A good monitoring setup should sound tolerable for anything you throw at it. Home stereo systems and speakers can color the sound by "enhancing" regions of the sound spectrum. And while all speakers and amplification systems color sound to a greater or lesser degree you don't want that type of coloration when handling a mix. This is due to the fact that coloration can hide things that an engineer needs to hear. When you mix it's time to take off your musician ears and put on your engineer ears. Sometimes a 3db boost or cut here or there doesn't sound apparent in a home speaker system but sounds overt in headphones or a car stereo situation. A few things people don't quite get when choosing speakers is room size. Even with near field speakers a large room with under powered speakers is a bad idea. Same goes for a small room with huge speakers. Now here is the kicker. If you are into dnb or dubstep and have a small room and speakers to match your aren't going to get the natural bass response one would expect working with subs. Like in those obnoxious super car radio's. There is a tendency to push the bass frequencies up to get some "thump" Well that can spell disaster when someone running subs listens to the mix or someone listening to the mix on headphones. Everything will turn to mud or disappear. There is no such thing as a deep, deep, heavy loud bass with a fast attack. So when you get your monitors. Get used to them first. Do a lot of listening to a wide variety of music. It will help you adjust your ears to the speakers. While you are doing all that listening try to do side by side with the same song and different environments. This is how you learn the characteristics of your monitors.

Everything is software for me these days. I used to be a big roland fan. Too much so I'd played roland stuff for so many years I just got tired of the sounds. I had an emu XL-7 with the 2500 rom which was a remasterd version of the composer/proteus 2000 rom. It sounded great till one cup of coffee ruined my command station. The nice thing about hardware is that the sounds are "homogenized" to a degree. I've got a large collection of vsti's and they don't always sit well in the mix starting out. It gets frustrating for me because if the sounds aren't jelling from the get go I'll spend hours tweaking them so they do. A pefect example is m1 house piano originally released on the korg m1. now available in software format (sorry mac users I don't think it will work with the latest release of osx) It's great in rave situations but doesn't sit well in the mix for pop/rock/folk/jazz or country. Re Kronos, that's big budged stuff my pockets don't reach that deep. Yes it does take a long time to boot, however once it has the sounds load fairly quickly.

Barre Chords came easy to me, they were the first thing I learned. I started playing songs my first week. Open chords were the challenge at first. simple things like going from an open D to an open E. No one really showed me anything it was like I'd watch em do it then hours later I tried to re create it. My biggest regret was not taking lessons earlier. I could play rhythm well. I was the king of rhythm guitar but I couldn't play a lead to save my life and no one wanted me to. There is a lot of information on the net. Too much information. It's easy to get into this bend where you want to try something beyond your abilities, stumble along and not have it happen so you jump to something else and something else again. And a frustration develops. The best thing I would advise to anyone who wants to be a better guitarist is to take lessons. I learned more in two months of lessons then three years of stumbling around with books. Not that other material doesn't have it's place. A video or study material won't expect you to have studied what you've learned for a week and be expected to perform it like a teacher will. A video or study material won't be able to look and listen to you and then give you advice like. If you hold your hand this way or relax this or.. lets take this slower and work all the way through it. A video or book won't say to you.....Your not ready for this yet. You need to prepare here are some things we need to work through before you're able. And there are hundreds more scenarios where having a teacher really is better then having internet study material. So my advise would be this. 1. Take lessons. 2. Develop a set list. Ten songs that you can play one after the other. 3. Try to learn at least one song a week all the way through if not two. 4. Don't be afraid to try your hand at writing music. The more you do it the more comfortable you will be with the process. 5. Although getting the right notes down is important the "feel" meaning the rhythm and accents are just as if not more important. 6. Strive for consistency. Start strong, play strong, finish strong. Some folks start weak and have to work up to keeping in time. Others start strong but then go through the motions without commitment and lose a bit of timing or miss a few beats. And other folks who have a great start and a good middle fizzle out near the end of a song. Be none of those people. If you practice poorly you'll perform poorly. 7. Play out as much as possible. Even if it's to your dog, or a relative. Getting comfortable playing to an audience makes it much easier to play to an audience or record.

1. Do you sing, play an instrument or instruments? I sing when the mood strikes me which is fairly rare What instruments? Mostly ztar, I have two. An older z6 and a baby z. I also have quite a few guitars. Usually my strat is my go to guitar. I've played mandolin, and electric bass. in the past 2. Are you in a band or bands? No 3. Do you write songs? I dabble quite a bit and occassionally record what I've written.. 4. Do you record your music? about once a week but I rarely goes through the entire production to a finished product 6. Are you a tech head? I'm a programmer does that count? I graduated from recording engineering school back in the 80's Quite a bit has changed since then. I've been in rock bands, blues bands, trad jazz bands and even fronted a fusion band. I actually entered the field of programming by trying to figure out a drum machine. I've produced hip hop and grunge bands using 90's technology during the 90's. I've written trance, italian disco, electro stuff with the aid of abelton live an emu xl-7 am fairly comfortable working in reaper. But I prefer more straight foreward tools these days band in a box, real band. It allows me to first focus on the writing process then working out the recording/mixdown stuff. Too much technology reduces the muse. 9. Do you draw/paint/write stories/computer art/dance or other creative pursuit? Occassionally I'll do some stuff in SWiSH Max I really like working with interactive multi-media stuff. 10. What would you like to get out of Songstuff? Material. I'm a terrible singer but sometimes a fresh set of lyrics draws me to a melody line. I like experimenting with lyric rhythm across the fretboad. I'm pretty quick to develop chord changes and styles.