become a better player with cubase....

[MCreel]

I had an idea the other day. Wondered if anyone else has tried this.

Put in a CD and export the wav to cubase. cut it down to the instrumental sections and play along with it to improve your chops.

Works better for jazz practicing....put in an r/b or smooth jazz song and play a lead over the intro.

Anyonw have experience with how this works out?

[Anomaly Design]

Isn't that the same as playing along to a stereo?

[MCreel]

kind of....except this way you can cut out any lead parts that you don't want to compete with.....and you can loop the song.

[djhead]

sounds like a good idea. How do you cut out the bad parts without nerfing your mix?

[MCreel]

well one particular song I have in mind has like a one minute intro with just teh backing tracks (small variations within it)... I figure I might have a small hiccup when it loops back around, but I'll still have a minute of continuous track, and likely the hiccup won't be so substantial as to throw off my playing and rythym.

If I can get it to work then I'll try to recod what I play over it and post it as an example.

[S.Clause]

Another option is installing a AB-repeat/loop plugin for Winamp (if you use winamp that is) and then just looping the section. You won't be able to cut it as good as you can with cubase, but it sure is less of a hassle.

[MCreel]

Originally Posted by S.Clause

Another option is installing a AB-repeat/loop plugin for Winamp (if you use winamp that is) and then just looping the section. You won't be able to cut it as good as you can with cubase, but it sure is less of a hassle.

It would be...if I didn't already have cubase installed. I don't have winamp. Never liked it much to begin with.

Plus the winamp one is really only very good if you have a song that you can easily get a precise time on. If it has a lot of extraneous tones/clicks/hits then the loop sounds crappy.

But good advice. Thanks for the thoughts.

[fraserhutch]

Or you can just get some Jamie Aebersold cds......

[MCreel]

not familiar with that name...but I'll have to check it out now. Thanks!

[IainDearg]

Terrific tool for practicing chops:

http://www.jazzwise.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=6043

[warrengtype]

yeah, you can also use the time stretch thingy to slow down the parts if you're having a hard time playing something up to speed. that way you can play it several times slowly to get the hang of it. that also works really well for learning something fast/difficult by ear.

[Superhuman]

I improved playing guitar a lot by using cubase. Try inputing a section of arpeggios into the midi editor, then loop the phrase you want to get down and slow down the bpm. I tried looping section of instrumental pieces and playing along with them but I find that writing your own tab out in the midi and gradually increasing the speed helped me to sharped my sweep picking more than anything else.