I can see where a acoustic guitar is a powerful tool...

[SEDstar]

I have grown used to trying out my note melodies on a piano sound.

I recently got a good sounding acoustic guitar sound, and have been playing ith it... hmmm... I must admit, I am "transfixed" by its rich, pure tones.

the same melody played on a piano sund, Is okay... but, th same exact notes played on the acoustic sound I just got, really does sound special.

I cant really suspend long held notes, against a series of shorter ones... when i use the piano, at least not in any meaningful way, I have to "suspend" with another instrument, like a long low cello draw...

it is awful handy, even at "first blush" to work with my counterpoint on the new acoustic guitar sound. I guess I can see what all you guitar songwriters out there are raving about the instrument for...

my buddy stopped over, and as a quick test... I had him listen to the 10 second long counterpoint basic melody in tonic... on piano sound. He shrugged *Its okay... see where it goes though, I guess...*

I played some other stuff, BSed a while... then wnt "oh yeah, I almost forgot... tell me what you think of this short guitar idea I had..."

(same exact notes, exactly)

"Hmmm... thats really pretty..."

"Should I 'dress it up' with other instruments, you know, like i usually do?"

"Naw man... thats really pretty... just make somethign around that... dont clutter it up..."



same exact melody... *shrugs*

I'm gonna mess with this acoustic guitar sound for a while, I think.

 

[Frankie Rage]

I started out on trumpet but then gravitated to 6 string guitar and then 4 string bass guitar. My true love is the 4 string bass it just feels right to me that I should be playing it whenever I pick it up.

I once had a Fender Mustang bass which was a beautiful instrument to my mind.

 

[Hakea]

Nice story about your mate not spotting the same tune.

When you talk about using this or that sound, what are you using to control them? Are you doing it through some sort of midi controller, or just using software and writing the lines out?

I'm trying to get some experience with as many of the options as I can, and they all seem to have their pros and cons, and special characteristics. So far that can mean a) writing music in Finale Print Music and either getting its own sounds to play it, or making a midi from it and dropping it into Cubase, GB or whatever. b) Using a keyboard as a midi controller (I'm pretty useless at that... ) or c) Playing a variety of instruments myself (including a keyboard that can fake other instruments, although not always well)..


I particularly like the last one, because (as you say) the change in timbres (sounds) lead you in different directions, as do the actual mechanics of operating each individual instrument.

Thanks to the wonders of modern recording software I can also make up for my very mediocre playing by cutting and pasting a few good notes, bars, chords, or whatever for the instruments that I would struggle to play accurately for an entire song (i.e. most of them... ).

Endless possibilities, but what do you use? A keyboard... or...??

Cheers,

Chris

 

[Whatmysay]

Nothing like new instrument or f/x pedal to aid inspiration. I got the same thing going on with my new Seagull.

 

[mikeh]

For many years, I searched for the most realistic guitar sounds via keyboard (and spent a lot of dollars in the process) - and spent dozens of hours trying to refine my keyboard playing technique to "play" those sounds on a keyboard to reflect the voicings and strum/picking techniques used by guitar players (I even recorded a "spanish guitar" part, strumming and single notes that actually fooled a guitar player into thinking it was an actual acoustic - he even looked at my cheap Washburn acoustic and commented on the nice recorded tone)

While I was able to play some basic guitar, my guitar chops and my guitar gear was lacking...............and I thought, it woud be easier/cheaper to simulate the guitar parts I needed on the keyboard - I was wrong!

While keyboards can simulate some guitar.....in particular single accoustic notes (I have a couple of very nice acoustic guitar samples)......it is simply too difficult to achieve realistic guitar parts on keys - in particular electric guitar (and I spent a lot of time and money trying). In particular since so much pop/rock/country music is guitar driven.

One day, about 10 years ago, I decided to bite the bullet. I woodshedded on guitar for many months and then started to acquire decent guitar gear (axes, amps and effects). I now can play most of the parts I need and get credible tone - much better than anything I was able to achieve on keys.

I've spent hundreds of hours on guitar chops and thousands of dollars on guitar gear - but it has been worth the effort and expense to achieve the guitar parts I could only hope for on keys. As an added bonus, my writing has grown significantly, since I can now write on guitar as well as on keys.

If you like the way your acustic sample sounds - imagine how mcuh you could enjoy actually playing the parts on a guitar.

The acoustic guitar is a wonderful sound - I have some acoustic guitar on almost every track I record (even if it is way back in the mix) - it seems to add a certain dimension to my tracks.

 

[SEDstar]

...

Basically, its just MIDI on the computer. WHile I can read/write time signatures and sheet music properly, I cant "compose" on staff fast enough to be creative. FruityLoops has a "piano roll" geature, which to ME (2 degrees in math/comp sci...) is just a graph of time vs pitch (x vs Y) so it makes inherent "sense" to me, and i can do it fast enough I can be creative without going "every... good... boy... does... ARRRGH!!!!!"

I had 4-5 years of classical snare training as a toddler, followed by 2 years of full set instruction, so... I can read time signatures, note lengths, complex repeats and codas, yada yada yada... the only thing i lack is experience with pitch. (drum sheet music is exactly the same... with 2 differnces... each "line" is an instrument in your kit, EG, snare is all on one line... and #'s and b's mean NOTHING to a drummer, LMAO)

Oh, I can slowly "decode" a complicated piece of clasical sheet music, but... we're talking figure out one note... memorize it, learn to play it... repeat every day, I can learn typically one measure every 8 hours I do it, LMAO, which is of course POINTLESS.

FruityLoops (FL...) lets me view sheet music as a graph of a mathematical function, which makes "sense" to me in a meaningful way. Its ironic that when I unroll an old "player piano paper scroll" the sequences of dots makes instant sense to me, and i get the gist immediately of the rhythm and itervals of the piece, LMAO, how useless is THAT)

the FL software is basically my combination MIDI editor/MIDI player/basic mixing console. If I have to any serious mixing or FFT noise reduction, I take the WAV into Adobe AUdition. WHen I say "I got a new piano sound" I either found a new "sample" and the MIDI player bnds the pitch to match my midi notes I wrote, or its a VST instrument I found or bought.

I learned to do home recording/mixing/multi tracking as a hobby to the point a guy that sang anbd played guitar, I made a "rough demo" of him and explaining multitracking to him... and it made a "really rough demo" of his 3 songs, on the strength of which demo he landed a paying gig as a lead singer in a local band. Its his actual day job for like years now, so... thats something...

I prefer VST instruments to simple "one shot" samples (higher quality resulting sound...)


about the only thing I had going for me, when i started to want to compose, other than th ability to read (more like decode, LMAO) sheet music... is a very strong sense of rhythm and syncopation. I "sight read" classical music for th RHYTHM in real time... the pitches jst dont make sense at full speed since I dont play any pitched instruments.

I once wrote a 30 second drum solo that sounds, honest to god, exactly like Neal Peart (drummer for years...) BUT, without a really expensive VST instrument to play it, it lacks "real" sound, LMAO)

While acquiring slowly my ear and bits of theory (the former slower than th latter, LAMO) slowly, I drifted towards solo piano pieces, as they seem to "instruct" me more i my little exercises. I LOVE my hgh quality orchestral VST, but I cant do it like I can drum solos and drum lines, LMAO. (patience, patience, LMAO)

the last couple days, I got a decent quality acoustic guitar VST running on my new(to me, anyways) music only computer, and am charging into THAT in place of solo piano pieces.

Basically I use FL to write my mlodies and play/record/mix them... if i need anything heavier than simple mixing, I run the tracks out into Adobe. I want simply EVERY vst instrument in the world, so I have more to pick from, LMAO, but money does not permit such, LMAO

(good VST instruments can get expensive, and my old music only computer doesnt play the better ones, lol)

I SUPPOSE using "piano roll/graph paper" to compose on... is kinda like writing guitar music by penning tabs... but I hasten to add I can read and write sheet music well, just too slow to actually b creative.

my ear is coming along slowly... and evry so often, I acquire a VST that actually works and sounds half decent.

I like the acoustic guitar VST so MUCH basically because in that sound, I can do proper "suspensions" of notes against a longr note, allowing me to perform real stage III and stage IV counterpoint without resorting to another instrument to perform the suspension... I *think* I would get a LOT of good use out of a very expensive piano VST, but I cant justify th expense yet.

my buddy (mate? you oz-ster, LMAO) got the guitar VST and didnt like it/figure it out... so I got a good deal on it when he needed a few bucks to buy a case of beer, LMAO

I GAVE UP on thinking TABS of classical or popular music would do ANYthing for me... they are all written by "ear only" musicians, and they are guessing at scales and notes, and it ruins my "flow" to have to go frm tab, to fret spot/string spot/pitch calculation, to keyboard, to midi... all just to have it be the wrong notes/scales anyways, LMAO, and 15 slightly different "interpretations" of any one song to boot, LMAO

plus, I shouldnt be "stealing" chord progs and melody snippets anyways, so i try to make it all up on my own now to force myself to learn more theory and ear.

everyone thinks FruityLoops is a "peasant's beatmaking tool", but, its actually extremely powerful as a midi editor/player/basic mixere, its just a matyter of how many good VSTs you can afford to buy (nothing more frustrating than buying somethign for 80 bux, and it sux)... every WEEK it seems like I start using another function that makes an hour of busy work into a few mouse clicks (EG, oh... I dont have to count semi tones of each and every note in my 15 bar 3 octave melody... I can just hit this menu click...thats handy...)

I sit here and wonder what Beethovn could have accomplished with modern software... remember, he had only a primitive piano keyboard instrument, and quill and ink and paper to work with, LMAO, imagine hw much MORE he cuold have made if he had our software, how complex it could have gotten!!

(not too practical to have an entire symphony sitting there every day, week in, week out... so that as he penned melody lines they could play it for him to hear it and mak changes on the fly like we can by ear...)

 

[Hakea]

While keyboards can simulate some guitar.....in particular single accoustic notes (I have a couple of very nice acoustic guitar samples)......it is simply too difficult to achieve realistic guitar parts on keys - in particular electric guitar (and I spent a lot of time and money trying). In particular since so much pop/rock/country music is guitar driven.
.

Great post.

I have an 'arranger keyboard' with a range of built in sounds. Some of them sound pretty good, and others are obviously cheesy. But there seems to be a rule of thumb which says that, even among the better sounds, the ones that sound the best to me are always ones for instruments that I don't play myself. If you do play then it's usually fairly easy to pick all the missing dynamics, lack of technique, and so on. If I try and do it all with virtual instruments in software much the same applies. I imagine that if your software is good enough, and you have enough skill and time you can eventually manipulate the elements of the track enough to come a fair bit closer. But it would take a level of ability and patience well out of my range.

Like you, I have found guitar particularly hard to get right, especially electric. The guitar sounds on my keyboard aren't even close.

So I've been trying to work my way through by learning to fake the ones that seem to have the best chance of success, and working backwards from the other end of the scale trying to learn to play the instruments that I've had least success doing 'virtually'.

Drums offer multiple possibilities - playing a real kit one drum at a time and building it up by layers, take by take, using a drum machine, playing drums on the keyboard (pretty good sounds to my non-drummer ears...) or just writing drum tracks in midi. Bass also has a similar range of possibilities. Next on the list is probably piano, and it doesn't seem so hard to put a little bit of basic keys somewhere in the mix.

For the instruments that I can play (or attempt to play) the software can come to the rescue in other ways. Whilst is obviously easy to cut and paste drum tracks, bar by bar, looping sections, etc, I've been able to do it with guitar too - i.e. record my own strumming, fingerpicking or whatever and chop it into short sections for repeating. One good verse take and one chorus take can obviously just be repeated, but I've also had some fun with chopping a successful live recording into a bar each of various chords and just swapping them round to write a new song.

So much to learn, and so little time... but the whole process of learning is so interesting in itself that I'm no longer as impatient to get to the 'end result' as I was. Partly because I realised that music is never finished - there's always another arrangement or variation to try....

What a great hobby it is.

Cheers,

Chris

 

[Hakea]

Thanks for taking the time to post all that SEDstar.


Heaps of intersting info, but I especially liked this:

B
I once wrote a 30 second drum solo that sounds, honest to god, exactly like Neal Peart (drummer for years...) BUT, without a really expensive VST instrument to play it, it lacks "real" sound, LMAO)

Getting that last bit of 'reality' is so tantalising....

As a non-drummer I can be satisfied with some embarrassingly cheesy backing drum tracks, but I'm slowly trying to get better. I even went and had half a dozen drum lessons to try and get a feel for how rhythm can be used, and how to program better. I had a job getting the guy to understand the second angle, and he just wanted to go through the usual steps to teach me to be a drummer. I didn't really have the heart to say "Look mate, I just want to learn enough to be able to put you out of a job by faking what you do so well...". However, somewhat to my surprise, sitting right next to a genuine pro drummer (many decades working experience) was a real eye opener (actually that should be 'ear opener'). Like you say about your Peart 'copy', there were subtle qualities in my drum teacher's work that I knew I wouldn't be able to fake. Most interesting.

Thanks again for the post.

Cheers,

Chris

 

[ido1957]

Funny thing - I'm a guitar player by trade. I find piano has fascinating possibilities and wish I could/would spend more time learning it. It opens up new pathways for writing, although all the songs are slow because that's all I can play on piano. The new instrument scenario does hold true.....

 

[mikeh]

So much to learn, and so little time... but the whole process of learning is so interesting in itself that I'm no longer as impatient to get to the 'end result' as I was. Partly because I realised that music is never finished - there's always another arrangement or variation to try....

What a great hobby it is.

Cheers,

Chris

You are so right "so much to learn and so little time". While my main axe is the drum kit, I'm pretty good on latin percussion, a decent keyboard player and have become a fair player fair on guitar and bass. I can also learn some specific parts on lap steel, banjo, violin and harmonica (at least enough to cover what I need on some recordings.

When I first started to learn other instruments, I too was impatient - and I wanted to immediately be as good as I was on the drums. Gradually, I understood that it was a long process and I simply tried to find the joy in the effort - and lo and behold, each year I grew a little more proficient on each intrument (although I spend hundreds of hours each year working on my chops).

I find that with each instrument I hit a wall, but if I keep playing, keep learning new songs, etc. I learn a new technique, a new riff or a new chord and I'm re-charged.

As my chops develop on any given instrument - I then discover the flaws in the sampled sounds that I thought we so good - as an example, violin - I've got some really good violin sounds - but once I learned how to actually play violin (at least a little), I started to realize the subtle things the samples failed to acheive.

On the plus side, as I learned more about performing with the actual instruments - I was able to get more out of the samples - since I now understood how the instruments really should sound - and I found ways to adjust my keyboard chops to better simulate a violin performance or a harmonica performance, etc.

Now, every two years I commit to learning a new instrument. The first year, I learn the basics and the 2nd year I woodshed. But, there are so many instruments - and as you indicate............."so little time"

 

[up-fiddler]

Funny thing - I'm a guitar player by trade. I find piano has fascinating possibilities and wish I could/would spend more time learning it. It opens up new pathways for writing, although all the songs are slow because that's all I can play on piano. The new instrument scenario does hold true.....

Here's the grass.--------------------------------------- Here it's greener.


WE all try to do everything as well as anyone else can do it. It is a no win situation but it is also our lot. I have never met anyone who did this for any length of time that wasn't driven internally. Even though being the best is important to us sooner or later we just get sick of a project and say, "Good enough." The trick is hanging in there long enough.

 

[Hakea]

Gradually, I understood that it was a long process and I simply tried to find the joy in the effort -

Beautifully put.

Finding "the joy in the effort" was the biggest leap for me. The early weeks/months seemed to have a mixture of pleasure and pain/frustration, with more of the pain than the pleasure. But as I developed I found that I could go back to the first chapters the beginner books and get some real enjoyment from those three or four notes exercises. And I'd wonder why I'd been unable to see the potental fun there before...

I'd also see - time and time again - people on forums saying versions of "I've been learning for a few weeks now, can anybody recommend a really easy song that I can play and make it sound something like the original???"

Putting the two together I came to believe that the reason I could go back and enjoy those four notes (which I couldn't do much with when I started) - and the reason the beginner's "easy songs" still sounded terrible - was that at the start you have no 'Touch and Timing'. Those subtle differences that turn a run of notes into something musical, but which no amount of diagrams and words can really explain. Once you start to develop a bit of that, even the simplest run of notes stops flapping dismally up and down the runway and starts to fly a little...

I'm still chasing that - and always will be - but now I can get a great deal of enjoyment out of a small range of sounds - it doesn't need to be a full band to be interesting. And I can now pick up an instrument that I haven't played before and within a few minutes discover a few noises to start stringing together. Of course, mastery of those instruments would take huge cumulative amounts of time that I simply don't have left. But to get to the level that I can enjoy them - or even play a few notes to drop into a mix - seems achievable.

On the plus side, as I learned more about performing with the actual instruments - I was able to get more out of the samples - since I now understood how the instruments really should sound - and I found ways to adjust my keyboard chops to better simulate a violin performance or a harmonica performance, etc.

That's most encouraging to read. I'm starting to 'get' that, but I'm still well short of being able to put it into practice, except at a very basic level.

Now, every two years I commit to learning a new instrument. The first year, I learn the basics and the 2nd year I woodshed. But, there are so many instruments - and as you indicate............."so little time"

That sounds like a good schedule. I'm still too impatient, and I get captivated by the beauty of instruments. Fortunately my wife (who doesn't play at all) agrees that a musical instrument can be as attractive to the eye as any painting or piece of furniture (and often less expensive). I save a few dollars a week, and every few months I buy another. So we have guitars hanging in the bedroom (plus a banjo and mandolin) a Roland digital piano in the lounge-room, a clarinet sitting next to the computer and so on. My playing on most of them is definitely no more than nursery rhyme level, but the enjoyment is positively symphonic!

Cheers,

Chris