Soundcloud Share Thread

[Rarebird]

My music is here:
https://soundcloud.com/user-804295634
There are 2 compositions in the works. One I can't finish currently, because there are some problems with the editing-software of my Nord G2 Engine. The computer recognises the synthesizer, but the editing-software doesn't.
So I started writing a new composition for 2 pianos, which I'm still working on.

[Top Cat]

My music is here:
https://soundcloud.com/user-804295634
There are 2 compositions in the works. One I can't finish currently, because there are some problems with the editing-software of my Nord G2 Engine. The computer recognises the synthesizer, but the editing-software doesn't.
So I started writing a new composition for 2 pianos, which I'm still working on.

Looking forward to anything new from you.

[Yodelgoat]

Added some Video links to some live material - I havent released original material on Video yet. Kind of need to get some better performances, but I'll set some out there. The hope is to get shows and get people to go to the shows, rather than to create, monetize and push digital material. That universe is dead for the obscure singer songwriter.

[BobM]

Here's a little New Years treat for you all. Happy New Year and may the world bring you more great music in the coming decade.

Been playing this song to try and get my chops back. I can't play it as fast or as clean as Master Emerson but I think I did a reasonable job. And who the hell knows what Carl Parmer was doing on drums, so my apologies if they sound a bit sloppy at times. Yes, there are some warts in it - I can hear them, you will hear them - but I'm done tweaking it. Ready to move on to something new.

https://soundcloud.com/user-139631929/elp-trilogy

[Top Cat]

Thanks Bob and Happy New Year to you as well. I love when the organ and moog synth kick in.
Nice work, I enjoyed it!

[Guitarplyrjvb]

Here's a little New Years treat for you all. Happy New Year and may the world bring you more great music in the coming decade.

Been playing this song to try and get my chops back. I can't play it as fast or as clean as Master Emerson but I think I did a reasonable job. And who the hell knows what Carl Parmer was doing on drums, so my apologies if they sound a bit sloppy at times.

https://soundcloud.com/user-139631929/elp-trilogy

Nice! Love the piano sounds and the way you handled the melody line on the synth. You nailed it. I'm too lazy to look back in the thread, but what is your rig? Just a nice overall airy sound to the mix. Love it!

[BobM]

Nice! Love the piano sounds and the way you handled the melody line on the synth. You nailed it. I'm too lazy to look back in the thread, but what is your rig? Just a nice overall airy sound to the mix. Love it!

I bought myself a Christmas present back in October - An Arturia Keylab 88 MK II. It has a nice piano action keyboard and comes with a bunch of software, over 7000 sounds to choose from and still be able to manipulate. There's a great Hammond B3 sofware and a full Mini Moog, as you can tell from hearing the song. I actually used the Keith Emerson organ preset, and to my ears it sounds like how he set up his Hammond. The piano sound was from their Piano V2 suite and I used the German concert grand. On a final note they offered a free download of their Rev-Plate 140 software which emulates an old Rev Plate reverb unit, a nice resonant hall sound. Just a wee bit of that on the final mix, and a brickwall limiter to keep things from distorting as they got loud. My only frustration is the drums. Who the hell can figure out whay Carl Parmer was doing. It sounds like he's just banging randomly on the toms, so I pulled up a percussion kit and kind of did that. Some of it works but some of it is badly syncopated. Sorry for that, but I only had one track available for drums and recorded them over and over and over, then gave up as good enough.

Glad you enjoyed it. Not sure what I'm going to do next. I had a thought to find all the classic country/honky tonk piano licks I could then lay them down and string a whole bunch of them together to see how it comes out as a big old jam. We'll see.

IMG_20191030_145248.jpg

[Rarebird]

I bought myself a Christmas present back in October - An Arturia Keylab 88 MK II. It has a nice piano action keyboard and comes with a bunch of software, over 7000 sounds to choose from and still be able to manipulate. There's a great Hammond B3 sofware and a full Mini Moog, as you can tell from hearing the song. I actually used the Keith Emerson organ preset, and to my ears it sounds like how he set up his Hammond. The piano sound was from their Piano V2 suite and I used the German concert grand. On a final note they offered a free download of their Rev-Plate 140 software which emulates an old Rev Plate reverb unit, a nice resonant hall sound. Just a wee bit of that on the final mix, and a brickwall limiter to keep things from distorting as they got loud. My only frustration is the drums. Who the hell can figure out whay Carl Parmer was doing. It sounds like he's just banging randomly on the toms, so I pulled up a percussion kit and kind of did that. Some of it works but some of it is badly syncopated. Sorry for that, but I only had one track available for drums and recorded them over and over and over, then gave up as good enough.

Glad you enjoyed it. Not sure what I'm going to do next. I had a thought to find all the classic country/honky tonk piano licks I could then lay them down and string a whole bunch of them together to see how it comes out as a big old jam. We'll see.

IMG_20191030_145248.jpg

Nice keyboard. I have the Arturia V instruments as well.

[Buddhabreath]

Hey that Arturia Keylab 88 is on sales at Sweetwater right not for $599.00. Tempting!

[Buddhabreath]

On another note I'd like to get the reaction of you gurus to the following:

After digging into the world of DAWs and plug-ins, midi, effects, virtual instruments, production and editing techniques including lots of YouTube videos, forums posts etc. etc. for just a couple of weeks, it seems to me that a lot of people doing this type of thing these days are focused on the technology rather than musicianship. People who do not understand music theory at all, cannot play an instrument are using sequencing to produce "beats' or just loading a beat or sample, looping it, editing midi data, piano roll views without even playing anything on a keyboard, quantizing, pitch correcting, snapping, nudging and otherwise cajoling data in an attempt to make something musical. I'm not denigrating any of these techniques or technologies, rather it seems to me that one can quickly be in danger of losing the plot and allowing the technology to override the art of making music. I hear it in the result of what is being produced from "hobbyists" through professional commercially successful "artists".

I ask in part since I feel like I am at risk at losing my own personal plot (if that makes sense).

Thoughts?

[BobM]

I think it's really easy to pick a sampled sequenced sound and just loop it, then add some looped drum track, add a simple bass line and come up with a melody of sorts, then add in some shock chords and airy pads and have the semblance of a song. Hell, I did it myself as I was trying to understand the software and the DAW and learn how they work. I know these were just my own attempt to learn the "instrument" - meaning the software and DAW became the instrument rather than a traditional piano or guitar or drum kit. Is it still a song? Yeah, but it's not the same as pulling open a fake book and playing something that was truly composed.

We live in a time where everyone wants instant satisfaction. Remember those organs with the left hand buttons that played chords and the music book that played by numbers rather than notes? They got a lot of people playing a song without having to take years of lessons. Sure, it sounded primitive and simple, but the person playing it was proud of their accomplishment and some might have actually taken lessons or composition theory to learn more. It was a starting point and that's the way I think of the software today. If it gets you psyched to do something more I'm all for it. I don't think people need years of eternal practice and suffering through lesson after lesson before they can produce music, though that's always going to be better in the long run and ultimately more self-fulfilling.

Hell, if it sounds good to your ears and you are happy with what you did and learned something musical in the process, then it's all good. The suffering artist is always going to be true, but it doesn't always have to be that way. I'm truly amazed at the cost of lessons in art and music and the timeline to get relatively good at it, and then the low monetary reward. It's not about the money for an artist, they do it because they must, and get great self-satisfaction from the process and end result. No reason why shortcuts can't be just as self fulfilling, and if you can sell your product then all the better. You don't get paid for what you put into it, you get paid for how it sounds at the end and who wants to pay for that.

[BobM]

Hey that Arturia Keylab 88 is on sales at Sweetwater right not for $599.00. Tempting!

That's the original version which is almost 2 years old, not the MK II. Seems they want to reduce their back stock. The MK II sells for $899. Still, it's a good buy and the software is the same. A midi controller is just a sophisticated keyboard mouse, after all.

[Top Cat]

On another note I'd like to get the reaction of you gurus to the following:

After digging into the world of DAWs and plug-ins, midi, effects, virtual instruments, production and editing techniques including lots of YouTube videos, forums posts etc. etc. for just a couple of weeks, it seems to me that a lot of people doing this type of thing these days are focused on the technology rather than musicianship. People who do not understand music theory at all, cannot play an instrument are using sequencing to produce "beats' or just loading a beat or sample, looping it, editing midi data, piano roll views without even playing anything on a keyboard, quantizing, pitch correcting, snapping, nudging and otherwise cajoling data in an attempt to make something musical. I'm not denigrating any of these techniques or technologies, rather it seems to me that one can quickly be in danger of losing the plot and allowing the technology to override the art of making music. I hear it in the result of what is being produced from "hobbyists" through professional commercially successful "artists".

I ask in part since I feel like I am at risk at losing my own personal plot (if that makes sense).

Thoughts?

I tend to let all that stuff I've seen and heard on the internet, roll off my back and just do my own thing.
I've found videos to be helpful when I'm having an issue or need to learn something about my software, but everything else is just white noise.

Having come from a analog background, for the longest time I resisted all this DAW stuff for some of the very reasons you've stated.
But over time as I've used it for years and try to get better with it, I realized there is nothing wrong with the technology, it's how we use it.
In otherwords, USE Technology, don't let it USE you.

Recording with a DAW is pretty straight forward, and it's no coincidence the controls are much like a tape deck.
You've heard my music, I never quantize. I do use a click track and coming from a improvisational background it was quite difficult for me at first, but I realized it's easier to collaborate if you have the timing right. Plus if you've ever done copy/paste of a segment of music, it makes it extremely easy to line the tracks up.
Now, I start a click track whenever I push record, even if I'm just jamming. Because sometimes something really nice will come out of a jam that you can cut up and use it later out of that jam, and it will be in time.
Another thing I like to do is play a basic kick/snare/hi-hat along with my click track sometimes, just to give it less a mechanical but more musical feel. And then later mute that and add my EZ Drummer patterns or Addictive Drums track.

Or, like you, if you're playing a classical guitar part or something on guitar where you are improvising and the click will throw off your feel, just make the click slower so it will come around again and ground you, but long enough where you can play freely.

In the end, do what feels natural to you. Do music for yourself by whatever means that is. I love the feeling you get recording with Spire, but as you've noted, it is limited, and what you hear in your head is not able to get out because of those limitations.

[Buddhabreath]

Thanks for the response fellas. Yes I'm not knocking the tech at all, it's fabulous! What I am knocking is some of the slick over-produced stuff I've heard that is quantized, auto-tuned, and otherwise manipulated into something that has nothing to do with an actual performance. Maybe it's the crotchety old-man "get off my lawn" attitude. Maybe it's just the constant back pain I have these days doing the talking. I don't know.

It's fine if people like the result, sometimes I probably do as well sometimes. If it's a good composition and well produced that's fine, but I've heard "commercial" stuff that sounds all quantized and auto-tuned. You can have a diva fart into a microphone these days and a tech-savvy engineer/producer can make something of it it seems. maybe that's all I'm trying to say.

Funny you should mention click-tracks Rick. I struggled and struggled with my first DAW piece (and as you know) ended of scrapping several hours of work and starting with just the guitar and playing it all the way through to a click track - which was difficult for me. I realized that I can still use rubato etc. and return to the beat/tempo, but at this point I still need more practice and experience with this and feel my inability to "groove" along with the click track compromised the result. I'll let you be the judge if and when I finish the damn thing.

[Guitarplyrjvb]

^^ Shoot, I’m not really any sort of keyboardist, but I was tempted by that Arturia!

To follow onto Buddha's comment, I think all of these things are just tools. When they take over, you’ve gone too far. I think it’s fairly easy to tell one of these lego-compositions from the real thing. Someday, though, maybe not. Would it really be so bad if music flowed freely from the mind without the impediment of actually having to learn how to play an instrument or sing? I don’t know! Since the 70’s, music has been employing more machinery: the beginning of Baba O’Reilly, the VCS3 by Waters and Gilmour on DSoTM, and drum machines in the ‘80’s. I don’t see the destruction of organic music resulting from any of that, as long as the human element retains control.

[Buddhabreath]

Fair points. I guess it all comes down to the ear of the beholder, but there’s no substitute for actual musicianship. I still have respect for experimentalists who use found sounds, music concrete, sequencing, sound sculpting, computer-generated music etc. I dabbled in in myself 20 years ago with the “I Can’t Stand My Own Mind” project I’ve posted on SoundCloud and I’m quite proud of some of the moments in that. But it is different thing in my mind to take a “performance” and morph into something the “artist” was incapable of producing through techniques like quantizing and auto-tune. Gentle Giant and many others took full advantage of the studio but were still able to deliver the goods live. That’s of course, not always the case. Now get off my lawn damn it!

[BobM]

There's a lot to be said when you hear a Rhodes, or a real piano or an acoustic guitar or a Hammond and real drum kit instead of everything synthetic. You can do so much with the basics and a good melody if you have the talent. That's the differentiator.

I'm just a hobbiest, so I play and record for myself. If I ever thought to play for others again I would have to work much harder and find some like minded band mates. Maybe some day in the future to relive my college years.

I have no issues with someone playing something and being proud of it, regardless of the quality of the performance. If it gets them to write and record something else next, maybe better, all for the good. But the encouragement of this group is awesome and I wish there were more like minded people who can hear the good in my shlock and tell me to keep it up. I love sharing stuff with you guys and I hope you feel the same. Send me more music!!!

[Rarebird]

I just compose and try to make it sound as human as possible. In the end, technology is just a way to get to a certain goal. People have used sequencers, drummachines and synthesizers and I don't mind. Is there a real difference between a Hammond organ and a synthesizer? Both use elctricity and electronics, to create a sound.

[frinspar]

Well, shit. I was gonna respond to Buddha but it seems he won't be around.
Thought I was having issues loading images when I saw his avatar not come up.

I guess how I maintain my personal plot is by being cheap. Getting the most I can from the least I want to afford, in this case it's an older iPad.

Where I lean on technology to do its own thing is in the drums on Garageband. For a free app, they're pretty damn deep, highly customizable and very intuitive. Although I have often added to them or programmed certain sections, and in a couple cases the whole song myself, they are quite sufficient in rounding out my songs with that final dimension to sound like a completed composition. That's all I needed. I got to a point where I recorded a ton of riffs and ideas but they were incomplete and rough. I'm never likely to play with a band, but I want that completeness. So I think my plot only got thicker with the technology.

I find solace in knowing that Prince used a drum sequencer on most of his earlier music.
I kid! He was an artist, I'm just a dork in my living room playing with myself. I'm just glad I have tools that will allow me to do something creative so simply.

Agree with everything Bob said up there. He put it all very nicely.

[BobM]

So some of you know I was testing out a new software synth from Arturia called Pigments. I made a simple test track using only sounds from pigments to see how my computer could carry the CPU load. It was a simple fun melody and the sounds I chose worked out pretty well. So now I thought I'd have some fun, so I shortened the song a bit, down from 7 minutes to about 3.5 minutes and changed the sounds I selected the first time, still all Pigments patches. I didn't change anything I played, note-wise, and just balanced out the sounds a bit so they worked with each other.

Here's the results ... interesting how selecting the sounds can totally change the way a song presents, for better or worse. Anyway I thought it was a fun experiment. Here's the link to all 3 versions if you want to check them out. You only need to listen to the first 3.5 minutes of the first one to compare.

#1
https://soundcloud.com/user-139631929/pigments-trial-1

#2
https://soundcloud.com/user-139631929/pigments-trial-2

#3
https://soundcloud.com/user-139631929/pigments-trial-3

[Top Cat]

So some of you know I was testing out a new software synth from Arturia called Pigments. I made a simple test track using only sounds from pigments to see how my computer could carry the CPU load. It was a simple fun melody and the sounds I chose worked out pretty well. So now I thought I'd have some fun, so I shortened the song a bit, down from 7 minutes to about 3.5 minutes and changed the sounds I selected the first time, still all Pigments patches. I didn't change anything I played, note-wise, and just balanced out the sounds a bit so they worked with each other.

Here's the results ... interesting how selecting the sounds can totally change the way a song presents, for better or worse. Anyway I thought it was a fun experiment. Here's the link to all 3 versions if you want to check them out. You only need to listen to the first 3.5 minutes of the first one to compare.

#1
https://soundcloud.com/user-139631929/pigments-trial-1

#2
https://soundcloud.com/user-139631929/pigments-trial-2

#3
https://soundcloud.com/user-139631929/pigments-trial-3

That's quite interesting how the presets changed the feel of how the song presented itself.
Personally I enjoyed the 2nd version. But they all had interesting bits in each of them.

[frinspar]

Pretty different end results. That's pretty damn cool.
Trial 3 is my favorite overall, but I still dig the shattered glass in the first.

I've done that a couple of times on songs where something didn't quite seem to be working right and I was started floundering. I recorded something using a particular amp model and/or effects, then played around and decided on something with a very different sound, and it changed the whole song for me and made it finally click.

[BobM]

Something a little harder this time 'round

https://soundcloud.com/user-139631929/metal-jive

(edit - added a bit more drum and bass)

[Guitarplyrjvb]

Is that your Arturia again? Very nice. The distorted sound is very close to a guitar.

[BobM]

Yeah, I was trying for something pseudo-metal with a little inspiration from Opeth's latest on the Mellotron chorus vocals. Not quite there yet. I probably need some super duper metal-like drum VST and something else that can give me distorted metal power chords, but it was fun.