GRcade Musician's Club - Do You "Do" Music?

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~Earl Grey~
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PostRe: GRcade Musician's Club - Do You "Do" Music?
by ~Earl Grey~ » Sat May 25, 2013 3:45 pm

I am trying specifically to hone my low singing voice. Don't know why exactly. I do come across better at a higher range, I know. I understand the basics of projection from some lessons I had years ago, but that largely seemed to address head voice. I seem to keep forgetting it at critical points in the performance.

Also, I like to stand and sing ideally - and angle my head upwards a little.

The postural aspect was more relevant than I had bargained for. Sitting and playing too, I feel kind of boxed in.

https://soundcloud.com/a-battleship-cal ... d-on-radio

This is a better example - a bit more discipline and more favourable circumstances. I just need to be able to sing like that when sitting (and trying to do 2 things at once).

And, unless I've paid for studio time (as in the above example) I always cut corners. It's like I'm more concerned with the idea behind something rather than the actualisation.

Lots of work to do.

Plus, not to keep making excuses, I also suffer from a hiatus hernia which seems to be getting worse. Gives me a plethora of problems for singing. I woke at half 6 this morning wheezing like like a 90-year-old. I swear my entire stomach was trying to displace my heart and lungs... :cry:

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Green Gecko
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PostRe: GRcade Musician's Club - Do You "Do" Music?
by Green Gecko » Sat May 25, 2013 9:29 pm

Grim, I can relate to all of what you're saying, apart from the hernia part.

I only seem to be able to get the best performances out of the heat of a stage presence, or a Iive band. I wouldn't feel to guilty about overdubbing vocals although I totally get there's something exciting about how the instrumental and vocal can play off each other, if you can really learn the parts to pull it off and not have one suffer.

I would like to at least try to relegate myself in a band where I don't do any singing and the singer is actually good , so I can get the same excitement. Even if I sing terribly the emotion is very exciting though, I wish I could develop lead like that. I started to captivate audiences at some point but never really got to the level of confidence needed to really feel my own vocal performance every time.

Some singers go through so much vocal training and touring you wouldn't know about so I don't blame myself too much, and there are lots of things in life that affect performance presence. Some artists are woefully weak but have something special about their voice or lyrics , so power isn't everything.

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~Earl Grey~
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PostRe: GRcade Musician's Club - Do You "Do" Music?
by ~Earl Grey~ » Sat May 25, 2013 9:30 pm

OK here's MkII. I slowed it all down and simplified the playing in order to really focus on the voice. I was trying to mentally visualise what was going on inside my chest, neck and head. I discovered that my soft palate was usually badly placed, too. I focused on keeping everything open (nose and throat mainly) and to make every breath nice and big.



This take is definitely more about the singing - I even pause now and then just to wait for the right mouth and throat "configuration" to fall into place, if you know what I mean.

I know you say it's not the right song for my voice but I don't know - with a little more "oomph" behind the voice, this one sounds like it could actually go somewhere now (after some more practice). I'm not saying it's perfect but I think you'll agree the voice is stronger.

And, of course, it goes without saying that it would be even better if it was multitracked - but one single, complete unbroken performance is the purpose of the exercise.

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PostRe: GRcade Musician's Club - Do You "Do" Music?
by ~Earl Grey~ » Sun Jun 02, 2013 2:12 am

Anyway, forget covers for a bit. I've been working on this lately.

https://soundcloud.com/a-battleship-cal ... t-term-man

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Cal
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PostRe: GRcade Musician's Club - Do You "Do" Music?
by Cal » Sat Sep 28, 2013 9:55 am

For the longest time I've been wanting to get myself a 12-string acoustic again. I've actually had a fair few over the years, including a 12-string electric at one point, but somehow I reverted to just owning a 6-string acoustic and it's been that way for a couple of decades. Until now.

I took the plunge today and have ordered myself this bad boy:

Image


Yamaha APX 700 II 12 String (Not me playing)



It's a slimline electro acoustic. Price-wise it's fairly 'intermediate' - neither cheap nor excessively expensive (£399 (new), reduced from £579). I looked around the web for ages trying to nail a best price and this was the one. I've watched a fair few YT videos in research before buying, and really felt the price, the build, the sound were all what I was after. I just have to wait for it to arrive now.

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Lime
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PostRe: GRcade Musician's Club - Do You "Do" Music?
by Lime » Sun Sep 29, 2013 1:20 pm

Cal wrote:For the longest time I've been wanting to get myself a 12-string acoustic again. I've actually had a fair few over the years, including a 12-string electric at one point, but somehow I reverted to just owning a 6-string acoustic and it's been that way for a couple of decades. Until now.

I took the plunge today and have ordered myself this bad boy:

It's a slimline electro acoustic. Price-wise it's fairly 'intermediate' - neither cheap nor excessively expensive (£399 (new), reduced from £579). I looked around the web for ages trying to nail a best price and this was the one. I've watched a fair few YT videos in research before buying, and really felt the price, the build, the sound were all what I was after. I just have to wait for it to arrive now.


Looks really nice - but it's not clear from what you've written whether you have held it and played it? I don't think I'd dare commit until I'd at least felt what it was like in my arms. There's a connection with the right instrument for you that happens pretty much as soon as you pick it up....specs, price and reviews often fall by the wayside, and really are just useful to shortlist.

I hope it's right for you, and I'm staying positive that it will be. Maybe it was calling you across the internet.....

Or you have played it and my concerns are misplaced. :D

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Stugene
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PostRe: GRcade Musician's Club - Do You "Do" Music?
by Stugene » Wed Oct 30, 2013 10:31 am

~Earl Grey~ wrote:OK here's MkII. I slowed it all down and simplified the playing in order to really focus on the voice. I was trying to mentally visualise what was going on inside my chest, neck and head. I discovered that my soft palate was usually badly placed, too. I focused on keeping everything open (nose and throat mainly) and to make every breath nice and big.



This take is definitely more about the singing - I even pause now and then just to wait for the right mouth and throat "configuration" to fall into place, if you know what I mean.

I know you say it's not the right song for my voice but I don't know - with a little more "oomph" behind the voice, this one sounds like it could actually go somewhere now (after some more practice). I'm not saying it's perfect but I think you'll agree the voice is stronger.

And, of course, it goes without saying that it would be even better if it was multitracked - but one single, complete unbroken performance is the purpose of the exercise.


Stop pointing your head upwards. Its making you sing out of tune.

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PostRe: GRcade Musician's Club - Do You "Do" Music?
by Green Gecko » Wed Oct 30, 2013 10:11 pm

Will admit I didn't take the time to check out EG's soundcloud but there's some really listenable stuff on there.

As in, a lot of the time I'm too lazy to listen to music at all. So that's a meaningful compliment.

Maybe I'll become one of those people that just listens to Soundcloud.

I like this: https://soundcloud.com/a-battleship-cal ... /editorial

"It should be common sense to just accept the message Nintendo are sending out through their actions."
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Hesk
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PostRe: GRcade Musician's Club - Do You "Do" Music?
by Hesk » Wed Mar 05, 2014 10:18 am

My band's got a new EP and video coming out pretty soon so I'll be back in here to post then!

In the mean time, I've been trying my hand at producing house for a project I'm aiming to get off the ground sometime this year. This is the most recent track I've finished. The production quality isn't amazing, admittedly. Only been doing it for about a year and had to learn most things completely from scratch -

https://www.indabamusic.com/opportuniti ... 000a23957a

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PostRe: GRcade Musician's Club - Do You "Do" Music?
by Hesk » Sun Mar 16, 2014 3:17 pm

Got another track online, bit more of a deep house kind of feel with groovy drops. The vocals are really nice. Got hold of the acapella through a remix competition a long time ago that I didn't have the chops for back then haha!

https://soundcloud.com/pulsc/my-midnigh ... lace-pulsc

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John Galt
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PostRe: GRcade Musician's Club - Do You "Do" Music?
by John Galt » Sun Mar 30, 2014 9:44 pm

I've been trying to get to grips with producing electronic music over the last few months and the amount of possibilities is absolutely baffling. I'm using Ableton and I've mastered the basics from YouTube videos and an Intro book I bought but I have no idea where to go next

I'm in no position to start making proper music as all the tutorials I've done have been geared towards teaching you how to use the software rather than how to actually make sounds. Synths seem like a never ending avenue (can I use the Ableton built ins? If not, which plugin should I use?) and other than sidegating a kick I have no idea how to customise drums.

Is it just a case of playing around with things as much as possible or are there some fundamentals that I need to get down before I let myself loose?

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PostRe: GRcade Musician's Club - Do You "Do" Music?
by Green Gecko » Mon Mar 31, 2014 6:27 pm

For synths just use Operator, Analog, Collision etc (all keyboard) and tweak the presets. Yes you might not know what any of the parameters mean without understanding how synthesis actually works but that doesn't really matter. If you want to know for example how FM synthesis works you might end up knee deep in Wikipedia and make nothing.

As for drums, don't your have the library installed? Some cracks don't include the library because Ableton suite 8 comes in at least 8GB in size. There are absolutely tonnes of samples and instrument presets included in the library.

Drag a preset from the drum rack onto a track or empty session view to create one. Arm the track so you can hear what it's doing and play some notes on the computer keyboard if you don't have a mini controller (make sure the icon of piano keys at the top somewhere is on). The keyboard will play a c scale starting with Q and you can transpose notes by dragging them later in be clip view. Or transpose the whole clip, I think you can do that too. If you hit some keys and look at the drum rack it will highlight key presses in the grid. This is set up for midi pad style controller so you may need to drag the samples in the preset around.

To create your own preset, navigate the library and drag in sounds you like to the grid or samples from your own library. If you don't have your own library start collecting ones or record your own.

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Cal
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PostRe: GRcade Musician's Club - Do You "Do" Music?
by Cal » Thu Apr 03, 2014 1:44 pm

I'm seriously considering getting one of these:

Image

The new Roland FA-06 Workstation. Does almost everything but actually make the toast. Around £825 - which strikes me as a pretty good price. I could get one right now, but I'm holding off a bit to see how Roland's own support and general muso opinion around the keyboard pans out. Looks like it could be a winner in the long run - most of the reviews are so far pretty good.

I still have my Korg Triton workstation, but frankly the FA 06 outclasses it many times over, being much newer technology and all. Time for an upgrade - but I'll keep the Triton; its a bit of a modern classic by now (guy I got to repair it a few years back offered to buy it off me).

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Stugene
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PostRe: GRcade Musician's Club - Do You "Do" Music?
by Stugene » Thu Apr 03, 2014 5:43 pm

Cal wrote:I'm seriously considering getting one of these:

Image

The new Roland FA-06 Workstation. Does almost everything but actually make the toast. Around £825 - which strikes me as a pretty good price. I could get one right now, but I'm holding off a bit to see how Roland's own support and general muso opinion around the keyboard pans out. Looks like it could be a winner in the long run - most of the reviews are so far pretty good.

I still have my Korg Triton workstation, but frankly the FA 06 outclasses it many times over, being much newer technology and all. Time for an upgrade - but I'll keep the Triton; its a bit of a modern classic by now (guy I got to repair it a few years back offered to buy it off me).


What are you using it for - the samples on the keyboard or for midi inputs?

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Cal
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PostRe: GRcade Musician's Club - Do You "Do" Music?
by Cal » Fri Apr 04, 2014 5:59 pm

Stugene wrote:What are you using it for - the samples on the keyboard or for midi inputs?


Not sure what you mean? I use the Korg Triton these days mainly for songwriting and hook it up to the DAW when I need to use some of its onboard sounds in Sonar X3. I have so many VSTi synths, including biggies like Omnisphere and RFX Nexus, that outboard hardware gear has become a bit redundant (so much so that a few years back I sold off most of my outboard hardware and went 'all DAW' for a good long while). However, I'm looking to pare back my reliance on the DAW side of things now and get back to using one 'do-it-all' keyboard, along with my 12-string guitar - I like the simplicity, I guess. I get far more done that way, it's much more immediate and involves much less faffing about on a computer. The FA-06 looks like a fantastic all-rounder (includes a built-in sequencer, sampler and it will 'talk' directly to my DAW via USB/Midi if I decide to broaden out the arrangements).

Anyway, I haven't yet decided on a purchase. I'll be keeping a keen eye on the FA-06 in the meantime, but it looks very tempting... I'll probably sell the Triton when/if I decide to buy the FA-06; I reckon I could get a fairly decent price for it, too. It has two ROM expansions, plus the optional Synth expander card, all the original system disks and manuals and I even had a custom professional flight case built for it. And it's in perfect condition. If I can get £500 for it that's a good chunk off the cost of a new FA-06. We'll see.

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PostRe: GRcade Musician's Club - Do You "Do" Music?
by Hesk » Sat Apr 05, 2014 1:23 am

I just want to buy the entire Roland AIRA range. It all looks so cool!

However, from my experience with Roland's drum products, most of their stuff seems to be gimped in some way. Features that are in one piece of hardware are inexplicably missing from another when it would've completely made sense for it to be there, some of which are complete steps backwards from previous versions. So frustrating when you know they can already do most of the stuff you want, but they've just decided not to include it or take it out of some incredibly expensive hardware.

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PostRe: GRcade Musician's Club - Do You "Do" Music?
by Pontius Pilate » Tue Apr 15, 2014 11:32 am

I need to buy myself an electric guitar. When I moved to Korea, I sold all of mine. I just have an acoustic nowadays. But I just found a video of myself wailing on the guitar, and it's urged me to get back in to it. I'll post the video just for kicks. I have the most ridiculous solo face.


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Cal
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PostRe: GRcade Musician's Club - Do You "Do" Music?
by Cal » Tue Jun 03, 2014 1:18 pm

I decided against the Roland FA 06 keyboard workstation. Instead, I've just ordered and paid for this beast:

Image

It's the Roland Integra-7 sound module - basically a massive, massive ROMpler (and a true successor to the venerable Roland JV1080 - which I used to own many years ago).

http://www.roland.co.uk/products/produc ... spx?p=1245

£1200. :shock: And I just paid cash. :shock: Still, I knew I'd eventually find something naughty to spend a little of my inheritance on. Thanks, mum! :wub:

Honestly, can't wait for it arrive now. I don't imagine I'll ever need to buy another synth again.

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PostRe: GRcade Musician's Club - Do You "Do" Music?
by Hesk » Wed Jun 11, 2014 10:20 pm

Started up a new party band called Sessions and we're gonna be doing Live Lounge-style covers of popular songs once a month. Our first one is Bastille's Pompeii -



I'm rocking a mini electronic drum kit made up of a Roland Octapad SPD-30, 2 custom dual zone drums, a Roland KD-120 kick drum and a Roland CY-12 cymbal pad. So much fun in such a small space :wub:

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PostRe: GRcade Musician's Club - Do You "Do" Music?
by Green Gecko » Sat Jul 05, 2014 6:28 pm

Dude I live right outside Brighton now. Let me know next time.

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