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

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~Earl Grey~
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PostRe: Do You "Do" Music?
by ~Earl Grey~ » Tue Oct 14, 2008 6:43 pm

I've recorded a new song, "Sugar Puppet", that's on my page now (click sig). In case you're wondering about the lyrics - it's about someone I really hate. Nuff said.

Oni-91
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PostRe: Do You "Do" Music?
by Oni-91 » Thu Oct 16, 2008 4:19 pm

I've been playing drums since 2004. Guitar since 2007. Also making electronic music since 2005. I'm using FL Studio 7 and a load of free soundfonts.

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~Earl Grey~
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PostRe: Do You "Do" Music?
by ~Earl Grey~ » Mon Oct 20, 2008 4:13 pm

So, any feedback? Anyone even listened?

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Abs
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PostRe: Do You "Do" Music?
by Abs » Tue Oct 21, 2008 4:08 pm

~Earl Grey~ wrote:So, any feedback? Anyone even listened?


I gave it a listen, it's aight, not really my thing.

btw, just snooping around your friends list, saw someone I know from Wales!

lex-man wrote:I still smoke I thinks its good to smoke late at night, the fire in my hand mirrors the fire in my mind.
JK
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PostRe: Do You "Do" Music?
by JK » Tue Oct 21, 2008 4:26 pm

Does anybody know of some fairly decent software that will allow me to record directly from my guitar / amp, and then mess about with what I record? I used to use a Cakewalk thing but that's proper old now.

Cheers.

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~Earl Grey~
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PostRe: Do You "Do" Music?
by ~Earl Grey~ » Fri Oct 24, 2008 7:54 pm

Abs wrote:
~Earl Grey~ wrote:So, any feedback? Anyone even listened?


I gave it a listen, it's aight, not really my thing.

btw, just snooping around your friends list, saw someone I know from Wales!


Thanks for listening anyway. Who is it you know?

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Pontius Pilate
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PostRe: Do You "Do" Music?
by Pontius Pilate » Sat Oct 25, 2008 12:03 pm

JK wrote:Does anybody know of some fairly decent software that will allow me to record directly from my guitar / amp, and then mess about with what I record? I used to use a Cakewalk thing but that's proper old now.

Cheers.



What do you mean? Like, software that will let you multi-track etc? I use one called Audacity. It's free, and it does the job...Google it.

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~Earl Grey~
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PostRe: Do You "Do" Music?
by ~Earl Grey~ » Tue Nov 18, 2008 4:52 pm

I've finished another song (well I say finished, they're all simply demos in my mind until I have the resources to do them 'properly').

It's called Editorial and it's about tabloids/celeb culture, etc.

Anyone fancy a listen?

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Yorkcityknight
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PostRe: Do You "Do" Music?
by Yorkcityknight » Tue Nov 18, 2008 8:15 pm

~Earl Grey~ wrote:I've finished another song (well I say finished, they're all simply demos in my mind until I have the resources to do them 'properly').

It's called Editorial and it's about tabloids/celeb culture, etc.

Anyone fancy a listen?


Just had a listen - Enjoyed it. Best of your five songs on there anyway.

I'll keep checking back to see what else you stick up.

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Turok
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PostRe: Do You "Do" Music?
by Turok » Sun Dec 14, 2008 3:52 pm

Listening to Editorial, and I think it's strawberry floating good! Very nice harmony you have going on there, especially in the first part. I can't make out the lyrics that much but I hate lyrics in general anyways.

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Green Gecko
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PostRe: Do You "Do" Music?
by Green Gecko » Mon Dec 22, 2008 12:55 am

I'm pretty enthusiastic about music-making. I kind of got given guitar lessons when I was 7 and this guy almost became my mentor, I saw him every week (more than my dad which is strange I guess). Stuck with him for right up until I left for Uni this September 'cause I can't go to his place for lessons when I'm 75 miles away. Played Latin-american/Spanish/flamenco/classical/fingerstyle/blues on acoustic and started electric stuffs when I was 11. Had a kind of blues hard rock band until I was 16 in which I was a songwriter/guitarist/bassist (one track of about 12-14 "Withdrawal" is on the player at link below. Yup, my voice was breaking). We played about 25 or so gigs. Thereabouts started getting interested in making my own music at home (had dabbled with stuff like Cubase, Wavelab and way before that eJay before) so saved up a lot of my cash from jobs, X-mas, birthday etc. and have ended up with almost all the equipment I need to do what I want, although I could do with a better electric guitar (stuck with trusty affordable-but-damn-good Yamaha Pacifica 112J (£185) for years). Looking at a semi pro Ibanez sabre at the moment because they best fit my needs. Around this point made a lot of kind of light rock stuff with jazz, breakbeat, D&B, electro influences, here:

http://www.myspace.com/lunalacerta

Still add to that occasionally. I use Ableton Live 7 with a load of VSTIs e.g. Albino, Arturia Minimoog, AAS LoungeLizard, Native Instruments B4 etc. and some processors (namely Waves). Multi-track the band with a slimline PC I built specially housing a single M-Audio Delta 1010LT 8-input/output recording soundcard, which I hook up to a Behringer 2442FX's 8 direct, post-fader outputs. And yeah, I screw around with a bit of DJing in Ableton now and then. The knobs and faders on my MIDI controller are damn good for that. Use Reason for synths too, through Re-Wire.

Image

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Around the same point jammed a lot of with long time friends and I really mean jamming here: a lot of it was just getting pissed, my mates on weed/shrooms/LCD/salvia (I don't do drugs) and we slowly became this weird experimental/psychedelic progressive rock band.. some of it's kinda jazz rock, some of it's a bit hard rock, some punky stuff and a load off it is pretty much noise rock. A small amount of that madness gets shrunk down and orchestrated a bit into our live set. We've did a stint of about 5 gigs in Brighton last spring which went pretty well considering our music isn't the most accessible (some of it is just horrific but it can be fun to make brain-melting music). So I warn you this isn't the most conventional rock music ever:

http://www.myspace.com/deboulaysbasement

We've been doing a bit more kind of reggae/dub/funk stuff recently (e.g. "Strobe Lit Hornet"; last thing I uploaded for months because there's 100s of GB of recordings to sift through). We're doing an acoustic gig at The Globe on Brighton Seafront this Sunday if anyone cares.. good to still be going.

It's almost a bit of an art project I suppose as we don't really give a crap about playing stuff people want to here, some of it is a farce, just taking the piss out of some kinds of music or kind of revelling in it. I don't know. It just happens and it's fun. After reciting fairly hardcore (grade 8) concert guitar pieces for 13 years it's wicked and pretty cathartic at times to just do the complete opposite. Even if sometimes we do end up making drumbeats with beer cans and Grolsche bottles or playing controlled feedback chaos for 40 minutes.

It certainly keeps the crowd's attention. Even if they think we're a load of bollocks, pretentious, pissed off our heads or just utterly mental that is one way of entertaining people. Although I think quite a bit of our stuff is musically satisfying too.. at least for me.

Oh yeah I started playing piano on an M-Audio Keystation 88 Pro with some half decent sample libraries about 2 years ago. I'm working on that. Not very good but I can write alright parts to back guitar or whatever in compositions and I like to write simple, jazzy melodies alongside the insane epic synth things you just have to do now and then.

Image

Fancy myself an M-Audio Axiom 61 to use on stage at while away from uni since the Keystation weighs a pretty strawberry floating hefty 25kg.

tl;dr so I'll leave it at that.

"It should be common sense to just accept the message Nintendo are sending out through their actions."
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~Earl Grey~
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PostRe: Do You "Do" Music?
by ~Earl Grey~ » Mon Dec 22, 2008 3:50 am

That's some sweet-ass gear there. I had an M-Audio card but it didn't seem to get on with my computer very well - I kept getting these periodic clicks through recordings. Tech support couldn't help. I smashed it up with a hammer soon after. Got a piece of gooseberry fool Audigy now. :(

Nice songs. I like a bit of prog. Kind of like Pink Floyd, but the singer sounds a bit like Ian Curtis. There's also a hint of Tom Waits in there too.

I'd say some of the levels need adjusting and maybe some EQ (naturally, that doesn't apply to the live recordings). The guitar can sound overpowering at times.

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Green Gecko
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PostRe: Do You "Do" Music?
by Green Gecko » Mon Dec 22, 2008 4:25 am

:D Cheers for your comments. Leave us that comment on the page and I'm sure the other band mates would appreciate it. Funny you should mention Curtis as I was at the singer's (in those recordings anyway; he's filling in for "Sam's Hat" but he does sing "Pool Music") house the other night and we watched this Joy Division biography film centred on him. He's a fan. Also Captain Beefheart and Jim Morrison are big influences, and I later turned him onto a fair bit of Frank Zappa. All influences for the band. He's into Velvet Underground as well. Has the most penchant for atonal/chaotic/avant-guard music out of all of us. Sometimes he goes a bit mental and starts smashing stuff but I guess that comes with the music. :lol: Once we had a swordfight on stage with the necks of our guitars which was pretty funny. Not so funny was when the synth player barraged his keyboard into my guitar and took to the neck in an annoying place.

ANYWAY yeah my EQ and compression is pretty bad in a lot of the recordings (and those are the better ones), and my guitar tone is too kind of acidic in some of the recordings. A lot of it comes down to using an amp modeller and only using a real amp as a monitor so I didn't quite know what the guitar really sounded like as it was being recoloured and re-EQed by the monitoring amp. I don't use the modeller now and mic or use emulated speaker outs on amps (Peavey and Marshall). It's hard to tell what the sound will be like and sometimes I just want a nasty guitar tone in the jam even if it might not sound great later. I tone it down a lot more now, and play without any effects (except a little delay) half the time to keep a good range of tones available. I can actually EQ the live recordings after the jam because I record kick, snare, overheads, bass, guitar, synth, cornet and vox on seperate channels. It's great being able to post-process and level recordings afterwards and focus on playing in the studio. That's why I built the PC - it's the perfect solution for my band.

I've gone through tens if not hundreds of hours of recordings (I record an entire evening's jamming) so there's not really much point putting much effort into mastering unless it's a really special recording. My mastering chain at the moment is just Live's eight-band EQ > PSP Audio Stereo Enhancer > Wave's TruVerb to Wave's L3 Ultramaximiser compressor/limiter that pumps everything up.

Didn't realise until recently that I was getting clipping between the chained processors so I've taken an eye to that now. Although there's probably clipping in it, I'm pretty happy with the big, clear sound of "Strobe Lit Hornet", especially since I hadn't really bothered to soundcheck and mic everything properly.

Still using cheap microphones - Samson C03 multi-pattern condensor for drum overheads and R21 dynamics for snare, bass amp, guitar amp and cornet (trumpet). Samson Q-kick for the bass has been a massive improvement for keeping the beat better in our recordings and we do use a Shure SM58 for vox. Considering I got the R21s 3x for £40 in a hard case I'm pretty happy with the recording quality. I'm only really bothered about capturing jams for archival purposes: when I can afford it I'll get better quality mics and probably some pencil condensers for cymbals, move the C03 condenser over to the cornet, and buy a better bass drum mic, moving the Q-kick to the bass amp (which is just a Peavy Microbass practice amp, but I can't convince my permanently skint, boozing and puffing mate to spend £200 on a real bass amp!!).

Shame about your card pissing about - did you really smash the thing? A lot of it is to do with the PCI controller on the motherboard sharing IRQs in Windows with USB hubs (which have constant data flowing through them like keyboard and mouse input) or, worst case, the graphics card. You need to re-jig the parts in your PC until the sound card is sharing an IRQ with something sensible. I never quite managed to do this with my main tower so I ended up just building this dedicated PC and once it worked, I didn't fix it. I try to avoid using USB sockets (PS2 connections for the mouse and keyboard) and it has an integrated video chip, so there's only one PCI device (instead of 3 in the other PC). Works brilliantly now and never get any pops and clicks. :D I upgraded the CPU and RAM in my main PC and put the old parts in this recording PC, so I saved some money making use of old bits. The recording PC build cost me about £200 in the end, pretty much just the barebones kit and a low-profile cooler (the case is 5cm high. Which is cool because I could probably rack-mount it).

One cool idea I've got is to use my Eee PC with a decent external audio interface to use Live and Reason live on stage so we have an endless range of sounds to use. The Eee's small enough to just sit on top of the keyboard!

Holy gooseberry fool that's an epic post..

Wow I'm really liking your first song. I wasn't expecting any vocals which are pretty good sounding, are you singing or a friend? Nice work. Kind of electro-fairytale sounding. Reminds me of Depeche Mode but more ethereal and spooky. Quite dark.

Did you ever finish that soft synth you made, Cascade? Did you ever get a VSTi going? If you did I'd make a tune with it.

"It should be common sense to just accept the message Nintendo are sending out through their actions."
_________________________________________

❤ btw GRcade costs money and depends on donations - please support one of the UK's oldest video gaming forums → HOW TO DONATE
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~Earl Grey~
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PostRe: Do You "Do" Music?
by ~Earl Grey~ » Mon Dec 22, 2008 5:54 am

I haven't done much on Cascade since to be honest, apart from a primitive save and load feature. It still has no envelopes and only runs as a standalone EXE (I have some basic knowledge of the VST interface so I might try to make it into a plugin at some point).

I do use it on some of my songs - the 2nd verse of Scarin' has this wineglass-like sound that I created using it.

And, yes, I did indeed smash it up with a hammer. The whole computer in fact. The sound card was just one problem of many. Then it started behaving really weird (I forget the details), which was just the final straw. I was quite pathological in that I carefully took out the hard drives first then got to work like Basil Fawlty on the bitch. :twisted:

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Pontius Pilate
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PostRe: Do You "Do" Music?
by Pontius Pilate » Mon Jan 05, 2009 2:53 pm

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default ... dID=909108 Check out ma new song idea

What do you think? It's kinda sketchy, but you get the idea.

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Orbital
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PostRe: Do You "Do" Music?
by Orbital » Tue Jan 06, 2009 12:18 am

Green Gecko wrote::D Cheers for your comments. Leave us that comment on the page and I'm sure the other band mates would appreciate it. Funny you should mention Curtis as I was at the singer's (in those recordings anyway; he's filling in for "Sam's Hat" but he does sing "Pool Music") house the other night and we watched this Joy Division biography film centred on him. He's a fan. Also Captain Beefheart and Jim Morrison are big influences, and I later turned him onto a fair bit of Frank Zappa. All influences for the band. He's into Velvet Underground as well. Has the most penchant for atonal/chaotic/avant-guard music out of all of us. Sometimes he goes a bit mental and starts smashing stuff but I guess that comes with the music. :lol: Once we had a swordfight on stage with the necks of our guitars which was pretty funny. Not so funny was when the synth player barraged his keyboard into my guitar and took to the neck in an annoying place.

ANYWAY yeah my EQ and compression is pretty bad in a lot of the recordings (and those are the better ones), and my guitar tone is too kind of acidic in some of the recordings. A lot of it comes down to using an amp modeller and only using a real amp as a monitor so I didn't quite know what the guitar really sounded like as it was being recoloured and re-EQed by the monitoring amp. I don't use the modeller now and mic or use emulated speaker outs on amps (Peavey and Marshall). It's hard to tell what the sound will be like and sometimes I just want a nasty guitar tone in the jam even if it might not sound great later. I tone it down a lot more now, and play without any effects (except a little delay) half the time to keep a good range of tones available. I can actually EQ the live recordings after the jam because I record kick, snare, overheads, bass, guitar, synth, cornet and vox on seperate channels. It's great being able to post-process and level recordings afterwards and focus on playing in the studio. That's why I built the PC - it's the perfect solution for my band.

I've gone through tens if not hundreds of hours of recordings (I record an entire evening's jamming) so there's not really much point putting much effort into mastering unless it's a really special recording. My mastering chain at the moment is just Live's eight-band EQ > PSP Audio Stereo Enhancer > Wave's TruVerb to Wave's L3 Ultramaximiser compressor/limiter that pumps everything up.

Didn't realise until recently that I was getting clipping between the chained processors so I've taken an eye to that now. Although there's probably clipping in it, I'm pretty happy with the big, clear sound of "Strobe Lit Hornet", especially since I hadn't really bothered to soundcheck and mic everything properly.

Still using cheap microphones - Samson C03 multi-pattern condensor for drum overheads and R21 dynamics for snare, bass amp, guitar amp and cornet (trumpet). Samson Q-kick for the bass has been a massive improvement for keeping the beat better in our recordings and we do use a Shure SM58 for vox. Considering I got the R21s 3x for £40 in a hard case I'm pretty happy with the recording quality. I'm only really bothered about capturing jams for archival purposes: when I can afford it I'll get better quality mics and probably some pencil condensers for cymbals, move the C03 condenser over to the cornet, and buy a better bass drum mic, moving the Q-kick to the bass amp (which is just a Peavy Microbass practice amp, but I can't convince my permanently skint, boozing and puffing mate to spend £200 on a real bass amp!!).

Shame about your card pissing about - did you really smash the thing? A lot of it is to do with the PCI controller on the motherboard sharing IRQs in Windows with USB hubs (which have constant data flowing through them like keyboard and mouse input) or, worst case, the graphics card. You need to re-jig the parts in your PC until the sound card is sharing an IRQ with something sensible. I never quite managed to do this with my main tower so I ended up just building this dedicated PC and once it worked, I didn't fix it. I try to avoid using USB sockets (PS2 connections for the mouse and keyboard) and it has an integrated video chip, so there's only one PCI device (instead of 3 in the other PC). Works brilliantly now and never get any pops and clicks. :D I upgraded the CPU and RAM in my main PC and put the old parts in this recording PC, so I saved some money making use of old bits. The recording PC build cost me about £200 in the end, pretty much just the barebones kit and a low-profile cooler (the case is 5cm high. Which is cool because I could probably rack-mount it).

One cool idea I've got is to use my Eee PC with a decent external audio interface to use Live and Reason live on stage so we have an endless range of sounds to use. The Eee's small enough to just sit on top of the keyboard!

Holy gooseberry fool that's an epic post..

Wow I'm really liking your first song. I wasn't expecting any vocals which are pretty good sounding, are you singing or a friend? Nice work. Kind of electro-fairytale sounding. Reminds me of Depeche Mode but more ethereal and spooky. Quite dark.

Did you ever finish that soft synth you made, Cascade? Did you ever get a VSTi going? If you did I'd make a tune with it.

tl;dr

edit: its a shame whenever i need to use your recording equipment its always at someone elses house...

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~Earl Grey~
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PostRe: Do You "Do" Music?
by ~Earl Grey~ » Thu Jan 08, 2009 7:36 pm

Ryan0rz wrote:http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=909108 Check out ma new song idea

What do you think? It's kinda sketchy, but you get the idea.


It's definitely got potential. I found the distorted guitars a little overwhelming in this version though. I'd EQ them a bit to take the edge off and maybe put some reverb/delay on them.

I like the phasing on the strummed part too.

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Pontius Pilate
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Location: Scotland

PostRe: Do You "Do" Music?
by Pontius Pilate » Fri Jan 09, 2009 1:07 pm

~Earl Grey~ wrote:
Ryan0rz wrote:http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=909108 Check out ma new song idea

What do you think? It's kinda sketchy, but you get the idea.


It's definitely got potential. I found the distorted guitars a little overwhelming in this version though. I'd EQ them a bit to take the edge off and maybe put some reverb/delay on them.

I like the phasing on the strummed part too.


Cheers. Yeh my recording gear is really basic, im basically just running my effects pedal through my pc. So it's quite hard to get a decent sound! I could definitely lower the mix of the lead guitar though!

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~Earl Grey~
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PostRe: Do You "Do" Music?
by ~Earl Grey~ » Fri Jan 09, 2009 8:55 pm

You need some kind of amp modelling software.

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Pontius Pilate
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PostRe: Do You "Do" Music?
by Pontius Pilate » Sat Jan 10, 2009 6:45 pm

Yeh i've had my eye on gear for a while, I don't know if I can justify the purchase though.

I'd probably rather save my money on buyin a tube amp. Not for recording, but for my own selfish benefits!


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