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Old 06-02-2014, 09:59 AM
DesolationAngel DesolationAngel is offline
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Default Love Tech

I remember being a kid with a battered electric guitar and a crappy amp, playing along to records, in his bedroom. I remember wanting to make music but not really having a band to play with, not really any mates who played nor having money to invest in other instruments. I remember reading music mags and drooling over early 'affordable' Tascam 4 track cassette machines. But I couldn't afford one... and I just moved on in life to other things.

Fast forward just a little over thirty years...

It's Sunday morning and I'm sitting on the sofa, just playing away on an old Washburn parlour guitar and reading the news, catching up on FB and perusing AGF all on my laptop. I stumbled into a little groove that I kinda liked. My wife walked past and informed me she was going to take a quick shower before we headed out for the day. Having lost many a half decent musical idea through not writing it down or recording it I said, 'ok, I'm just going to record this idea down'. Instead of heading into my home studio and firing everything up and spending a bunch of time getting everything 'ready to record' I just pulled out my Apogee Mic, my HD-25 headphones and fired up Logic on the laptop right there on the coffee table in front of me...

I created a new project, selected a Drummer that I like the sound of and then fiddled with it to get the groove and tempo that I was looking for. I tuned the guitar to pitch (through Logic) and hit record. Two or three takes and I had the seeds of what I wanted. Then I took that track and panned it hard left, duplicated the track settings but panned the second one hard right. I put down the Washburn and picked up my old LG-2, pressed record and got the second layer down in one take. Then I 'cycled' the track a few times experimenting with some melodic noodling over the top. Once I got to a point of liking what I was hearing I duped the second track settings, panned to centre and hit record. Logic will let you keep recording over a cycled section until you have a take that you like. Take 3 sounded ok to me. I played the overall track back a couple of times and decided I wanted an additional acoustic layer so I created a new track with a fingerpicking EQ preset, hit record and finger picked the chord changes throughout. Played the whole thing through and liked what I had recorded so far. Unplugged the Apogee and started slicing up the drum track to create more dynamics and a more natural feel. Started to add some reverb to different tracks and then started riding the volume on each track to mix it a little better. Played it all the way through and liked how it sounded.

And then my wife walked past, fresh out of the shower. THAT is why I love some of the technology available to people who are into making their own music these days. In, probably, about 20mins, I'd managed to put down a fairly polished 'demo' of an idea using additional equipment that really isn't, in the grand scheme of things, very expensive (assuming you already have a computer); Apogee Mic $200, Logic Pro $200, Sennheiser HD-25 $200. Even getting it out to the world is easy and fairly inexpensive these days using services like Soundcloud.

Anyhoo... fiddled with it for a few more minutes this morning (without recording any additional takes or punching in any error corrections) and thought I'd post it just for giggles:

Shower Time

It's not going to set the musical world alight but I like it and I enjoy being able to make stuff so easily these days.
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Old 06-02-2014, 10:12 AM
moondoggie999 moondoggie999 is offline
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Hey pretty cool little demo and enjoyed the title/back story! I'm in the midst of a cd project that is taking forever due to family stuff but also is being recorded with my clunky old equipment. When it's done I am going to experiment with newer lighter less heavy duty equipment, possibly some multi tracking apps and a mic, something real simple you know? So the rule of thumb is to be able to produce a demo within the span of the wife's shower
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Old 06-02-2014, 10:15 AM
DesolationAngel DesolationAngel is offline
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Ha... love that Moondoggie, better time her next she hops in.
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Old 06-03-2014, 09:05 AM
Rodger Rodger is offline
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DA.... nice job and cool story.

I have a slight advantage - my GF takes a really loooong time showering. I could probably put down 2 or 3 song ideas. If we're going somewhere, I'm now in the habit of telling her the time to be somewhere is 30 minutes or so earlier than actual.
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Old 06-03-2014, 09:08 AM
DesolationAngel DesolationAngel is offline
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In my experience it's often inversely proportional to how long you think it'll take :-)
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Old 06-03-2014, 09:24 AM
MikeBmusic MikeBmusic is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Rodger View Post
DA.... nice job and cool story.

I have a slight advantage - my GF takes a really loooong time showering. I could probably put down 2 or 3 song ideas. If we're going somewhere, I'm now in the habit of telling her the time to be somewhere is 30 minutes or so earlier than actual.
Ahh, you've learned what every married man knows!
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Old 06-03-2014, 04:15 PM
whitecloud whitecloud is offline
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Hey I can relate to your situation in mnay ore ways than you can imagine. Glad your back int the saddle
The Recording of the guitars seems like they are running kinda of hot, just though
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Old 06-03-2014, 04:53 PM
DesolationAngel DesolationAngel is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by whitecloud View Post
The Recording of the guitars seems like they are running kinda of hot, just though
Quite possibly, it was really just a sketch of an idea... I wasn't sitting too comfortably on the sofa and may well have moved a little close to the mic at times (trying to eliminate any background noise from the cat/traffic/etc)
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Old 06-03-2014, 08:41 PM
rickwaugh rickwaugh is offline
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I'm pretty well set up in my practice space now. Slip the ipad into it's clip on the mic stand, plug in the mic and turn on phantom power, start up Auria. Ready to go. I could actually just use the built in mic on the ipad with Auria, and record anywhere I want to get an idea down. It's pretty mind blowing. My friends and I had an 8 track recording studio when we were younger. Now, it had a full drum set and a marshall stack, but I'm not sure it sounded any better than what I have now.
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