Soundcloud Share Thread

[BobM]

Welcome Neron. I listened to a few tracks and may click on a few more later. I like your long formats and complex themes. There's plenty of interesting ideas in there. One thing I noticed that you seem to struggle with is the same thing I struggle with - syncing the drums and incidental things with the melody. In some places they are just a little bit off. Certainly that is harder to do when playing and recording audio tracks to a DAW rather than using pure MIDI, which allows you to quantize most things to be on the click. But overall I like what you are doing.

[BobM]

Here's an experiment I made using a Shepards Scale (more info on what that is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shepard_tone). Basically it is a scale that seems to keep rising, or falling, perpetually. It's a trick using tones an octave apart and bringing one in while fading the other out. Anyway, here's a simple mix that I did playing with that concept.

[Guitarplyrjvb]

^ Neat, Bob! That patch to emulate a guitar is really good! I've heard this technique in Yes's music. Chris Squire's bass line in Going for the One is one example.

[Guitarplyrjvb]

Here's another new track. May not be of interest to many on this board since it's more of a Dan Fogelberg/Singer-Songwriter kind of thing. It's about being homesick despite being surrounded by beauty. Thanks for listening!

[BobM]

Nice track. A very listenable song. You are inspiring me to try singing on the next thing I record.

[Guitarplyrjvb]

Thanks, Bob! Always look forward to new stuff from you..

[Rarebird]

Very nice song, I'm not that sure about the short electric guitar part.

[Guitarplyrjvb]

Yeah! Me either! It doesn’t really fit!

[Guitarplyrjvb]

I swapped out the electric guitar solo and put an acoustic one on there. Thanks for the feedback, Renate! Can I hire you as a producer?

[Guitarplyrjvb]

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.

Listened to "Rising Hope" and "Intertwining". Love them both. Did you play all of these parts? You've got some compositional and playing chops!

[Rarebird]

Listened to "Rising Hope" and "Intertwining". Love them both. Did you play all of these parts? You've got some compositional and playing chops!

I just do the composing. All playing is done by the computer. I would rather have musicians do it, it would make things so much easier. Now I have to program all playing into the computer, after I have created the sheet-music on the computer.

[BobM]

Here's something ambient and melodic I wrote in 5/4 while toying with some chord progressions. I actually had a hard time playing that piano lick against the click track, one bar on the click then one bar off the click and repeat. It was throwing me off to think like that and still play what I wanted note wise. Definitely would have been much easier without the click, but I needed to line things up properly... so click away it does. So I finally learned how to quantize on my DAW and it worked out.

[BobM]

So much better with the acoustic instead of the electric Joe. Beautiful.

[Guitarplyrjvb]

^^ That thing has a little Kit Watkins vibe! Cool!

[BobM]

^^ That thing has a little Kit Watkins vibe! Cool!

I was also trying for a little Pat Metheny-like melody line, where it just travels over the chords. I think I have to work on that a bit.

[Guitarplyrjvb]

Well, you've achieved the art of playing something out of common time that doesn't seem "out" to the listener. Nice job!

[frinspar]

Joe, so clean and clear. It has a nice 70s vibe to it. That's a good thing.

Bob, that was nice. I'd like to hear it with less of the wind/blowing effect to the pipes, it's a little jarring in places. Maybe just a steady breeze across the track? I imagine that as a lead-in to a long symp prog epic. I started hearing drums at the fade out.

[BobM]

You know, I had one or two others say something similar, like it was just an introduction and needed to grow into something more. Maybe I'll take a shot at that sometime in the future - I'll have to figure out where it goes thematically. I can tone down the noise effect (it's actually played on a miniMoog), just a twist of the knob. (OK, updated and re-posted on Soundcloud - I wish there was some way to do that without deleting it completely and re-uploading it as a new track again)

[Guitarplyrjvb]

Joe, so clean and clear. It has a nice 70s vibe to it. That's a good thing.

Thanks for listening and for your kind comments, Matt!

[frinspar]

You know, I had one or two others say something similar, like it was just an introduction and needed to grow into something more. Maybe I'll take a shot at that sometime in the future - I'll have to figure out where it goes thematically. I can tone down the noise effect (it's actually played on a miniMoog), just a twist of the knob. (OK, updated and re-posted on Soundcloud - I wish there was some way to do that without deleting it completely and re-uploading it as a new track again)

Yes! Thanks for trying that.

[BobM]

I had an idea, probably a stupid one, but I took my song "Five Alive" written in 5/4 time and thought it might be fun to follow the theme and the chord progression and write a tune in 4/4 (Four Before) then another in 3/4 (Three Bee) and 2/4 (Two Too) and put them all together in a mix. Lots of commonality in the lead theme but the styles and instrumentation are different as the time signature changes. I hope it's not too long to get through to the end.

[Guitarplyrjvb]

^^ Bob, you are getting some great sounds from that thing! I could only detect the time change from 5 to 4 and didn't hear it go from 3 to 2, although the ending, I guess could be counted in 2 as well as 4. Exercises like this are great for developing composing chops, and you've done it with an engaging listen.

[BobM]

Yeah, little difference between 2/4 and 4/4. It's really just a matter of the pace of things, I guess, but it worked conceptually. The 3/4 to 2/4 change is only obvious if you count the beats because I used triplets in the 2/4 when it sped up. That masked it a little I suppose.

And what I did here was hardly composing. All of it is pretty simple. It was more a matter of picking sounds and giving it a "feel" and style.

[Rarebird]

I swapped out the electric guitar solo and put an acoustic one on there. Thanks for the feedback, Renate! Can I hire you as a producer?

Producing from a distance.

[BobM]

So Joe, I didn't forget my promise to try singing on the next track, so I pulled out some old sheet music and did a basic version of the song I wrote for our wedding 27 years ago. The instrumentals turned out fine, even the drums. I recorded a melody line I could use as a guide vocal and plugged in the mic. The wife went out today and I sang...

...This is not something I would subject anyone to, even after using MEqualizer and MAutipitch from Melda Productions. Putting the RevPlate140 reverb on it helped, but not enough. I tried a chorus effect but it just multiplies my shaky voice. So, sad to say, nobody here is going to hear this song. It will have to stay archived and occasionally I can pull out the cassette version that was recorded at our wedding and thank the band that learned it and played it for doing as good a job as they did with only one rehearsal.