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VerbalPuke

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I came to the realization slowly that - at this point I've probably spent at least 25 years now knowing how to play the guitar in some capacity and just kind of enjoying it. I still get out my acoustic and play stuff every now and then, but I don't think while playing for myself or performing - I ever really enjoyed playing the guitar all that much and I was never 100% invested in learning more advanced techniques because I wasn't ever really super into pulling them off.

I've gone through period of trying to learn piano/synth and I've REALLY wanted to get into making beats and stuff like that. Growing up I had friends that played every instrument and I don't know why it took me now into my early-mid 30s to understand if I want to do those things now... I can just do them. I always wanted to sit behind my friend's drum set when I was growing up and have them just teach me, but I knew that it wasn't a feasible thing for me to do when I was school even and even less so when I moved up to the city.

But bass man, bass.

That's another thing he played and played in a band. And after watching a friend on Twitch pick up the bass and stream with it every now and then, I've kind of been re-invigorated. I looked into the fact that I can get mini-amps and a ton of different setups in order to practice even in an apartment. I've always been a fan of rhythms so I don't know why I didn't just ask around about this until now. I reached out to that friend since he still lives in the area looking for some advice - I think I have a starter bass picked out, and he's even going to lend me his old bass so I can get hands on with it for a little while to see if it's something that I'm going to want to take up, but I can already tell that I've waited WAAAAY too long on this and just need to get under way with it.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 20/06/2022 at 18:14, apsham said:

I came to the realization slowly that - at this point I've probably spent at least 25 years now knowing how to play the guitar in some capacity and just kind of enjoying it. I still get out my acoustic and play stuff every now and then, but I don't think while playing for myself or performing - I ever really enjoyed playing the guitar all that much and I was never 100% invested in learning more advanced techniques because I wasn't ever really super into pulling them off.

I've gone through period of trying to learn piano/synth and I've REALLY wanted to get into making beats and stuff like that. Growing up I had friends that played every instrument and I don't know why it took me now into my early-mid 30s to understand if I want to do those things now... I can just do them. I always wanted to sit behind my friend's drum set when I was growing up and have them just teach me, but I knew that it wasn't a feasible thing for me to do when I was school even and even less so when I moved up to the city.

But bass man, bass.

That's another thing he played and played in a band. And after watching a friend on Twitch pick up the bass and stream with it every now and then, I've kind of been re-invigorated. I looked into the fact that I can get mini-amps and a ton of different setups in order to practice even in an apartment. I've always been a fan of rhythms so I don't know why I didn't just ask around about this until now. I reached out to that friend since he still lives in the area looking for some advice - I think I have a starter bass picked out, and he's even going to lend me his old bass so I can get hands on with it for a little while to see if it's something that I'm going to want to take up, but I can already tell that I've waited WAAAAY too long on this and just need to get under way with it.

Yeah, I think bass is a great instrument to start with if you're kinda interested in all of them.

You can get an amazing bass for not very much money, well depends I guess on budget. I really like Ibanez, Fender, and Sterling at the 200-500 price point. I personally like a smaller short scale bass, mostly because I don't have giant hands and I'm more guitar player then bass player. 

@K I made a video you may enjoy, its a demonstration of synth at work. 

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

Whelp. Stopped into the music store today on a whim, left with a bass. I had actually entirely forgotten what you said about shorter necked bass' @VerbalPuke - but when I spoke to the salesman, and told him that I had a history as a guitar player he said the same and guided me towards a couple of them. I ended up going with the higher scale one that he recommended as it just felt right.

bass.jpg

Ibanez SR300E - which isn't what I was looking at going in there, but I got sold on it pretty well. Nabbed it with a headphone amp so I can practice without bothering anyone - so now I have the daunting task of teaching myself. I already sat down with a friend's bass not too long ago and had a good time with it - played a bunch of Pixies songs and some other bass lines I always wanted to play and that's what sold me on the idea that I was indeed going to grab one. Just wasn't expecting to so soon.

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On 16/07/2022 at 16:22, apsham said:

Whelp. Stopped into the music store today on a whim, left with a bass. I had actually entirely forgotten what you said about shorter necked bass' @VerbalPuke - but when I spoke to the salesman, and told him that I had a history as a guitar player he said the same and guided me towards a couple of them. I ended up going with the higher scale one that he recommended as it just felt right.

bass.jpg

Ibanez SR300E - which isn't what I was looking at going in there, but I got sold on it pretty well. Nabbed it with a headphone amp so I can practice without bothering anyone - so now I have the daunting task of teaching myself. I already sat down with a friend's bass not too long ago and had a good time with it - played a bunch of Pixies songs and some other bass lines I always wanted to play and that's what sold me on the idea that I was indeed going to grab one. Just wasn't expecting to so soon.

That's awesome dude, I love it. Ibanez make really bad ass  basses for an affordable price. I actually have an Ibanez bass myself. 

Here's a picture, apologies to non-donators but I can't figure out how to get a picture link to post. 

I'd actually love to see you record some bass stuff and show off for us. You don't have to of course haha, but if you get ambitious I'm really curious to hear what you come up with. 

Speaking of stuff...I've been a busy boy with music. 

So I wont lie, I love this song I made. I think it's a really good techno dance tune, and I think the video is cool. The footage of the group dancing is actually from Detroit public access tv. If you search youtube for Detroit Bass....something or other there's a ton of stuff. It's like Soultrain or American band stand except Detroit techno. I'm really really into the Detroin techno of the late 80s/early 90s and its a big influence on what I try to do. The other dancers are just disco people but got beautiful moves. 

This song I was sure if I liked at first, but listening again I really like it and think I can do a lot with it. I think it's a cool punk song that I can put some lyrics too like "I dont wanna go to school, I dont want to get a job, I reject your model I want to be a slob". Somethig stupid like that, it'd be fun. I'd like to maybe re-do it and put some lead guitar  on it. 

 

20200722_212315.jpg

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  • 3 months later...

So I haven't posted in awhile, so I'm gonna dump a bunch of soundcloud links. I've been playing around with a DJ Deck, sampling and scratching and shit. I've got it hooked to my synth set up so I've got a lot of possibities, so I've been messing with combining beats and layering them with synth to see what I get. 

The first one is all my own stuff I used, so I looped myself playing drums then took cuts of other songs in the same key and put it together. 

This one uses a little guitar lick from a song from the Warriors soundtrack along with a loop of a drum beat from Dee-Lite along with my own synth stuff added in. I do some scratching here, I'm not that good yet but getting there. 

Then a cool punk song I did, my friend liked it so it must be good. :)

 

 

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  • 3 months later...
9 hours ago, LittleDaniel said:

Hey @K, did your wife end up getting the Scarlet 2i2 audio interface/does she like it? I'm looking to pick one up soon and that's what I'd seeing recommended, came in here to ask about it and then read the conversation at the top of the page lol

Yes we did! It works perfectly for what she needs, which is connecting her devices to her laptop. We genuinely don't know enough about the scene to be able to say if it could be better at anything, but we're happy with the purchase.

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Presonus makes good cheap interfaces as well, I have one (well, had, I loaned to a friend) and they're on par with the Scarlet interfaces. Mine only had 1 input for a mic so it was pretty basic but it worked well. 

I think most of the interfaces will also come with a basic DAW when purchased new if you're not feeling the other options out there.

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What DAWs do people use, out of interest? I use Cubase and that’s basically because my dad used it when I was a kid so I’ve literally known it since I was five years old and it just seems like so much work to learn something new. Plus Cubase does all I need. I tried to learn Ableton a while ago but couldn’t really get a hang of it.

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I use Reaper. It's very good, and very cheap. It was originally designed at a cheap price point for schools to download in large quantities but they also allow for the public to purchase a license. 

It compares very favorably to more expensive options and offers a free 60 day trial. 

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I'm slowly....slowly....very slowly....learning Ableton (Lite). It's probably a bit much, but it came with my Minilab and I figure I'll be better off in the long run if I can learn to use it.

Before that I just used GarageBand, but then my MacBook broke last year and it seemed silly to buy another when that was the only Mac-exclusive I used anymore.

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  • 2 months later...

If you're like me you may have watched Doug on Nickelodeon in the early 90s. There was these two twins named Al and Moo Sleech. They had this neat theme song in the show so I made a little beat out of it, combined with Mr. Lif and my own electronic devices.

 

And I'll put this one in here as well. It's actually from my birthday last year and it was my friends and I drumming. I was drumming, and then a friend was playing bass and another playing drums. Was just an impromptu type jam while we were tripping on mushrooms and shit. 

 

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  • 1 month later...
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  • 4 weeks later...

Does anyone have any experience with BandLab?

One of the kids that works for me told me to check it out, and it's pretty rad and easy to use. I've just got a question in regards to using the program that I couldn't find an answer to, and we've got a pretty diverse group of people kicking around in here.

My dumb-ass question to anyone who has used BandLab: I put a track together that I really like, but I can't seem to figure out how to make the program move from one section of sound seamlessly into the next. Even if it's the same sound file, every bar seems to have a "jitter" as it moves into the next one. So, could anyone help me figure out how to connect it all together for one seamless experience?

https://www.bandlab.com/revisions/3bfe74ef-653d-ee11-b8f0-000d3a41ec20?sharedKey=oUXsr-nuRkuzYKirCgRjSw

That should work, I think, if what I said didn't make any sense.

It's just my first attempt at doing anything other than splitting tracks with BandLab, so I just put it all together in twenty minutes to see what it was like.

It's very 80's horror, synth and bass.

 

EDIT: Fuck me. It only does the stuttering when you're making the song... but if you go outside the studio and listen to it, it's seamless.

Now I'm actually pretty impressed with myself, because I'm really digging this and my god am I just so happy that I found a program that makes sense to me.

Edited by Gabriel
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  • 2 months later...

Played around with vocals a little bit in BandLab. Here's a shitty little vocal demo of William Control's cover of Can't Help Falling in Love.

https://www.bandlab.com/band/band8355227470543555/william-control-cant-help-falling-in-love-7572da38-0daa7784

Turned out better than I expected with just being able to do the one vocal take this morning.

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  • 2 months later...

Ended up having a free half hour yesterday, so I pumped out a quick little vocal cover of Junkie by Alex Story. Explicit lyrics warning, for those who are bothered. It's an acoustic jam, vocals removed and re-recorded by myself.

https://www.bandlab.com/post/60dd5ce0-a7c3-ee11-85f9-000d3a90bcc3

 

Aside from that, I've been working on some country-influenced tunes, as per my father's challenge. I had asked for help focusing my creativity, because I noticed that I'd somehow ended up with almost a dozen different projects ongoing, and that's no way to complete anything.

I'm not a big fan of country, and it's usually easier to just tell people that I don't like it, but it's going better than I anticipated. The first tune is almost ready, but ended up not being at all what I'd been thinking about. Musically, it's nowhere near the sound I'd envisioned, but I'm playing around in a puddle that I'm not used to, and I'm happy with it regardless.

I've laid down a baseline vocal to establish my melody and lyric placement, but the hard part now is going to be trying to find the sound that I want from the vocals. With the music not hitting that country style like I'd hoped, I'm trying to channel my inner-hillbilly for the vocals in an effort to bring the sound more in line with what I set out for.

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Commenting to put a pin here so to speak.

Just wanted to say I have been reading your posts @Gabriel

I'm just lazy. I'll respond in depth soon. 

I've also dabbled with trying bluegrass/country. You can really take a simple approach with it and use a standard 12 bar blues. I made a song with acoustic guitar, a shaker, drums, and tambourine. I can post it if you want. 

Its a three chord song, easy shit right. Country is great because you can keep it very simple as long as you have a good voice.

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17 hours ago, VerbalPuke said:

Commenting to put a pin here so to speak.

Just wanted to say I have been reading your posts @Gabriel

I'm just lazy. I'll respond in depth soon. 

I've also dabbled with trying bluegrass/country. You can really take a simple approach with it and use a standard 12 bar blues. I made a song with acoustic guitar, a shaker, drums, and tambourine. I can post it if you want. 

Its a three chord song, easy shit right. Country is great because you can keep it very simple as long as you have a good voice.

...man... I'm fucked.

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