EWB Musicians

[VerbalPuke]

On 05/07/2020 at 08:56, Kaney said:

Cheers dude. I forgot to say it was Cochise by Audioslave. It could stand to be a little faster but eh. The chorus works fine at that tempo but the verses don't really so I'm not recording that yet

Do you have an idea what you want at the end of the whole guitar/bass/drums thing or do you just noodle around and see what happens? I find it really weird to sit down and try to actually play something that isn't already a song I've learned.

Covers can be funny, I honestly don't play them often because I end up not wanting to learn and feel like I'd rather be doing my own. That being said, sometimes the beauty of a cover is putting your own spin on it, so if you do Cochise but maybe it's a slowed down version of it that has your own spin? My buddies and I do a pretty cool jam of Jethro Tull's 17 and realistically, it's got the same sound/spirit but it's very much our own doing. 

 I did have a cover of the Nile Song by Pink Floyd, it's not one of their best known songs, but it's a really cool and easy song to do, pretty heavy for 68. I'd post it, but I may have deleted it from my soundcloud (honestly it was just guitar/bass anyway). 

Honestly, the full on band recording I've been doing is still pretty new to me. So I'd say almost everything I've posted started as a drum beat and then I just kind of went from there. With now having the looper pedal I can actually just play one of my riffs and let it loop while I work out what I want to do with the drums. Even if it's not completely perfect I can get the beat I want then get the spirit of the riff, the song I did "Special Occasion" is an example of coming up with the riff first (very basic A to G, then to F and back down to G to A). But most of what I've posted started as a beat. I think something I want to do soon, specifically with the song "Floating Through Time", that one I did the guitar/bass first on it and really wanted to add drums, so I added drums after. It sounds ok, but as I've discovered, it is much easier to start with your drums, then go with your bass, then the guitar parts. I don't always go bass then guitar, but usually thats how I start. 

Anyway, my plan is to listen to that song again and record my drums as a completely new track, and then re-do the guitar/bass over that drum beat. I think it'll be a vast improvement and will be an interesting side by side comparison. 

I'm really wanting to get some of my older riffs into full songs, so the looper will come in handy for that. 

[VerbalPuke]

So been recording a lot still. Wednesday night is now my jam night in my own basement since covid prevents me from going next door.

I'll just pick a few of my recent favorites since not everything is that good. None of it is, but I try. 

So this. I came up with that drum beat, and for some reason that weird rhythm is what I was feeling with bass. 

I played this one and told my wife it was prettier than my other stuff. 

Synths are dope, so why not?

A surf one that i like a lot but blatantly fuck up near the end. 

And this might be my new favorite thing I've done.

 

[ChrisSteeleAteMyHamster]

We each made a video for a different song off our 2018 album during lockdown. Not our best three songs, but I guess they were the ones we chose! 😂

 

 

 

 

[VerbalPuke]

Did some stuff, came up with this idea using my looper. Really quite simple actually, the rhythm is just A Minor to A then E to E Minor. Then I added the lead thing over it, and then drums, and I beefed up the sound with just hitting the A and E at the top of the beginning rhtyhm parts. I *mostly* love how it turned out, the bass on this needs to be re-recorded. Bass is kind of tricky as you can record and then it's either too quiet or if you turn it up it gets a shitty sounding distorted sound (as you can probably hear in this). Otherwise though, I like this. 

Fun surfy tune I blatantly stole from The Gears and The Riptides. But really it's just key of A (chord progression is A to D to E). Then I added some neat lead and got a fun song out of it. 

So this one is definitely just fast punk. I love playing shit like this especially on drums. 

 

And because my influences are blatantly obvious, here's a sorta surf/spy sorta deal. Kind of has a Peter Gunn theme vibe to it. I like it though, it's not fast paced blitz, but still has this cool sinister sound. It reminded me of marching for some reason so I came up with that name. 

[Kaney]

Shit man Depression Has No Age is fucking really great. I like all your stuff but I could legit listen to a full song of that.

[VerbalPuke]

On 19/08/2020 at 17:14, Kaney said:

Shit man Depression Has No Age is fucking really great. I like all your stuff but I could legit listen to a full song of that.

Thank you. I mean I know I'm a solo hack, but when I put that together and recorded it, I was happy with it. Not sure what it is, it's such a simple idea but I think it came together well (i have reverb on one guitar part and delay on the other) where it has this cool ambient sound, sort of sad, but also not slow sad.

[VerbalPuke]

So nothing new but the new basement studio is about ready. Might still be just a bit before I get something new recorded.

In fun news I did buy my son a kid sized Ibanez Mikro. Could use new strings but its a lot of fun to play, quite a nice little starter for a little dude.

[VerbalPuke]

 

So...honestly I titled this song the way I did for a reason. I kind of just dig into my bag of tricks which is limited, but I put together something with it. It's not bad, I like the idea, but distortion is difficult to record as it really comes through pretty thin. 

This again, it's fine but I think what it really needs is the tempo to be picked up. In fact, I normally do play this little lick quicker but I was sort of adapting it to slower drums. This is probably one I'll re-do soon. If I am being honest I put together two sort of quick things for tonight because it's been a long time since I recorded and I just really wanted to get something out. 

[VerbalPuke]

Put in some work last night....

I dig this one, it was fun to record. It took me awhile though, getting the lead guitar parts to sound right, not fuck them up took me a few hours. I could have done better with it but after a few hours I just wanted something done, still a cool idea.

You may notice in some of this stuff I'm doing I've been adding more guitar parts. Part of it is to make the songs more interesting, but it's really just me trying to get proficient at adding more elements to songs. I mean I think we can agree I can power chord my way through a song, but I have so many influences that I don't simply want to just go full speed ahead all the time. 

 

But that doesn't mean I'm going to stop going full speed ahead...

[VerbalPuke]

Listen to Loafing and Horse Play by VerbalRick on #SoundCloud

I may re-record this one because I like it so much. I'm still finding my way around coordinating my feet to make the hi-hat sound good. I may try to do it without using my foot on the hi-hat to minimize the noise. Plus I want to slightly tweak the structure. 

Listen to Tripping on Pluto by VerbalRick on #SoundCloud 

Been meaning to play with synth and my oddball pairings, this was fun. I may start working on more stuff like this.

Edit - Made the links browser friendly. 

And just did this...

 

 

[VerbalPuke]

So I've been playing around with adding sound clips from movies and such to my songs, because it's fun and why not. 

I've also been experimenting more with my synth. Kind of wish I could play keyboard/piano but for now adding the electronic sounds as background is a bit more my speed. 

First one is something I whipped up last night, just had an extra drum track on my computer so I just started playing around with the synth. My limitation is obvious that I can't really play a keyboard, but I do know the notes and can kind of go from there. Beauty of synth is that it can kind of just add ambient sound if you're just holding the keys down. 

This second one was a lot of fun actually. I did the synth with the drums and then just built the bass line/guitar from there. The guitar sounds funky because I'm playing through a synth guitar pedal (so I have synth, bass, and then guitar through a synth pedal to make it nice and weird). 

Then this last one is pretty run of the mill power chord work. I was playing with adding the movie clips in this one, so you'll notice the beginning starts with laughter which I took from Evil Dead 2 when the inanimate objects begin laughing at Ash. I basically ripped of the Monkees "Steppin' Stone" for the main riff then sorta just went easy and the second port alternating between G and open E (if you listen close you can hear me trying to get a little cute on bass). Funny enough, it's one of my simple ones but a friend of mine seemed to think it was one of my better recordings. Less really is more sometimes.

Edit - Soundcloud is acting funky so the last track isn't showing up. No worries. 

Also I feel kind of bad blowing this topic up constantly, hopefully nobody minds, just like sharing my music, yall are cool though so I feel comfortable showing you this stuff. 

[VerbalPuke]

So I find that I may say this often this year as I get better....but this song is maybe my best work to date. It's a punk song with some energy, but I really like the construction of it. My drumming is pretty on point here I think. This one took me awhile, I had a bit of trouble getting the bass line right with the drums. I had to do a bit of editing around the time the "solo" part starts here. You'll notice the guitar stops and just the bass is going, but then the guitar comes back in. This wasn't intentional but I liked how it sounded so I went with it. 

Then this one was another that I had a hell of a time getting the bass done on it. Part of it was not really knowing what to do with it, and the other part was just that I suck. But it's a cool little synthy thing, kind of a weirder one. 

 

[Kyle]

Seeing as my guitar is at my grandparents house and in need of re-stringing, I've been dicking about with FL Studio. Presenting the world's most generic tropical house loop:

 

[VerbalPuke]

3 hours ago, Kyle. said:

Seeing as my guitar is at my grandparents house and in need of re-stringing, I've been dicking about with FL Studio. Presenting the world's most generic tropical house loop:

 

I quite like it, very pleasant sounding. Nicely done.

[VerbalPuke]

Oh also, I recorded a couple things lately. 

ACTUALLY

I should talk about the new guitar I bought. I bought a Reverend baritone guitar and it is so fucking cool, beautiful surf/seafoam green (which I already have a guitar in that color but I just love it). So for those maybe unfamiliar a baritone is basically a guitar but typically tuned in B or C as opposed to E and has heavier gauge strings so it has a more bassy sound. Many of them have longer scale necks but the one I got is built more for a guitar to play with a shorter scale neck. It plays really nice, in a way it's such a unique sound that it's hard to go back to a regular guitar. The cool thing with it is that you can play the same exact chord shapes as you would on a E tuned guitar but if you play the open E for example, you'd be getting open B (and kind of just work from there, like the D open major on baritone gives you an A, A gives an E, E gives a B etc). 

 

Only difference is that mine is just slightly older so my pickguard is a red tortoise color. But otherwise, that's it. 

And with that obviously came two new songs....

I've maybe been having too much fun with adding movie lines to songs. But this is the baritone in action on this song, baritone, bass, and drums so its a familiar bassy song. 

 

The next one is a guitar thing I wrote seven or so years ago? Maybe longer, its probably one of the first things I'd wrote, and honestly at the time I didn't realize what my chords were when playing the barre chords. So anyway this one is a jangly number with my wonderfully reliable Marauder. I did use the baritone in here but only to add a bit of depth to the sound, you'll notice the sort buzzy/fuzzy notes mixed in. Also, the drums on this tested me, my foot was pretty damn tired after trying to keep this pace with the kick drum. 

 

[VerbalPuke]

Got some new stuff. Before that though....I got fucking stupid with my money and bought a new bass amp, new bass, new electric acoustic, and just some other dumb shit. I don't know man, this is a hobby I'm all in on so I'm fucking just trying to make my set up radical. 

This next one will have a familiar tone because it's my fucking beautiful wonder Fender Marauder on guitar. My first guitar that can do surf and punk, the perfect guitar for a VerbalPuke. That said, I love this song. I am 100 re-recording it with lyrics and so that some of the weirder stop and starts in the song are removed. This is an example of me fucking losing track of what I'm doing on drums and just rolling with it. 

This one is kind of a dirty sounding song I think. Not great, but kinda cool. 

And this, I love the idea but I think the song is missing something. I don't know what but it needs another layer or something. 

 

[VerbalPuke]

Hello everybody, a new batch awaits. 

This song actually I've posted before, but this is a new recording of it, it's a lot cleaner sounding. I did the drums first then played everything around it and it is a much more coherent recording. 

Ok so this one....well I tried my hand at some electronic type stuff. I've got a Behringer TD-3 sequencer as the "master" and my Korg Minilogue as the "slave" (meaning I have two synth type things chained together, and the Behringer is controlling the rhythm, the Korg I used because there's a really nice sounding bass sound I created). So honestly, this is a first attempt, I anticipate this will get cooler once I have a drum machine. It was pretty fun to do, but I wont fault anybody for tapping out halfway lol. (Also, I recorded this by micing up my keyboard amp, my guess is that most people probably go directly into their recording software. Go me). 

 

[VerbalPuke]

So two new ones. First one is more synth, got a drum track on it now. I kind of talk in the beginning, I was drunk, and just ad libbed that shit. 

This is a song I posted before, but now I added drums and bass. So this is hopefully the catalyst that gets me actually singing in all these songs. The instrumental stuff is cool but I think they could be better with vocals, and not saying I write great lyrics, but I got some shit that can fit....in a split...with a tit....git. Sorry lol. 

 

[VerbalPuke]

I posted this in the special place, but I'll show it here. I'm trying to roll with some music videos now. I just used an old song and whipped this together and kind of followed a youtube tutorial. Now it's on youtube.

 

 

[VerbalPuke]

 

And I did some more electronic with my synths. I really like how this came out, it's maybe a bit long but I think its a cool sci-fi techno sorta deal going on. I was actually going to record guitar and bass with it...but honestly I really like it just as a straight electronic track.