Minor Creepiness

NorioDS

OK, I've finally put together a 1-minute track using Linux to stick it all together. It was very quickly put together last night with zero warming up, practising or even an idea of what I had in mind. The noodling is fulla mistakes, I know, but I was more interested in getting the recording to sound half decent.

Here's the track:
http://s3.amazonaws.com/gfsa/norio/minor-creepiness.mp3

Feedback?

What I Did

1. Put together a basic drum-track in Hydrogen. I hate doing this. It's a lot harder than it looks and eventually I chucked all my ideas out the window and went for just a little hihat action using the "Ultimate Acoustic" drumkit ?

2. Recorded the drums into track 1 in Ardour.

2. Messed around in ZynAddSubfx (synth) to create a little progression. Played freehand on my PC keyboard ?

3. Recorded that into track 2 in Ardour, with the drum track playing along so I could (sorta) get timing OK.

4. Set up my guitar through rakarrack and plugged the output of that into track 3 of Ardour. Played along with the above 2 tracks. Didn't practise or anything, just noodling. I have a preset for rakarrack that I enjoy using with a little overdrive and a lot delay ?

5. Opened the mixer window in Ardour and turned the volume down on the guitar track to something acceptable.

6. Exported to MP3.

All in all...

... I'm quite pleased with how easy it was to put my basic ideas down. It'll also be trivial to re-record and re-mix the percussion, synth or lead at a later stage. I'm thinking of adding rhythm guitar, for example, and it'll be uber easy to do that. Just throw in another track, arm and record.

Not happy with the recording itself but appreciate the idea of where it's going. Really need to work on a solo that I'll stick to -- something I always struggle with.

PS: Guitar was DI'd into DS-1 and then laptop through STUSBG10. I didn't use the distortion on the DS-1, just used it for it's low-impedance (or something like that ?)

Questions? Feedback? Suggestions?

AlanRatcliffe

And you're off... Cool! It'll be interesting to see where you are in a year's time.

OK. Next, try and import a drum part to work with. Your tempo is 80 BPM, right? Try this:
http://ratcliffe.co.za/music/norio.wav (10MB)

Download that, import it into your project and position it right where the first beat of the music starts (right after the four beat count-in). If I've done that right, it should more or less match up to what you have recorded. Experiment a bit with working with and around the drum beat and see what you come up with. I usually prefer to start with a drum beat as it is usually makes working with the rest easier.

Next, experiment by cutting and copying measures and pasting them all around the place to create a longer work.

Have fun...

NorioDS

Thanks Alan ?

Downloading it now to play. VERY scared of cutting and copying measures though, I must tell you!

NorioDS

Ooooh, it's such a pretty drum-track! Thanks ?

I'll try copy it exactly in Hydrogen as a learning exercise. Should be fun!

Now if only I could get all my clients to pay me for learning how to make music ?

AlanRatcliffe

Don't be frightened - you should have multiple levels of undo. To be safe before doing something new, do a "save as" to save yourself a new copy to edit. Prevents disaster. ?