I haven't. I always kinda loathed them, but I've been intrigued by Jared James Nichols. He swears by them, and I think his tone is killer.
been listening to a bunch of solo acoustic stuff at work. Hvetter Music is some good shit for working. Dude plays just perfectly layered loops. Has a fantastic ear for melodies and they're all very simple for any above average guitar player i'd think. the soloing and timing the loop to stop and then cut back in can be tricky til you get used to it. Highly recommend for any acoustic fans. Also think the loop by Tobias and the other dude rising phoenix song are pretty tight. made me buy a cheap delay and distortion pedal and hook back up the looping station. that shit is fun honestly fucked around little tonight and came up with a couple of cool loops just wondering if i could recreate them in a quick fashion and record it. why not other two guys more of a straight flameco style here but i like
Took way too long to do but finally have a basic recording studio fully functional at my place. Got an acoustic, electric, keyboard, mic and MPC running into reaper. Pretty excited when I saw Akai had a plug-in already for Reaper I thought that was gonna be quite the hurdle. Lookin for any good VSTs for Keys/synth (pref free or cheap at least) since keyboard is going in as MIDI controller and I’d assume there’s better sound groups online than what’s in my low-end keyboard bank. Any suggestions hook me up Also since I’m running the guitars and mic in through UM2 I decided to only run the guitar through delay/distortion before and then send the output back through the UM2 and then into Boss Loopstation then to Amp/Speakers. End goal there was to be able to make loops using every instrument without any unplugging. Haven’t fucked with it too much since I just finished last night getting the software and shit ready. Gonna be time for some hot tracks soon hood b. goode
Redav or anyone else that's been in bands: what do you use to get different microphone effects live? I know Garageband and other software have it for manipulating after you record. But I've seen lots of people live who use the effect that sounds like chorus/reverb or the distorted sound and also would be cool to use that Akon rap voice that's gained so much popularity. CAC voices need help sounding dope. The too obvious answer would be running the mic through pedals but I'd feel dumb hooking a mic up through a guitar distortion/chorus pedal...
I don't know a ton about vocals. They have vocal effects processors just like guitars and I don't think it would be weird for you to use one. electronic I think is currently in a band and prob could tell you what they use.
If running it through pedals gets the desired effect, then I say go for it. From my experience, sometimes venues with good sound equipment may be able to hook you up with vocal effects.
What kind of stuff are you looking to do? Do you want to change effects based on the song, or just trying to dial in a sound/tone/reverb generally?
mostly change effects based on the song. my friends like to fuck around with making beats/rap songs and being able to do the computerized sounding voice or hell that deep voice modulation they would both be fun to use. for my personal enjoyment i'd like to use the effect that sounds like the chorus the girl uses in this video (what i was basically calling the chorus/reverb) it's just a really full sound that kinda sounds like a lot of people singing. I've seen lots of people that do solo acts live use that effect when singing the chorus to a song just to make it sound a lot more full
Any of y'all play with Origin Effects pedals? I met the founder in Asheville a few nights ago. Got the impression they were a good product but I know nothing about music so...
Boss has been top tier for a long time. Decided I wanted to have another loop pedal basically because of that MGMT cover above. got a very basic ammoon one for $35 to record the base riff on. then will do all the layer loops on boss 20xl. i like that style where you can add and build up on one while having the most basic rhythm one on another. lets you cut out all the noise for some parts and then kick it all back in at once. also got one of the latch boss pedal additions i'm not entirely sure why i needed it I JUST KNOW THAT I DO FYI reaper is overwhelming. I've got a couple of (from what random listeners have said) pretty good rap beats and recording them on the 20XL is so easy but trying to do it in Reaper I think I may need an adderall and 24 hours reading the manual. Any reaper pros out there? when you record something and it's just a little off from the main riff that's acting as the base... in garage band its so easy to just move the notes one at a time or as a whole. Also trim just to the beginning of the note instead of to the closest full measure. Very frustrating just bc in the last 3-4 months I've learned the Akai MPC Essentials software and GarageBand... and now I don't really need either of them. And I'm pretty bad at "producing"... where's dre when I need a hand
On the subject of recording/producing...this guy does everything with an iPhone THE HOT NEW HIP-HOP PRODUCER WHO DOES EVERYTHING ON HIS IPHONE Spoiler A FEW MINUTES after Steve Lacy arrived at a dingy, weed-clouded recording studio in Burbank, the 18-year-old musician flopped down in a plush leather chair in the control room. Vince, one of the studio's proprietors, came in to show Lacy how the mixing boards and monitors worked. Lacy didn't care; he was just in it for the chair. He picked up his new black-and-white Rickenbacker guitar, then reached into his Herschel backpack and yanked out a mess of cables. Out of the mess emerged his iRig, an interface adapter that connects his guitar directly into his iPhone 6. He shoved it into the Lightning port and began tuning his instrument, staring at the GarageBand pitch meter through the cracks on the screen of his phone. Lacy's smartphone has been his personal studio since he first started making music. Guitar ready, Lacy relocated into the studio. He usually works in the vocal booth, where he'll light candles and hang for hours, but since I had a cameraman with me he agreed to sit somewhere a little more visually appealing—and bigger. Lacy, wearing jean shorts and a plaid khaki shirt underneath an unzipped blue hoodie, sat on a drum throne in the center of the studio and re-assumed his previous pose: right leg crossed over left, Beats headphones on his ears, iPhone perched precariously on his bare knee (he swears this isn't how he cracked the screen) and connected to the guitar in his lap. Then he went to work, kind of. He'd never call it work. He doesn't even call it recording, or songwriting, or producing. He calls it "making beats." It's a weird recording setup, but it's working for Lacy. Last year, he was nominated for a Grammy for executive-producing and performing on the 2015 funk-R&B-soul album Ego Death, the third release from The Internet and Lacy's first with the band. He's a sought-after producer, featured on albums like J. Cole's "4 Your Eyez Only" and Kendrick Lamar's new "Damn." Earlier in 2017, he released his first solo material, which he's playing as part of the setlist for The Internet's worldwide tour. (Somewhere in there he also graduated high school.) The only connection between his many projects? All that music is stored on his iPhone. That night in Burbank, Lacy had no real agenda or deadline. It was just a brainstorm, a jam session. He paged through the drum presets in GarageBand for a while before picking a messy-sounding kit. With two thumbs, he tapped out a simple beat, maybe 30 seconds long. Then he went back to the Rickenbacker. He played a riff he'd stumbled on while tuning, recording it on a separate GarageBand track over top of the drums. Without even playing it back, Lacy then reached down and deleted it. It took three taps: stop, delete, back to the beginning. He played the riff again, subtly differently. Deleted it again. For the next half hour, that's all Lacy did: play, tap-tap-tap, play again. He experimented wildly for a while, then settled on a loose structure and began subtly tweaking it. Eventually satisfied with that bit, he plugged in his Fender bass and started improvising a bassline. A few hours later, he began laying vocals, a breathy, wordless melody he sang directly into the iPhone's microphone. He didn't know quite what he was making, but he was feeling it. All night, Lacy goofed around. He found a sword in the studio, and made up a shockingly catchy song called "Sword in the Studio" that's still rattling around in my brain. He paused every few minutes to snack on Sour Patch watermelons or let out a deafening burp. Occasionally, when I asked him a question, he'd respond with a British accent. He paced around the room, took a call from his mom, and joked with his manager, David Airaudi. And even when he'd get back to making beats, it still looked more like play. Lacy's smartphone has been his personal studio since he first started making music. Even now, with all the equipment and access he could want, he still feels indelibly connected to something about making songs piece by piece on his phone. He's also working this way to prove a point: that tools don't really matter. He feelds a tension that's been part of the music industry since the Tascam 424 Portastudio made mobile recording easy in the 80s, and has come up time and again since then. He wants to remind people that the performance, the song, the feeling matter more than the gear you use to record it. If you want to make something, Lacy tells me, grab whatever you have and just make it. If it's good, people will notice. Maybe even Kendrick Lamar. DAMIEN MALONEY FOR WIRED The Accidental Grammy Nominee One of Lacy's earliest music memories comes from fifth grade or so. This was circa 2009, when Jerkin' was the new dance craze. At school in Torrance, California, a bunch of eighth-graders would tell him to grab two pens and tap out beats while they jerked. "I was so honored," he says, "because they were the cool kids!" He quickly learned to use erasable pens, which are plastic, because the glass ones would break and get ink all over his hands. He also learned he had a knack for making beats, though everyone else seemed to know that already. Since it's all in his pocket, Lacy is ready to play his stuff at any time. Which was particularly handy last fall, when Lacy found himself in the studio with Kendrick Lamar. When Lacy and I first met, on the Venice beach a few hours before heading to the studio, he seemed to be thinking about his musical history for the first time. (He was also distracted by the half-finished cheetah tattoo on his abs, which itched like crazy.) Most of his stories go the same way: our young protagonist shows up, goofs around, and something magical happens. Like when Jameel Bruner, a high school senior when Lacy was a freshman, took Lacy under his wing. Bruner played keys; Lacy had learned guitar and bass. "He puts me on all this new music," Lacy says of Bruner. "I looked up to him a lot. On keys, that man? Crazy. Playing with him felt so good." LEARN MORE THE WIRED GUIDE TO THE IPHONE Bruner started bringing Lacy around to a Hollywood recording studio in 2014, where he was working on a new album with his band, The Internet. Lacy watched and learned, seeing the production process first-hand. Then one day, Matt Martians, one of The Internet's founding members, needed a bass player. Bruner said, hey, Steve plays bass. "And we get to the studio," Lacy says, "and we're just instantly making bangers." Much of what Lacy and Martians made in those early sessions wound up on Ego Death, but at the time Lacy just thought he was jamming. "When people ask how it felt to know you're co-executive producing an album," Lacy tells me, "I'm like, I didn't know?" It was only after Ego Death got a Best Urban Contemporary Album Grammy nom that Lacy decided a music career was for him. (Some signs are hard to ignore.) But he was going to school in Harbor City, 25 miles and untold traffic away from the Hollywood studio. He didn't own a laptop, either. But he did have a phone. He jailbroke his iPhone, which gave him access to an app called Bridge that could save songs straight from the internet. He also tore through the App Store, experimenting with iMachine, BeatMaker 2, iMPC, GarageBand, and others. Mostly he started making beats all the time. At home. While driving. In class. Once outside a barbershop, when there were a bunch of people ahead of him in line and he had a hook idea in his head. Lots of musicians use voice memos to record and remember snippets of songs, of course. It's just that for Lacy, the stuff stayed on his phone. He'd build tracks in pieces, then put them together and upload to Soundcloud or Tumblr. At first, nobody was really listening, but song by song, beat by beat, he gained a following. DAMIEN MALONEY FOR WIRED Making music on his phone is mostly about the simplicity, the convenience. It's a little about skipping the traffic on the way to the studio. But there's one other advantage: since it's all in his pocket, Lacy is ready to play his stuff at any time. Which was particularly handy last fall, when Lacy found himself in the studio with Kendrick Lamar. Normally, Lacy does all his dealing artist-to-artist. He'll DM other musicians who follow him on Twitter, or just call them. But he got to Lamar a slightly more traditional way: through producer DJ Dahi, who he met thanks to Vampire Weekend frontman Ezra Koenig. Dahi, Lacy says, "brought me in to see Kendrick just to make some beats with him, just work on some ideas." At one point, as things naturally do, the room got quiet. Everyone was on their phones, nothing was really happening. So Lacy pipes up. "Let me play you some stuff," he told Lamar. That's how Lacy likes to work—not jumping straight to collaborating, just playing everyone what he's working on. If they're into it, great. If not, no worries. With Lamar's attention, Lacy played him a couple of songs from his demo, and then a track he'd worked on with singer Anna Wise, a longtime Lamar collaborator. Wise and Lacy had recently been in the studio together—Lacy's more versatile with his tools when he's working with other artists, some of whom think the whole iPhone thing is weird—and all the equipment was screwing up. So Lacy told Wise, "OK, let me make a lick on my laptop, bounce it to my phone, and we'll play this acoustic." He showed Wise how to use GarageBand, and sent her into a vocal booth with a phone and a pop filter. As soon as she sang the track, which they called "Wasn't There," they both knew they had something special. So Lacy played this track for Lamar, his beat with Wise's singing. "And as soon as I played it," Lacy says, "[Lamar] goes, 'Yo, put your number in my phone.'" Lamar hit Lacy up later, saying he might want to do something with the beat, so Lacy sent it to him. He hoped for the best, but didn't expect much—plans change all the time, especially when you're Kendrick Lamar. A few months later, after never hearing back, Lacy texted Lamar to see if he wanted to get together again. Lamar responded he couldn't, he was in the studio finishing his album. So Lacy replied, "Got the tracklist?" followed by the eyes emoji. Lamar responded, "Lol, 'Wasn't There' is Track 4." (It's actually track seven on the album, now called "Pride.") Suddenly Lacy, who's been a fan of Lamar's since middle school and still rues the day his M.A.A.D City CD got stolen, had a hand in the most anticipated hip-hop album of 2017. He sat in his car for a while, screaming with joy. Make It Up as You Go When I ask Lacy what he thinks of how far he's come, he seems almost afraid to overthink it or jinx it somehow. Nothing he's accomplished so far was planned, he says. "I literally had no fucking idea what I was doing," he says. "And from that, I got a Grammy nomination. So I'm like, OK, this is my life." Not planning got him here; he's going to keep not planning. But now that he's out of high school, and putting off college for now, there's a lot more to do. Lacy and Airaudi are trying to figure out how to make more money off all these collaborations, for one thing. And there's that tour coming soon, too. Lacy's still deciding how that'll work: He digs the idea of a backing band playing his songs, but says "the DIY in me wants to do a one-man show." It's immediately clear that Lacy's not interested in fitting into anyone's idea of what a musician should do or what music should sound like. Some of Lacy's songs are 90 seconds long, verse and chorus meant to be played over and over. Others are more traditional. "He talks about changing what it means to be pop music," Airaudi, his manager, tells me. "Why doesn't that include song structure? Why doesn't that include song length?" Lacy refuses to call his solo debut, "Steve Lacy's Demo," an album, and hates that iTunes labeled it an EP. READ MORE LAURA MALLONEE How Reggaetón Exploded All Over Cuba Without the Internet STEVEN J. HOROWITZ The Unbearable Tameness of This Year’s Grammys BRIAN RAFTERY 8 Great Albums You Might Have Missed this Year WIRED STAFF 5 Albums You Need to Play Right Now, From The xx to Ty Segall Even the style of his music is hard to pin down: he'll take the melody from a folk song, pair it with a soul-heavy bass, and then funk the funk out of the guitar line. "The hybrid sounds a little odd at first glance, I know," The music website Consequence of Sound wrote about his song "Dark Red," "but just think of Mac DeMarco kicking it with some Motown records." Lacy calls his style "Plaid," a jumble of colors and patterns that somehow work together to make one awesome design. Whether it's wild shirts, Prince songs, or the movie Get Out, Lacy says he has a thing for art that's one of one. Musically, he experiments with everything, trying not to sound like anything you know. One thing won't change, though: Lacy's going to keep making music on his iPhone. He does own a laptop now, and he knows how to use the producer-preferred Ableton software. But there's something about the freeform creativity the phone allows, the fact that recording in GarageBand isn't the hacky first step in the process but the whole thing. He's even come to like its sound better. He's made a few songs on his laptop, which "sounded too clean," he says. "The beats I make in Ableton, I feel like I have to get those mixed by a professional to beef them up. But GarageBand masters it so it's at a cool level already." But it's more than that, even: When Lacy tried to work on his laptop, he says he found himself creatively bare, just completely out of ideas. So he grabbed his phone and starting goofing around. Suddenly the juice started flowing again. The most recent addition to his studio setup? A second phone. Mostly because too many people now have his number and it won't stop ringing long enough to let him work, but also because it helps with the process. "I can play the instrumental" on one handset, he says, and "and record the voice memo on my other phone." The previous setup was clunkier—and the way Lacy did it, downright dangerous. "I would have to drag the beat into GarageBand, try to get the vocal as I'm driving." What he does now is just as illegal, but probably a little safer. The problem is, the new phone is an iPhone 7, which doesn't have a headphone jack. That means he can't plug in the iRig and hear the track played back at the same time—he tried a bunch of dongles at the studio, and nothing worked. So it was back to the cracked iPhone, at least until he can get his hands on the iRig HD2 and its integrated headphone jack. The cracks don't seem to bother him, though. He doesn't care what he's using. He's just there to make beats. https://www.wired.com/2017/04/steve-lacy-iphone-producer/
Watch how easy Mark Knopfler makes fingerpicking seem. (Fast forward to 1:00) Anyone have suggestions on how to learn to fingerpick in a ragtime style? My whole life I've played electric and it wasn't a large part of the music I played. Now that I'm older and sitting around with an acoustic is more common I want to learn to play some ragtime/fingerpicking blues type stuff.
What's an example of ragtime guitar? I mostly associate it with piano. I learned some Scott Joplin back in the day; he basically is ragtime
It doesn't necessarily have to be ragtime, but the type of fingerpicking that encompasses both the melody and the bassline. So the guitar is basically the only instrument that needs to be played if that makes sense. But I might try to learn something like this:
As far as how to learn it, tip #1 is just practice a bunch obviously. Another tip I assume is one you use when you learn piano music -- learn the "left hand" and the "right hand" separately before putting them together. (The bassline and the melody). If you're reading off sheet music, bassline should have stems pointing down and melody stems pointing up. You use your thumb for the bass stuff. Final tip, it gets a little fancier but the basic pattern for the bass line is alternating between the root and fifth of the chord. So if you're playing C, you sit there and go back and forth between C and G for the bottom note. D, go back and forth between D and A. Add in some "walk ups" or "walk downs" to fill in the notes between chord changes and that's the basic formula I believe.
That's exactly the sort of thing I meant. What do you call that type of guitar? And how the hell do you even learn it without taking lessons? Seems like a bit of a lost art.
Idk exactly what you'd call it besides fingerpicking solo guitar? It's like classical guitar, but updated to modern/pop music instead of just classical. Can you read music? Seems like the type of thing that would be easiest to learn from sheet music. This is basically playing a guitar like a piano, so it's quite difficult. Open tunings obviously would open up different possibilities.
Thanks for the advice. I've gotta get more patience with this form of playing. I've always wanted to pick it up quickly and if I have a hard time I give up. I feel like really familiarizing yourself and your thumb with the bassline is the key, but since the bassline usually isn't the "difficult" part I skip on to the other finger parts and it never comes together.
It's just like singing and playing at the same time, or playing the drums. At first it feels really hard to connect both parts and you keep screwing up the timing. But eventually, it sort of "clicks" and you can do both together. Then eventually you can do it second nature while you watch tv or something.
When you're really good at piano, you're supposed to be able to treat your two hands entirely separately. Right hand playing slightly louder than the left since it has the melody, for example. That level of coordination obviously takes lots of practice
I can read tabs but not music. I've never really taken a lesson so almost everything I've ever learned is based off blues style rock because that's what I really liked when I started learning. None of that really incorporated finger picking that much so I pretty much know Blackbird and Babe I'm Gonna Leave You and that's about it. I think I need to take some lessons. That's the only way I'll ever really get myself to stick to learning the style.
Yeah, you're basically talking about cooking fancy dishes without using a recipe. If you want to play complex fingerpicking stuff I think reading music is probably pretty key, though you can always go rote memorization just watching a video. Yeah that was my start in music. Took lessons 5th through 7th grade. Started guitar in 8th. Also did band :aero:
I’m heavily considering forcing my child to learn piano. I don’t know a single person who regrets that aspect of their childhood even though I remember friends bitching about it at the time.
I loved it, and what I learned in those 3 years carried me right through band and minoring in music in college. It is the best musical foundation I could name
haters might hate but john mayer when he plays solo does this as good as anyone and it's fantastic. if someone ever does that "hey you play the guitar play something" shit that happens if i'm at a house with a guitar there and everyone's drunk... "Sucker" is the go to. It's a real fun style to play and it's not a hard song to sing. really toes the line between a fun party song and a cheese dick sup girl https://www.songsterr.com/a/wsa/john-mayer-sucker-tab-g-s12308 This one is probably immediately following and then hand it over to someone else. Real fun style to learn for solo acoustic https://www.songsterr.com/a/wsa/john-mayer-life-lines-tab-g-s310398 And I don't think you have to learn to read music to learn the style. I don't know shit about reading music for guitar or piano. Just know the scales like the back of your hand. If you know what key the melody notes are in you can figure out what bass notes to play. It does take a decent amount of practice to get used to all the positions you have to use with your left hand in order to have something on the bass note. Just a completely different ballgame from traditional rhythm guitar. Especially if you're playing the blues style like that JM song. Using your thumb is easy to pick up on but when you start using your pinky/ring/bird it takes some getting used to. but there are basic positions you can practice, ie- For an F (Fadd9 or a F/G technically but "a position to play an F sounding slap and tickle riff") e - x b - 1 index g - 2 bird d - 3 pinky a - x E - 3 ring or (play the basic major 2 diff ways 2nd way in parenth) e - x b - 1 index (bird) g - 2 bird (ring) d - 3 ring (pinky) a - x E - 1 thumb (index) a Bb would be e - x b - 1 index g - 3 pinky d - 3 ring a - x E - 3 bird and then F7 (basing the mid strings on how I play a D and anyone playing a D otherwise is a weirdo) e - x b - 1 bird g - 2 ring d - 1 index a - x E - 1 thumb walking these 7ths up or down one sounds so good on a blues song For a minor I mostly do a 7 so Fm7. but you could try sliding ring/bird down a string and throwing pinky out to D 3rd fret. its hit or miss e - x b - 1 pinky g - 1 ring d - 1 bird a - x E - 1 index so just apply those to whatever chords you're trying to play to practice switching positions on the fly a more advanced JM song for that style is Neon. I used to be able to play it well but it took a fucking lot of practice. Good news is - if you can get away with playing JM without any haters from the peanut gallery... there's accurate tabs out there for all his old songs (the good ones from the mid 90s before he went into full cheesedick mode). And videos of him playing them solo acoustic to watch / tutorials.
right hand for the most part is just getting used to using thumb and first 3 fingers on specific strings. takes a little funky blood in the veins especially when you add in the percussion "slap" that timing takes fuckin practice.
also honestly doesn't have to always be finger picking. especially for songs a little more upbeat you can use a pick and it sounds great instead of the slap / in addition to the slap you have the muted strum that gives good percussion sound like this one: key there is getting really good at muting strings with your LH and being reasonably accurate with the strumming, ie - hitting just E on the downstrum vs. hitting just the d-b on down/up strum. Gotta have that strong thumb game to cover your E and mute the A. and just get to where you're not even hitting the bottom e unless it's necessary so you don't even worry with muting that.
A good exercise for this side of it. Google metronome and the google one should come up. Set it to an easy tempo like 100 (i'm sure i'm gonna mess up the terminology so I'm just gonna say "clicks") have your thumb ready for E and pointer d / bird g / ring b strings slap with the pad on the base of your thumb on the first click the thumb picks midway between first and 2nd click and then 3 fingers pick together on the 2nd click sooo I guess if it's a 4/4 measure the 1st note is slap. 2nd is thumb pick. 3rd is 3 finger pick. 4th is nothing Eventually you'll get to where you can improv for a more natural bluesy sound and vary the slap and pick timing while still staying on time with the songs rhythm. just gotta get down the motion of slap>thumb>pick
If I practiced that much I’d want to learn a cooler piece than that tbh. That style of jazz is bland for me
What keeps yall wanting to play music? Do you play after work? On weekends? I've lost my inspiration. Seems like there are a whole bunch of hobbies and only so much time, usually just on the weekends. Just haven't found time for it.
What is a cool acoustic song that sounds impressive and is fun to play for me to learn. Mayble I'll sit down and try to learn Couldn't Stand the Weather by SRV. Probably my favorite song by him.
If you could have any guitar set up what would it be? I'd go with the guitar I have but I don't have the right amp. SRV Strat with Texas Special Pickups Fender Twin Reverb Amp-apparently $1500. Wish list: Les Paul, SG and a Marshall stack. Holy shit never realized Marshall Stacks run from like 4k-6k