lowstring

I have been playing guitar for about 15 years now, and like most guitar players I can’t decipher a single note of written music. I took lessons for a couple years, and really wish now that I had stuck with it, or at least enrolled in a music theory class while in school. I am to the point now where I can’t really go any further with the guitar unless I start to understand some of the basics.

If you are not a guitar player, then you are probably wondering how the hell do you write music, or play an instrument without even knowing how to read any notes? Well simple…… guitar tab, or by ear. Taking lessons I learned basic chords, and the pentatonic scales……. The rest I picked up or taught myself along the way by reading guitar tab or sitting in my room till I figured something out. I can tell you what notes or chords are being played on a guitar but I can’t write them down, or read them from sheet music. So you can see how this might hinder someone trying to write songs and record an album.

In an effort to really only teach myself, I am going to start a series of posts having to deal with reading music, music theory, and how they relate to the guitar. I am also teaching myself to play the piano, so this information can only aid that process as well.

I finally got to see one of my favorite bands last week, and that band is Brand New. They played @ SUNY Cortland, down in Cortland, New York (which is about a 2 hour drive from me). I have heard they are good in concert, but I have seen many a good shows in my 26 years on earth, so I was skeptical. Well the rumors are true, and I may have to just rank this concert right up there in the top 5 concerts I have attended!

The set list was pretty good, although I would have like heard more off of Deja Entendu or Your Favorite Weapon. They also did not play “Limousine” which is a favorite of mine off of their latest album The Devil And God Are Raging Inside Me. All in all though, I thought it was a good mixture between the 3 albums. One thing I did notice was how little anyone in the band spoke (which is fine with me). The only time Jesse did anything but sing was right before he strapped on the acoustic for “The Boy Who Blocked His Own Shot”.

The highlights of the night for me, was Jesse playing “Play Crack the Sky” (from Deja), and also the guys playing “Jesus Christ” (also off the new album). They ended the night with “Welcome to Bangkok” off of TDAGARIM, which climaxed with the whole band and tech’s banging on the 2 drum sets they had set up. Jesse and Vinnie both dropped their guitars and left them on stage, resulting in some of the sweetest feedback I have ever heard! I highly recommend checking these guys out, although most of their shows have been selling out! For some reason this show was not advertised on their website, so I guess I was lucky I found out about it. Now if I could only get to a New Amsterdams show :-/

Probably the hardest thing to do, and one of the first things I did before I even hit record was: ask myself what do I want this music to sound like? What genre of music would my music fit into? This seems easy right? Well unless you have a band with a well established sound it isn’t that easy. I wrote or recorded many of my initial ideas with just an acoustic guitar and one vocal track. If you are planning to be a folk singer than that is cool……. I wasn’t sure the sound I was going for, but could hear in my head what some of the songs could sound.

I settled on an alternative, folk, rock type sound, at least initially (once you start recording, you will find your sound may change). I think I settled on this sound, partly because: for one, this is the type of music I listen to all of the time, and sonically this type of music is not all that hard to record. There is a certain raw unpolished sound that surrounds this genre, which is good for someone like me that is on a limited recording budget. I am not saying you can rush things and fake your way through things though. You should always take the time to record things to the best of your ability, and the best of your equipments ability.

XLN Audio is fairly new Swedish audio software development company that has recently released the first version of its new drum sampler plugin named; Addictive Drums. First let me get you up to speed with how I produce drum tracks; Roland V-Drums baby! Recording the midi out from an electric drum kit is in my opinion the only way to truly capture a natural drum feel (unless of course you are recording an acoustic kit). You can of course use keyboard controllers, or manually enter midi notes but I am lazy, time is money and that is way to time consuming, so hence the $1k investment in V-Drums. Ok back to the topic at hand, I opened up an existing project I have been working on to try out Addictive Drums. This project already has a midi drum track that I recorded from the V-Drum output, and in this song’s case that track was currently routed to an instance of Toontrack’s EZDrummer.

I fired up Addictive Drums, set the midi output of the drum track to Addictive Drums and hit play. Not surprisingly, the V-Drum midi notes and Addictive Drums did not map well together. A quick search on the Addictive Drum forums turned up nothing, although I did find a post where Lars (An XLN dude) said V-Drum support would be included in a future release. So back to the drawing board; I dug out the V-Drum brain manual, as well as the Addictive Drum midi note list, which you can find in PDF form in the XLN Addictive Drum installation directory. Thankfully both Roland and XNL documented their midi note mappings quite well in an easy to read chart, so creating a custom drum map in Sonar was no sweat. The brain that came with my V-Drum set, can only possibly output around 40-50 midi notes, while Addictive Drums can handle around 90, so using V-Drum’s in my case won’t allow me to utilize everything Addictive Drums can offer. However I am not Neil Pert, and I don’t really need 4 toms and 8 cymbals!
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Welcome to lowstring.com! About a year ago I decided to write and record my own album, and I have decided to document the whole process right here at lowstring.com. You might ask; what have you been doing the last year? Well I have been writing songs, demoing songs, buying equipment, and learning how to use that equipment. Also throw in a move from one side of New York to the other, one job change, and two failed relationships, and here we are.
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