I have played guitar for about three years now and am really not that good in terms of technical skill or theory (I mean, I do have some skills on scales and chord progression, etc.). I would consider myself mediocre I suppose, but I listen to ALOT of different types of music and consider myself creative. Anyway, I intend to improve on a lot of those things significantly over the summer, and sooner or later I'm going to be looking for some recording software. I was wondering if there are any musicians or people with a knack for audio software in XoO who have some advice to give on swhat is and what is not a quality product out there. A guy at Radioschack today recommended something called SoundForge... Thoughts/advice on any of this?
soundforge is a pretty popular one, cakewalk is another one... My brother does some recording and I think the biggest problem he ran into was a slight delay in what you play and what you hear which makes it hard for timing if your trying to play with another track.. I think that was a limitation with the sound cards? (he may have solved it, I never asked him afterwards) I know a couple people though that have done CDs with their PCs. I will ask them for some advice for ya on software and dealing with any lag or anything.
All of the Recording students at school use ProTools, expensive, but it's pro quality stuff. I have Logic Express 8 on my MacBook, and it serves me pretty well. For basic stuff GarageBand is great. As for on PC though, the only quality program that I know of is ProTools, try a free trial of it and get some ideas of what you like. An M-Audio won't give you delay when directly hooking in your guitar to your computer, just so you know.
wow thanks for all the advice. audacity is free i think, and i heard its good but simple. As I said I don't know much about this yet, but I plan to over the next six months or so because--like so many people--I find it hard to play music with my friends because, although they play instruments... well they just have no taste . they also have nothing to teach me other than what i already know, but I am learning more music theory and practical application from a great private learning site that i somehow stumbled upon through youtube.
Fliggen, I never got very good at guitar, but I did notice that playing with others you tend to feed off each other... What you might want to do is find some people that you can jam with that have the same taste in music... or just ignore the fact that your friends taste in music sucks and consider it a learning experience and play with them anyways Think about how a lot of metal riffs are adobted from clasical music I think though you will find playing with others will speed up your learning process, and I also think that you can get really good at guitar, but if you don't play with anyone along the way, you will have trouble when you do go to try to play with others and it will feel like you have to learn everything again... or you will not get spots in bands or whatever due to them thinking you suck cause you can't play with others well... Playing with others is almost a skill in it's self...
hmm i can see that being very true. i suppose i will try playing with them some more. honestly i also need people with the same enthusiasm for music as me. some of my close friends have 600-1,000 dollar keyboards and they only dabble with them. one only likes to play stuff that other people have written, and never his own music. one has a gibson les paul and can't get off rock band. one of my closest friends from hom had a really nice guitar bought for him and just decided to give up- even though he listens to so much music. i mean it's just hard to see something like that and ask them straight up "if you didnt wanna play music why did you invest in something like that?". but most of them just dismiss my statements or ignore them. in retrospect of my statements, i may have been misleading. its not only that they limit themselves in terms of types of music, its that they limit themselves to music in general, and, consequently, are difficult to play with. i mean they are my good friends, but that's a big gap between us. i have a few other friends i could look up, though. worth a shot.
yeah find some people that like to sit down now and then and just screw around and play... It can be cover songs or whatever, the key thing is to get used to playing with others really... Like I say, you will feed off each other as well... some things that you find easy they may not, and vice versa so you can pick up tips and hints for things you might not have thought of on your own. Cover songs are great to learn how others have done things too and they are a good place to start when playing with multiple people cause everyone knows how it's supposed to sound.. You can always sit down and write your own tunes and then go to them and say "hey I got this song I'd like to hear with a second guitar, want to try it?" or drums or keys or whatever. 12 bar blues is another good way to start... have someone strum and another play lead.
Jeb hit it all on the head. Being a professional guitar player for the past 7 years and doing it for a living now, I have to say in my experience, playing with other people, like hardcore jamming, develops your sound. I've played with some SHITTY people, that you know will never go anywhere, but I learned how to work with them, and it was all experience, it taught me something you know? Because of that I've been able to jam in blues and rock clubs across the world. And my journey in music has just begun, now that I'm going to a music school and have got a great band that I love playing with! Also, Jeb was right, Blues is one of the best things to jam over, especially if you want to become a better lead guitar player. Playing Blues develops your vocabulary and teaches you how to build a theme, how to build motif's. In being a lead guitar player you have to remember, space is one of the most powerful musical tools in the world. Learning how to leave space, being repititious with your melodic ideas and learning feel and touch is how you become a great guitar player. Knowing your melodic minor and natural minor scales and your modes is great! But knowing how to shape them into something musical, that's something entirely different, and starting with the Blues will teach you so much, even if you don't like it. Just listen to greats like B.B. King and Buddy Guy, listen to how they solo, they leave space and really play their solo's tastefully. Because in the end, it's not how many notes you can play, it's how few notes do you need to touch someone emotionally and take them on a journey. Chords and notes have ways of triggering emotions in people, being the master puppeteer of a humans emotions is one of the greatest thing about being a musician, being able to trigger so many emotions at once that you take someone on a trip through the song, telling a story with high end, intense parts, and with calm, peaceful moments as well. Remember to really understand dynamics well. If you need any tips in playing music, let me know, I've been doing this for years now and I'm getting a great education and I can really help you out with my knowledge and experience. -Samakar
yea samakar, i completely agree with alot of those points. and i think the blues is a great place to start, but personally im not a big fan of straight 12-bar or "chunka-chunka blues. i like 7th chords. and i totally agree that RYTHUM is just as important in music as melody or tone. leaving space between notes and having different length of notes to create a certain effect is what music is all about. That's why I'm also such a fan of percussion (although I can't play it at all). In other words not just technical proficiency, but creative efficiency. you can play like herman lee or eddie van halen but if you don't have some sort of ideas behind your music then you're just pissin in the wind (albeit, very technical pissing. pee-pee zig zags... but no1 cares about that!)
Mix it up yo! And remember, 9th. chords are your friends too! Add a funk element to it! Add a quick change from your I to your IV chord where your IV chord is a 9th. chord and then instead of going straight to the V chord, go to the II chord and then the V chord. Mix it up and have fun! Hell, try an 8 bar blues, that's fun (and difficult), or a 16 bar, that's really difficult for me to count for some reason lol.
reason I say 12 bar blues is that a lot of people learn it just because so many others know it... it's sorta a base that allows you to play with others without having to learn to play their songs or whatever. If you sit down with a friend and you both know how to play it, it's easy for one to play some lead while the other does the rythum. Most people that play guitar that I know, can play it even if they arn't into blues.