Reply With QuoteIn light of the holiday, here's a Christmas tune. Last year I recorded 5 Christmas tunes, but I think this was my favorite. It's such a simple melody but does a lot with a little. Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.
Ok so I thought it was time to pull out the jams again. Grey posted some things in his musicians thread but that kinda gets lost in the noise.So I thought if anyone has some stuff they would want people to hear, anything at all do it here. To start off here is a couple of things I have been doing working out how to use cubase 4 ( which I just got). Prepare for some guitar wankery though.
https://soundcloud.com/darryl-25/superliminal
https://soundcloud.com/darryl-25/trumpetshuffle
hope you enjoy, and please feel free to put stuff here cos I know there are some talented ppl here.
In light of the holiday, here's a Christmas tune. Last year I recorded 5 Christmas tunes, but I think this was my favorite. It's such a simple melody but does a lot with a little. Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.
Despite playing 2nd chair trumpet in middle school band, I don't have any real musical talent.
I can beatbox, but it's not that impressive. I guess I'll live vicariously through you all.
Dema that was really nice, enjoyed your solo very tasteful. Did you ever have lessons or you self taught?
Also what keyboard are you using.
Thanks. I took basic lessons growing up, but the stuff I play now, basically jazz, I followed lessons from pdf and youtube tutorials and then made my own lessons and stayed on a practice schedule. (I played trumpet in middle school too but piano was clearly my calling, and I can play guitar. )
The keyboard is a Yamaha Mox8, which has very nice and natural sounding (sample and velocity based) factory voices. For the kind of things I play, I'm very happy with it.
https://soundcloud.com/kolya33/walk-of-glory
https://soundcloud.com/kolya33/alone-in-the-city
I have no musical education whatsoever (as you may have guessed if you listened to these). I usually make music on my phone using various apps and just go but what sounds good to me.
I listened to your stuff Kolya, I quite liked the second track.
Thanks. The synth part was made with Beppi's QiBrd app which is great even for non-musicians like me to play around.
Earlier this year, I uploaded all the music tracks that I developed for Bipolar, CrossTrix and other games to Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/artist/4S32rZVWbB1yHsR7rsz2ce
Majority of it would fall under the "Drum and Base" genre. I just did them in the style of the music I used to listen to a fair bit on the radio late at night when I was a kid. Makes for good background music to have running while your doing something else.
I dont have a spotify account believe it or not, so cant listen to those tracks
If you have Facebook then you can sign in with that.
Enjoyable wankery though - I thought of Steve Lukather and Frank Gambale when listening to superliminal. Some more ambient reverb in the mix would be nice as it sounds a tad dry. Never actually heard your playing yet. Is that you playing the trumpet as well?Originally Posted by PigLick
@dema - good playing - how long have you been practicing again? I wouldn't mind learning a bit more Jazz playing - all I do at the moment is try and play minor 11th chords in every key. I seem to be resistant to learning to play actual tunes...
I got the keyboard and tried to start maybe 2014, but my neighbor loudly complained about the finger tapping (even using headphones) and made any regular practice impossible. So I literally moved just to practice in peace. I'd say end of 2016 I started studying seriously. I first went through some theory books and then I started doing daily scales and voicing practice from mid-2017.
If you want to know my little system, whatever time you can schedule to practice, divide it into 3 parts (like 20 min, 20 min 40 min). Start with scales and technique practice, all keys. An example of scale development is, well first all scales: bebop maj, bebop dom7th, maj-min, whole-half (aka double diminished), chromatic. Each session you start on the next note in the scale. Up-down, down-up, contrarywise (lh goes down, rh goes up and back). Then vary fingering (e.g. alternate 1-2, then 2-3, etc, 1-2-3, 2-3-4, every possible combination). Or whatever the equivalent is for your instrument if it's not piano.
Then the second part is a device, lIke a type of voicing (drop-2, drop-3, rootless, etc.), or walking bass, or block style, or 100 other things you pilfer from books and recordings... You make a list of devices and just go down the list, moving to the next item when you've got the last one down at tempo. One kind of method is hitting the device in all keys on a beat (early on in a circle of 5ths, or standard changes, later on at random by flashcard app), start at lIke 40 bpm then you up the tempo. Another thing that mixes Part 2 and 3 is improv riffs (e.g. stay in a bebop scale with all chord tones on downbeats, then spread them out or mix in riffs).
Then Part 3 is just playing a tune in a perpetual loop. You also have a list of those (like the top 50 standards, then another 50 of your favorites, alternate), again you go to the next when you have the last down, gradually increase tempo, etc. And of course you want to focus on whatever device you just studied in the improv. When you really want to learn a tune actually, early on you play it focusing on all the devices you know and have like 5-10 different riffs ready for each part you mix and match. As you go, you get better at high-level planning of a motive and the mix of devices and styles you want to use part to part.
You do something like this mechanically, just down a list of items in a regular way so "motivation" isn't really a factor. It's just, what's on the list for today's practice.
Do just that every day / few days for like 9 months and, barring musical disability, you'll be a functioning jazz musician, and by 18 months you'll be actually really good at it.
Last edited by demagogue; 31st Dec 2019 at 14:00.
The trumpet was actually my daughter playing, I suck at brass. Thanks for the lukather and gambale references, they were quite big influences when i was learning.
Well, that'll never do. Have you tried blowing?
@dema - useful tips - at one point I picked up a Jazz guitar primer written by Mickey Baker and picked up a couple more chords. I also know I'm capable of teaching myself some bits of Beethoven piano sonatas. The hitch is always with organisation...
Ok so to stop this thread from dying totally Ima gonna post more songs, this is interesting, I found an old CD when I was cleaning up my storeroom the other day, stuff that was recorded when I would have been around 18-20 yrs of age, so total shred era stuff. I must say its quite understated for those days.
https://soundcloud.com/darryl-25/outintheopen
https://soundcloud.com/darryl-25/speedracer
https://soundcloud.com/darryl-25/freeflying
https://soundcloud.com/darryl-25/elevatorfunk
again guitar wankery abounds so if thats not your thing probly dont listen
listen to this instead https://soundcloud.com/darryl-25/somebodysguy
real funk live
Last edited by PigLick; 5th Jan 2020 at 08:28.
I was actually thinking about making a similar thread. I've got a couple different soundcloud accounts for different styles of music I've been working on.
My silly pop project is called Wanda Plaza, and my hit song is Vapin' in My 4x4. I also wrote a song about the Grand Buddha in Leshan and a few others that are on the main page if you're interested.
But my main interest is ambient music, and I've been making it under the project name Sleepmute. I have an album's worth finished, but I don't know what to do with it. I'd like to put it on cassette and play live shows; just working out how I'd actually do that. My favourite Sleepmute track is probably this one, and you can listen to a couple others here. (I'm keeping the rest private until the album is out).
So far I've only listened to dema's which is really impressive, especially considering you taught yourself. I got up to grade 8 piano and my ear is decent, but I've never had the willpower to become as good a player as I'd like to be.
vapin in my 4x4 reminded of the Flight of the Conchords for some reason. I'm not a huge fan of ambient stuff so yours sounds...ambient ?
Last edited by PigLick; 10th Jan 2020 at 23:57.
Those were great Aja. I like when some voices slip in then back out of detune. It's kind of disorienting in a good way.
Here's something of mine that's not exactly ambient, but it's good for background music. From about 2:40 it settles into a kind of chill lull of notes.
I wanted to see how well I could emulate a nylon acoustic guitar on my keyboard.
Last edited by demagogue; 11th Jan 2020 at 04:48.
no one listens to my stuff
oh wait scumble did
Nah, I listened to all your tracks, Pig. My favourite was the trumpet one -- I wish it had gone on for another three or four minutes. My other favourite was ElevatorFunk, which had a real Can't Buy a Thrill vibe for me. I think if I were mixing your tracks, I'd be using more reverb overall, but that's personal taste. Your playing is great.
I love the Conchords, so I'll take that. When I think about making ambient music, I think about what Brian Eno said in the liner notes to Music for Airports, that it's music that should be as directly listenable as it is blendable into the background (he put it more eloquently). So my goals are for it to be immersive and relaxing but also interesting if you listen closely to notes and textures. I also try to avoid making it sound cinematic but instead aim for evoking more ambiguous feelings. I've also always loved the way a running furnace sounds although I guess in Australia you don't have those.
Thanks! I like the drowsy feel of subtle pitch modulations, plus it's a good way to add movement to an otherwise static sound.
Both you and scumble mentioned more reverb in mixing, which I'm really not very good at as I just tend to leave the tracks as is, something to work on so thanks. I suffer from insomnia and use a white noise generator to help me sleep, so I guess thats a kind of ambient thing right?
Yes!
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