Anyone else play music?

I was in a band when I was in college, then never really had any band or project work out after that because of the time commitment and various factors.

But it was kind of a blessing in disguise, since I started messing around with audio production and engineering around 2002...and now today, I have basically an entire studio in my bedroom,  and I play guitars, bass, synthesizers, and drums. With a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) that means I can record songs by myself, playing every instrument, rather than having to depend on other people who may or may not be serious or committed.

I also have a really fantastic Audio Technica condenser mic, a second solid condenser, and a few dynamics. I've spent thousands of hours mixing vocals to learn different tricks, and I'm proud of all I've learned, but I can't sing my way out of a paper bag, so unfortunately I have to rely on other people for vocals lol. That can be fun, trying to find people on the internet who have real vocal talent. Sometimes there are real diamonds in the rough.

Anyone else play or record? If so, what instruments do you play? Do you play with others, or are you more of a solo player? Any sweet equipment in your home studio?

I don't, but my husband plays guitar. He does have some other things set up on the computer in the other room for mixing, etc. but don't ask me what. :anon:

I have an electric guitar and know a few very basic songs. I had learned a few Green Day songs awhile back but have forgotten most of them, but I think the one that comes easiest to me was "Letterbomb". I always play air guitar to that song in the car :lol3:

I have a LOT of friends in local bands, so am quite often surrounded by musicians when I am. Occasionally folks will have a jam session and I'm so tempted to bring my guitar, but I also know how much I will sound awful compared to them, so end up not doing it.

There's this "retreat"-like thing that I went to for Memorial Day Weekend last year. They have something of an "amateur hour" on the last night. Some of the folks are legit musicians, one was the kid of one of the musicians, and others did other things (told stories, did tricks, danced, etc). After doing that, I went home and picked up that guitar! I'm considering going back for lessons (again) at some point, when and if I can afford it again. I really wanted to learn how to play a song for that retreat this year but for many reasons, wasn't able to go for lessons.

I go with a group of four other people to a local nursing home once a month. Four of us play acoustic guitars and all of us sing. We do all traditional gospel music for those folks. They seem to love it and they are a forgiving audience.

I have had my guitar about four or five years. I haven't had any lessons. I just watched a lot of things on the internet and hung around with people who know more than I do. I have learned a lot by doing that. :lol3:

As for instruments, the guitar is the only one I know how to play, although I have a fiddle and a banjo. My love is "bluegrass music" and I would love to be able to play the other two instruments.

I play clarinet or bass clarinet at the area Symphony and Concerts in the Park during the summer. Also used to play woodwind choir at church and church orchestra.

Teaching myself drums now.

Donutte said:

After doing that, I went home and picked up that guitar! I'm considering going back for lessons (again) at some point, when and if I can afford it again. I really wanted to learn how to play a song for that retreat this year but for many reasons, wasn't able to go for lessons.

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blueyedgirl5946 said:

I go with a group of four other people to a local nursing home once a month. Four of us play acoustic guitars and all of us sing. We do all traditional gospel music for those folks. They seem to love it and they are a forgiving audience.

I have had my guitar about four or five years. I haven't had any lessons. I just watched a lot of things on the internet and hung around with people who know more than I do. I have learned a lot by doing that.

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Thank you for mentioning what I was going to suggest to Donutte.

Youtube has thousands of instructional videos on all sorts of styles and songs, but there's a guy named Marty Schwartz who is an amazing teacher. I mostly use his videos for funk and jazz lessons, but he has an entire channel dedicated to taking requests from people and teaching them specific songs, usually modern rock or pop rock, songs a lot of people would know.

What I like about Marty is that he shows you immediately what the finished riff or song will sound like, then breaks it down. He has a great, easygoing way of explaining things, and he doesn't drone on like a lot of music teachers do. With him, it's always about working on the music. And obviously, you can rewind as many times as you need, which I tend to do a lot when working on stuff.

Marty's beginner and cover channel:

https://www.youtube.com/user/martyzsongs

One of Marty's channels where he teaches blues and funk:

https://www.youtube.com/user/guitarjamzdotcom

Laura H said:

 
I play clarinet or bass clarinet at the area Symphony and Concerts in the Park during the summer. Also used to play woodwind choir at church and church orchestra.

Teaching myself drums now.

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Now that's some serious pro stuff!

I play the harmonium.  It's a pretty basic instrument and I wouldn't say I do it particularly well, but well enough to hold a decent Kirtan (yoga chanting/singing).

I play viols (bass and treble) though I haven't picked one up for a while now. Used to play recorders, baroque flute, piano, a little modern flute, a little shawm and crumhorn...ex music student (you'd never guess :lol3: ).

Plan said:

Thank you for mentioning what I was going to suggest to Donutte.

Youtube has thousands of instructional videos on all sorts of styles and songs, but there's a guy named Marty Schwartz who is an amazing teacher. I mostly use his videos for funk and jazz lessons, but he has an entire channel dedicated to taking requests from people and teaching them specific songs, usually modern rock or pop rock, songs a lot of people would know.

What I like about Marty is that he shows you immediately what the finished riff or song will sound like, then breaks it down. He has a great, easygoing way of explaining things, and he doesn't drone on like a lot of music teachers do. With him, it's always about working on the music. And obviously, you can rewind as many times as you need, which I tend to do a lot when working on stuff.

Marty's beginner and cover channel:

https://www.youtube.com/user/martyzsongs

One of Marty's channels where he teaches blues and funk:

https://www.youtube.com/user/guitarjamzdotcom




Now that's some serious pro stuff!

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I think it was blueyedgirl5946 that suggested it But thanks for the links! For some reason learning from youtube doesn't work for me, though I have a friend that has done just that. Especially since they were using the names of the various notes and cords and I was a beginner in every way imaginable. Now I'm a little more familiar with the names, but still have to google them, which means stopping the video to do that, lol.

There are two means of refuge from the misery of life - music and cats.   (Albert Schweitzer)

I have been playing the guitar as an amateur for many years now. Though the instrument is of the classic variety with nylon strings and I play with my fingers, my repertoire consists of folk and pop songs, nothing classical.

As a social occasion, I also continue to attend guitar classes, organized by the Ministry of Education, where fees are negligibly low.

I play piano.  Back in 1996 when I lived in Atlanta, I got an electric Kurzweil Mark 10 Ensemble Grand at a music store on North Druid Hills Road.  I don't think it's there anymore

I got this piano with the hopes I would never have to tune it again (I have perfect pitch), but found out that some of the keys are not in tune exactly (the Eb below middle C particularly drives me nuts), so it's permanently that way!  

At 14 I took piano lessons but found them to be insufferably boring.  My piano teacher fired me because I kept choosing on my own to play much more difficult pieces than the boring ones she wanted me to practice.  So I began playing by ear.  If I could go back and talk some sense into my 14 year old self, I would have stuck with it and would be much more proficient today.  Anyway, I have written many poems and put them to music, the latest of which is a full album worth or more dedicated to the grief process over losing my mom.  Music has always been an escape for me and a beautiful means of communication when words just don't work.  I've had some of my work copyrighted, but not all.  

I'd be interested in learning how to use recording equipment to put the current music I'm doing to paper and gettting it all copyrighted and possibly published.  Some of the music is so involved I would definitely need the help of a musical genius in writing it out.  It's kind of frustrating, sitting on so much music with the only outlet being my mind!  Thirty years ago, I wrote a piece on the day the space shuttle Challenger blew up.  Thirty years, I've been sitting on this!  I have no idea how to proceed, and only intend to do so very carefully to protect myself and my music!

@ Ginny

Writing of music scores is also my problem, since I’m no professional musician. There are programs that help but from my investigation of them, they still need appreciable music writing skills on behalf of the composer. A much easier method is to get a midi keyboard that creates the musical score as you play. These are not expensive, of the order of 50 $ or Euros.

Even more easily you can record the execution in good quality WAV or MP3 sound. For that, you connect a mike to the computer and use a program like the free Audacity. Alternatively, you can buy an independent digital recorder. These cost 150 $ or Euros, but produce surprisingly good quality.I use one myself and am very satisfied.

I think my short-term goal at this point is to be able to learn how to play "Daytripper" - the whole dang thing. I really like playing that song.

bobkater said:

 
@ Ginny

Writing of music scores is also my problem, since I’m no professional musician. There are programs that help but from my investigation of them, they still need appreciable music writing skills on behalf of the composer. A much easier method is to get a midi keyboard that creates the musical score as you play. These are not expensive, of the order of 50 $ or Euros.

Even more easily you can record the execution in good quality WAV or MP3 sound. For that, you connect a mike to the computer and use a program like the free Audacity. Alternatively, you can buy an independent digital recorder. These cost 150 $ or Euros, but produce surprisingly good quality.I use one myself and am very satisfied.

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My problem is I'm not that good on computer.  I have a macbook pro which has GarageBand but I'd definitely need an actual tutor (not the online tutorial) to learn how to use it.  I can play some of the music I've written, like the Challenger song, from beginning to end.  Others I can play only parts.  Many are still in my mind with only notes taken that have the key, chord structure and individual notes with the words.  And I can only tap out the barest structure of the song, yet I hear it in my mind with all the instruments (ones I can't play!)  It's on my to do list to pursue this further, but for now it'll have to take a back seat to all that's going on right now.  

Sibelius is a fantastic score writing programme, and you can play straight into it with a midi keyboard. You can choose the instrument you want and it'll play it back with that sound...you can create full blown orchestrations and hear them played back...and you can print out the resulting sheet music too if you want. It's pretty intuitive too (or, at least, the version I had was...going back 14 years or so), and I'm definitely no computer whizz!

Wow...this thread is really going off on a tangent here :lol3:

Columbine said:

Sibelius is a fantastic score writing programme, and you can play straight into it with a midi keyboard. You can choose the instrument you want and it'll play it back with that sound...you can create full blown orchestrations and hear them played back...and you can print out the resulting sheet music too if you want. It's pretty intuitive too (or, at least, the version I had was...going back 14 years or so), and I'm definitely no computer whizz!

Wow...this thread is really going off on a tangent here

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Native Instruments also makes ridiculously awesome orchestral signal processors. They are meant for people who know what they're doing, music-wise, so if you're a trained pianist or classical instrumentalist, you basically have an entire orchestra's worth of sounds at your fingertips.

The way to think of it is this: You, the player, have to know how to play your instrument. But what you're doing is playing the naked instrument into the computer, and from there you literally process the signal to get an infinite range of different sounds. Some programs, like the orchestral ones, might give you several hundred processors that render different tones and bow positions on a cello. Another might give you 200 different piano sounds modeled after some of the greatest, vintage pianos in the world.

This is what I use for guitar. The program is called Guitar Rig, and it is also by Native Instruments. And the way it works is, I play my guitar directly into an external sound card (usually called an I/O or an audio interface), and into my computer. In the Guitar Rig program, I can select between more than 1,000 presets of different guitar tones. But I can also pick different amps, different stacks, FX pedals, wah, chorus, reverb...I can even change the position of the "virtual microphones" in the modeled amp to get exactly the sound I want!

This is what is so incredible about using modern computing power to make music.

I remember as a kid I used to get those Sam Ash and Guitar Center catalogs, and salivate over 16-track analog recorders that cost thousands of dollars at the time. Now, I can record unlimited tracks on my PC, conduct unlimited non-destructive editing of those tracks, make my guitar sound like the guitars on any album in history, program drums that sound EXACTLY like the real thing, play synthesizer lines, add my own bass, and then mix the whole thing, with complete control over every aspect.

I know I sound like a huge nerd right now, but this is exciting! My kid self wouldn't have believed what we can do nowadays.

It also spurs creativity. I find that when I create a new drum sound or bassline, suddenly I am playing riffs and chord changes that I would not have thought to play.

Ginny said:

 
My problem is I'm not that good on computer.  I have a macbook pro which has GarageBand but I'd definitely need an actual tutor (not the online tutorial) to learn how to use it.  I can play some of the music I've written, like the Challenger song, from beginning to end.  Others I can play only parts.  Many are still in my mind with only notes taken that have the key, chord structure and individual notes with the words.  And I can only tap out the barest structure of the song, yet I hear it in my mind with all the instruments (ones I can't play!)  It's on my to do list to pursue this further, but for now it'll have to take a back seat to all that's going on right now.  

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The nice thing about DAWs (Digital Audio Workstations, like GarageBand or Reaper) is that you can do what's called quantizing, basically locking the project to a rhythm. Combined with the built-in metronomes, it's really easy to get tracks down.

You can also edit chords after you record them in MIDI. So let's say you have a chord progression, but you want to add notes to make the chords sound fuller. You can do that in literally seconds by pulling up your piano roll, seeing the chords visualized as individual notes, and "painting" the new notes you want into the chords.

bobkater said:

 
@ Ginny

Writing of music scores is also my problem, since I’m no professional musician. There are programs that help but from my investigation of them, they still need appreciable music writing skills on behalf of the composer. A much easier method is to get a midi keyboard that creates the musical score as you play. These are not expensive, of the order of 50 $ or Euros.

Even more easily you can record the execution in good quality WAV or MP3 sound. For that, you connect a mike to the computer and use a program like the free Audacity. Alternatively, you can buy an independent digital recorder. These cost 150 $ or Euros, but produce surprisingly good quality.I use one myself and am very satisfied.

Click to expand...

The nice thing about MIDI keyboards is that you can change the sound of the piano in any way you want using plugins like the Native Instruments stuff I mentioned above.

This video shows people playing MIDI keyboards coupled with NI piano sounds. It's insane!


Likewise, this song was made with a virtual bass, by a guy controlling the bass input via a MIDI keyboard...and yet it sounds perfect:

Oh, it's been years and years, but at one time I played flute and recorder fairly well...I had a beautiful, handmade copper flute (back in the hippie years).  I also played guitar and did fool around quite a bit with the autoharp.  Arthritis robbed me of my ability to play the winds and guitar to my own satisfaction.  I am thinking about taking up the autoharp again, as it is a bit more forgiving.  Just for myself.  It's time.  I quit smoking, and to my delight, my voice is actually recovering!