November 18th, 2010 – So several of you have expressed interest in the collaboration project, and those that I have contact info for through your comments have been added to the shared DropBox folder. If anyone else wants to be part of the project, please comment on this post and enter your contact info in the form (email addresses won’t be shown publicly). Also, please tell everyone about this project as the more people we have, the better it’ll be.

After reading the comments on the last post about the project, I realized that I may not have been clear about what I had in mind. Originally I had thought that we would all submit samples into a shared directory and then everyone would create their own song from the same sample pool. At the end, we would share what we had all created.

I discussed this a bit with Travis from SilverLakeStudio, and Jon over at AudioGeekZine (who just had a beautiful baby girl so head over to his site and send him well-wishes) and they thought that instead we might create one song together with tasks separated to each interested person. I think that this is what many of you had thought I meant, and this is certainly more in keeping with the collaborative spirit. However, I’m not sure how this will work logistically as certain tasks are linear and cannot be done in tandem with others. For example, someone responsible for mixing cannot begin work before the song has been produced.

We would also need to make sure that everyone had their tasks done on time, and that no one bailed on the project. Because of this difficulty, I hadn’t considered this type of project. I’m thinking that perhaps we can start with the “common sample pool” project, see how that goes, and then try out the real collaborative project. What do you guys think? I could really use the feedback to decide where to go with this! Oh, and before I forget, I really appreciate the interest everyone has shown. Let’s get this thing going!

November 13, 2010 – We’ve all been there fleshing out a track and thinking “Oh this is the chorus”; Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V. It happens in every genre, but especially to independent producers who do everything themselves. After all, if we want another chorus, we just need to clone another one and maybe add some new stuff on top right? Wrong.

Have you ever finished your production and it sounded a little flat. With stellar mixing and careful production, why doesn’t it sound as good as the latest record by so-and-so? The reason is groove. Of course, feeling a groove in traditional instrument music is important because otherwise it ends up sounding like cheap karaoke.

If you listened to the latest Taylor Swift track and it was a copy-paste affair, the production would be so generic that you would naturally tune the song out completely. However, she uses real session musicians who play the song through, even if a part repeats, allowing the nuances of their playing to keep the track interesting.

That’s all very well and good for big budget productions that can afford seasoned Nashville players, but what about the rest of us toiling away in our basements? It’s especially hard when we’re dealing with loops or with sequenced instruments.

Emulating the groove of a live performance is the best way to add interest to your productions. There are two main ways to do this in your home studio, play the instruments all the way through live (not an option for many) or to sequence the instruments and add groove templates.

Growing up, I was very fortunate in that my parents wanted me to be a musician. Over the years I’ve learned how to play enough instruments to be able to record a full session by myself. For those of us who are already instrumentalists, the process of adding groove is pretty easy: just play things all the way through instead of copy and pasting. You should also keep your quantization to a minimum.

This even works for hip hop tracks which may be built strictly with loops, and electronic music. Using a drum machine or a MIDI controller to trigger samples live adds the producer’s own groove. A lot of the most successful hip hop producers use a drum machine to play the samples in live, essentially making the loops an instrument. It doesn’t sound boring because the loops are triggered by a person and not by a square on a grid. For producers like Ninth Wonder, this is the bread and butter behind their soulful beats.

For electronic music, artists like Justice and Daft Punk play their electronic performances live and record them. Some parts may be sequenced, but mostly they are recording a band full of electronic instruments. In Justice’s case, they used Apple’s Garageband which comes free with the computer. I can guarantee you that the ability to add groove after the fact is severely limited.

So what about those who can’t play the parts in live? You can always add the groove of someone else. In most DAW software, there is an option to add a groove template which basically overlays MIDI timing from another person. You can buy the grooves of someone else, or you can sometimes extract it yourself. Then as a quantization option, you can apply that MIDI groove. Ever wanted to get the drum feel of John Bonham? Extract his groove from an old Zepplin track and apply it to your own sequenced drums.

Just the little bits of off-timing will add a whole new dimension to your productions. Your audience might not be able to put their finger on it, but they’ll know there’s a difference between one with live groove and one without.

August 29th, 2010 – Way back when first started this site in 2008, I talked briefly about how video games like Guitar Hero or Rockband, might inspire a whole new generation of musicians. Well I just wanted to share that I met one.

Today, I recorded a demo for a young man who is going to give Dave Mustaine (of Megadeth) a CD this Friday. He started playing Guitar Hero, mastered all the songs on Expert Mode, which got him interested in learning how to play the songs for real. He now knows half of Megadeth’s catalogue, and Metallica’s entire catalogue; every solo, every riff. Time from Guitar Hero to real guitarist? One and a half years. His age? 12.

When his dad told me that he was good, I held healthy skepticism; after all, all parents think their kids are awesome. However, when I started talking to the young chap, and he indeed would rip off note perfect songs as he discussed them, it became apparent that he was the real deal. He’s not just some mimicking robot either, 3 of the 4 songs we recorded today were written completely by him (the other was a Megadeth cover obviously). Did I mention that he’s also self-taught?

It looks like this is where our future musicians are going to come from. Unlike when I started piano lessons, learning music through video games introduces the world of musicianship through fun. I used to practice piano 4 hours a day, and longed to play outside every minute of it. This kid practices 4 hours a day because he wants to. He doesn’t even play video games anymore because it cuts into his practice time.

Anyways, I just wanted to share his amazing story because I think that there are tonnes of young people out there like him, and that we’re going to see a huge resurgence in musicians in a few years. Exciting times!

July 22nd, 2010 – Sanyo’s Eneloop series is one of the best bets for rechargeable batteries. Thanks to 300Guitars (great site for guitar tech by the way), I found out that they’ve expanded to the very niche market of guitar pedals. The Pedal Juice, is a lithium ion rechargeable battery pack that will run 9v to all your guitar pedals.

It has two output jacks that you can use to daisy chain power to all your pedals. Sanyo says that it will fully charge in 3.5 hours and lasts for up to 50 hours (probably powering only one pedal under ideal situations). Being battery powered means that you’ll be able to avoid dodgy AC plugs, and get stable power. The Pedal Juice is also water and shock resistant so you’ll be safe next time you decide to play outside in a torrential downpour during an earthquake. The unit (which is about the size of a standard guitar pedal) retails for $150.

Sanyo Pedal Juice via 300Guitars

June 22nd, 2010 – Okay, it seems a little weird to be editorializing on a game but Harmonix’s Rockband series is something different. Introducing what Konami did 10 years ago with the Guitar/Drum/Keyboard Mania series, to an American audience at the right time allowed Harmonix to tap into a video game market that isn’t just for kids anymore.

A decade ago, only children and hardcore gamers played video games. But contemporary consoles like the Wii and games tailored to subjects suitable for families and parties, have broken through that stigma and allowed the Rockband franchise to enter a receptive marketplace.

Both Rockband 1 and 2 are similar games. Other than the set lists and little tweaks driven by user feedback, the gameplay experience is largely unchanged. Rockband 3, however, marks an interesting leap into perhaps dangerous territory. The news that many seem to be focused on is the inclusion of a keyboard (that could potentially be used as a real MIDI controller, albeit with a very limited key range) and an available adapter that allows you to use real MIDI controllers you already have within the game. For me, however, the most interesting part of Rockband 3 is the new guitar controller (click here for Engadget’s breakdown of the controller options).

For those that are unfamiliar with it, here are the important bits: (1) the guitar now has frets, (2) each fret has 6 buttons in parallel mirroring the six strings of a guitar, (3) where the strum bar was before, there are six strings that are strummed or picked. The first interesting thing about this controller is that it’s similar to expensive and custom MIDI guitar controllers that have been created by the boutique and DIY builders. The price of the guitar peripheral itself is expected to be around $150, so expect a significant investment in Rockband accessories (kind of like real world instruments).

Here’s where it gets interesting though: in the “Pro” difficulty level of songs, the fretting will mirror the actual chord fingerings of the real song. That means you’ll be learning how to play the actual songs, with skills directly transferable to a real guitar. Or, if you want to spend some real money, Fender is releasing a Squier guitar that can be used in Rockband as a real, honest-to-goodness guitar with full on frets and strings. Potentially you could be playing a song in Rockband and have your guitar plugged in a real amp and be rocking on both your TV and your amp!

Now all this guitar business takes Rockband into weird territory. On the one hand, people have gravitated towards the series because without having musical skills beyond basic timing, you can still have a lot of fun playing “instruments” in a karaoke kind of way. While musicians play the game, it is still a lot of fun for non-musicians because they get the thrill of playing without the hassle of practicing technique for hours a day.

I understand why Harmonix went in this direction. After the first two Rockband games, they had to come up with something exciting. The drums have always been very realistic in Expert modes; you play pretty much exactly what the actual drum arrangement is. What’s next but to up the ante for the guitar?

But will gamers step up to the plate and take the leap into becoming an actual musician? Will Rockband 3 become an actual teaching tool? Combined with the new Rockband marketplace, I expect that artists will be rushing to get their songs released there and it would be a great marketing bullet-point for Harmonix to push the education angle. Why send your kid to guitar lessons when he can teach himself at home, all the while being tricked into thinking it’s only a game?

I think it will be interesting to see if, given the opportunity to learn to play guitar through the game, gamers will stick with learning the actual instrument. After all, how many people have started learning an instrument only to get discouraged and quit soon after? Will learning through the game motivate people, and perhaps make playing the guitar easier psychologically? I guess we’ll have to wait and see. As for me, I’ll definitely be picking up the game. I’ve always wanted to play Bohemian Rhapsody on the guitar.

What’s your take?

February 8th, 2010 – As I struggle to finish material for my RPM Challenge album, I find myself frustrated that I can’t get what I hear in my head, out into the real world. Perhaps I’m rusty, perhaps I’m overthinking it, probably both. I’ve written about the problem with too many options, and I know that the RPM Challenge is supposed to force you into a timeline, which theoretically simplifies your mental process. Unfortunately, I’m finding it easier said than done.

Ian Shepherd of ProductionAdvice.co.uk, posted a link to a video today that refreshed my perspective. It features the late Francis Bebey, a writer and musician, talking a bit about human anthropology, and demonstrating how to take something simple, and create something much more complex, effortlessly and without having to intellectualize it. The video is nothing short of inspirational. Thanks Ian!

Real World Records via Ian Shepherd of ProductionAdvice.co.uk

January 29th, 2010 – Today I thought I’d write about a topic that’s been bothering me for a while. There is an attitude out there that a real musician plays real instruments; that individuals playing on a Monome, an MPC, or turntables, aren’t real musicians because they’re just “button mashing” or “making noise”. That’s bullshit.

I would be considered a traditional musician; my interest in electronic music and turntablism is pretty recent. My parents had it in their mind that I would be a pianist, so I was in music classes before I could talk, and performing multi-movement Sonatas before my first day of school. My path was as a classical pianist, and I practiced most of my awake hours, after school.

In my late teens, I picked up the drums, bass, and guitar. I have studied music theory and harmonic analysis academically for three quarters of my life, and I’ll be a lifelong student of it. I enjoy most genres of music but, most importantly, I respect all types of musicians. This post isn’t about how great I am, I’m far from a musical genius, but I think I have a pretty good idea of what a musician is.

When I see turntable terrors like Q-bert or Kentaro, Monome masters like Edison, or MPC maestros like Hifana, I see virtuoso musicians playing instruments. The technology may be different than the beautiful acoustic constructs that musicians have historically used to create music. But these new instruments manipulate sound in a way that parallels the frenzied rate at which our technology has advanced.

Music didn’t stop at baroque, jazz, classic rock, disco, or boy-bands, it has been constantly changing and evolving. In fact, technology such as multi-track recording (RIP Les Paul), amplified instruments, and synthesizers have changed music so drastically, it’s impossible to imagine what music would be like today without them.

What makes a turntablist any different from a percussionist? Does he not work with rhythm? To be a good turntablist, you have to fully exploit the tools available to you, just like a percussionist. How do you convey feeling and emotion in percussive playing? That is what separates a good musician from a mediocre one. A successful percussionist or turntablist does this.

What makes a monome-ist (is that the correct term?) or an MPC wizard any different from a pianist? They all are, in effect, playing a keyboard, albeit laid out differently. When the keys are pressed, sound comes out. The difference is that pianos make sound by striking hammers to wire, while an MPC plays back digitized samples back into the analog world. But it is not the played that makes the player.

A pianist can transfer her skills to a harpsichord, a MIDI controller, an organ, or an accordion. They all have similar key layouts, but they output drastically different sounds. A Monome or MPC has a different key layout, but they’re still keys. With both devices, you could map each pad to a note chromatically and be able to play piano-style music. So how are they different than a piano?

Look, I understand that not everyone is a fan of all types of music. But there isn’t good or bad music, there is only music you like and music you do not like. That does not mean that someone that plays music you don’t like, isn’t a musician. Just because my friend doesn’t like classical music, doesn’t mean that Yoyo Ma isn’t a musician. Sounds like a ridiculous comparison right? Yet that’s the comparison people are making when they categorically declare anyone playing a Midifighter or Monome not a musician.

I am not saying that everyone who spins two turntables, or plays an MPC is a musician, but one cannot say that just because the instrument someone uses to make music is electronic, that the person playing it is not a musician. Conversely, you cannot have your whole song laid out in Ableton live and trigger whole sections with one mapped pad on a Monome, and call yourself a musician. You are a producer pressing play at that point. Yes, I draw the line somewhere. It definitely took musicianship and a good understanding of music to create, but it’s more akin to lip-synching. DJing, which I consider separate from turntablism, is a grey area that I feel is a hybrid of an engineer and musician. I’ll leave that topic for another day.

A musician is a musician, and no matter the device she chooses, she’ll play it like an instrument. Not everyone who plays an instrument is a musician. I think that’s a distinction that naysayers don’t understand. They imagine the worst case scenario for a device and declare everyone using that device a fraud. “They’re just mashing buttons, they’re just hitting play”. Watch a video of Edison and if you’re a musician yourself, you’ll immediately understand that he’s just like you.

Being a good musician means a lot of practice. Whether that’s on a guitar, on a set of drums, or on a turntable, they’re all instruments for you to leverage and make great music with. These new musicians are masters of the new, and that does not mean that the past is irrelevant. I think that’s the real issue here, fear. Fear of obsolescence, fear of change, fear of getting left behind. I guarantee you that a turntablist does not think they’ve made a pianist obsolete. They’re different and complimentary to the musical soundscape.

I expect that I’ll get some flack for this post, but I think it’s an important subject to discuss rationally and amicably. I’m sure my ideas on the subject will be refined over time, and I’ll update this article. What’s your take?

January 4th, 2009 – As a classically trained pianist, my formative years were spent learning to play as a soloist. I needed to play as a one man band; kind of a lone wolf. In most situations, a classical pianist is playing by himself, save for the odd duet. Even when playing concertos, classical pianists tend to be off in their own world, leaving the conductor to wrangle the rest of the orchestra.

As you might imagine, it was quite a rude awakening when I wanted to play in a band with some friends of mine as a young teenager. Here I was with years of musical training, struggling to not sound like crap while playing along with a drummer, bassist, and guitarist. What was going wrong? I had flawless technique, laser sharp timing and a whole noggin of musical knowledge and yet I was as unsteady as a baby taking his first steps. Unfortunately, I had a woefully incomplete musical education.

In yesterday’s post, I talked about the relationship between a DJ and the audience. They are both equal partners in creating a unique and awesome experience. A DJ who gets it in his head that he’s some sort of messiah ready to bestow awesomeness on the peons below, is sadly not an uncommon occurrence. Similarly, a musician who plays oblivious to those who are listening is bound for the same failure.

So what does all this have to do with playing with other people? Learning to play with other people is the most important skill in learning to play music at a high level. Back when the first humans saw fit to create communities, music was a way to communicate. It still is. It’s about engaging other people, and when you do that, your own fundamental understanding of music changes. It becomes less about you, and it becomes more about us.

When I finally understood this, it destroyed the plateau that I wasn’t aware I was on. Suddenly, I was on the road to becoming a complete musician. I’m still not there yet, and I imagine I’ll be working on it the rest of my life, but that’s the fun of it. Yesterday, I was watching an instructional video by one of my favorite musicians, Robben Ford. In it, he says that he’s happy to lay down a groove for someone else to build upon. Here he is, one of the most virtuosic guitarists of all time, and he likes nothing more than to let someone else shine. I have to say, when I’m jamming with a great group of musicians, I feel the same way.

When I produce music, I’m not creating something that shows off my skills, I’m trying to build a foundation to showcase other artists. When I play with other people, it’s not about them backing me up, it’s about us all. I would never have understood this if I had continued being a soloist, and I definitely wouldn’t be able to produce music well enough if I didn’t understand at least some of what goes on in each musician’s head in a band.

I have quite a few friends who sit in their basements and practice their instrument determined to be the best, like their heroes. They feel like they need to be the best before they can even venture out and play with other people. Unfortunately, they never get good enough in their mind which means they never get to play with anyone else. One truly becomes good by playing with other people and then taking the experience home and practicing. Not the other way around.

I had almost forgotten this, but going to Japan and getting to sit in on drums for a few sessions, and guitar in others, reminded me what I’m missing by locking myself in the basement to work on music. It’s also the reason that I’m not progressing as fast as I used to when I was playing with other musicians. Yes musicianship makes a big difference in producing music, even if you aren’t using acoustic instruments. While technology has made it a lot easier to make great music without having to physically mic instruments, you still need to understand how the interactions between musicians works to create something that’s accessible to others. As they say, you need to know the rules to know how to break them properly.

Learning to play music with other people is the highest form of musicianship and something that you can work on for the rest of your life. If you aren’t already out there playing with others, try it out and see what happens when you apply what you’ve learned to your own music. Even for musical genres that aren’t typically thought of as collaborative like DJing, or controllerism, working with other musicians opens up new creative possibilities.

October 25th, 2009 – I’m not that great of a guitarist. I was content with the skill level I had because it allowed me to track a decent rhythm guitar for songwriting, but being in the company of so many great guitarists in Japan made me realize that good enough isn’t good enough. I really enjoy playing guitar and I’ve decided to work towards becoming a great player.

To achieve this goal, one of methods I’ve been using to get my technique back, is doing scales and variations. One of the brutal exercises I’ve been working on is the stretch scale where you play the 6th string, then the 1st, then the 5th, then the 4th, and so on until you’ve played all the strings and frets chromatically in one hand position. To be honest, it hurts. I have a feeling that it’s because, as a warm up exercise, it requires its own warm up.

In the video below, Billy Penn from 300Guitars demonstrates a quick way to warm up your wrist and fingers. I tried out his techniques and my wrists and knuckle joints felt quite a bit more fluid. These exercises are definitely going to become part of my warm up routine. If you’re a guitarist, check out some of his other posts on guitar tech. There’s some pretty in depth stuff on there.

300Guitars