JHolmes

I'm still very much a beginner to the guitar; picking isn't my strong point (well, nothing is, really). I do that whole new-to-guitar strum too hard thing, so I've been focusing on holding the pick more loosely. Unfortunately, switching from upstrokes to downstrokes causes me to chuck my pick into the sound hole half the time.

Changing from upstrokes to downstrokes either changes the timing on the bass string being plucked and throws my rhythm off or throws my strumming off when I try to compensate to keep the E/A string on beat.

I'll focus more on strumming patterns after I start to consistently muting strings with my left hand only when I mean to.

I'm going to have to rerecord it before I start layering. My timing/rhythm has never been very strong, and it's made worse by my newness to the guitar.

My fingers still aren't strong enough to play for more than 30-60 minutes at a time on the acoustic, so it will take awhile before I'm confident enough in this to start layering. My current plan is to record some electric with a click track (to keep me on beat), and use the acoustic as an intro, outro, or bridge.

Thanks. I enjoying the large dynamic range you can get on a guitar; it's very different from my classical piano upbringing.

I can't even tell you what notes I'm playing unless I count frets and strings, so I'm pretty much playing entirely by ear. The concept, to me, is quite alien and exciting. I'm enjoying it immensely and have been getting a solid half hour to two hours in every day, fingers permitting.

Those callouses will form eventually...

Thanks.

Well... the level does involve an army of rabid mutated squirrels chasing you while you backpedal and shoot at them with a machine gun...

... so I guess that's a "yes, it does involve shooting squirrels."

Thanks man. I appreciate it.

Thanks.

Thank you. I was supposed to make about 15 more of these style tracks, but my buddy still hasn't asked me to make them.

I guess he didn't like it :-\

Thank you. It's got... a lot of hours into it now. 10+ by now, easily. It's coming together as a song, finally.

I think the next step is to add a real bassline; it feels sort of empty with just the melodic piano just jamming the whole time.

This will probably get updated a few more times tonight/through the weekend. By the time Monday hits, I'll be done(ish), plus... work.

I've never really understood the genres; I'm not a beat man. I tend to just take a random kick that sounds good from my library or Deadmau5's sample CD as a place holder, then grab a loop I like the sound of and rearrange it. I'm very... white... if you know what I mean?

Thanks for the advice. I'll hop over to trance community and get some kicks. Guess I should delete some crap to save some space.

I'll move it RnB then.

Any advice on how to get some good drums? I've never been good at that sort of thing; what I have in now is just an off the shelf loop I slice up and rearranged.

In the newest update, I have the bass pulled to one channel with a bass boost compressor, and the highs going to another. It should sound better now (or at least once I upload it).

Thanks for the input. I'll check your page out when I get a chance.

Thank you. There should be an updated version of the song (and it might even be a song instead of a 1.5 minute demo) by the beginning of next week.

Thanks man. I'll upload a full version when I finish it. I'm going for a track I can ask someone to rap on top of, I think.

Thank you; It's one of my favorite songs too. I have no idea what came over me when I wrote it, but I remember it taking at least 60 or 70 hours to get to the "yeah, I think this song is gonna be good" stage.

Please do.

The drum is in E in theory, but in reality it's about 60 cents below an E; you might have to either detune what you're working on to just below an E flat or bring the drum part up a bit.

If you want a wav file or the clean version of the recording, just let me know.

I wish I could take more credit for it. My friend was on the vocals and guitar, which are sadly more in the background to my keyboard than I'd like. Next time we jam, I'm going to put two mics on him so I can balance it out more. This whole "recording from one mic" thing is forcing this to sound much more lo fi and amateur than I want it to.

Ideally I'll get enough audio to make something production level without having to buy studio time.

Anyway, thanks for the feedback. I'll pass it along to him to see if I can convince him to put some time/effort into recording for real.

Unfortunately, my phone was sitting on top of the keyboard when this was recorded. I have a great video of the ceiling as it gets buffeted around by that plink of the keyboard. Since I got it in in mono, there's not too much I can do but try to get rid of the peaks at 330hz...

I've been trying to get my friend to record for the last few years. Next time, I'll try to get multiple mics in on the recording.

Thanks! I'm glad I got the rhythm figured out; it wasn't as good until I got my younger brother in on the project.