phoenixdk

Sorry about doubling, but seriously, no comment? Also, there's new stuff up •••

About the guitar, can you give an example? I agree that in some cases it stands out in a "too obvious" way, but the loops and synth-doubled stuff feels very well integrated to me. "Intelligent Life is Love" is a track where I think it works well - the basic melody and much of the lead stuff is live-looped guitar and guitar synth. "Japanese Mens Fashion" also works well, in my opinion, because the guitar is sampled in a basically impossible-to-play fashion (making it more synthesizer-sounding). As for the quality vs fun thing... I'm not sure what you mean. Do you mean your listening pleasure versus our recording pleasure? Or do you mean the technical competence of the music versus the "funness" of the music? Something else? For me it's not the goal to have a very contrasty, constantly changing soundscape. It's obvious we're not making short-attention-span radio songs. So if by quality you mean how rapidly the music changes (among other things), that's just not a quality criterium for us. Still, it's valuable feedback. It's always a challenge to know when to break out of a good thing and move into as-of-yet uncharted territory when jamming, especially with an audience. Just tell me if I'm understanding you correctly.

Thanks man! Just throwing this out there - does anyone know of any other duos / groups that work like this? Improvisation -> selection -> release I mean. I'd be interested in checking that out.

Two guys with synthesizers meet up and improvise for a couple of hours. Best bits are selected for release. It's a really free-flowing and productive way of making music, and the results are often pleasantly surprising. But to the point: You like electrostuff? You like chipsound? You like prog-space-far-out-ambient-videogame-music? Check us out please, I would seriously love to hear what you have to say. Constructive criticism and / or praise is preferable of course. http://chillbots.bandcamp.com/

I hear Bandstand is designed to do exactly that - take a midi file with a pretty standard setup of instruments, and well... un-midi it. I haven't tried it though, and the little bits I've heard are kind of awful, since it tries to replicate real instrument sounds with mediocrely sampled ones. Reason is always a winner, especially if you're used to handling synthesizers and similar hardware... it's built up in a rack kind of way, with cables and so forth.

Ah, you're right... I guess the first time I used Live I only looked at it as a DAW, where it didn't do what I needed it to. But for live performance it might be good. It has both sampling and tempo-sync functionality, and even the ability to record on the fly / add effects. I think with a bit of practice it could actually be even cooler than a sampler! Sorry for doubting you OverCoat!

I've tried it, some time ago... it's really more of a recording suite than a sampler. And it doesn't have any simple triggering functionality... What I'm looking for is basically just a program that will start a sample when I press this or that midi control, keep looping it, and stop it again when I press a midi control. Preferably synched to a tempo, so I don't have to be 100% precise in triggering the samples.

I have a peculiar problem... I need a simple software sampler, intended for live use. In search of suitable software, I've tried all sorts of huge programs like Kontakt and Reason, and a bunch of less popular, but equally huge programs. Incredibly enough, none of these programs fit my needs... all I need is a simple program, which can be triggered by midi, and allows me to activate and stop loops from playing. No effects, no sampling instruments, no huge sample libraries, sequencers, softsynths, just the exact functionality of a normal hardware sampler. Does anyone have any ideas? Becuase I'd really like to avoid buying a Roland SP-404 or similar, if I can avoid it...

Just to add my 5 cents... I've been playing a lot of different electric guitars for around 10 years, and although I used to hate them, the best all round guitar is probably the good old Fender Stratocaster. I have a telecaster myself, which is a bit more twangy in the tone, but also very good allround. The strat is great for everything though... right from clean rockabilly, to clean / drive jazz, to rhythm metal or screaming heavy metal solos. As for strings, I recommend going with one type of strings, or at least one particular gauge of strings. Rule of thumb is, the thinner the strings, the easier they are to play. Slightly less sustain than thicker strings though, but nothing to be worried about. The reason it's good to stay with one particular gauge per guitar is that a non-fixed bridge will be heavily affected... a floating bridge like the Floyd Rose tremolo system will take an hour to adjust to a new string gauge, I'm not kidding. As for amps, I actually have a Roland micro Cube anniversary, and my dad has a Cube 20 or something like that. Both are fantastic, right from clean blackface style sound to super high gain. They're a bit simplistic, but they really do sound great. If you want some sound examples, just PM me.

You definitely don't need a tube amplifier to achieve that effect. Even a cheap distortion pedal / distortion channel amplifier can do that... I have a lot of distortion pedals and multieffect boards which all pull this off just fine. Just be aware that the higher the pre-gain on the distortion channel, the lower your guitar output volume will have to be. So, low gain means better control but less max gain for instance.

Thank you very much, and I think my track is pretty much already finished. I'm thinking of doing another one... I'm really looking forward to hearing what everyone's contributed with! That alone is almost motivation enough to do another track, so it'll be done sooner!