64D hasn't done a collaborative music project yet. At least, not with actual instruments.
Incidentally, I haven't seen a completed game collaboration in 64D's 6 year life, but whatever.I think the main reason there hasn't been a music project (with instruments) yet, is because no one can record their drum set. I've dropped several thousand on a Roland TD9-SX, so I can record some drumming.I know half the site plays bass, and several of you play guitar, so let's try put something together.I was thinking someone could record some guitar, and then I could record some drums to match it, and someone could do some bass over top of it. I'm sure someone plays the keyboard too. I doubt anyone is non-awkward enough to do vocals though. XDI've never played in a band - my 8 years of piano lessons was ALL classical, and my 2-3 years of drum lessons have simply been to blow off steam. I don't know how musicians normally collaborate together, and I'm not very creative, nor musically inclined. But I thought it'd be fun to try this. Also, I took 3 years of music theory - most of it's gone out the window, but I can re-learn what I need to, if that helps anyone else communicate.Soooo, someone record something. Or, if you want, I can record something and you can play something over top of the drums, but drumming isn't usually the driving force behind the melody of a song.Another thing we could do, is define a tempo, a style of music, and sort of lay out the flow of a song. (ie a 4/4 rock song at 120 bps, that is energetic for the first 8 bars, then slows down for 6, then goes back to energetic for another 8 bars, etc)Juju is the only one I know of here that is in a band, so I'm expecting him to comment on this! =DEdit: Oh yeah, we'd be doing different mp3 files, so we'd use Acid or Fruity Loops to put the music all together.Edit 2: We're not doing mp3. Poly has advised that mp3 loses sound quality. Also, rather than an original song, we can do a cover, if everyone can agree to a song.
Agreement with poly. mp3 is great for end-user distribution but everyone needs to record in something lossless to begin with. Might I suggest we open a Dropbox to facilitate the storage and transfer of master recordings?
Ideally, we would record drums and bass at the same time. That's not gonna happen so we should record bass first to a click track, then the drummer can play over the top of that. We do it this way because it's very easy for the drummer to miscount bars without some sort of tonality. Then you add rhythm guitar and whatever melodic instruments we have - Vocals are last, always last. It's best to record the basic chord progression and melody and then start dicking around with structure later. Once you have the core then you can fiddle with any dynamics and arrangement; this means no effects pedal for guitars/bass and minimal fills from the drummer.It will take a number of iterations before you we get a finished song, we shouldn't expect to only record once.You then neaten everything up, EQ everything nicely, set the panning and autotune the tits off anything melodic. You can compress it to all Hell if you want as well. We should nominate someone to be the producer for the mastering process. When it comes to actually recording the instruments, everything should be recorded directly into the computer via an audio interface (preferable) or a line-in (not so preferable but still ok). If people don't have the technology required, we're going to end up with a shitty-sounding song even if what people are playing is fundamentally very good.In terms of original versus a cover? I suggest we do a cover first to test the water. Green Day seems reasonable since it's easy to get four people (drums, bass, guitar, vocals) sounding nice together rather than any more. Ideally, we should do an original at some point and I'm more than happy to write the bass part although I think we should give CPS here a chance.All in all, a cool idea. I'll keep checking this blog.It's about time we get your logic up in here :P
i got dibs on the kazoo :P
ORIGINALS ARE EASY, we just live in a world of people too CLAMMED UP to go out of their comfort zone.
a cover is almost harder because you're trying to sound like something that already exists. there's really not even a point in discussing what to cover until we know who's doing vocals, much less who else is playing.Originals are easy, yes. But when doing a cover who said you need to be spot-on? You can be creative with them as well.
I'm exaggerating a little but to get a well-produced track, it is essential to pass at least the vocals through an autotuner. It'll tidy up any rough edges and make everything sound a lot neater. In some circumstances, you don't want to do that (authentic punk) but in the vast majority of cases, you do.
Also, I think you guys are missing the point of doing a cover in this context. It's to practice our methodology recording and not to get wonderfully creative. It's a learning tool. It's doesn't have to be inventive for us to learn from it. Once we get a cover done, we've learnt how to co-ordinate the recording, then we can start being creative.Autotuning a slide guitar really is ridiculous. I would not stand for that either!
I like that puzzle-piece style of composing. That'll be really nice. Get two people to write different bass lines (they have to be similar, obviously) and then have people work over the top. That's a great way to do this entire project.