Lets share our creative process,inspiration,How do you get up for creating maybe share some recording tips.What gets you up for playin?
Well me....I would'nt say I'm exclusive in my way of playing ,but,generally,I just pick up the guitar and it tells me what to play....I used to practice and practice and record tracks over and over , criticizing tiny mistakes till I drove myself batty,not anymore.
I try to pick up a different CBG as often as possible.Each one has its own voice,I have 10 now , so that's easier.. with the looper, It's the beat that gets me going.So the guitar sorta steers me,then the rest evolves from improv.It's pretty crazy for me that it happens that way....thas all
my studio is simple right now,A Tascam Handheld,then I just lay a track down of rhythm,I also like playing percussion so ,If I have time ,I'll shake a little shaker..the and a lil bit of CBG lead...bam.
I totally believe that first takes are best takes.
.I keep pretty busy so I don't write much lyrics these days, Used to write alot
,I also did a fair amount of multi track recording b4 now , but.....For meit is now an arduous process at best, these days ,and..... I have the attention span of a gnat. Yup, I do!!!
Thanx for the awesome response to the last discussion.Man,that one had some legs...I learned a ton from all of the comments,
Play on, gang....Music is Love, Toodles,Vinnie
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I like playing grass reeds and mixing arm pit farts!
Well, I was given pretty stoic genes from my Finnish ancestors so I'm about the emotional equivalent of a somewhat warm rock. However, when the odd emotion does strike me, it is usually enough above the baseline that it actually would register on a normal scale.
So the couple times I wrote something decent it has turned out OK. My first real set of lyrics were for "Road Worn Blues" and was the result of me making a sales call near NJ to a group of people I really didn't have much professional respect for and they annoyed me to the point that I actually insulted them in the lab. Not terribly professional, but I still got the order. The lyrics were written in about 10 minutes as I sat in the parking lot after the meeting.
The second was after my first visit to Copp's Hill Burying Ground in the North End of Boston. It is hard not to recognize ho spooky that place is. Again, lyrics for "Time Stands Still on the Burying Ground" were pretty much done by the time I took the subway back to my place.
For the last year, it has been a typical dry spell. However I just saw a note penned by my 5 year old daughter and I think I feel the start of a typical "Daughter's Dad Blues" coming on.
The note read:
Dear Chris,
I'm sorry I broke your heart.
I'll understand next time.
I like you as a friend.
As I said, she's 5.
For recording I use either my Samsung Galaxy Tablet or a Smartphone. Audio-only tracks are recorded using and Android app, J4T which is a simple 4-track recorder that has some modest effects built in.
I can write lyrics out of a comment, or a situation, and never really know where it's gonna end up; I do know if I try to force them, or get too literary, the Muse wanders off in search of a good time. I have a fair number of lyrical fragments lying around. Sometimes, they just dry up, because there's too much thought and not enough emotion in them. After writing poems for almost 45 years, I've learned to recognize when this happens, and back off, take a break, pick up a git...if it comes back, great. If not, I now know to move on to the next street lamp of inspiration, which may take minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, or even years. Sometimes, the timing just isn't right.
I find it easier to write lyrics to other people's music, than to my own. I hear something I like, that gets a thought going, sometimes it fits their music, sometimes it goes to a completely different place. When I write words first, the rhythm of the words usually determines the musical style I will focus on for my own stuff. I spend a lot of time working on internal rhyme schemes ( being a fan of Steven Sondheim, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Rodgers and Hart, etc. musicals, and Tin Pan Alley / Brill Building songwriters), that are percussive in nature, as well as playing with couplets and variants of iambic pentameter. I can do the standard and mixed blues forms, but with internal rhyme twists; I'm also a huge fan of limericks and free verse. It helps having been strongly attracted to poetry since I was a kid (my grandfather used to read us Robert Service poems aloud), and having been an English major who veered off into Science and Engineering after seeing the pay scales.
As far as music goes, it strongly depends on which guitar I pick up, and what tuning it's in. Then, I try to find a rhythmic figure or riff to get me started; I'm currently channeling bits of Led Zeppelin, because I'm listening to the albums in order on my iPod at work and in the car. I have lately tended to explore bits and pieces all over the fretboard, and attempt to play both chords and melody almost but not quite simultaneously, kinda like jazzbos do, but not as cleanly. I take these bits and pieces, then try to find either good passing chord linkages, or riffs that work together. I listened to a lot of old country, blues, rock and roll, rockabilly, Latin music, and classical growing up, and was one of those kids who loved field trips to the symphony. I've also been in choirs and small puckup bands almost continuously from the third grade to my 53rd year, over a wide range of music. I know how to analyze a song both rhythmically and melodically, not in a strictly formal sense, but enough to get by, and am always looking at popular song structures. Being in the Middle East for 10 years now, I have an affinity for oud music, and can easily see how it influenced Spanish guitar music. I also am a sort of fan of some West African music, but not in any deeply knowledgeable sense. My work as a geologist and geophysicist is heavily influenced by looking for recurring patterns, and that slops over into my songwriting.
If something's not working or progressing, I first crank it through a variety of amps and effects, and play with the rhythm. This usually results in either dropping the tune fragment completely, or sending me off down another rabbit hole. That's probably why I don't stick to one genre or style, but I do feel very comfortable with bluegrass, country blues, Latin and gypsy rhythms. I just can't play em as fast or as smoothly as I'd like.
Once I got a tune going, occasionally a lyric, refrain or verse will pop into my head. Most often, though, if the music comes first, it ends up being an instrumental. I've learned to trust the guitar in my hand to tell me where it wants to go, something that didn't used to happen with 6-stringers, but happens routinely with 3- and 4- bangers.
Many of my instrumentals are just two or three repetitive passages, with variations, in either speed, rhythm, or riffage, much of which is derivative from the 70s rock where my ears normally live.
I typically record using GarageBand and / or Amplitube on the iPad, recording through an iRig mic. For video, I currently use a Samsung handheld, but I need to explore recording vid with the iPad. I do some track post-processing and EQing in Audacity, either on a PC net book, or increasingly, on my wife's big all-in-one Mac.
Exposure to other people's creativity here ratchets up my own creative juices. Thanks to all of you.
I write the words first....then figure out what genre' the song will be... then I spend a ton of time trying to get everything to sound like music. Seeing people with the same interest playing their stuff usually gets my juices flowing.
I totally relate, I got 16 each in & out on logic gold (8 midi each way too) but much prefer garage band on the iPad these days, too much power is debilitating/distracting...