Working at home may be convenient for me but it may be quite distracting at times too. Have you ever tried writing what you thought would be the song of the year when your 5 years old daughter tells you to clean her up after she went to the toilet. Then try taking a whiff of what she ate for dinner.....heheheh...think about it. But then again..I should be immuned cause I write songs when I'm in the toilet, Remember?.;)) Ok let's get down to it.
This is my Pentium IIII Coppermine 550E Mhz that's been overclocked to 825Mhz. Here is where any song arrangements starts. I am currently using MOTU's(Mark Of the Unicorn) Freestyle for programming. It's a pretty good software for me until MOTU wakes up to the idea of developing a Digital Performer platform for us PC owners. Currently I'have a Creative Soundblaster Live value card in my PC. Note: please be careful when you see Midi interface cables that cost like bout Sin $10- $20/- as it may not be the real thing. I had bought one of these before and there were no midi dialogue. After spending good money changing another soundcard, i discovered that the fault lies in the cable itself. I later got hold of a working midi interface cable for around Sin$40/-. So be warned! Also in my PC is a Yamaha CRW 4260 rewritable,recorderable CD Rom.
I'll be honest...I'm really a terrible keyboard player. hehehe Fact is I know nuts about playing keyboards! I'm a guitarist.so I uses a guitar to program my songs. I have been using guitar synths since 1989 so it was pretty easy for me. On the left is my Roland GR 30 Guitar Synth. On the right is my Godin guitar fitted with a GK-2A Synth pickup. There is a Godin model available that has built in midi pickup. Guitars synths are not really easy to program with as there will be a slight delay from the time you hit the string til the time the midi notes sound. It's not very long, but mind you it could be quite distracting for the novice.
On the left are my sound modules..sounds pretty neat eh?. but the fact is I uses mainly the Roland JV2080 with expansion cards installed. The JV880 is my Aux model in case I run out of midi notes. On the right is my Korg X5D keyboard which is just the right size for my small work room. I mainly uses the keyboards for strings and drums....but I'm playing a bit of piano parts in arrangements recently... hehehehehe YOU CAN TEACH OLD DOGS NEW TRICKS!
This is where the final song get tweaked and mixed down to. The Roland VS880 digital recorder is a very versatile machine that I would recommend to any musician who wishes to create music at home. Especially useful for guitarist, it has built in effects for guitar (electric/acoustic) and ton's of other useful effects. After doing the mix, I would transfer the mix to my Sony DAT (Digital Audio Tape) machine. Doing vocals and backup vocals is a snap as you can actually cut and paste certain parts thus saving time. I would plug in my Nitefly electric guitar on the bottom (My main workAxe) directly in..using the the VS880 built in effects.
Step by step procedures in writing a song. I would normally do this except for times when I would really have to rush a song out.
1} Having a melody in my head that won't go away after a few hours. I would then get in down on a cassette tape. Whether it's a 8 bars section or a complete song, it doesn't really matter as long as I have it on some tape. (That's the disadvantage of not learning music formally like reading and writing notes).
2) I would then spend some time listening to the material that I have on my cassette, trying to figure out whether I would spend the time making a song out of it. Once I've decided..I would then open up my Freestyle program in my Computer and start to do the arrangement. I would normally start on the rhythm section first meaning the drums and percussions..then the Bass parts and so forth. This would normally take a couple hours til I'm satisfied with the end product.
3) After being done with the arrangement, I would then transfer a 2 tracks mix to my VS880. This is my Music minus 0ne. Doing my guitars would be next, Accoustics first if there any.and then the electric. After the guitars have been recorded, I would then start on my vocals. Recording vocals need a bit of time as there are some tweaking to do before I even start, things like Compressing and Eq are the norm. Even as I do my vocal parts, i would sometime change the melodies. Sometimes it's because of the lyrics, at times it's because of the FLOW of the melodies. After the main vocal part, I would then start on the backup vocals or harmonies. By then then I would have almost used up all the existing 8 tracks that are available in the VS880. If I needed some more dubbings, I would then mixdown the tracks that I've recorded and do some bouncings. ( eg. tracks 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 to empty tracks 7 and 8 leaving 6 additional tracks to work with namely tracks 1,2,3,4,5,6).
4) And after all the dubs are completed, I would then Mixdown the whole thing. Care should be taken when you need to Compress the Mix as it may sound funny if your music is being "squashed". The VS880 has a function called the Auto Mix much like the mix automation systems that are available in most professional studios. (Hmmm..I should be getting some commissions from ROLAND!) This is where all your fader movements are being recorded and noted down by the VS880. After hearing the mix like fer a couple hundred times and coffee is slowly oozing out of my caffeine stained mouth, I would then transfer the whole completed mix into my Sony DAT Player thus creating a master copy of the song.
Doing all these is pretty tedious as you may well see. Your neighbours may look at you funny the next morning after hearing or should I say being tortured by your Bryan Adams like vocals in the middle of the night before. hehehhehe. But After you have sit down and listened the whole song that you have completed, you'll feel the joy like I do, knowing that you have done all that and HEY! it doesn't sound half bad! You're on your way to being a songwriter with a KILLER demo!
HAVE FUN AND REMEMBER TO THANK GOD FOR GUIDING YOU THROUGH THE MAKING OF YOUR SONG. That's what I'll do.
Click on the Studio Icon to know more about what I do in a guitar recording session.
