Let’s get this straight. I like music. I like to listen to songs, play songs (as in guitar and sing) and write songs.
Anyone can write a song. You just need to put some words against you or someone banging away on something that may or may not be a recognized musical instrument. Hell, you can even sing, rant or mumble a cappella (that’s to sing without instrument accompaniment for you ignoranti out there.)
Not everyone can write a good song, let alone a professional song, and even fewer can write a hit.
I try. As for if I succeed, I guess that’s up to you. A successful song has a whole team of people behind it, from the writer(s), the other musicians, the producer and a professional studio through to a record company paying the cheques, distribution, marketing and so on. Independent musos don’t have these luxuries and have to make do. It’s a cliché, that long hard road, but true. At least now, the web makes it easier.
Me? I do everything. Not that I like to, I just have to. And with a midi studio, equipped with a computer, I can. But it’s a slow process because I have to enter the music by hand, ie type it in, since I’m not adept enough on keyboards to play a line. Up until recently, the only things I recorded were vocals, rhythm and lead guitar. Now I’m adding bass guitar to that.
Why? Good question. It’s one I ask myself a lot, but basically, it’s to get a more natural (ie realistic) bass sound. It wasn’t my idea, though. I’m fundamentally lazy. But having spent years learning to play guitar under a local country muso, Peter Miller (he still plays in bands, is a session musician and a local record producer) I graduated to other instruments as I shifted into writing, arranging and recording songs. I still pay Pete for songwriting lessons and basically he casts a very picky eye over my lyrics, arrangements, recordings and mixdowns — everything. He teaches guitar and other stringed instruments at Ron Pierce Music, here in Adelaide (hmmm, I wonder if that free plug is worth anything?) So I blame Pete, he’s the one who wants an authentic bass sound. Trouble is, he’s right as usual. It’s a pity I’m the one who has to suffer.
I’ve always had to stuff around, trying to get a decent bass sound out my midi units. The trouble is, a real bass guitar has different tonal qualities depending on which string and where on the neck you play. Midi basses sound much of a muchness over all the range of notes, except at the extremes where they begin to sound more like an electric piano or some such thing. This might be okay in techno and electronic music where the bass line might be played on a synth, but it isn’t the greatest for most other types of music.
So, in case you haven’t guessed, I have a home recording studio. Don’t you love computers? I sometimes (read quite often) wonder if the programmers who wrote the software I use were forced to have a lobotomy before they began, or did they submit willingly?
I have a windows pc with XP on it and I use an M-Box to record with. The M-Box comes with Pro Tools, but I still use Logic 5, since I got stymied trying to figure out how to edit midi in Pro Tools. The damned thing wouldn’t do what the manual said. The manual was obviously written for a Mac and nowhere did it say what the equivalent of a certain key was in windows. After two weeks of frustration, I gave up. The M-Box comes with an asio driver, which is limited to twenty-four audio tracks and is enough in most cases, though with my 20-bit Gina card in Windows 98, I had 64 audio tracks available. Maybe one day, I’ll try to work it out. Logic 5 is a few years out of date and the later versions are only available on a Mac since Apple bought the company.
For midi, I have a Roland Sound Canvas and a Roland JV880 synth unit. These plug into an old Tascam 8-channel desk (4 out, but only two work.) The desk’s output is routed to a pre-amp, then a stereo 32-channel graphic equalizer (to adjust for the room’s acoustics) and to an amp. Signals can be sent to an old and battered cassette recorder (now rarely used) and back to the computer to record mixes for burning onto CD.
The studio was a spare bedroom and is basically a four-metre cube, so I had to do a little modification. I stuck cork tiles to the wall behind the computer, desk and speakers and slabs of straw roofing hang off the adjacent wall at a slight angle to both make a dead wall and break up the room’s symmetry. Then the room’s ambience was taken into account by putting white noise through the system and adjusting the graphic equalizer.
Like any studio, mine has been through a few revisions from when I first built it while doing a sound engineering course donkey’s years ago. That was (gulp) back in the mid-eighties.
‘When was that, grandpa? The eighteen-eighties?’
‘No, you miserable twerp. The nineteen-eighties!’
‘Same thing. Still means you’re way past your use-by date.’
‘Grrr....’
Actually, I don’t have any kids, grand or any other kind. After all, why should I marry a woman who’s stupid enough to want to marry me, huh? I mean, it stands to reason ... anyway, she didn’t want to marry me, the restraining order made that quite clear. Her husband wasn’t crazy about it either, but I digress....
So, in case you haven’t guessed, my studio has been around long enough for the cobwebs to fossilize, and this was after I spent a few years stuffing around with a stereo that had a pair of cassette units. Then I moved on to a Tascam four-track unit and a six-channel mixer, and then on to a Tascam eight-track recorder and the eight-channel desk.
With the four-track, I added a Yamaha R1000 drum machine. Mein Got! I was almost a band. I could record rhythm and lead guitar, drums (mono) and butcher a bass line. With bounce after bounce after bounce I’d end up with a song in mono with guitar, drums, bass and noise ... lots and lots of noise.
Then I got my first computer (after the eight-track arrived, if I remember) and really went midi. It was an Amiga 2000. Talk about expensive: over $3000 Australian. That’s a small fortune in 1990’s currency. With that came Bars &Pipes — a great little midi software package that disappeared without trace after Microsoft bought it — and the Sound Canvas. There I was, a pig in shit. I could program in not only a decent bass track, but piano and lots of other instruments. Still had to record it on the eight-track though. I tried a couple of things to try to automate it, eg using one of the tracks to control Bars &Pipes so I didn’t have to record the midi stuff, but I don’t recall it ever really working.
And then ... ta da! I went to digital recording with Logic and a Gina card in Windows 95. Bye-bye Bars &Pipes, hello frustration. If I hadn’t been the world’s dumbest genius, I should have seen straight away that I could have kept Bars &Pipes for the midi side and used Logic for the audio recording. You see I transferred my midi songs to Logic from Bars &Pipes via midi with Bars &Pipes in control.
And so, my eight-track was consigned to the dark confines of an old cupboard in the spare room and my new motto for digital recording was: I’ll fix it in the mix.
From 95 I went to 98 to XP and I only went to XP because I had to. My Gina card was beginning to show its age, so I bought the M-Box after reading a couple of rave reviews. But what they didn’t say was that the reviewers tested it on a Mac. Unfortunately, only after I bought it did I see in the fine print at the bottom of one of the narrow sides of the carton that it required Windows XP.
And then, after installing Pro Tools (after installing XP) did I discover that Pro Tools wouldn’t work with my computer. Lo and behold, but in the depths of yet more fine print, did I discover that I had to go to Digidesign’s web page to see what hardware this option of Pro Tools was compatible with. It’s lucky I have a full head of hair otherwise I’d have been frustrated with having nothing to pull out. There was a veritable menagerie of Pro Tool versions, each for different recording hardware and different motherboard/processor/chipset combinations for the different VERSIONS of each option of software. And it just so happened that my computer’s chipset wasn’t compatible with any version of Pro Tools for the M-Box.
The new motherboard is. So that was a cheap exercise — not!
Computers! I’ve worked with them in a professional capacity for years and I still hate ’em. ;-)
Ah, why don’t you go check out my songs? They say music can soothe the savage breast. I tried, but I got my face slapped.
