Hot and Cold

Glad you're taking onboard what everyone's saying. The secret to progress is to focus on quantity, think of every piece as the sum all of works before it and that's how quality no matter what people claim ends up being the same thing as quantity.

Rather than doing a full track try this exercise this week -

1. Every day find any midi drum pattern you like in EZDrummer or whatever drums your'e using. Use this as your metronome.

2. Now pick any three chords, doesn't have to be original, just has to be three chords. Create a rhythm part using just those three chords in order, for only 16 or so bars (4 loops through your chords). Pick a random 4th different chord to end on, and before the first loop add a single note of your choosing on the third beat. That's your rhythm track.

3. Add a bass-line, starting out and finishing at any point over these loops.

4. Add any form of lead after the first loop of chords.

No other rules, you can pick any tempo or signature, you can loop your chords rather than playing them if you want, you can use a keyboard for the chords rather than a guitar even, you can use any combination of sounds, you can delete the first or last bar of drums once it's down. Just follow this basic structure though and churn out these little 16 bar tracks, one per day. Post them here.

Shouldn't take you too long once you get into the swing of things, and remember to keep it simple. The goal is just quantity and to come at it fresh each day and apply whatever you learned the day before.

great & fast progress , impressive ! I really liked the section @ 1;45 and the changes in your patterns. Those PM and power chords are much more fluid , as per your lead phrasing.

As Per said, work in loops , best way to work groove & relax your phrasing on your right hand , I'd insist on working chordal and riffs funky licks If you were my student . best exemple as you now have this level :

What VST are you using for your drums right now?

Stay with it Killer

Quote from BayouTexan

I found a "swing" beat in my drum samples last week that I like but I need to develop my "funky-side" to come up with a proper tune for it. That Doobie riff is a tuff one. Just tried it out.

pretty cool , a groovy beat is quintessential . keep with it with the doobie licks ; once you master this one it will spice up your playing immensely.

Quote from BayouTexan

Thanks waraba ! I found a "swing" beat in my drum samples last week that I like but I need to develop my "funky-side" to come up with a proper tune for it. That Doobie riff is a tuff one. Just tried it out.

I'm using both SD3 and MT Drumkit Per . I'll pick like a 4/4 beat preset and then use the editor or my midi keyboard to edit it as needed.

You guys giving me lots of homework, but I don't mind as long as it gets me to be a star soon.

For the exercise just use the inbuilt midi, don’t worry about “programming”. here’s my workflow

1. Go to the “grooves” tab in SD.

2. Click on The “Tap2Find…” button in the top left.

3. using your mouse, or a midi controller tap in just the kick and maybe a snare.

4. click “Show Results”

5. from the list now at the bottom of the screen find one you kinda like.

6. Drag it to the SD timeline and then CTRL+drag (option I think on the mac) the clip to duplicate it, hit CTRL+A to select all, then duplicate and drag again and repeat till you’ve got a few bars covered.

Now just groove out.

Later on come back to SD at the end, right click on the groove you picked (if you can’t find it then drag a clip from the timeline to the “midi drop zone” under “tap2find” and it’ll locate it for you), and pick “Select containing folder”, this will show you the family of the beat, usually handily arranged in intro, verse, chorus grudge and fills sub folders. So then all you have to do is audition and drag in the bits you want and it’ll all fit together seamlessly.

Reality is anyone listening to your tune doesn’t know what you intended so its ok if the drum pattern isn’t exactly what you had in mind originally, so long as it’s the right tempo and groove.

Don’t get bogged down in the drums. Like I said, just pick a groove first, chords second, bass third, find a lead after everything else in this exercise. Also to keep it very short so you can spend time on polishing up, you can always revisit later if you like and turn it into a full track but for now keep it super short. The point is just to rapidly churn stuff out and let go of perfectionism that makes you worry about the organization of the paper clips while the building is on fire.

Definitely getting better, it sounds more balanced than some of your previous mixes which show great progress.

What gauge strings do you use and do you have a tremolo on the guitar you record with? For the individual melody lines try adding some finger vibrato or use the tremolo especially on the last note that hangs. Another thing you could do for the lead lines is attach the accented notes with a harder pick stroke, this coupled with a bit of vibrato will take your playing to a whole new level. Also try sliding into notes or from note to note, this can be another trick that’ll add to your repertoire.

In terms of getting started quickly Per is right, try utilising the drum loops to get you moving, you can always make tweaks when you get the other instruments down.

One other thing that I’d say that benifits me is having “go to” guitar and (for you) bass tones that you know work well in a mix. I’ve used the same Kemper TAF Blue profile for my past 5 or 6 songs and just varied the guitar I use or the tuning, I’ve written in E, Drop C, Drop D and Drop A recently and all on the same profile. This really speeds up you writing and recording.

Using Per method for quick and continuous loop writing you can use this to experiment with various tones until you find your “go to” favourites.

Everyone is different but I like to have a left and right rhythm guitar part, it makes me so happy to record one, pan it one way, record another and pan it the other way, add the bass then feel the power behind a simple drum part, 2 guitars and bass.

All in all you are definitely getting better

Quote from BayouTexan

Thanks MuddySludge ! You know I will!

I'll try that out Per. I'm so amazed how fast you and Franjoe30 spit out those drums so fast. I feel like I am needling a crochet sweeter clicking on single notes here and there.

No timeline the present, give it a try.

Maybe sometime I'll do another live-stream so you can get an idea of how I approach things.

I'm in California, if you're in Texas then you're only a couple of hours ahead of me.