The Musicians' Corner

[ShinyUmbreon189]

I've been playing for 4 years and there is still so much for me to learn. I'm now working on learning all the scales in the key of C.

[Kanto_Johto]

Originally Posted by Aeroplane

Ya man just keep practicing, you'll get it! I've been playing for about 5 years (sometimes for like 3 hours a day, for weeks at a time) and I still don't think I'm that good.

I started playing bass in 2006 and guitar in 2007, and in terms of technicality I'm nothing amazing. I can play chord progressions cleanly and intermediate lead playing, but I'm no Eric Clapton.

But yeah, as Aeroplane says, keep working on it and soon you'll be able to do it without even thinking about it.

And CarefulWetPaint, my non-smoker comment was just to exaggerate the difficulty and concentration of the breathing patterns required for slower grade 8 standard pieces. I think it's because I'm used to playing upbeat improvised jazz.

[CarefulWetPaint]

Kroso I hope everyone helped you out enough but in the end everything really just comes down to practice.

Oh I see kanto, so smokers find it easier to breathe in slower stuff from smoking?

[Kanto_Johto]

Originally Posted by CarefulWetPaint

Kroso I hope everyone helped you out enough but in the end everything really just comes down to practice.

Oh I see kanto, so smokers find it easier to breathe in slower stuff from smoking?

Noooo, haha. It would be harder for smokers, but it's hard for me even as a non-smoker. It was just a small joke I decided to throw into my initial post.

[CarefulWetPaint]

Kroso I also suggest checking out some instructional videos such as John Petrucci's (god he is an amazing player) Rock Discipline. I think it could really help your playing.

Ah well I guess I ruined the joke by not understanding it :'( Sorry bro. I assume it takes a lot of practice to get your breathing right then? Do you have to breathe in while breathing out/ something similar to that? I really have no idea and I am curious.

[Kroso]

Does anyone know any good amp modeling software?
Anyway tell me what guys think about this
And no, it supposed to be me testing out the quality of a new usb thingy that I bought today.

[CarefulWetPaint]

Amp modelling software.. Not sure but the Line 6 POD is a good hardware piece that does the amp modelling I believe you could always check it out? I know Musicman1066 uses one for his recordings/at least he use to and he got pretty good tones and such from it.

[NeoPsychedelia]

Username: NeoPsychedelia
Instrument(s) played: Singer, guitar, harmonica, viola, bass guitar. I'm a decent songwriter, and I know production basics.
Are you willing to collaborate with other members: Depends. I'm not the best musician, but I'd be willing to work something out if anyone wanted to play or try the specific genres I have in mind. I'm a creative and slightly eccentric thinker when it comes to music.

[CarefulWetPaint]

NeoPsychedelia Welcome to the club!

Oh you're a song writer? Thats very interesting, do you have any originals that you are willing to share with us so we can listen to your talent? I personally would love to hear some! What kind of singer are you? (by that I mean what genre does your voice fit best i guess

New discussion point:
What is the largest crowd/group of people you've played infront of? What was it for? How did you feel before, during and after the experience

[Kanto_Johto]

Originally Posted by CarefulWetPaint

New discussion point:
What is the largest crowd/group of people you've played infront of? What was it for? How did you feel before, during and after the experience

In 2010 I played with my old band at a venue which had 100ish people attend overall, which isn't bad considering the capacity was about 300 I think. It was a battle of the bands competition. It was a good first gig. Our first and last song sounded great, the middle three not so much, but a reasonable effort. Was a great experience.

Also, myself and a classical guitarist once got picked to perform a concert separately. We were representing our college and performing in front of members of the music club for that area. That was pretty scary. I played well, but the classical guitarist completely outdid me. I was completely out of his league. I think he studies at the Royal College of Music in London now. He was a phenomenal player.

[Kurui]

I'm back now (although I probably won't be as active.....I'm still kinda in the blah aftermath stage), and with more UTAU music to burn your ears since I have a new person to work with. :B

So right before husbando died I met a new guy via Kitty-chan who I now work for a little on some things. But i got him to sit and try to make an UTAU, and ;; he can't say Japanese well and has this horribly thick brit accent.........But yesh indeed, he made a few syllables for me to work with so that's what I've been doing to escape the fountain tears.

Yesterday i sat down with the notion in mind to make my very first from complete SCRATCH UST. Yes, from SCRATCH. So i pumped myself full of caffeine and set to work and it paid off! I have the complete first verse and chorus of a song now.

And soooo I introduce to you Toad UTAU (voiced by Toad ofc) singing 'My heart Will Go On' (yes......yes, i went there XD ).



I also made a few more songs but on some of them I wasn't using proper flags (I'm a fail~) so it sounds strange.

Paranoid Doll Short Toad Cover (with a music video because I'm so nice <3 ) :



Yeah, trying to get him to say Japanese R's did not work......neither do the Tsu's. He gave me anything from "Tu" to "Wwwwrrruuu" for R sounds. Like I told him to combine D and L and he gives me T and Wr........because that makes TOTAL SENSE! And Tsu is obviously "Shoe". <_< Yep.

And this one is a WIP and will be his first full song release. :B


And I'm nice and put subs on my videos so APPRECIATE. owo

I'll be back with finished Rain Stain and probably a finish version of that Titanic song. XD

[CarefulWetPaint]

You disappeared on us! But it looks like you've been keeping busy though! Those are all marvelous! Have you personally sung on anything lately though? How long does it take you to make those?

Also you people should answer the new topic!

As for me I haven't played infront of a large crowd or group before, I'm not very confident in myself. I've played for a girlfriend a couple of times, played soothing soft songs until she feel asleep when she was a bit ill.. thats about it though.

[Jacinth]

Username: Jacinth
Instrument(s) played: Flute, ocarina, a bit of guitar, and I sing.
Are you willing to collaborate with other members: Err... Maybe? I would really love to, but I'm not sure if my skills are to par with everyone else's. And I don't have a flute anymore, so...

Anyway, the largest crowd I played in front of was around 200-300 people. And dang, it felt good. I made a few mistakes, but hey, who doesn't? It was fabulous. I can't say I wasn't nervous before and during, but after I felt really accomplished.

[CarefulWetPaint]

Welcome Jacinth!

What were you playing infront of that many people for! Thats incredible! I bet you felt absolutely incredible after that! You're so lucky to get to play infront of such a large crowd, Im sure youre very talented as well!

[Kurui]

I work with a Korean rap/hip-hop artist now that I sing songs for, but other than that no. My recording programs have been giving me so much troubles. T_T

You can hear a small WIP sample of our first song here: http://www.esnips.com/displayimage.php?pid=34151599

Playing with chorus harmonies and main melodies. It is a rap/rnb Kpop style. Title will be "Come Alive".

UTAU songs take longer/harder to make than me singing. XD;; But it depends on the quality of the available UST (that includes the notes data that the UTAU voice will sing) and whoever bank I work with on the song. Every UST is usually shipped ready to go for most UTAU voices, but Toad has a limited bank, meaning for many of his syllables I have to heavy edit the existing UST or make from complete scratch (as in that english one). He has roughly half of what a normal sized bank has.

An example from my Toad edits is that he doesn't have a "Ha" syllable, mostly because of his superly extreme accent which makes him saying "Ha" very hard to hear the H, so I had him record himself going "hhhh" and tack that on to the "a2" file, with "to" for the T. Here's a sample file of Toad singing the smoothest part of the song that I could get. I plan to rework much of that first portion to make it smoother. Mind you this is CV, not VCV so it will sound less realistic than VCV UTAU. But it's DANG close, I'll tell you that, because I'm slaving over pitch bends and envelops (the most fun part).

http://www.esnips.com/displayimage.php?pid=34161825

The real syllables you're hearing here are. "a2, n, du, su, be (he does not have a pe sound, it corrupts), se, su, bi, tu, wi, n, a2, su, yu, ha, vu, ka, mu, tu, sho, yu, go, a2, n" every syllable applied to the timeline and then edited with flags (which changes everything from gravel to breathiness to clarity), envelops, attack, volume, vibrato, pitch bending, etc. to make it smooth transition. You also must oto the file to fit some UST which tells the program how to render the note, where the consonant and vowel should start, and which part of the file to hold out/stretch. This becomes a problem for Toad's bank, which is limited so sometimes I will edit the UST piece by piece with different oto settings in order to give him clearer consonants or a more definite vowel sound.

I've put in around 7-ish hours on that from scratch UST. To modify a pre-existing one, I usually put in between 1-2 hours. That's including mixing.

[CarefulWetPaint]

Man thats pretty cool that you are working with someone like that Kurui! Will you make the billboards with that or what!

Also the UTAU sounds so very complicated I can barely even keep up I guess as long as you enjoy it thats all that matters isnt it! But wow that does take a long time to do it At least you're really good at it

@Kroso I listened to that test and it sounded fairly clear Im not really sure what it's suppose to be though? Was it just a test to see how your USB recorder works?

[Kroso]

Yep, it was to test the quility of the USB recorder.

[Kurui]

Billboards? I hope not. I don't want my name anywhere XD;; *doesn't like attention*. I had enough "fame" back when i was singer of a band in college. I didn't like it. At all. (Answering the question of crowds, I've sang in front of more than a few hundred at once when I made 3rd chair all-state choir and had solos, and we'd also pull nice crowds whenever I was part of the band.)

UTAU's complicated for a relatively new user like me. If I keep working at it I might be able to speed up UST making process. ;;

[Slayr231]

Username: Slayr231
Instrument(s) played:Trumpet, French Horn, Mellophone, and a little of Piano
Are you willing to collaborate with other members: Not really, my internet is really bad and spotty so colaboration isn't really an option for me.

The largest crowd I've played for is probably with my high school's marching band. We played at the Northwest Championship in front of around 300-400 people. It was great and since it was the last performance of the season we played the best we had all season and even ended up taking 3rd in our division and 14th overall out of 32 bands. Not bad for a 2A school!

[Kanto_Johto]

Well, I've finally managed to upload a mix to Soundcloud, although it's a pretty basic one. Essentially I just recorded my acoustic guitar and vocals and spent an hour or two tying together the loose ends (I might add more instrumentation at some point). If anyone wants to have a listen there's a link to my Soundcloud account in my sig. It's a cover of a song called Junk from Paul McCartney's debut album. If you guys could tell me what you think of it that'd be great . Advice and/or critique is welcomed.

[Kurui]

Your voice is so pretty. Wish I could duet with you XD;;; I can't write musick well so I can't really give advices, but I like how it sounds.

Also this is not musick but it is an audio clip from a game we're working on and it's epick and has earned us a buttload of more followers for our game XD;; so woooo! jdhfhfijwijijwYAYAYAYAYAYexcited

http://www.esnips.com/displayimage.php?pid=34164125

Eargasms worth of battle, minus the main character's voice cause his VA is lazy o.O;;; (He will be voiced by Nightmare Nadia though lol)

Mix and vocal editing by Me/Kurui
"Eve Maiden" voiced by Christina/Kitty
SFX by Nightmare Nadia
Epick Musick of epickness "Kneel and Perish" by Burstknuckle (although it is not for this game, but for one of my personal games, so it won't be in this game at all just a placeholder XD sucks for them long live Burstknuckle epicks~)
Based on ChiMeGo's (studio) game, "Anything", produced and directed by Mortimer "Toad" Toynbee, founder/CEO of ChiMeGo.

[CarefulWetPaint]

Welcome to the club Slayr!

For collaboration its more you record your part then upload it and someone puts it all together xD, so its not that big of a deal if your net isnt THAT great, so dont let that stop you! How long have you been playing?

Kanto! Bro, you have a very pleasant voice, I really liked that cover and I personally think it was fantastic but I dont know what the original sounds like so I cant really compare it to anything. It does sound fantastic though! You should definitely get some members together and do some more songs with them (us).

Kurui that was definitely cool sounding, is this game just going to have an epic OST or what!? I think yessss!

[Kanto_Johto]

Aw, thanks for the kind words guys.

CarefulWetPaint, I'm up for collaborating with other users. I haven't checked through the thread but are there any other members who regularly collaborate with others on Pop/Rock/Jazz stuff?

Kurui, that audio clip sounded awesome. Couldn't help but bounce my head to it. Do you have other audio clips like that for the rest of the game?

[Kurui]

No, that was our first one. It's going to have video to it when we get the video to render properly, and with hopefully the main character's voice acting also in there.

But I did sing a little verse of a song I like, but I can't find the english instrumental of it so singing the chorus would be werid......but I sang the verse <3

http://www.esnips.com/displayimage.php?pid=34164563

A barren lonesome place stripped of all hope, faith, and belief
I stumble on for I alone can bring relief to those that cry out
With the weight of the world now on my shoulders, I feel weak
But with a hand from you I'll never know defeat

In your arms I feel warm and I know then that you'll always be the one that's there for me
And so I dream once more
Of that one place we both knew when happiness was just one step away

[Kroso]

Spoiler:

Watcha guys think of the improved guitar?
By the way, if anyone wants to know. The body is made of live oak, the neck and head are made of pine while the fret board is made of red maple.
Also notice my fingers that's near the pick up slot, tell me what picking style that it is?