Pink Floyd's Mother

Hi Courtney, and welcome to the forum! A lot of us on here upload our songs as MP3's to Soundclick.com or other sites (MySpace, Acidplanet etc), then post a link to the song here.

Plenty of cover versions get posted; as long you're not selling downloads I think you're pretty safe to do that.

As to the Roland Guitar Synth - there's a guy who posts here, Kenny Wilson (Kennywtelejazz) who uses that rig, maybe you could drop him a line through the forum if he has PM enabled. He certainly gets some tremendous sounds out of it!

Looking forward to hearing your tune!

Marcos, you 3 chord hack, stop misleading women. It will only lead to trouble and sorrow. LOL.

Randy

Mark,
You know 3 chords now? Nice that he let you know first, Randy!

Gamergirl - There are probably a thousand guitarists and then some on this forum. Anyways, welcome to the forum. Let us all know when that song of yours gets posted.

People post cover tunes here all the time. Kenny would be a great person for you to contact regarding the Roland guitar synth. He's an excellent guitarist and very willing to help out. Like James said, for posting songs I suggest opening an account at soundclick or acidplanet and posting your songs there. Then you just copy and paste a link to the page here. It's easy.

PS....This place is full of guitar players and other undesirable characters!

Courtney,
Welcome. Looking forward to hearing your take on Mother. There are a bunch of us geetar players here as you are now seeing. I also use the GR-20 with my Godin LGX-SA. I've used it in an audio track capacity only at this point. I've been using it since 12-06. I have found it to be a bit tough to use and am working on adapting my playing to it. Basically I try to keep misfired notes to a minimum but use gain envelopes and fades to fix up the tracks where I have these problems. I've used it for bass patches with varying success. Mostly it is the orchestral patches that seem to be the most forgiving. I've started to use the hold pedal quite a bit and that has helped a lot in maintaining a certain sound without change. I like to layer a bunch of tracks when doing guitar synth so I've been able to hide a lot of stuff in the sound that way (for good or bad).

There is a user group on Yahoo for the Roland synths although it is geared around an older synth model. You can find that here.....
http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/GR-30/

I did find a .zip file on that site for something called fretted drummer. I have yet to open it and check it out but it appears to be some kind of generic MIDI template for generating drums via guitar controller. I've messed around with MIDI input but have not yet used it for a song or to sequence any drum parts (I use drum loops mostly). There is another user called gnie who uses the guitar as a controller. There are probably others out there who I have just not run across yet.

I'll also recommend Soundclick. It's a way to at least get your feet wet and it's free. You can always move to another service if need be. And as has been stated, many folks post covers. There is actually a section in Soundclick for that. Basically you upload your file to Soundclick and you just paste the link into your message and/or signature.

I am a guitar player but I try to play bass some too. I have a keyboard but no training and rarely use it. Drum loops are cool but of course nothing replaces a real drummer, which I am not.

Anyway, good luck and enjoy the forum. I'd also like to hear how your GR-20 experiences have gone and also am looking for tips. Recently I switched from using Elixir coated strings back to my old D'Addario standbys on my Godin to see if that would help tracking. It seemed to help a little but mainly I've found that a lot of tuning and also calibrating the settings is the best bet to success against misfire notes. Don't ya love it when that one open string sounds right in the middle of a great take? Aaaargh!

I actually knew this guy I was in rehab with (is that too much information?) who really did know only three chords. I tried to teach him the Aminor chord but it was to no avail, his brain was totally hardwired and he couldn't learn any more!!!

I've been playing for quite some time, and I'm not all that good by the standards around here- I live very close to Nashville, everyone plays guitar- but I get by.

OK, I have a soundclick account, but some of my older stuff on there isn't all that great, if I post the link, you guys gotta promise you'll only listen to "Mother". I have better equipment now, and I'm redoing all those songs, and I'm working on a totally new arrangement of "Raglan Road." (a Celtic traditional). I had my friends sing 'cuz, like Jimi Hendrix, I was really self-conscious about my voice. Now that I have SONAR 6, PE and the Roland V-Vocal, I think I can make my voice sound a lot better than it would in reality; maybe that's cheating, I dunno, but who cares? It's only for demo purposes. I had a friend sing on my original track "Pagan Soul" and I think it's just awful, so I'm redoing it, too. Promise me you won't listen to those until I finished with them.

If ya'll make that promise, I'll post the link. Oh, you CAN listen to "light years," the singing isn't great but I think the song turned out pretty well.

Oh, also, is posting "Mother" as an instrumental likely to get me into trouble? I know it's technically a violation of copyright, but in reality, is anyone (like, say, Roger Waters) likely to notice, and do something about it? I think not, but what do you guys think?
Courtney Patricia "GamerGirl" Parsons

ORIGINAL: CreatingNoise

Courtney,
Welcome. Looking forward to hearing your take on Mother. There are a bunch of us geetar players here as you are now seeing. I also use the GR-20 with my Godin LGX-SA. I've used it in an audio track capacity only at this point. I've been using it since 12-06. I have found it to be a bit tough to use and am working on adapting my playing to it. Basically I try to keep misfired notes to a minimum but use gain envelopes and fades to fix up the tracks where I have these problems. I've used it for bass patches with varying success. Mostly it is the orchestral patches that seem to be the most forgiving. I've started to use the hold pedal quite a bit and that has helped a lot in maintaining a certain sound without change. I like to layer a bunch of tracks when doing guitar synth so I've been able to hide a lot of stuff in the sound that way (for good or bad).

What's a Godin LGX-SA? Is it a synth, or is it just an interface? Does it require a pickup, like the 20?

There is a user group on Yahoo for the Roland synths although it is geared around an older synth model. You can find that here.....
http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/GR-30/

I used to use the older synths. I've fooled with the GR-9, and I used to own a GR-1 and GR-30 (I think those are the right model numbers, it's been awhile- maybe it was Gr-900 and 300? Anyhow the 30 (300?) was my fave because of it's flexibility).

I can't figure out how to assign patches to individual strings on the 20. Do you know of a way to do that? I know it CAN be done, because my gutar got stuck in a mode where it would only play a certain patches below the 12th fret, and above, it played a different patch, but I don't know how it got that way, and it was troublesome when it was unintentional, and it kept sending extraneous PC messages to the sequencer. I finally had to reset the factory defaults, and it works fine, but I don't know how to toggle that mode, and there's nothing in the manual about it.

I did find a .zip file on that site for something called fretted drummer. I have yet to open it and check it out but it appears to be some kind of generic MIDI template for generating drums via guitar controller. I've messed around with MIDI input but have not yet used it for a song or to sequence any drum parts (I use drum loops mostly). There is another user called gnie who uses the guitar as a controller. There are probably others out there who I have just not run across yet.

I step record with the guitar, otherwise you get a lot of excess data coming in, mostly notes you didn't play, but sometimes those you DID play don't sound. So you just use ACID loops and groove clips and stuff?

I'll also recommend Soundclick. It's a way to at least get your feet wet and it's free. You can always move to another service if need be. And as has been stated, many folks post covers. There is actually a section in Soundclick for that. Basically you upload your file to Soundclick and you just paste the link into your message and/or signature.

I am a guitar player but I try to play bass some too. I have a keyboard but no training and rarely use it. Drum loops are cool but of course nothing replaces a real drummer, which I am not.

Anyway, good luck and enjoy the forum. I'd also like to hear how your GR-20 experiences have gone and also am looking for tips. Recently I switched from using Elixir coated strings back to my old D'Addario standbys on my Godin to see if that would help tracking. It seemed to help a little but mainly I've found that a lot of tuning and also calibrating the settings is the best bet to success against misfire notes. Don't ya love it when that one open string sounds right in the middle of a great take? Aaaargh!

Exactly!!! I *hate* that!!!

OK, if you guys promise not to listen to the older stuff, I'm uploading Mother to my Soundclick board today (MP3 format, converted with Cakewalk Pyro- Cakewalk should pay me for all this free advertising, dontcha think :-)?), I'll post the link tomorrow.

Courtney

Oh, does anyone here have the VG-99 yet? I'm thinkin' of getting it, it's supposed to do it ALL- synth, MIDI recording, VG Cosm guitar modeling, the works... right now I use a Digitech GNX 3000 for my guitar processor, I almost bought the Line 6 floor pod, can't remember the model number, but the BIG one, the one that was nearly 400 bucks... I like it, it sounds nice, and it doesn't have a lot of squeal when you crank up the fuzz. It's got the best noise gate on it I think I have ever heard in a digital multieffects unit- as opposed to a "real" noisegate, y'know, a standalone floor pedal- to date. But I'm also going to get that VG-99, use it here at home, and take the digitech to small gigs (if I ever have any- I haven't played live since last year sometime.

I'd LOVE to start a band, but finding reliable musicians, as you guys know, is a NIGHTmare. Anyone here live in the Nashville/Murfressboro area?
GG

ORIGINAL: Gamergirl

ORIGINAL: marcos69

ORIGINAL: Gamergirl

...I wonder, is anyone else here a guitar player...

I've played some guitar.

Kick-ass! Nice pic!!

How do you input Midi data? Do you use Cakewalk for your drum/bass tracks? Do you use groove clips, or templates, or do you, like me, input the beat with a mouse, and copy and paste the pattern, and put your rolls and transitions in by hand?
GG

I don't do anything midi. All my drums are Smartloops basic loop clips that I then re-arrange and add fills.

OK. What is this? Where the hell is the song to listen to? You put the name of a song in the title and there is no song?

ORIGINAL: CreatingNoise

Courtney,
Godin LGX-SA is a Roland synth ready guitar. The piezo (acoustic sounding) pickup also takes care of the signal to the synth. Basically just like your setup but the pickup and controls are already built into the design.

I know that the GR-20 has some patches that have different sounds on different strings. I know with the AXON midi converter you can split the fretboard in a few ways which would allow the assignment of different patches. I've never seen anything about doing that with the GR-20. It might be possible to do such a patch assignment within Sonar although I've not tried that. Yeah, they've had quite a few models of synths and I know very little about them.

I really need to start working with the step sequencing cause like you say, it can be cleaned up. Kenny (the guy mentioned earlier in this thread) gave me some advice I never thought of. He says to slow the tempo down to step sequence to make harder passages easier. Thought that was a nifty thing. So did you sequence your drums using your guitar? I'd like to hear more about that.

Naw, it's a long story. This particular piece, Mother, I actually did a long time ago by mouse-plugging the beat into the Piano Roll view when Cakewalk was just a sequencer, and wav/Midi mixing was still a pipe dream (94, I think)... I had a Roland Rap-10 (a 16-bit card), which was the only piece of hardware capable of mixing waves and midi at the time, but the waves kept getting out of sequence with the MIDI, I guess b/c I had a really slow computer with a slow harddrive at the time (I think ASIO was a pipe dream, too, then).

Bottom line is, I don't do drums with the guitar, it's too unreliable; however, some patches work well, (such as bass) and record accurately enough, so I did the bassline that way, as well as most of the synth solos on my original recordings- check out "Light Years". Nowadays, there are all these templates and I can usually find one that fits my needs- also, my pedal (DT GNX 3000) has a variety of drum patterns you can download via usb Midi to your sequence.

I use Acid drum loops. Everything else is me which usually means guitar, bass and guitar controllled synths.

I've found that sometimes, the only way to get what you want is to open up piano roll view and plug in the beat by hand. The pattern brush is a nice tool, but it's a new thing, and I'm having a time figuruing out how to make it do what I want.

Don't worry about your earlier work. We all post our work and everybody is respectful. There are many levels of musicians here and we are all just trying to improve our recording and instrument skills and have some fun. Come on, post that Mother song, we all are curious now!

Nice to have another fellow Tull fan around (or at least I assume that from the quote).

It's the singing that's not so great! I'm actually a fair musician. But thanks to the V-vocal, hopefully that will change soon. Is that cheating? I don't care!!! I tried to post the song yesterday, and the upload got all frakked up...

But you can listen to my older stuff.
Check out that Roland user link I put in my first post. They are discussing the VG-99 there now. I seem to have heard that it isn't out yet (maybe in September). I watched the NAMM show video for it and it is pretty darn cool. I just use a Digitech RP80. I looked at the GNX units but really didn't want to spend that money until I knew I would fully use on of those.

I'll try to upload Mother again later today. My computer has a dual-boot, one for music, one for gaming (they don't call me gamergirl for nothing- I'm both a video and tabletop gamer), so uploading and working on my music are mutually exclusive, and I have some work to do today- Saturday's my hobby day.

Post some of your stuff. Many people here collaborate online and there are some really neat things that have come from those collaborations. Join in the fun. So far I've been involved in 3 collabs and it has been a really neat experience. Folks here are friendly and patient. I lucky enough recently to have a drummer add tracks to one of my existing songs. It was really cool and for someone who is extremely busy this is as close as I get to a band experience.

Awesome. I'd love to collaborate.

Oh, and yeah, I am a Tull fan... a pretty serious fan, as if you are familiar with Tull much at all you will recognize that the quote comes from neither "Locomotive Breath" nor "Aqualung", which is all most folks know. It's actually from "hunting girl" (songs from the wood), my second-to-favorite Tull album... my first is of course "Heavy Horses".

OK, here's the link.

The 'mother' upload was unsuccessful, I will try again later.

"Ouroboros" was just like an afterthought, so don't be too hard on me with that one, it's a really simple song.

The Minstrel turned out pretty good musically, but the singing (my cousin, me backing) stinks. I'll try to do better, now that I have the V-Vocal.

I'll try to upload "mother" again later this afternoon.

I also have a cover of "All along the Watchtower" and Neil Young's "Cortez the Killer" that turned out OK.


Enjoy.

GG

ORIGINAL: zeypxun

OK. What is this? Where the hell is the song to listen to? You put the name of a song in the title and there is no song?

Damn, son, be patient, the upload failed. I'll try again later this afternoon, but I have a really slow connexion cuz I live out in da country... I don't have permission to upload to this forum, so check out my Soundclick page, below.
GG

Well, still waiting for that 'Mother' link, but in the meantime I had a listen to Ourobouros - nice riffs, good guitar tone on that. Recording was kind of distorted though, especially the hi-hats. I understand it's an older piece, so I'm sure you know that.

ORIGINAL: Gamergirl

ORIGINAL: zeypxun

OK. What is this? Where the hell is the song to listen to? You put the name of a song in the title and there is no song?

Damn, son, be patient, the upload failed. I'll try again later this afternoon, but I have a really slow connexion cuz I live out in da country... I don't have permission to upload to this forum, so check out my Soundclick page, below.
GG

Hi there Gamergirl ,
I just saw your thread,
I hadnt realised a few friends here had mention me as a posible person to contact as far as midi guitar goes......
I use one all the time ....
if you want to hear some give a listen
here
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/pagemusic.cfm?bandID=427899
not much here that sounds like Floyd ....
I hope you solve you what ever it is that is causing all the delays in putting up your tunes
the songs section here is probaly the best on the net ...and the folks here are the best
you will ever find anywhere imo

Kenny