As a matter of fact, at the moment, I am setting up a system to send out to a cousin who is a single mum who wants to learn and practice music with her lil son. They need something to start with. A cheap used laptop with the free version of FL Studio to set up beats with some training on Facebook Messenger. A used Z623 from my collection, a new Akai MPL Mini Play, a kid size bass, a mic, a travellers guitar and an AliExpress mixer with Bluetooth and USB recording. Simple online training on hooking it up together and capable tools for good start
Yes! Recording is straightforward if you already know how play. That's the problem here as I see it. Playing skill comes first. Recording isn't for other people to hear until you are good enough at playing. Most of the effort at first has to be in learning how to play.
Learning how to play takes practice. Sometimes people don't feel like practicing. It helps if the practice gear is easy to use and sounds good. Take it your bedroom and practice with headphones, whatever. Record with your phone or your laptop. You don't have to make noise that bothers other people in the house. But you have to practice precise repetitive motions a lot. And a lot of different repetitive motions, too. All in time.
Heck, yesterday I was playing the stainless steel kitchen sink basin, the toaster, the electric can opener, and the faucet knob (to get a DJ scratching sound with the faucet). It all came out as a groove and the people present laughed and had fun. But it wouldn't have been nearly as fun if it didn't groove.
Learning how to play takes practice. Sometimes people don't feel like practicing. It helps if the practice gear is easy to use and sounds good. Take it your bedroom and practice with headphones, whatever. Record with your phone or your laptop. You don't have to make noise that bothers other people in the house. But you have to practice precise repetitive motions a lot. And a lot of different repetitive motions, too. All in time.
Heck, yesterday I was playing the stainless steel kitchen sink basin, the toaster, the electric can opener, and the faucet knob (to get a DJ scratching sound with the faucet). It all came out as a groove and the people present laughed and had fun. But it wouldn't have been nearly as fun if it didn't groove.
Last edited:
Also, one of things I point out to people about some of their favorite albums is that all the songs on album sound alike in some way. But the songs all sound different in some way too, otherwise people probably wouldn't enjoy listening to the whole album. So the question I ask people is what do they think makes one song sound different from another yet still fit in with the album? Is it key, tempo, lyrics, and are those things by themselves enough to sound different enough to keep you listening. IME, the answer is that best albums that people like most have a little bit different groove for each song, a different lilt, if you will. Not very many people seem to notice that even though IMHO its essential.
IOW, it something consumers of music may tend to be not that aware of, but makers of music need to learn to be very aware of it.
IOW, it something consumers of music may tend to be not that aware of, but makers of music need to learn to be very aware of it.
My point is that a capable system makes learning a pleasure and effective. I tried something different with kids, I had them follow the onscreen sequencer as a visual and audible metronome. The ease with which they fit into the riddim is remarkable and these were kids that were struggling with timing and pace, practising alone at home and in school class with "practice amps"
A higher resolution delivery makes the work happening easier to follow for all and one. The sound can be more cohesive and the result more pleasant in the living room. It doesn't have to be a huge system and with the OP already having a very good mixer and pedals, a 2.1 type higher fidelity system makes for smarter learning than low resolution practice amps and one box bargain PA bins
Imagine two family members jamming and some sitting and listening and waiting for a turn or something. His Zedfx, flamma and a real 2.1 system would allow things like channel panning and such and be capable of a rich and complex sound stage with very little further investment
This is why I advise contrary to general consensus. Learn on a good but small console fed system and as you discover the playing styles and sounds, aim high for premium instruments and amps rather than budget
The console based system is flexible and allows powerful computer and visual integration when compared to practice amps
A higher resolution delivery makes the work happening easier to follow for all and one. The sound can be more cohesive and the result more pleasant in the living room. It doesn't have to be a huge system and with the OP already having a very good mixer and pedals, a 2.1 type higher fidelity system makes for smarter learning than low resolution practice amps and one box bargain PA bins
Imagine two family members jamming and some sitting and listening and waiting for a turn or something. His Zedfx, flamma and a real 2.1 system would allow things like channel panning and such and be capable of a rich and complex sound stage with very little further investment
This is why I advise contrary to general consensus. Learn on a good but small console fed system and as you discover the playing styles and sounds, aim high for premium instruments and amps rather than budget
The console based system is flexible and allows powerful computer and visual integration when compared to practice amps
@Crocobars recording needs are covered with his laptop and his mixer that has build in 4 in 4 out soundcard. Recording is not the topic of this thread.
The possibility of playing or practicing guitar and bass together and seperately in their familyroom is the topic.
-One box to avoid clutter not take up much space is preferred. (Mandatory?)
How is the best way to learn guitar is also not the topic of the thread I think. -But an interesting theme for a new thread I think. I would like to know.
Cheers
The possibility of playing or practicing guitar and bass together and seperately in their familyroom is the topic.
-One box to avoid clutter not take up much space is preferred. (Mandatory?)
How is the best way to learn guitar is also not the topic of the thread I think. -But an interesting theme for a new thread I think. I would like to know.
Cheers
How does people feel about this? 50 Dollars. Is it a bass combo that has been gutted for its amp part? The amp part of @Crocobar 's Frontman could be put in the vacant space and drive the speaker to loud. Guitar in high impedance instrument input and bass board into aux input. Then cabinet simulation should be turned of on the Flamma. To me it should sound great for both Guitar and Bass:
https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/1755887921544172/
https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/1755887921544172/
Last edited:
And what about this:
Put cool cloth on front of the mesh doesnt exist anymore. Or put cool/pretty cloth on the mesh.
Its a 15 inch organ tipe driver so should be perfect for both guitar and bass.
Tweeter is blown but should be bypassed anyhow. JBL horn can stay or be salvaged for a future super quality outdoor speaker.
Seal cabinet after maybe dampening with asphalt or something.
Should sound just as a good sealed guitar/bass amp.
Both suggestions are local pickup so delivery charge wont eat into the deal.
Cheers!
Put cool cloth on front of the mesh doesnt exist anymore. Or put cool/pretty cloth on the mesh.
Its a 15 inch organ tipe driver so should be perfect for both guitar and bass.
Tweeter is blown but should be bypassed anyhow. JBL horn can stay or be salvaged for a future super quality outdoor speaker.
Seal cabinet after maybe dampening with asphalt or something.
Should sound just as a good sealed guitar/bass amp.
Both suggestions are local pickup so delivery charge wont eat into the deal.
Cheers!
Not arguing with this, Mark! But... perhaps I am at least part-way there? It's been over a year since I picked up the guitar, and I practice every day: sometimes just a few minutes when I am disorganized but usually half an hour or more. I fully appreciate your playing in-time advice, and I practice either with a metronome or with the simple drum machine in our electric piano. Until recently, I was doing Justin Guitar online lessons too, went through Beginner grades 1 and 2, stopped in the middle of grade 3: decided to spend a bit more time on playing the songs but might go back to it afeer a while.
And this is not the first time ever I picked up a guitar, just the latest conistent attempt. I played simple chord-based acoustic songs in college. The new technique for me is picking: I always played with fingers before.
I also went through an 8-year formal music course as a kid, when I was 7-15. I played cello, a little piano (everybody had to play a little piano regardless of the "main" instrument), the course also included weekly lessons on music history, and solfège twice a week to learn some music theory, aural exercises, and rhythm. I was a C student in this course since my heart was not in it but I picked up some stuff over years.
So, perhaps I should not pose as a complete beginner. I am not a proficient player by any standard, very amateurish but I have some foundation I think.
Last edited:
Hi Crocobar,
I was thinking more about your daughter learning to play bass. Are you proficient enough to be a good teacher? There are various ways to use the fingers and or thumb, to use a pick, etc. Are you flat picking, sweep picking, playing pick slides, artificial (pinch) harmonics, palm mutes, making a note or notes both start and stop on time, etc.? Point is all these things take time to develop, but they don't have to be learned completely sequentially. At some point its just necessary to start working on them because you need to find a playing technique that works for you and allows versatility of expression. IOW, you need to make sure you are not developing bad habits that limit what you can play.
I was thinking more about your daughter learning to play bass. Are you proficient enough to be a good teacher? There are various ways to use the fingers and or thumb, to use a pick, etc. Are you flat picking, sweep picking, playing pick slides, artificial (pinch) harmonics, palm mutes, making a note or notes both start and stop on time, etc.? Point is all these things take time to develop, but they don't have to be learned completely sequentially. At some point its just necessary to start working on them because you need to find a playing technique that works for you and allows versatility of expression. IOW, you need to make sure you are not developing bad habits that limit what you can play.
Last edited:
Oh, I am not trying to be her teacher! She is playing piano for years, taking lessons at a local music school, at a level that gets her new teachers assuming she is going professional until she says she does it for fun. She decided on a bass after trying acoustic guitar (she flat out does not want to play electric guitar), so we got her lessons in the same school on a bass, and after a few months she got pretty good: good enough to play pretty much any bass line from her favorite bands like Arctic Monkeys, Smiths, Måneskin, Lovejoy, probably others that I don't remember. Her teacher got her playing some Zeppelin lines too. Only on a few songs I can keep up with her, playing rhythm guitar, most others are a bit too much for me yet.
She prefers practicing/playing alongside the original recording but sometimes plays by herself. Occasionally I stumble along with the guitar.
Okay, that's great. Probably good for both of you to start playing along with some jazz (try the bass lines in some Herbie Hancock tunes), some funk, some Latin, Reggae, etc. Its can be very good practice to play with different types of 'feel.' Maybe like this:
Also, curious about why your daughter doesn't like electric guitar? It can be very expressive, bending strings, and such.
Also, curious about why your daughter doesn't like electric guitar? It can be very expressive, bending strings, and such.
Last edited:
Maybe time to start building your book. A sheet that sketches out the chords and lyrics for each song. Mine's coming up to around 70+ songs - not that I can play them all - yet - but it's a life-work in progress. They're the ones with some hope and probability of mastering. Its amazing how challenging it is to grasp what the original artist was doing. I like 60's stuff. YT has been my friend in that regard; download the video, rip out the audio with VLC, change its key, change its tempo using Audmonkey - now I have something I have a hope to sing, chords I can actually play. I'm working on "Beyond the Sea" - my God those "every chord I know" chord changes are so fast, so I slowed the tempo without changing pitch by 10%. Now I at least have some hope of chasing what they're doing. Those tools are free...
I also committed to attend a weekly open mic. I've fallen right on my face on stage multiple times. Dead stop on the lyric "Before I laugh and act like a fool" because my hand failed to chase Bm A D Bm A E Bm A like a crazy Pete Townsend. Bm being my personal hardest chord. Teaches you to know when a song isnt ready for a performance attempt. Also to not beat the tar out of yourself "getting ready", so by the time you play, your hand is so fatigued it just doesnt grip anymore. Zero opportunity to warm up - cant do that while others are performing - barely have time to check your tuning. It's all older folks like myself, trying to cover Neil Young, JJ Cale and a lot of stuff I dont even recognize. Very forgiving environment; I'm lucky to have the opportunity. One would think something similar would be available in the Portland area.
Grab your book, your daughter, your instruments - go sign up - and pull off 3 songs in front of other people. Exhilarating - when it works. Memorizing the songs - playing without the cheat sheet - is a whole 'nother step for me; not even in the arena with that one yet.
I also committed to attend a weekly open mic. I've fallen right on my face on stage multiple times. Dead stop on the lyric "Before I laugh and act like a fool" because my hand failed to chase Bm A D Bm A E Bm A like a crazy Pete Townsend. Bm being my personal hardest chord. Teaches you to know when a song isnt ready for a performance attempt. Also to not beat the tar out of yourself "getting ready", so by the time you play, your hand is so fatigued it just doesnt grip anymore. Zero opportunity to warm up - cant do that while others are performing - barely have time to check your tuning. It's all older folks like myself, trying to cover Neil Young, JJ Cale and a lot of stuff I dont even recognize. Very forgiving environment; I'm lucky to have the opportunity. One would think something similar would be available in the Portland area.
Grab your book, your daughter, your instruments - go sign up - and pull off 3 songs in front of other people. Exhilarating - when it works. Memorizing the songs - playing without the cheat sheet - is a whole 'nother step for me; not even in the arena with that one yet.
I am kinda doing it. It is more of a binder with patterns, combined with some perpetually open Chrome tabs, and I kinda like the idea to try to rely on memory as much as possible but I am with you. For me, the harder parts are not so much the chords or lyrics but the exact patterns: what gets repeated how many times and such.
I am looking into this. I'd rather not drive all the way to Portland but there might be something in Vancouver (the proper Vancouver in Washington, not the nouveau monstrosity in Canada
).
Randy, even though I am open to pretty much anything, I dislike a fancy or custom-made option for the amp/speaker for the same reason I dislike using the instrument amp: in addition to the ergonomics issues, which I mentioned (and @Guerilla picked up on spot-on), I would very much prefer a compact "modern" way to create my basic tone. I do not want a traditional amp and a cabinet to be a part of my instrument.
I want as much of the guitar-to-ear pipeline to be generic and drop-in replaceable, especially the PA system/cabinet. I believe folks who say that getting the dedicated instrument amp will likely get the best tone in the most straightforward way but then I am stuck with this amp combo if I want my tone, and I don't want that. Flamma is of course kinda the same thing but at least it is a tiny and standard box, and it does not need to be mic'ed. I haven't explored the plugins yet but I assume that plugins are even more like that, I can probably carry it on a flash card and use on any compatible system.
If this is viable, all I need from the PA Speaker is to be transparent and handle the necessary load. And be as replaceable and uninteresting as possible.
Its that frequency response is not all that an instrument amplifier and speaker do to shape the sound. For decades the same company that makes Autotune has made mic modelers. Speaker modelers are basically the same thing. A frequency response that is applied through convolution. However, cone breakup, and complex dynamic amplifier non-linearities can be very difficult to model well. An early way people used for some more advanced modeling is described in the attached.
Still sounds phony. But at least its better than just FR modeling.
EDIT: Anyway, I understand the appeal of digital emulation. I spent my own good money on an number of digital processors and plugins some years ago. The best general plugins, or some of the best, may still made by Universal Audio. Those run on dedicated DSP processors. Also, the Crane Song HEDD 192 cost me thousands and included some hardware DSP. In the end I only used it for for the ADC, as the DSP didn't sound that great. Also had the Line 6 POD, which was disappointing too.
So, I guess I can say I wanted back then is about what you say you want today. I spent my money in the belief that modeling would be good enough. Of course the marketing claims turned out to be something of a lie.
That's why I suggest to go to a music store and try before you buy. Make sure that what you say you want is truly what you will get, given the reality of what practical DSP can do .
EDIT 2: So you can try some free plugins to do what you want:
https://bedroomproducersblog.com/20...best-free-guitar-amp-simulator-vstau-plugins/
https://thehomerecordings.com/free-bass-amp-vst/
https://blog.landr.com/best-free-vst-plugins/
https://bedroomproducersblog.com/free-vst-plugins/
Compare the sound to your Fender practice amp. Can you get a good clean sound? Good light distortion? Good heavy distortion? Good Jazz sound?
If you are happy with that stuff, then great. I won't bother you any more.
Still sounds phony. But at least its better than just FR modeling.
EDIT: Anyway, I understand the appeal of digital emulation. I spent my own good money on an number of digital processors and plugins some years ago. The best general plugins, or some of the best, may still made by Universal Audio. Those run on dedicated DSP processors. Also, the Crane Song HEDD 192 cost me thousands and included some hardware DSP. In the end I only used it for for the ADC, as the DSP didn't sound that great. Also had the Line 6 POD, which was disappointing too.
So, I guess I can say I wanted back then is about what you say you want today. I spent my money in the belief that modeling would be good enough. Of course the marketing claims turned out to be something of a lie.
That's why I suggest to go to a music store and try before you buy. Make sure that what you say you want is truly what you will get, given the reality of what practical DSP can do .
EDIT 2: So you can try some free plugins to do what you want:
https://bedroomproducersblog.com/20...best-free-guitar-amp-simulator-vstau-plugins/
https://thehomerecordings.com/free-bass-amp-vst/
https://blog.landr.com/best-free-vst-plugins/
https://bedroomproducersblog.com/free-vst-plugins/
Compare the sound to your Fender practice amp. Can you get a good clean sound? Good light distortion? Good heavy distortion? Good Jazz sound?
If you are happy with that stuff, then great. I won't bother you any more.
Last edited:
Mark, please keep "bothering" me - I learn a lot, and even where I don't, I enjoy the conversation!
Besides, my current choices are not forever. A year ago I wanted something different. I am sure it'll change. I suspect that a half-decent DSP modeling will caryy me for years - I am no Gilmour or Knopfler (yet).
P.S. I seem to remember an interview, where Gilmour said that Knopfler once asked him to use his rig when his own was broken or late or something. He said he did not do anything: just plugged in, and sounded like Knopfler.
Yeah. That can certainly happen. A lot of the sound is in the fingers, as they say. I find it to be true for my own playing as well. There are so many ways to manipulate the strings into giving different sounds, and there are also idiomatic ways of playing a bit out of time. Guitarists like Stevie Ray Vaughn and or Eric Clapton sound the way they do in large part because of the unique way they play out of time. However only one member of a band can do that at any given moment. It means the rest of the band has to play tightly together in time and ignore (not be distracted by) the soloist timing so as to provide a groove for the soloist to contrast against.
I thought there used to be a big act that had their own PA which took many trucks to carry from city to city. At some point they gave that up and just contracted sound reinforcement from local providers in the cities they gave concerts in.
If a vendor in a particular city didnt do a good job, maybe there's 3-5 more there who'd love that contract. Unsure how something like that is even specified; is it kW per system? That measure simply scales out to # of speakers hanging from the scaffolding and amps driving them? Not how does it sound? Just transparent, provides the power, if you cant I'll find someone who can; nothing interesting beyond filling that spot for that show.
The open mic has two, I assume 12" EV PA speakers. Apparently, they do an adequate job of turning the board audio output signals into sound. Cant imagine what else you could ask for, in that small room.
Family music + DIY'ing....... thoroughly likeable aspirations.... all the time in the world to help sort out
Already decided on a route, pooling consensus by holding back pertinent information thus learning by creating contention.... not very cool
See, the thing is, most of us DIY'ers look to "spot on" solutions and are here in an attempt to move up from generic and mass-produced. Engaging the mental reverse gears to contemplate your already made decision is difficult due to the bewilderment factor
Maybe layoff on selective responding a bit, and start with some proper answers to questions that are being raised. How about this for starters
What is it about the eBand JS-10, that doesn't meet your statement of requirements?