Roll Your Own Software Guitar Effects

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Indispensible Online Music Tools, About 7 of Them

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Great Articles on Home Recording

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Microsoft Songsmith Commercial Wreaks Havoc on Psyche

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New Frontiers in Pitch Correction

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Fun Music Flash Visualisation

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The Best Tab Site Ever

Most online tab sucks. That is not to say that they are incorrect or incomplete (though this is a common crime of online tab) but that often they are an unreadable mash of ASCII that is from a system produced when monitors could only display 16 colours. Just look at the example below. As far as notation goes, it’s very bare bones, and requires great work picking through it to get it sounding right. Blame the lack of rhythm information, blame it on the lack of spacing, but ASCII tab is all too often a big mess.

e|----------------------------------------------|
B|----------------------1-------0--------1---4--|
G|----2----------3b----2---2-------1----2-------|
D|--3---------2-------2--------1-----3----------|
A|--3-------1--1-------------2------------------|
E|----------------------------------------------|

When I came across Songsterr it was like the heavens opened up. Finally a place with full featured tab, the way it was meant to be written. Take a look at this screenshot. It’s beautiful!

Click to see full size

It has note lengths below the bars, full fledged bend and vibrato notation, and the real kicker: IT WILL PLAY THE MUSIC FOR YOU! That’s right, the fancy play button isn’t just for show. You can play, pause, skip around the tab till your heart is bursting with glee. A marker will run along the notation so you know where you are.  Just when you thought it couldn’t get better the songs let you choose which part you want to look at the tab for.

Click to see full size

There are of course two levels of features, the ones that are free and the ones that you pay for. On the list of paid services are: Playing at half speed, Fullscreen mode, Printing,  Part volume control, and Part soloing. The ‘plus’ account is $9.90 per month. I don’t have that much of a need for tab, but if I were in a working cover band I’m sure I’d get my monies worth. If your tired of sloughing through the tons of crappy tab on the internet check into Songsterr, you won’t regret it.

 

Learn Your Intervals

Musicians should be able to identify intervals. It goes a long way in improving your composing and improvising skills. If you find your skills in this area are rusty, or even completely lacking, there is something you can do. Go over to Michael Ossman’s Big Ears to sharpen your skills. For a more in-depth coverage of intervals, go to the Musical Intervals Tutor. Take some time every day to work on this and you’ll be hearing music in new way.

 

Practice to Some Real Beats

I found a cool little online drum machine called Monkey Machine. It’s nice to use for when you’re practicing and want a timekeeper that is a little more expresive than a metronome. Be sure to check out WeBirth by the same author. It is an online TB-303 bass synthesizer and TR-909 drum synthesizer. Very cool.

 

Improve Your Music Through Restraint

Some time ago I went plugin happy. Actually it was more plugin mad. I trolled through sites like VST Planet and Audio Mastermind searching for the elusive plugin that would make my recordings sparkle. Just the faint promise of breathing life into the guitars, or polishing the vocals was enough to sell me. Soon my plugin folder was awash with oddly named effects that rarely did anything discernible. Most I never use, but I was comforted by the thought that I could if I wanted to.

The tyranny of choice. That’s what it comes down to. I played around in a local music shop with a Line6 Pod and was struck by the number of combinations available. With 32 amps and 60+ effects that is over 1920 distinct combinations. It would take quite a while to plough through them all. Pretty soon you’re not playing, but rather playing around, trying to settle on the right sound.

If I had to offer advice to those who are looking to jump into the effect market to tweak their music it would be this: Think of how you want to sound first, then limit your choices to put you in that direction. Good recording and good production may dupe people briefly into liking what is otherwise flat material. One can spend great amounts of time getting the right sound to liven up that which is flawed by bad playing, recording, composition, expression, or whatever. The audience is infinitely more forgiving of sonically imperfect experiences than we are apt to believe, provided the performer can entertain that is.

So forget the giant multi-effect boxes with their plethora of distraction. Instead polish what you have. Learn to compose a song that will stand on its own, without the aid of high production value. Learn how to perform in a way that is expressive without the use of an expression pedal. You will waste less time flipping through presets and twisting knobs, focusing so intently on the quality of your sound, and will spend more time focusing on the quality of your music.

 

Ancient Computer Tunes

BBC has a writeup on the oldest known music produced by a computer. My how far we’ve come.

During the session, the temperamental machine managed to work its way through Baa Baa Black Sheep, God Save the King and part of In the Mood.

Following one aborted attempt, a laughing presenter says: “The machine’s obviously not in the mood.”

Read more …

 

Music’s DNA?

Interesting software has emerged to help visualise music as you play. It’s a novel sort of notation system though not the first to incorporate colour. There have also been other attempts to visualise music. I’d like to see what becomes of this.

“It’s essentially a visual translation of the language of music,” said Lemons, 34, who founded the company in 2006.

The hope is that the software will launch a new way of teaching and learning music. Instead of playing notes from sheet music, students could learn — or even compose music — by visualizing the notes on Musical DNA’s colorful grid.

Read more …

 

Punk Rock Robots Pogo to the Music

BBC reports on robots that have learned to appreciate punk music. I like this story because it combines two of my favorite subjects. As far as building robots that evaluate music goes it’s an interesting reversal on the usual endeavor to have machines perform or write music. In the sci-fi vision of the future could there be a robot audience to a robot band? I can only see this as furthering the ability of computers to generate songs. If they have an ability to judge the musicality of a piece then by using genetic programming algorithms or even using a Monte Carlo approach there ceases to be a need for human interference guiding the process.

The robots can decide whether a song is punk or not within 30 seconds.

“It depends on the form at the beginning of the song. It flicks between thinking a song is punk and not punk at the start and then becomes convinced,” said Mr Jones Morris.

Professor McOwan added: “If you look at the audio cortex in the brain and the cochlea in the ear you find that’s exactly how the human system does it.

The robot reacts to the level of “punk” in the song.

The more punk it believes the song is, the more it pogos in a “happy and frenzied way”, said Professor McOwan.

Read more ….

 

Give Me a Beat

I’ve tried all sorts of metronome software. Frankly, much of it is dreck, expensive dreck. I hate it when someone wants to charge as much for a metronome program as an actual metronome would be. Let’s be honest, having to have boot up my computer just to get a rhythmic click-click is a pain. If you’re charging $30 for that little bit of weekend coding you threw up on the web, then I’d rather get myself a small electronic box that fits in the palm of my hand and probably even has a tuner; much better value and convenience.

I was about to give up on the thought of a software metronome altogether when I got weird. Not only is it free, but it is much more usable and flexible that any other program I tried. With the ability to use nearly fifty sounds it’s like having a mini drumkit. I just pick out some of the many samples and go to town. If I’m just doing finger exercises then I use it straight up. But the real beauty of this is its ability to do arbitrary time signatures, a feature you don’t really find elsewhere. If you want to get the hang of playing in 5/4 then do yourself a favour and download this.

http://www.pinkandaint.com/weirdmet.shtml