Welcome...

Hello and welcome to the best social group on MF for people who make music, in whatever form.

Be it as a musician, a performer, a producer or any other aspect of creating music.

A friendly place to chat about music while sipping your favourite brew.

Pull up a chair and count us in..

Ah one, two, three four.....

This has got the most likes on my YouTube, I’m self taught and I struggle playing in front of people or with people, nerves just get the better of me

Jupiter on alto

This is a common issue, we all had a starting point that scared the hell out of us.

Kate Bush couldn't perform live for years because of it.

Try getting together with friends for a jam/rehearsal. Choose just one or two songs that you know well and a are comfortable with and tell the others "If I get lost, I'll eventually find a time where I can come back in.."

The others will keep playing until you do...!

I didn't know there were private social groups on here so thanks for the invite. I generally have email notifications turned off on all forums and just visit them when I feel like it but I presume posts on here don't appear on the active general new posts page?

As per the Spotify thread, I do a lot of recording. Mainly covers but about 40+ original songs up on youtube. I'll have a go at anything for a laugh. Always up for a bit of a colab as well if anyone is interested. It will be interesting to see this group develop. It seems like there are a fair few Musos on here. Has anyone invited Mike (Makems)? I think he is still around. He and I did a gig at a Music meet about ten years ago. Talented bloke.

Hi Barry and thanks for joining in the fun...

I really don't know the answer to your question, I'm new to this as well...!

I'll find out all these things as we go along...

Hey everyone, I'm here, the one who asked about Spotify and caused all us closet musos to come out and play! Thanks to The Saints for setting up this group

Looks like notifications appear in the little bell top right but if someone one starts a new thread I guess you will have to visit here to see it.

So what does everyone play or use for creating music? I guess I'm a guitarist first and I bumble my way through keyboards, bass, drums and vocals. As I only record and never play live I kind of had to really. Drums are always the biggest challenge though. I use pro tools first DAW software for recording and it comes with a pretty good virtual instruments package called Xpand!I so I can pretty much create any instrument through my M Audio keyboard from Trumpets to strings and drums and drum loops. Often I just cobble together drum tracks from the internet or if Im doing covers you can sometimes get the isolated drum tracks off the internet. Doing manual drums on a keyboard though is "Challenging".

The synth / keyboard was a game changer for me a few years ago. Before that, all my tracks were drums, bass and guitar and very loud.

I had singing lessons when I was younger but never really did anything with it, other than belt my lungs out at home! I had played a little piano, guitar and the obligatory recorder (which I was quite good at!). I also did ballet, tap and ballroom dancing (which got me paying good attention to the beat and timing).

I've always loved music since I was a child and have a wide range of tastes, from Classical (which my Dad brough me up on) to Rave and anything inbetween. The only stuff I don't like is that shouty, sweary stuff that's REALLY loud. I really can't call that 'music'.

I've always had a good ear for music.

Currently, I'm writing my own songs and using AISongGenerator to put them to music. After that, I sometimes tweak the result with Virtual DJ. I'm not able to do much more than tweaking at the moment, as I'm quite the amateur with it. I need to do far more tutorials but it's fairly easy to get to grips with.

AISongGenerator also does music videos which, to be fair, are fairly basic but fun. However, there's plenty of option within AISG to manipulate the images, timings and intros so, with a bit of time, you could make them far better.

I've also been using Fotor to create videos from images, which I hope to use for my music videos in the future. Plenty of time-wasting fun to be had with that !!

I also have an extensive collection of vinyl (7", 12" and albums), mostly 70s and 80s but also have some original Elvis, Everly Brothers, etc.

Anyway, that's me xx

I keep searching AI options for creating drum tracks but so far nothing I have found comes close to what I want. The tools I have via pro tools first do allow you to create very realistic loops but they are no substitute for a real drummer. They sound as good but they just aren't if you know what I mean. Fills, solos, bridges and choruses are quite hard to get right.

This was my best effort at manual drums via the keyboard and its also one of my favourite tracks. I just used a loop for the slow verses but the aggressive and raging choruses I played manually on the keys. Took ages and its just a complete mash up but it kind of works. I'm afraid its a bit shouty, pitchy and loud but I love this song.

I honestly can't remember when I wrote it only that I was in a dark place when I did. Its full of rage but starts off very mellow and ends on an even more mellow tone. Quite a long one. I do go on a bit sometimes

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barryd said:

I keep searching AI options for creating drum tracks but so far nothing I have found comes close to what I want. The tools I have via pro tools first do allow you to create very realistic loops but they are no substitute for a real drummer. They sound as good but they just aren't if you know what I mean. Fills, solos, bridges and choruses are quite hard to get right.

This was my best effort at manual drums via the keyboard and its also one of my favourite tracks. I just used a loop for the slow verses but the aggressive and raging choruses I played manually on the keys. Took ages and its just a complete mash up but it kind of works. I'm afraid its a bit shouty, pitchy and loud but I love this song.

I honestly can't remember when I wrote it only that I was in a dark place when I did. Its full of rage but starts off very mellow and ends on an even more mellow tone. Quite a long one. I do go on a bit sometimes

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Click to expand...

That's really good! It's not really my kind of music but I can totally appreciate the lyrics and emotion. You should think about publishing it

Beat Buddy from Singular Sounds is the best Drum Pedal I have ever heard, puts the
Boss RC-10R to shame and has amazing back up from Singular Sound, Beat Buddy Manager and Beat Buddy Song Matcher.

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HKF said:

That's really good! It's not really my kind of music but I can totally appreciate the lyrics and emotion. You should think about publishing it

Click to expand...

It was a track of my one and only official Album from a couple of years back which I did upload to one of the free music hosting sites. I prefer youtube as a platform really as a lot of the stuff I do is fun and visual. Some of it verging on hilarious probably

I called the Album "Price to Pay".

"An album about sex, regret, the environment, sadness, happiness and the general rantings at the world of an agiing Muso."

Ah good stuff ... it is difficult trying to replicate a decent drum track. So I'm a drummer. 40yrs plus now (EEEK!!). That's not my age by the way . My time is split 3 ways musically. One originals band, fairly laid back style, "West Coast Yacht Rock-ish easy listening", secondly myself and a great rock guitarist who I work with do home recording. We decide on some classic rock/metal songs to cover, voice sample the singer, he (Jeff) has some clever software to do this and what we can't do ourselves, he knows a man who can. Jeff plays bass, rhythm and lead guitars, I play drums and keys. We use the Reaper DAW ... its a fab easy to use multitrack recording software (for us ) and basically put a click track down with a guide guitar and bass track. Jeff sends these files to me, I load them up and then lay the drum tracks down. Once that's done the guide tracks are deleted I return the new drum tracks and he plays the guitars parts properly. We then add any keys and the main vocal tracks and we try and replicate the original as close as possible. We then begin the mix downs. We've had loads of fun doing loads of stuff over the last couple of years and what's really made a difference is I now have an Alsesis Strike Pro SE drum kit. Acoustic kits are so loud and take loads of time to get a decent sound so I bought this leccy kit and it's a game changer. Instant arena drum sound with minimal work and I play in virtual silence so I don't annoy the neighbours . I use a Behringer 8 channel DAC so each kick, snare, toms, hi hats, ride and cymbals are recorded on their own separate tracks. Again, it's game changing stuff. I only use the stock effects that come with Reaper and there's more than enough on there to work with. Compressors, gates digi reverbs etc etc. My 3rd split is that my Yacht Rock band are branching out and going to do some slightly heavier stuff with some other musos coming on board the project. Again it will be original stuff but it's a new project that's going to be a real part time thing but we'll hopefully get it going via file transfers as I do with my work colleague. I did promise a while ago to post some stuff but not got round to it yet. Watch this space though .

Hi Tony, I've promised myself a bit of a studio set up in our neew house. We've only been there a few weeks and loads of stuff to do before I even get close to unpacking my gear, but the space is ear marked. Nothing special, just a glorified man-cave really.

I bought Band-in-a-Box a few years ago, but haven't really sat down with it properly. I did look at Beat Buddy but decided I had enough problems moving my arms and fingers at the same time. Adding my feet into the mix was too close to being a drummer and I was extremely crap at that..!!

I do have a Trio+ which I was getting into before buying the house.

I long for the simple times when we just trundle along quite happily in our MH...!

As always, please post here anything you've created.

The BeatBuddy pedal is a fantastic bit of kit especially when coupled up with the Singular Sound Midi Maestro. Downside is arranging your own drumbeats, the BeatBuddy Manager program isn’t the most user friendly interface, not having a Drag and Drop facility makes for a long winded affair.
The Trio pedal is a fabulous bit of kit for the single guitarist.

As Tony says the Alesis Strike Pro SE is a very nice bit of kit.

The Saints said:

Hi Tony, I've promised myself a bit of a studio set up in our neew house. We've only been there a few weeks and loads of stuff to do before I even get close to unpacking my gear, but the space is ear marked. Nothing special, just a glorified man-cave really.

I bought Band-in-a-Box a few years ago, but haven't really sat down with it properly. I did look at Beat Buddy but decided I had enough problems moving my arms and fingers at the same time. Adding my feet into the mix was too close to being a drummer and I was extremely crap at that..!!

I do have a Trio+ which I was getting into before buying the house.

I long for the simple times when we just trundle along quite happily in our MH...!

As always, please post here anything you've created.

Click to expand...

Will do .... I'm currently archiving stuff that I've got everywhere at the moment. My pc and laptop has music files everywhere so I'm organising it all into proper files and folders. I'll get some pics together of my mancave and see if I can successfully post some stuff here. I've not tried that yet ! What happened to the years gone by where we didnt have to worry about technology as we were "growing" with it as it evolved!!! All of a sudden tech has gone mental and everyday becomes a school day to keep up. Thought I'd finished my education 40 years ago