[I suck at] Making Music

[zourtney]

I've got a little music brewing inside me. Nothing good, of course. Just inspiration. Just the urge to make melodic noise. We should get together and make noises some time. I forgot how to play guitar.* We have no drums. I have a decent bass (the instrument; not the fish).

* Severely out of practice and was never very good. Also, my guitar neck is warped and therefore impossible to tune properly.

[Nick]

Sounds fun. I still can't really play the guitar and have been toying with the idea of taking lessons and chemeketa. But just playing around and actually practicing would probably do some good.

[zourtney]

I can teach you everything I know (in about 2 minutes)

[zourtney]

I had a little free time yesterday evening and found that occasionally my coat helped make really awesome sounds when you have distortion. These are called pinch harmonics (I was looking it up before the coat revelation). It's that wild, screaming horse sound you hear in rock/metal music. But I really suck at doing it on purpose.

[Nick]

Wow, I just doubled what I know about guitars by reading that.


Edit:
(The Wiki page that is.)

[zourtney]

Edit: removed out of self-annoyance.

Bam!

[zourtney]

Anyway, I can almost make that one sound on purpose, but it usually takes a couple of tries. I can almost throw it in with strumming...but not really. Now my fingers sort of hurt because I have no guitarman callouses. Nope, not for years...

[zourtney]

Tonight's project: making off-beat music! Literally.

http://randomland.net/downloads/music/zourtney/eleven-to-doze-sample (about 8 secs)

I was playing around with my guitar and got sucked into LMMS. I played around a bit and got the sample above. It sucks. I am trying to learn how to loop the guitaring to make a decent rhythm track. I'm sure that people usually just play the whole thing and don't loop it, but I'm weird and mostly just like making bad sounds with expensive equipment.

The little lead riff is off beat and doesn't quite sound right. Meh...Anyone else want to play? It's fun! 

[Nick]

Nice. Much better then anything I ever made.

[zourtney]

You should try! All you need is:

• your amp which already has the headphone/lineout
• computer
• a headphone cord with two male ends
• LMMS for the looping
• Audacity for recording and trimming the audio into loopables

[Nick]

I have all that! I have even had the guitar hooked up to the computer before (using it as a gimpy amp.)

First I really need to learn how to play something.

[zourtney]

You and me both! It's easy enough to find guitar tab for any remotely popular song, though. That's always a good start, even if you just find out which barre chords to play. I always get distracted, though, and never learn a whole song...

[Nick]

http://datacent.com/hard_drive_sounds.php

Sample sounds for making techno/hippity hop

[zourtney]

Brad got me thinking about making crappy game music again. Any suggestions? (Yes, you may include the suggestion, "don't!")

[Nick]

Something with strings. I have always had a little love for the long stringed instruments.