Modern Day Songwriter Frustrations Part 1
01/07/2010 02:58
Well,
2009 has came and went. And sadly... I still didn't
manage to write a single song! I swore up and down
that I would, but it didn't happen. "Why not Jason?
Just do it!" Yeah well, it's not so easy. I got to
thinking about why that is, and I'm not sure. I
think it might be more simple than I imagined. I
simply don't have time. And when I do have time,
it's spent doing other things that need done. So
sitting down at my DAW and writing something seems
great in a daydream, but it's not so easy. It USED
to be easy though! Back in the dinosaur days of
Tascam Cassette 8-Tracks, Alesis SR-16 Drum
Machine, cheap Alesis Compressors and FX units, and
the two most important elements... TIME and
MOTIVATION! My life is so much busier now with
kids, a working wife, and all of the things that go
with that. My mind is much more preoccupied than it
used to be. I'm also not a "late night" person
anymore. Some time ago, I was able to stay up late
and function just fine the next day. But now,
despite being an Olympic hopeful in the
long-distance sleep-a-thon, I just can't stay up
late anymore. I don't sleep well anyway, but I'll
save that for another blog post. But now, I'm
interested in a lot of things. That's my little way
of justifying my lapse in songwriting. Blame it on
the kids, lack of time, and other hobbies! I also
like to blame it on my equipment, which is quite
hilarious when you consider what I'm using! I have
a Digidesign 002r Interface running Pro Tools LE. I
also have an Avalon U5 DI, an old Symetrix
Compressor/Limiter which sounds great, a Monte
McGuire modified Symetrix Mic Pre, Shure SM32 mic,
iMac G5 with 4gigs of memory, Line 6 DI with the
Gold Effects Bundle, Reason 4.0, Ableton Live 7,
Battery 3.0, McDsp Filterbank and Compressor Bank
plugins, Steve Massey Plugins, Waves Renaissance
Maxx Bundle, Autotune 5.0, Autotune Choir,
EZDrummer with the Funkmasters, Nashville, DKFH,
and Vintage EVX's, Superior Drummer with the Custom
& Vintage Add on, and the original DKFH program
tons of Midi loops, and a keyboard controller. So,
it's clearly NOT a gear limitation! If only they
made a plugin that gave you time, inspiration, and
motivation!
My quest to get motivated started with a gear search. I had convinced myself that my workflow that was the problem. Back in the day, my equipment was easy to operate. I had spent so much time with it, that I could operate it in my sleep. I could program a drum track from start to finish in no time. I would sit down, program a beat, then start playing guitar....always recording...then later I'd listen back in the car to what I had done. Sometimes I'd hear something that sparked something. I'd get home, fire up my gear, and fine tune the riff that I had heard until something developed. Once I got the guitar parts worked out, I'd write an entire drum "song" to that guitar part. Then I'd listen to that over and over in my car, trying to pickout melodies. I'd record myself searching for a melody via a hand held tape recorder that I kept in my car. Once I'd get that figured out, I'd start writing lyrics. Now the song is ready to record. So, I'd tweak my drum and guitar parts a bit, to fit my vocals better, then lay down the master drum track, master guitar tracks, bass, then vocals, and I was done!
Once I went to a Mac and Pro Tools, I was first overwhelmed by the complexity of not only learning the Mac, but learning Pro Tools as well. But I could immediately tell that it was going to make things MUCH easier to do, and give me a world of possibilities. After all, pro bands cut records with this VERY PROGRAM! So that excited me big time. But not long after I got all of that stuff, we had our first child. I didn't spend too much time messing with my new toys, because I was in "daddy mode". And that was perfectly fine by me!! I love being a daddy more than anything else. Then we had another child, bought a new house, etc. The "daddy mode" took over and SQUASHED the songwriter in me. I kept telling myself, "I'm just on a break. It'll be good for me anyway and will get me out of my typical songwriting traps. I'll come back to fresh and focused." But that still hasn't happened! And the irony of it is, I've been playing regularly in a rock band on the weekends. My playing has improved 10x over, my voice is stronger now than it has ever been in my life, my guitar chord and riff vocabulary has tripled, and I think that whatever ideas that I get in my head will be just better overall. I'm convinced that whatever songs I would write now, wouldn't really resemble the songs I wrote back then. Of course, they will still sound like "me". But I think I'd be a smarter songwriter. The problem is actually DOING IT!
So by now, I have forgotten almost everything I had learned about Pro Tools. So I decided that it would make it SO much easier if I had a control surface. It was all the tedious keyboard and mouse clicking that drove me nuts. So I bought a Digidesign Command 8 control surface. WOW. What a difference it makes!! BUT, at almost the same time, I subscribed to the Groovebox.com video service. Groovebox is a god send because it's a service that gives you video tutorials on how to operate all kinds of audio software. It's very in depth and clear cut. You get to actually watch a pro USE the software and follow along! It's great. My favorite series is by Kenny Gioia. Pro Tools Tips and Tricks Vol 1 & 2. I'm not sure if he's done more or not. I need to check. But I basically hijacked all the videos that I could in the months time I subscribed. I got tutorials on how to use Ableton Live, Pro Tools, Reason, and Logic (if I ever buy it). But it was the Kenny Gioia series that helped me the most. After watching him do it, I realized that I don't really need a control surface at all! It's all about keyboard shortcuts! I memorized a ton of them, and that opened the door big time for me. I learned how to use Elastic Audio and Beat Detective. Two KEY components of Pro Tools that I'm not sure anyone could live without. I had no clue how to use them before, and didn't understand at all. But now I know! I also went to Kenny's website and purchased all of his Loop CD's. Those are great too.
But still.... the bottom line for me is workflow. Or... lack of a workflow. For some reason drums are what give me the biggest fits. I have zillions of loops and great sounding software, yet can't seem to get myself in sync with it all. It always goes back to wishing I could still use my SR-16. It just doesn't get any easier then that. The problem is, the internal sounds are VERY dated. I'm not setting the world on fire with my songs, nor am I trying to be an artist of some kind. I just love to write songs. It's personal cleansing for me. Doing so "makes me right with the world". But I can't stand using dated sounding drums, knowing I have amazing sounding drums at hand.
So, i tried syncing my SR-16 up to Pro Tools, and using it as a trigger for EZ Drummer. That worked! But I only did it once, then went back on break for another year. So, I can't recall if it worked WELL, or if I had to do a bunch of stuff to make it work? It seems like I was able to program the performance inside the SR-16 and create the song. Then send it to Pro Tools as midi, triggering the EZD sounds. But I seem to recall having to go in and manually edit a lot of velocity strikes, which took forever! NOT what I'm looking to do! Spending hours staring at a screen editing midi notes is a real buzz kill. But to be fair, I can't remember if I had to do that or not. I've done it before, but I can't remember the circumstances. All I know is that I HATE doing that. Recording drums should be easy. Getting a good and realistic performance is a challenge, but I'm ok with that too. There is a fine line between a drum track that sounds programmed vs a real performance. I try to make my drum tracks sound like someone played them if possible. In order to achieve that, you've GOT to edit your velocity and feel. I can do that inside the SR-16 brains, but not to the degree that you can with a midi pencil. So what I need to do, is try the SR-16 again to see if that worked the way I wanted it to work. I'd kinda like to sync it up to Pro Tools like I used to with my cassette machine via a timecode. I'd stripe my tape with the timecode, and would never had to actually print drums to tape! I'd hit play on the machine, and my drum machine would follow the song no matter where I was at. This gave me an extra track to use and still allowed me to have stereo drums on the master fader! I'm sure there is a way to do it. But it'll probl take me hours to figure it out. I'm not really concerned with saving a track in Pro Tools though, since 32 should be enough =)! But it would be nice if my software could sync to the machine. As it is now, I have to actually print the drum track as midi. That's fine if I'm doing a song but not very convenient if I want to just jam on something.
Using loops is perfect for that. But my gripe with loops is that the loop has too much influence on the riff. I like to write my drum tracks to fit the guitars and vocals, not the other way around. You end up spending WAAAAY too much time sifting thru drum loops trying to find one that fits. By the time you're done, yer too burned out to be creative!! At least for me anyway. But loops do have their place. I just prefer to write my own drum patterns, that's all. I know you can take a midi loop and edit it to fit how you want it to. But then we're back to tediously messing with midi notes, quantizing, velocity, etc. I thought that if I purchased an actual controller to write my own drum patterns that it would be easier. So I went out and bought a Korg padKontrol unit. It's really slick. But it doesn't make it any easier. Gives me more options and pads than my SR-16 does, so that is good. But it just sits there with my other gear not being used. So it obviously didn't help "spark anything"!
I next decided that I'd purchase a better sounding drum machine, and just go back to using a drum machine full time. I purchased the Boss DR-880 drum machine, which is supposed to be the best one they make. I will admit, it was cool. But as with most drum machines, it only had one or two kits that I actually liked, and a TON of crappy sounds. The best thing about it was the built-in guitar amp sims. Those sounded really really great, but not as good as my Line 6 stuff. Plus, I was never able to really grab the concept of how to program patterns in that thing. Boss uses a funky way of doing it, and I didn't like it. I was so used to the SR-16 way, that I couldn't get used to the Boss way. It seemed counter-intuitive to me. The SR-16 just made sense. So, I sold the Boss unit.
I then purchased a used Boss Micro-BR recorder. I thought that it would allow me to record ideas on my drive to work, and if I wanted to, I could program drums with, cut guitar tracks, etc. How simple and easy! Well, it didn't turn out to be quite what I thought. You can't import your own drum sounds. And the built in sounds are pretty rotten for the most part. It has like ONE decent sounding kit, and that's it. Plus, you can't alter the preset patterns. The sounds and patterns that are built in are what you get. Period! Now, you can program drums on your computer if you wanted, and send that track to the Boss via a line in, but why bother?? Why not just use Pro Tools? But this Micro BR I am keeping because the built in guitar sounds are great plus it is an MP3 player/Guitar Trainer. I use it to practice new songs that the band is learning, and it works GREAT for that!
So the Micro BR was too basic for me. If only I could get back to the old school way that inspired me? So, I went out and bought a Zoom HD-16 multitrack recorder WITH built in guitar and bass sounds and a drum machine on top of the unit!! This was going to be the ticket. Or so I thought! Turns out that the menu system was weird and complicated to use. I constantly had the manual out. Plus, the built in drum sounds were rotten. REALLY rotten! However, you can load your own samples if you want. So, I built me a custom kit using Drums on Demand drum hits. They sound fantastic! Now we're cookin! Not so fast...! For some reason, Zoom doesn't give you a lot of sample time. And you can barely build a custom kit of samples with the small amount of sample time they give you. So, I had to borrow a Zoom sound or two, which didn't sound good. Plus, whenever I'd program a drum track, it would give me this strange glitch in the track where notes were being choked off. Like cymbal crashes cancelling each other out, etc. My settings were correct too. So, I chalked it up to the DOD samples causing weirdness. If I can't use good sounding samples, then I don't want the unit. So I sold it!
My quest to get motivated started with a gear search. I had convinced myself that my workflow that was the problem. Back in the day, my equipment was easy to operate. I had spent so much time with it, that I could operate it in my sleep. I could program a drum track from start to finish in no time. I would sit down, program a beat, then start playing guitar....always recording...then later I'd listen back in the car to what I had done. Sometimes I'd hear something that sparked something. I'd get home, fire up my gear, and fine tune the riff that I had heard until something developed. Once I got the guitar parts worked out, I'd write an entire drum "song" to that guitar part. Then I'd listen to that over and over in my car, trying to pickout melodies. I'd record myself searching for a melody via a hand held tape recorder that I kept in my car. Once I'd get that figured out, I'd start writing lyrics. Now the song is ready to record. So, I'd tweak my drum and guitar parts a bit, to fit my vocals better, then lay down the master drum track, master guitar tracks, bass, then vocals, and I was done!
Once I went to a Mac and Pro Tools, I was first overwhelmed by the complexity of not only learning the Mac, but learning Pro Tools as well. But I could immediately tell that it was going to make things MUCH easier to do, and give me a world of possibilities. After all, pro bands cut records with this VERY PROGRAM! So that excited me big time. But not long after I got all of that stuff, we had our first child. I didn't spend too much time messing with my new toys, because I was in "daddy mode". And that was perfectly fine by me!! I love being a daddy more than anything else. Then we had another child, bought a new house, etc. The "daddy mode" took over and SQUASHED the songwriter in me. I kept telling myself, "I'm just on a break. It'll be good for me anyway and will get me out of my typical songwriting traps. I'll come back to fresh and focused." But that still hasn't happened! And the irony of it is, I've been playing regularly in a rock band on the weekends. My playing has improved 10x over, my voice is stronger now than it has ever been in my life, my guitar chord and riff vocabulary has tripled, and I think that whatever ideas that I get in my head will be just better overall. I'm convinced that whatever songs I would write now, wouldn't really resemble the songs I wrote back then. Of course, they will still sound like "me". But I think I'd be a smarter songwriter. The problem is actually DOING IT!
So by now, I have forgotten almost everything I had learned about Pro Tools. So I decided that it would make it SO much easier if I had a control surface. It was all the tedious keyboard and mouse clicking that drove me nuts. So I bought a Digidesign Command 8 control surface. WOW. What a difference it makes!! BUT, at almost the same time, I subscribed to the Groovebox.com video service. Groovebox is a god send because it's a service that gives you video tutorials on how to operate all kinds of audio software. It's very in depth and clear cut. You get to actually watch a pro USE the software and follow along! It's great. My favorite series is by Kenny Gioia. Pro Tools Tips and Tricks Vol 1 & 2. I'm not sure if he's done more or not. I need to check. But I basically hijacked all the videos that I could in the months time I subscribed. I got tutorials on how to use Ableton Live, Pro Tools, Reason, and Logic (if I ever buy it). But it was the Kenny Gioia series that helped me the most. After watching him do it, I realized that I don't really need a control surface at all! It's all about keyboard shortcuts! I memorized a ton of them, and that opened the door big time for me. I learned how to use Elastic Audio and Beat Detective. Two KEY components of Pro Tools that I'm not sure anyone could live without. I had no clue how to use them before, and didn't understand at all. But now I know! I also went to Kenny's website and purchased all of his Loop CD's. Those are great too.
But still.... the bottom line for me is workflow. Or... lack of a workflow. For some reason drums are what give me the biggest fits. I have zillions of loops and great sounding software, yet can't seem to get myself in sync with it all. It always goes back to wishing I could still use my SR-16. It just doesn't get any easier then that. The problem is, the internal sounds are VERY dated. I'm not setting the world on fire with my songs, nor am I trying to be an artist of some kind. I just love to write songs. It's personal cleansing for me. Doing so "makes me right with the world". But I can't stand using dated sounding drums, knowing I have amazing sounding drums at hand.
So, i tried syncing my SR-16 up to Pro Tools, and using it as a trigger for EZ Drummer. That worked! But I only did it once, then went back on break for another year. So, I can't recall if it worked WELL, or if I had to do a bunch of stuff to make it work? It seems like I was able to program the performance inside the SR-16 and create the song. Then send it to Pro Tools as midi, triggering the EZD sounds. But I seem to recall having to go in and manually edit a lot of velocity strikes, which took forever! NOT what I'm looking to do! Spending hours staring at a screen editing midi notes is a real buzz kill. But to be fair, I can't remember if I had to do that or not. I've done it before, but I can't remember the circumstances. All I know is that I HATE doing that. Recording drums should be easy. Getting a good and realistic performance is a challenge, but I'm ok with that too. There is a fine line between a drum track that sounds programmed vs a real performance. I try to make my drum tracks sound like someone played them if possible. In order to achieve that, you've GOT to edit your velocity and feel. I can do that inside the SR-16 brains, but not to the degree that you can with a midi pencil. So what I need to do, is try the SR-16 again to see if that worked the way I wanted it to work. I'd kinda like to sync it up to Pro Tools like I used to with my cassette machine via a timecode. I'd stripe my tape with the timecode, and would never had to actually print drums to tape! I'd hit play on the machine, and my drum machine would follow the song no matter where I was at. This gave me an extra track to use and still allowed me to have stereo drums on the master fader! I'm sure there is a way to do it. But it'll probl take me hours to figure it out. I'm not really concerned with saving a track in Pro Tools though, since 32 should be enough =)! But it would be nice if my software could sync to the machine. As it is now, I have to actually print the drum track as midi. That's fine if I'm doing a song but not very convenient if I want to just jam on something.
Using loops is perfect for that. But my gripe with loops is that the loop has too much influence on the riff. I like to write my drum tracks to fit the guitars and vocals, not the other way around. You end up spending WAAAAY too much time sifting thru drum loops trying to find one that fits. By the time you're done, yer too burned out to be creative!! At least for me anyway. But loops do have their place. I just prefer to write my own drum patterns, that's all. I know you can take a midi loop and edit it to fit how you want it to. But then we're back to tediously messing with midi notes, quantizing, velocity, etc. I thought that if I purchased an actual controller to write my own drum patterns that it would be easier. So I went out and bought a Korg padKontrol unit. It's really slick. But it doesn't make it any easier. Gives me more options and pads than my SR-16 does, so that is good. But it just sits there with my other gear not being used. So it obviously didn't help "spark anything"!
I next decided that I'd purchase a better sounding drum machine, and just go back to using a drum machine full time. I purchased the Boss DR-880 drum machine, which is supposed to be the best one they make. I will admit, it was cool. But as with most drum machines, it only had one or two kits that I actually liked, and a TON of crappy sounds. The best thing about it was the built-in guitar amp sims. Those sounded really really great, but not as good as my Line 6 stuff. Plus, I was never able to really grab the concept of how to program patterns in that thing. Boss uses a funky way of doing it, and I didn't like it. I was so used to the SR-16 way, that I couldn't get used to the Boss way. It seemed counter-intuitive to me. The SR-16 just made sense. So, I sold the Boss unit.
I then purchased a used Boss Micro-BR recorder. I thought that it would allow me to record ideas on my drive to work, and if I wanted to, I could program drums with, cut guitar tracks, etc. How simple and easy! Well, it didn't turn out to be quite what I thought. You can't import your own drum sounds. And the built in sounds are pretty rotten for the most part. It has like ONE decent sounding kit, and that's it. Plus, you can't alter the preset patterns. The sounds and patterns that are built in are what you get. Period! Now, you can program drums on your computer if you wanted, and send that track to the Boss via a line in, but why bother?? Why not just use Pro Tools? But this Micro BR I am keeping because the built in guitar sounds are great plus it is an MP3 player/Guitar Trainer. I use it to practice new songs that the band is learning, and it works GREAT for that!
So the Micro BR was too basic for me. If only I could get back to the old school way that inspired me? So, I went out and bought a Zoom HD-16 multitrack recorder WITH built in guitar and bass sounds and a drum machine on top of the unit!! This was going to be the ticket. Or so I thought! Turns out that the menu system was weird and complicated to use. I constantly had the manual out. Plus, the built in drum sounds were rotten. REALLY rotten! However, you can load your own samples if you want. So, I built me a custom kit using Drums on Demand drum hits. They sound fantastic! Now we're cookin! Not so fast...! For some reason, Zoom doesn't give you a lot of sample time. And you can barely build a custom kit of samples with the small amount of sample time they give you. So, I had to borrow a Zoom sound or two, which didn't sound good. Plus, whenever I'd program a drum track, it would give me this strange glitch in the track where notes were being choked off. Like cymbal crashes cancelling each other out, etc. My settings were correct too. So, I chalked it up to the DOD samples causing weirdness. If I can't use good sounding samples, then I don't want the unit. So I sold it!
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