Busking "I Believe in Father Christmas" by Greg Lake

spinland
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Wed Jan 04, 2017 6:26 am

thereshopeyet wrote:
Never mind that ..... it's being played by a reindeer !!!
:laugh:
That's my out! Rudolph is a lefty and had a custom piano built! :laugh:


spinland
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Wed Jan 04, 2017 6:44 am

Okay, so as is my wont I'm up before dawn with some morning coffee "me time" before I must dive into client work. That's dangerous, as it gives me license to yap about stuff. :side:

First, the dirty secret (I've already spilled in another thread): I'm not yet able to play any of that all in one go, not yet. As I'm given to understand is common practice in recording studios these days, I laid down those tracks line by line with pauses in between to regroup and have a listen to each new take. One day I intend to have the chops to grunt through something like a Greg Lake masterpiece in one sitting...but that time is not yet.

I've alluded to my digital guitar, thought I'd elaborate a little more. Please feel free to move along if this bores you. :P

This is my MIDI recording arsenal (plus mic for vocals):

Image

The guitar has six strings where the right hand work happens, and each string has its own pickup hiding under the bridge. From there the fretboard is all touch-sensitive high tech geekery. WIth a tap of a button you can enable hammers, taps, and slides and, since you obviously can't bend strings, you use the tremelo bar for "bending" and there's a pinky control to add vibrato on demand.

Why is this even a thing? Because internally it stores the tools to sound like 30 different instruments, even two at the same time, and by piping it through a DAW that ensemble becomes effectively limitless. Drum kit, "blues harp," tenor sax, grand piano...it's all there and, as someone more comfortable around a fretboard than a traditional keyboard (though I use that at need), it's golden to have all that at my literal fingertips.

I do have a couple of "proper" guitars, including the shiny new PRS semi hollow Custom 22 Santa brought me this year. I've long wanted an electric but have an "acoustic soul" so the hollow body style is my natural fit. Here are my "Tres Amigos" lined up for inspection:

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The acoustic is by Art & Lutherie and was my first new guitar. It's called the "Wild Cherry" and was a limited run seasonal built in the mid 90s.

And that's a peep into the twisted reality up here in Spinland. Have fun, and always remember to tip your server (or musician).


michelew
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Wed Jan 04, 2017 5:51 pm

Mark,

WOW that is interesting and some tech geek gadgetry to be sure. I'm quite familiar with creating different instrument sounds using a midi keyboard, but I've never seen a midi guitar before. It's intriguing. Though when it comes to electric guitar, there's lots of fun to be had in bending real strings.

Your confession of your dirty secret made me smile. Don't worry I've definitely used editing magic and smoke and mirrors on some of the collaboration videos I've posted on TG, including cuttting different takes together. It's all in pursue for the best sound.

Well with Neil's and Vanessa's help I'm sure you'll be able to reach your goals.

Thanks for the show and tell. It's always fun seeing how people make the cool sounds that they do.

Michele


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neverfoundthetime
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Wed Jan 04, 2017 6:51 pm

Great, thanks for the peep show Mark... we are all gear lovers here :)


spinland
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Thu Jan 05, 2017 6:02 am

It's a divine madness. :silly:


spinland
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Sun Jan 29, 2017 10:13 am

An early take recorded during my making of the music video.

Many thanks to Bill Somers for helping me un-bork the original unusable audio/video sync and how to keep that from happening again. Unfortunately this is only a singing video; it was the only raw footage I retained because of the aforementioned sync issues. I deleted most of the footage and gave up trying to record the "making of" process.

Next time will be better.

[video type=youtube]yk1cv_wSQOU[/video]


spinland
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Sun Jan 29, 2017 10:43 am

Although the other attempts at recording video went bust, there does exist one still image from the video of my recording the guitar track I was singing to in that last post.

Image

The digital guitar was set up to emulate a Martin D28 in drop D tuning. As I mentioned elsewhere, I recorded the fingerpicking with the metronome at half speed and sped it up in post production because my fingerstyle skills are not yet close to being able to play a piece like that at tempo. Someday. :side:


TGNesh
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Sun Jan 29, 2017 4:25 pm

Very nice video and picture Mark! Very nice to hear you sing too.

So that's how you do it, recording it at a slow speed and just speed it up in post production. :laugh: Well why not?! ;)

In truth, i'm one of the non-gear-lovers out here, but I can surely appreciate what you and some other folks do with it or just have a lot of it. ;)

Thanks for sharing Mark, although I think others probably won't guess there is a video to watch in this thread. I'd suggest to create a new one next time. That is of course, if you want to obviously. :)

Ness


spinland
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Sun Jan 29, 2017 5:36 pm

TGVanessa wrote:
Very nice video and picture Mark! Very nice to hear you sing too.
Thank you, Ness! I promise: more to come. Really, I mean it. :side:

Thanks for sharing Mark, although I think others probably won't guess there is a video to watch in this thread. I'd suggest to create a new one next time. That is of course, if you want to obviously. :)
Hmm, okay. I figured since it related to a thread I'd already started I should keep it here. Would it be better to start a new one?

Mark


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