Music inspriration is very hard to get on-demand, just like inspiration for anything creative – it finds you not the other way round.
So what is it that brings these creative surges and how can you get more of them? I forget which famous inventor used to lock himself in a dark room for hours (was it Edison?). According to Napoleon Hill it worked a treat.
I’ve had more musical inspiration in the last 2 days in Cornwall that I have all year up in London. Maybe it’s the place, maybe it’s the change of scenery, maybe it’s the removal of my every day routine – maybe it’s a combination of all of it.
Whatever it is I’ll definitely be doing more of it and I recommend you do too. Next time I’ll bring the guitar though…
Cheers!
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If you’re anything like me you have trouble focusing on one project at a time. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing if you can keep tabs on different projects and make sure you finish them. Some people are naturally predisposed to completing one task or project at a time and others (like me) tend to come up with lots of ideas, start acting on them and end up with lots of half finished projects.
This is especially true with music. I have a tenedency to come up with new ideas far more than develop and polish off the half finished ones. This results in lots of bits of tracks all over my hard drive and very few completed ones.
If you can relate to this then what do you do about it? How do you discipline yourself to put some time into existing projects and revisiting all those snippets and ideas?
One way to do this is to assign a time once a week or month to dedicate at least an hour to going through any such snippets and seeing if they can either be:
1. Incorporated into another track or song
2. Warrant a new project all of their own.
You never know you might get 3 or 4 whole tracks out of the 10-15 snippets you’ve made over the last week or month.
That’s Saturday morning booked up from now on! This applies to aall projects as well not just music ones by the way
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OK in my last post about different methods of recording a good guitar sound for the home studio we looked at micing up an amp, using a computer interface/DI unit and software guitar racks.
One of the major issues with using computerised guitar effects instead of your amp is the delay you get while the computer processes the sound and outputs it to your speakers or headhpones. This is known as latency and is a common enemy to many guitarists and sound engineers.
With all this technology available it’s quite possible to get some amazing sounds from your guitar and even make it sound like a different instrument altogether. But even with a very powerful computer there is still the issue of the slight delay from playing the note to hearing back. This makes it very hard for monitoring a track you’re playing along to or even just jamming away using the computer and software effects as an amp substitute.
Enter the ASIO
One way to get the benefit of computerised virtual effects and guitar racks – without having to suffer latency problems is to use an audio interface with stereo outputs that you plug into an amp and some external speakers. Using ASIO drivers your computer will output the sound to the interface which will then output to your amp and speakers (or headpones) with zero latency if you have a good interface.
On the left is my set up at home, you can see my beloved Fender Stratocaster, an old HiFi amp on the right, one of the speakers to its left and on top of that my audio/Midi interface which plugs into a USB port on my computer. Not to mention the obligatory headphones for those 4 am sessions.
Which Interface?
There are a few low budget and high quality audio to USB interfaces and DI (direct input) units you can get. To use this method however you need one with stereo outputs that will plug into an external amplifier and speakers. The one I use is the M-Audio Fast Track Pro which you can see reviewed here (opens in new window). As you can see from the picture below it has stereo outputs in between the effects loop ports on the right and the MIDI in and outs on the left:
To Amp or Not Amp?
Using this method you could do away with the need for an amp altogether. However many will tell you (and I’ll agree with them) that even the most advanced softare guitar effects and racks still cannot compare to the sound of a good amp – especially a vintage one if you’re going for that sound.
But what if you want that amp sound but can’t play it loud enough to get a good recording through a microphone?
Well stay tuned for the next part in this series where we’ll get the amp to output into the audio interface using DI instead of a microphone.
When you’re learning music production and how to make music on your computer it helps to have a solid project to focus on.
You might already have some songs in your head that you’ve been itching to get out and onto disk, you might not have a clue where you’re goin to start. If the latter is the case then don’t worry too much ideas will come to you as you experiment with sounds and samples.
In my case I’ve opted to recreate some of the old tunes I co-wrote back in the early 90s with our 10 piece jazz/funk band the Phuse. It’s going to be a bit of a challenge recreating some of those horn and percussion parts (I was on guitars and bass) but challenge is what it’s all about.
Track #1 is started, I’m liking the sound of it already but there is still a lot to do. Oh it’s all coming back
Fun fun fun.. 
