Hey guys, how's it going?
First post here... Is this the catchall bass OT thread? <grin>

[quote=BenJammin;18587828]I wrote a new song. First one in a long time. Not worth starting a thread about, so I'll leave it here.

[url]http://soundcloud.com/ben-lesser/dream-thief[/url][/quote]

That song was fun. More electronic than I originally expected, but still fun. Was all of that done on a keyboard?



I attempted to make the circuit board this weekend for that tube OD pedal I want to build, and it is harder than it looks. I'm having a hard time getting the pattern to transfer onto the circuit board. I'm going to try again tonight with the ring modulator pattern and see if I can get that to work. Otherwise, I'm at a loss here and may just have to pay some hobbyist on the pedal forums to etch them for me.

Yeah, that's all keyboard generated. My music is split 50/50 these days between heavily electronic, or traditional cinematic style. I'm working on a few other pieces, too, but it's slow progress. Thanks for checking it out.

Here's another one, just because I'm writing well today.

[url]http://soundcloud.com/ben-lesser/one-thousand-sunsets[/url]

Tried my hand at recording the guitar tracks to a new song last night. What I learned is that I need to play it 5-10 more times to the metronome. I've been playing solo acoustic so long that I never realized how often I drifted out of time.

My dad's moving out tomorrow, so tonight was kind of like the 'last supper'. Bit awkward and really surreal :/

Dude, I'm sorry to hear that. Was it a sudden thing for you, or have you known for a while that your parents have been having troubles?

i found him talking to his girlfriend on skype chat like nearly a year ago though i don't know how long it's been sour. but he's only just saved enough money to move out. you just don't expect it i guess!

I can't imagine what that would feel like. I've been fortunate to have parents who have stayed together. At least you're at an age where the family dynamic has less of a psychological impact.


Did anyone know that T-Pain could rap so well? Where the hell is this skill in his mainstream sh*t?
[url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71FYK_4jEz4[/url]

Also, I've been playing around with Adobe Audition's built-in plugins, and the guitar one is pretty useable, although there's just something to be said about creating a tone before recording it.

[QUOTE=FunkMetalBass;18594152]I can't imagine what that would feel like. I've been fortunate to have parents who have stayed together. At least you're at an age where the family dynamic has less of a psychological impact.


Did anyone know that T-Pain could rap so well? Where the hell is this skill in his mainstream sh*t?
[url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71FYK_4jEz4[/url]

Also, I've been playing around with Adobe Audition's built-in plugins, and the guitar one is pretty useable, although there's just something to be said about creating a tone before recording it.[/QUOTE]

I can barely listen past that annoying auto-tune on the voice that all pop stars seem to use completely past the point of subtlety.

[QUOTE=karmapavementplan;18594546]I can barely listen past that annoying auto-tune on the voice that all pop stars seem to use completely past the point of subtlety.[/QUOTE]

I was talking to a girl I worked with at my last job just before I moved. She was sending me links to this music she liked, I can't remember exactly what it was but some horrible techno-pop stuff with massive auto-tune on the vocals.

The response I got to saying I couldn't stand the vocals was "what's auto-tune? It sounds fine to me..."

She's three years younger than me, is it true the end is only three years behind us? Or is it because we're musicians?

[quote=funkyhoney;18594872]Or is it because we're musicians?[/quote]
speak for yourself!

[quote=karmapavementplan;18594546]I can barely listen past that annoying auto-tune on the voice that all pop stars seem to use completely past the point of subtlety.[/quote]

That's T-Pain's thing. He basically made that popular in the rap/hip-hop community. Normally his stuff is so mainstream and slow, I'm just impressed he can rap.

How are you?

[quote=funkyhoney;18594872]I was talking to a girl I worked with at my last job just before I moved. She was sending me links to this music she liked, I can't remember exactly what it was but some horrible techno-pop stuff with massive auto-tune on the vocals.

The response I got to saying I couldn't stand the vocals was "what's auto-tune? It sounds fine to me..."

She's three years younger than me, is it true the end is only three years behind us? Or is it because we're musicians?[/quote]

Pop music has never been good. It's catchy, and requires nothing resembling musicianship to pull off (Is that ending a sentence with a preposition? Because "pull off" is kind of a compound verb...). I thought the same thing when I heard Attack Attack's "Stick Stickly" song. It's terrible.

Alas, there are musicians who will utilize tools as stylistic options and not to disguise faults in their ability to sing or play. In the case of T-Pain, he's not bad enough to really need the heavy autotune, but it's a style choice. Also, his mainstream music sucks enough that it's the only way to make it sound mediocre at best.

It's not because we're musicians necessarily, it's because we have different tastes and an appreciation for the arts. I personally find myself listening and judging lyrics all the time, even to the point where the music can take a back seat. Lyrics make or break a song for me.

I've actually become increasingly fond of modern mainstream pop/rap music. Probably because I've spent so much of this summer getting fucked up and partying and it's the kind of tunes that are always going. Is it going to win awards for musical complexity, or intellectual lyrics? Hell no. But it's fucking fun stuff to listen to, and a lot of it grooves pretty hard.

I really dug that track, too, Joe.

[QUOTE=FunkMetalBass;18595208]Pop music has never been good. It's catchy, and requires nothing resembling musicianship to pull off (Is that ending a sentence with a preposition? Because "pull off" is kind of a compound verb...). I thought the same thing when I heard Attack Attack's "Stick Stickly" song. It's terrible.

Alas, there are musicians who will utilize tools as stylistic options and not to disguise faults in their ability to sing or play. In the case of T-Pain, he's not bad enough to really need the heavy autotune, but it's a style choice. Also, his mainstream music sucks enough that it's the only way to make it sound mediocre at best.

It's not because we're musicians necessarily, it's because we have different tastes and an appreciation for the arts. I personally find myself listening and judging lyrics all the time, even to the point where the music can take a back seat. Lyrics make or break a song for me.[/QUOTE]

As far as the preposition goes, ask Ben, I never did well in linguistics, I was more a stylistics kinda guy. Having said that, 'off' is in fact a preposition, and 'pull off' is a compound verb, my linguistics lecturer never liked to talk about prepositions. He always used to disown them and say they were basically "anything in a sentence that isn't a subject, object, noun, verb, adjective, or adverb."

... I don't think it's that important if it read well. Like I said, stylistics I find more important as English doesn't really have an agreed set of rules like French for instance.

I can never really put my finger on what exactly it is I hate so much about pop, it's not so much catchy to me as it is almost ambient. You can easily ignore it or pay attention to it. I think it's the lack of instrumentation perhaps. It just doesn't have feel, like most modern hiphop/rap when compared to "classic" hip hop which is more closely related to funk in my opinion.

T-Pain just offends me as a musician, it's painful to hear, that's basically the opposite of what music is supposed to be. I suppose even Christina has used auto-tune though, and she's an amazing vocalist, so it can be used as a tool... I still find it's invention useless. Considering it's original intention was to correct minor flaws, that tells me that some people think that without perfect pitch, music is fundamentally flawed. We should definitely go back and apply autotune to Under the Bridge, I can't stand hearing it with the bad vocals :amaze:

Lyrics are important. I actually don't mind some pop music, the vocals and lyrics almost always ruin it for me though. I'd much rather hear Dave Grohl or Anthony Kiedis almost incoherently screaming something of substance (alliteration bitch) than hear a perfectly sung line about how much you like boys and cars.

And yes I'm aware of the irony of hating pop while liking The Foo Fighters and RHCP, two of the biggest bands around.

[URL]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DA_c1o5Y95o[/URL]

I wish all pop artists covered good songs.

[quote=funkyhoney;18595395]And yes I'm aware of the irony of hating pop while liking The Foo Fighters and RHCP, two of the biggest bands around.[/quote]

"Pop" is an unfortunate category for music. It's purely popular music, but the general consensus is that pop music is soul-less profiteering, and that's not necessarily true.

good pop music is still good music. too many people are snobby about music.

To put things into perspective:

Think of pop artists/bands/etc as a business. Like any business they are in it to make a profit. To make said profit, the music has to constrain to certain norms so that it will first be accepted by a radio programmer, and then the radio listener. And then hopefully it either sells records, or generates money in other ways (such as making it a big enough song to star in the next Apple advert). It needs to be almost perfectly in time, perfectly in tune, and hardly ever break the 4 minute mark. These are the simple facts of pop and what people now accept to be common practice. Whether it makes them legitimate as an artist or not is irrelevant, because their target market (see: general masses) do not give one flying fuck about their legitimacy as an artist. Hell they barely care about much past the lead vocal and the beat/groove.

Now, I don't know about you, but I can think of far worse business practices to make a profit than tuning a vocal, aligning drums to a grid and writing simply structured and predictable songs. Ya know, like dumping waste in a river/ocean/lake, aggressively preventing electric cars from being produced because there is too much money oil, animal testing, laying off 1000's of workers, extreme mark ups on the cost price, illegal business practice (see Telecom), lack of customer service...etcetcetc.

To get angry enough to actually post on a web forum that you dislike Auto-tune is kind of silly. If you don't like it, don't listen to it, don't talk about it, don't post about it, don't even think about it. It shouldn't worry you. Just go listen to the music you do like and leave it to the general masses to consume. It won't make you feel any better ranting about it on a almost defunct forum.

What will make you feel better is going and doing better in the music industry than these aforementioned pop artists. But wait, you probably can't, you don't have the talent/connections/personality to succeed, whether you wanted to or not.


/rant.

[quote=Convectuoso;18595821]To put things into perspective:

Think of pop artists/bands/etc as a business. Like any business they are in it to make a profit. To make said profit, the music has to constrain to certain norms so that it will first be accepted by a radio programmer, and then the radio listener. And then hopefully it either sells records, or generates money in other ways (such as making it a big enough song to star in the next Apple advert). It needs to be almost perfectly in time, perfectly in tune, and hardly ever break the 4 minute mark. These are the simple facts of pop and what people now accept to be common practice. Whether it makes them legitimate as an artist or not is irrelevant, because their target market (see: general masses) do not give one flying fuck about their legitimacy as an artist. Hell they barely care about much past the lead vocal and the beat/groove.

Now, I don't know about you, but I can think of far worse business practices to make a profit than tuning a vocal, aligning drums to a grid and writing simply structured and predictable songs. Ya know, like dumping waste in a river/ocean/lake, aggressively preventing electric cars from being produced because there is too much money oil, animal testing, laying off 1000's of workers, extreme mark ups on the cost price, illegal business practice (see Telecom), lack of customer service...etcetcetc.

To get angry enough to actually post on a web forum that you dislike Auto-tune is kind of silly. If you don't like it, don't listen to it, don't talk about it, don't post about it, don't even think about it. It shouldn't worry you. Just go listen to the music you do like and leave it to the general masses to consume. It won't make you feel any better ranting about it on a almost defunct forum.

What will make you feel better is going and doing better in the music industry than these aforementioned pop artists. But wait, you probably can't, you don't have the talent/connections/personality to succeed, whether you wanted to or not.


/rant.[/quote]

That being said, do you do any pitch correction on vocalists that you record?

I've tried using pitch correction on stuff. It's actually really hard to make a bad vocal sound good on it. And I'd say when you're using on a good singer who's just a little bit out on a couple of words, it would be more time effective and give a better result to get them to re-record the line. The use of it as a deliberate vocal effect is an entirely different matter.

Yeah, as a deliberate effect, it can be awesome.

Also, my soundcloud plays are up by 1100% this week. lolwut

[QUOTE=BenJammin;18595921]Also, my soundcloud plays are up by 1100% this week. lolwut[/QUOTE]
You had 11 more views than 0? Lol :p

[QUOTE=FunkMetalBass;18595855]That being said, do you do any pitch correction on vocalists that you record?[/QUOTE]
On a project I just worked on I had to. It was requested by the producer. We didn't flat line anything, just kinda evened it out. But my main thing I've got going on with this dude I'm not. Well, actually on one song I might have to. It comes down to more than just "re recording another take". What if you don't have access to the same mic you used on the original session? Then you have to go through the cluster fuck of gain matching and EQing the new take to sound like the old mic. Whilst doable, it's easier just to shift the note up, no harm, no foul.

As FB says, it's really hard to get a bad take to sound good without noticeable artifacts. You have to have the performance there (think in terms of it's hard to make a bass tone sound good at the mix if it aint there in the first place), and if it's all basically on, you can make the decision to make it 'perfectly' on. Usually that means shifting it like 1-10 cents up or down, and not even touching transitions to notes.

I dropped the cash on Melodyne Editor (with Direct Note Access) after working on this project. You can change a fucking minor chord to a major just by shifting one note!

[QUOTE=Convectuoso;18596317]You had 11 more views than 0? Lol :p[/QUOTE]

...not far from the truth. :(

I hear you man :(

I've had 78 plays this week. Out of my total of 358.

lmao

[IMG]http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSjkmVO-ShWzZKTxlRqzXtlqDy9WqrMT-BC1g8Lf_oLh7D3KZXgCw[/IMG]

[IMG]http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQHDmSOqLsCbtRskLhqhu4QO8w03eojf3S-XC38VVj7NsIPX1M[/IMG]

[IMG]http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTFyGovFxE3f-XGeJGV8kp1JhZ1EQpQdyOlEYPemFDYUWPSifEv[/IMG]

[IMG]http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSnm8V7qFL4_SCXGz8MKJAkIPOjrmRKvzcIpkQKS0Qv6ogmdTrU[/IMG] (The foam thing not the mic)


All coming my way very soon XD

[QUOTE=FunkMetalBass;18595639]"Pop" is an unfortunate category for music. It's purely popular music, but the general consensus is that pop music is soul-less profiteering, and that's not necessarily true.[/QUOTE]

See here's where I disagree, I think "pop" and popular music are completely different. By that definition, Offspring was pop, U2 is pop, etc... Anyway, I don't want to get bogged down in this, I hate unnecessary over-categorisation more than I hate pop. Eg. Nah man, that's not post-punk, that's more post-grunge because there's slightly more distortion on the guitars and the tempo is 5BPM slower on average.

[QUOTE=fatbandit;18595692]good pop music is still good music. too many people are snobby about music.[/QUOTE]

My problem is that too much pop music is just generic and derivative. See: Lady Gaga, the only reason she's anywhere is because Madonna's too old to appeal to Generation Y and she's won the competition of who can do the weirdest shit. Christina's latest album was blatantly in the vein of Gaga and it got shitcanned commercially.

[quote=Convectuoso;18596317]You had 11 more views than 0? Lol :p[/quote]

It would be 1 view last week, 12 this week. (11-0)/0 = infinite %. :thumb:

[quote=Convectuoso;18596323]On a project I just worked on I had to. It was requested by the producer. We didn't flat line anything, just kinda evened it out. But my main thing I've got going on with this dude I'm not. Well, actually on one song I might have to. It comes down to more than just "re recording another take". What if you don't have access to the same mic you used on the original session? Then you have to go through the cluster fuck of gain matching and EQing the new take to sound like the old mic. Whilst doable, it's easier just to shift the note up, no harm, no foul.

As FB says, it's really hard to get a bad take to sound good without noticeable artifacts. You have to have the performance there (think in terms of it's hard to make a bass tone sound good at the mix if it aint there in the first place), and if it's all basically on, you can make the decision to make it 'perfectly' on. Usually that means shifting it like 1-10 cents up or down, and not even touching transitions to notes.

I dropped the cash on Melodyne Editor (with Direct Note Access) after working on this project. You can change a fucking minor chord to a major just by shifting one note![/quote]

Oh, of course. Although the MythBusters disproved it, it coaligns with the old adage that you can't polish a turd. I was just curious if you thought it necessary to touch up a great singer's +/- 7 cents variance or not.

[quote=funkyhoney;18596593]See here's where I disagree, I think "pop" and popular music are completely different. By that definition, Offspring was pop, U2 is pop, etc... Anyway, I don't want to get bogged down in this, I hate unnecessary over-categorisation more than I hate pop. Eg. Nah man, that's not post-punk, that's more post-grunge because there's slightly more distortion on the guitars and the tempo is 5BPM slower on average.[/quote]

By definition, "pop" is (or used to mean) "popular", but in a sense, I think you're right that they are no longer one and the same. Genres are impossible for me to keep track of anymore.

[quote=funkyhoney;18596594]My problem is that too much pop music is just generic and derivative. See: Lady Gaga, the only reason she's anywhere is because Madonna's too old to appeal to Generation Y and she's won the competition of who can do the weirdest shit. Christina's latest album was blatantly in the vein of Gaga and it got shitcanned commercially.[/quote]

Iit's true. The first time I heard her, I thought it was a new Madonna single. Nobody cared about her back in the day when she was the cute and talented Stefani G.
[url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NM51qOpwcIM[/url]

[QUOTE=Convectuoso;18595821]To put things into perspective:

Think of pop artists/bands/etc as a business. Like any business they are in it to make a profit. To make said profit, the music has to constrain to certain norms so that it will first be accepted by a radio programmer, and then the radio listener. And then hopefully it either sells records, or generates money in other ways (such as making it a big enough song to star in the next Apple advert). It needs to be almost perfectly in time, perfectly in tune, and hardly ever break the 4 minute mark. These are the simple facts of pop and what people now accept to be common practice. Whether it makes them legitimate as an artist or not is irrelevant, because their target market (see: general masses) do not give one flying fuck about their legitimacy as an artist. Hell they barely care about much past the lead vocal and the beat/groove.

Now, I don't know about you, but I can think of far worse business practices to make a profit than tuning a vocal, aligning drums to a grid and writing simply structured and predictable songs. Ya know, like dumping waste in a river/ocean/lake, aggressively preventing electric cars from being produced because there is too much money oil, animal testing, laying off 1000's of workers, extreme mark ups on the cost price, illegal business practice (see Telecom), lack of customer service...etcetcetc.

To get angry enough to actually post on a web forum that you dislike Auto-tune is kind of silly. If you don't like it, don't listen to it, don't talk about it, don't post about it, don't even think about it. It shouldn't worry you. Just go listen to the music you do like and leave it to the general masses to consume. It won't make you feel any better ranting about it on a almost defunct forum.

What will make you feel better is going and doing better in the music industry than these aforementioned pop artists. But wait, you probably can't, you don't have the talent/connections/personality to succeed, whether you wanted to or not.


/rant.[/QUOTE]

Whilst I have my own grievances about autotune and music and purity and all those clichés, I can understand why pop music does it. What I can't understand is when the vast majority of mainstream music and "urban" music (don't even get me started on the racism that is "urban") tend to use autotune as an effect on every song. I understand it was a cool effect like when kraftwerk used it, but now it's just old and sounds truely horrible. I mean black eyed peas, victoria beckham, Ke$ha and all manner of other nonsense. I mean there's not even an attempt at a song, it's just autotuning flat vocals, often even rapping http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSD4vsh1zDA

Lady Gaga is awesome. I don't like her music very much but she understands exactly what you have to do to be hugely rich and famous - all the crazy outfits are what make her a success, and I can't think of anyone who works harder just to keep people talking.

Stefani Germanotta was never going to be that famous because when you're a really cute girl singing songs, so what? Everyone has seen that already. Her music is nothing particularly unique, it's just the same old kind of thing, but when you throw in all the weird outfits and media attention that generates - bam, superstar. That's what being a huge pop star is about these days: the most important thing is media attention, secondary to that is the video clip product, and third placed (if that) is the actual music.

She knew exactly how to play the game and did it, so I say, fair play to her. I don't think her music is terrible, the two songs I've heard I'm pretty down with.

Hottest chick going, love it.

Love the Dirty Loops cover of Just Dance too, those kids are tight.

Speaking of stupid music, I found a track I did a while back, but forgot to upload. It's full of dumb synths and arpeggiator abuse.

[url]http://soundcloud.com/ben-lesser/the-lost-shore[/url]

Selling some stuff

[url]http://www.talkbass.com/forum/f213/fs-eventide-pitchfactor-%24300-cad-794858/[/url]

[url]http://www.talkbass.com/forum/f213/creation-audio-labs-holy-fire-distortion-overdrive-%2470-cad-794854/[/url]

I'll knock another $10 off if anyone from here buys either one of those.

Holy Fire is already sold. :)

Pitchfactor still up for grabs.