#3 - Electronica for those of us who don't own oil fields

Holidays - the best time to work - are on, and work is the last thing on my mind. Somehow, the urge to just pick up the classical, or the electric, or the composition pad and lay down some practice is just not there. So I've begun to relegate an hour and a half to classical guitar everyday, so as not to lack practice when I finally get inspiration. As I read somewhere - success is when preperation meets opportunity. Lame. =/

What I'm more interested in, these days, is creating electronic music. I'm teaching myself Ableton Live and Reason, two really nice softwares. Ableton I love in particular, it's so great to lay down improvised riffs and beats while the music plays on, like a DJ, or more so like a band where you take on the role of any musician, while the rest play on. I had fun making dance-type beats and analog synth basslines, goofing around with syncopation, basking in this new (electronic) definition of sound. It's a lifetime experience in itself.

Reason is another unique software. Doesn't use too much memory, and a GREAT interface. I love the ReWire bit, and how you can simply route signals by actually swapping the wires around, just like real rack mounted effects which I'll be damned if I could afford.

I also saw this advert for Propellerhead's (I always have trouble spelling their name >.>) Record. It's a very interesting ad, and a tempting software too...but I think I'd rather get to a recording level playing for now.



Things of note
-It propagates the use of software based guitar and bass modellers while recording a band. I wonder if any but them best PC/Mac has the capacity to run latency-free guitar and bass through it, while recording drums, vocals and keyboards through their respective effects (reverb, compression and so on)? It sure would need a top of the line laptop...
- 1:32 "So we won't be needing this anymore. -half stack disappears-" and the bass guy is like, "*shrug*, if you say so!". Lol!
-2:14. The singer.
-2:25. The SINGER.
-2:50 The...singer. :p

Back to electronica; strangely enough, the uploaded works of YouTubers puts me off from searching there for music to let me understand the possibilities of these softwares. However, it seems to me that the trailer videos of software are good places to check out some neat electronic music (and that's my opinion. I'm sure hardcore electronica fans won't agree with me on this. If you are one of them - recommend me some music/artists you think I may like, many thanks to you.).

Anyway, for one, there's this. Reason 4.0's trailer.



The bass (dunno if I can call it that) and the distorted guitar in the intro was the slickest sound ever, to my ears...so gritty!

So I searched for the Reason 3 trailer, in hope of something similarly brilliant. Not as powerfull or moving as the Reason 4 video, but I wasn't disappointed.



The electronic bass again, this time with an army of frenetic effect modulations, and a nice driving guitar bit later. And I absolutely smiled (rare occurence. Sad, I know.) from 1:32 onward - great involvement with the video! And a nice resolution in the music after that...sweet.

Sadly, I can't do it. Unless I slug it out with this craptastic laptop (Intel Celeron 1.73 GHz with 512 MB of RAM, now you know my misery.). I dream of owning a fully maxed out MacBook Pro (among other - studio - things) some day, in which I'll do all my recordings, sequencing and live performance. I can hardly afford a sub-decent laptop, let alone pro-quality MIDI controller, interface and mics. Pop goes the electronica dream.

And speaking of 'pop', and then Dad will urge me to take up commercial stuff and learn KEYBOARD to accompany/record for other artists so I can earn a living. Really?! Keyboard is just a subset of electronic, and how the heck can one think of doing it if you can't even afford a laptop?

/rant
- - -

Think objectively, boy. Think objectively.

You have,
-a Yamaha C70
-a 7 string electric guitar, shitty processor (Digitech's discontinued RP300A), shitty amp (the ever-stupid Marshall MG10)
-a player who is semi decent at classical, demi-semi decent at touchstyle electric, a newbie at electronic music and otherwise a dab hand at PCs
-the shittiest computer possible

Surely there's something you can do in that?

...just kidding, he's screwed.

/CGKnight