Modular/Hardware/Guitar live video tracks

yes it's far too noisy at the start. the audio is going straight from the interface into the camera. also it would have been good if the guitar fretboard was visible in the first part of the video.

had a lot of fun doing this. any thoughts?

Nice little jam. Don't care for the guitar, though. 

like the drum programming, bass, and synth chords a lot. Wasn't feeling the guitar either. The playing is good, but it doesn't mesh well with the other stuff. Maybe an ebow or single notes/chord swells with the volume knob would have fitted nicer. 

thanks for the feedback psn and Drum Up. i hear you RE the guitar part. it's not very techno. at least not the way i play it. it's been a long time since i used it in electronic stuff, i still play it and practice it (work in a music school teaching guitar), but i don't listen to guitar music. i pretty much only listen to electronic music. and Bob Dylan sometimes. can't think of the last time i heard any electronic music with guitar in it that i liked.

so it's weird to use it but with live sets it's much more fun actually playing lines. 

might try some other approaches next time.

the guitar is a nice addition to the purely electronic instrumentation, it adds something special imo. but i do think it would fit much nicer as a less dominating sound in the song, something that compliments the overall atmosphere in a subtler way. more ambient-ish. another idea would be to just build up that melody even more, maybe you wont even need the other instruments to support the song! the guitar melody is strong enough on its own. 

when i think of electronic + guitar sounds, im having these in mind (maybe you'll find them inspiring):

gaussian curve - broken clouds

skyramps - days of thunder

emeralds - does it look like im here?

  On 10/27/2019 at 10:22 PM, zoid said:

i pretty much only listen to electronic music. and Bob Dylan sometimes.

an odd pairing. I like Dylan as well, especially Nashville Skyline. Have you ever listened to J.J. Cale? His album Naturally is top notch. He's got such finesse on guitar. He's definitely more in line with Dylan, not electronic at all, but his playing style might be something cool to check out in relation to what mirror says about atmosphere and subtlety. Pat Metheny's work with Steve Reich on Electric Counterpoint also comes to mind for guitar style that might adapt nicely to electronic music. 

Try keeping the guitar but find like a nice 10 second loop of it. Then process it with effects, make it more subtle. 

  On 10/28/2019 at 12:02 AM, mirror said:

the guitar is a nice addition to the purely electronic instrumentation, it adds something special imo. but i do think it would fit much nicer as a less dominating sound in the song, something that compliments the overall atmosphere in a subtler way. more ambient-ish. another idea would be to just build up that melody even more, maybe you wont even need the other instruments to support the song! the guitar melody is strong enough on its own. 

when i think of electronic + guitar sounds, im having these in mind (maybe you'll find them inspiring):

gaussian curve - broken clouds

skyramps - days of thunder

emeralds - does it look like im here?

 

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thanks mirror! those three are new to me, i'll check them out :)

  On 10/28/2019 at 12:11 AM, Drum Up said:

an odd pairing. I like Dylan as well, especially Nashville Skyline. Have you ever listened to J.J. Cale? His album Naturally is top notch. He's got such finesse on guitar. He's definitely more in line with Dylan, not electronic at all, but his playing style might be something cool to check out in relation to what mirror says about atmosphere and subtlety. Pat Metheny's work with Steve Reich on Electric Counterpoint also comes to mind for guitar style that might adapt nicely to electronic music. 

Over the past 4 or 5 months I've listened to all Dylan's albums chronologically up to Time Out of Mind. still have Love and Theft, and Modern Times to listen to. then i'm done, i'm not going to listen to the Standards albums! I enjoy the contrast of listening to music that is NOT all about production and timbre, just the song. My favourite Dylan album is Desire. LOVE every song on that one.

i've never listened to JJ Cale actually, thanks for the recommendation, i'll check out that album.

Pat Metheny playing Electric Counterpoint is something I relistened to recently - i'd heard it before but i hadn't made the connection that it was sampled in Little Fluffy Clouds - which i really love.

  On 10/28/2019 at 2:48 AM, yekker said:

Try keeping the guitar but find like a nice 10 second loop of it. Then process it with effects, make it more subtle. 

That could be tricky given this was recorded live and there is no multitrack recording of it. but i get what you're saying, if i did record it i would do that :) thank you.

  On 10/28/2019 at 12:02 AM, mirror said:

the guitar is a nice addition to the purely electronic instrumentation, it adds something special imo. but i do think it would fit much nicer as a less dominating sound in the song, something that compliments the overall atmosphere in a subtler way. more ambient-ish. another idea would be to just build up that melody even more, maybe you wont even need the other instruments to support the song! the guitar melody is strong enough on its own. 

when i think of electronic + guitar sounds, im having these in mind (maybe you'll find them inspiring):

gaussian curve - broken clouds

skyramps - days of thunder

emeralds - does it look like im here?

 

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ok I checked all those out. Emeralds was my favourite of the three. they are all much more congruent than my mashup of jazz guitar and idm - the contrast of these styles is the problem but at the same time I don't want to dampen it down, it's who i am. will upload another video track next week if i get time!

listening back to the video, i'm hearing the incongruency of the guitar now really clearly. i think it's mainly the SOUND of it... hoping to shoot another video tomorrow night, going to try getting a more synthlike sound out of the guitar. not sure how yet...

Agreed the guitar doesn't add anything. Nice little garage tune other than that.

Here is the next version of this live track. I added a B section and changed the guitar sound to a more sinewavy synth sound by processing it with Max4Live. I think it's more appropriate now! What do you say?

tasty, really feeling the drum programming. Guitar works way better than before. So is your guitar plugged into Ableton, then? Might have been cool to modulate the parameters on whichever max4live devices it was running through at the end after you get the loop going. Just spitballing here, though, sounds really cool as is. 

  On 11/3/2019 at 10:40 PM, Drum Up said:

tasty, really feeling the drum programming. Guitar works way better than before. So is your guitar plugged into Ableton, then? Might have been cool to modulate the parameters on whichever max4live devices it was running through at the end after you get the loop going. Just spitballing here, though, sounds really cool as is. 

Thanks Drum Up! Yes, i was thinking about modulating the guitar sound actually... but the looper is recording the audio coming out of the max patch so i couldn't modulate it after the loop... the guitar signal chain is:

guitar -> Blackstar HT1 -> audio interface input -> Max4Live patch -> audio interface output -> Boss delay pedal -> Boss reverb pedal -> ditto x 4 looper -> audio interface another input

maybe i could try routing the signal from the looper into something else cause modulating it after recording would definitely be cool :)

Wow really feeling this version. Extremely sick. One of the best things I've heard here recently!!

Reminds me a bit of Luke Vibert.

  On 11/4/2019 at 8:49 AM, TheBro said:

Wow really feeling this version. Extremely sick. One of the best things I've heard here recently!!

Ah nice one The Bro!

Cool, love Luke Vibert. just got the Kerrier District rerelease on Hypercolour a couple of weeks ago, its amazing

This is lovely. I was getting Square Pusher/Shobeleader One vibes...i may have spelt that wrong tho. Looks like you had fun.

  On 11/4/2019 at 12:29 PM, Polytrix said:

This is lovely. I was getting Square Pusher/Shobeleader One vibes...i may have spelt that wrong tho. Looks like you had fun.

cheers Polytrix

i was mad into Squarepusher for years. Still rate him very highly but i lost interest a bit after Ultravisitor. Although Shobaleader One is pretty cool, i'd def love to see them live.

In 1998 i finished school and went to live with my friend (who was a student) in Glasgow. 3 of us were sharing a one room flat. We heard Squarepusher was playing at Glastonbury but we were horribly broke, so we hitch hiked all the way and went in over the fence as many people used to do back then. It took us 24 hours to get from Glasgow to the festival, and another 6 hours to figure out where Squarepusher was playing. We arrived at the tent to find out we missed the set by half an hour. There was nothing else good at the festival except for some West African drummers playing in a field, so we spent most of our time in the comedy tent. Saw Neil Delamere die on stage, it was horrible. Despite this the whole journey was a great adventure, it was the best and worst weekend of my life up to that point!

Haha! What a story! That's sad that you saw someone die! Jesus! 

Yeah, I watched some Shobaleader One on youtube just then. Seriously good.

Never been to Glasto sadly.

  On 11/4/2019 at 3:37 PM, zoid said:

In 1998 i finished school and went to live with my friend (who was a student) in Glasgow. 3 of us were sharing a one room flat. We heard Squarepusher was playing at Glastonbury but we were horribly broke, so we hitch hiked all the way and went in over the fence as many people used to do back then. It took us 24 hours to get from Glasgow to the festival, and another 6 hours to figure out where Squarepusher was playing. We arrived at the tent to find out we missed the set by half an hour.

I was at that gig, was just after I finished my leaving cert. I nearly missed it too, though I had no excuse as I'd been there since the Thursday (it was on in the Avalon tent IIRC, which was a small one I hadn't been to before so it took a while to find it). I think it was the one where his brother joined him on stage for a duelling 303 acid-off (don't think he'd released anything at that point), was great. It's funny you say there was nothing else good there that year, and that you've been listening to Bob Dylan, because he played that year and it was great! I remember it had been pissing rain and the clouds parted and the sun came out just for his set, played mostly the early electric stuff. One of the best things I ever saw there. No longer listen to his stuff much, but still love Nashville Skyline.

Like the jams, 3rd one definitely sounds the best, but I'm not completely lost on the first couple either, I think if the backing was a bit more sparse a cleaner jazzy guitar part would sit with them nicely.

If you've not heard Pat Metheny's Offramp album definitely check that out (it's really great), some really good integration of guitar with cheesy 80s electronic sounds. Album version of this is slightly different (and better), but not on the youtube.

Another lovely tune from that album, this one isn't at all electronic sounding, but still very nice: 

Also agreed on that JJ Cale album, the following one is great too, Really. Not heard much else after that.

  On 11/4/2019 at 5:04 PM, Polytrix said:

Haha! What a story! That's sad that you saw someone die! Jesus! 

Yeah, I watched some Shobaleader One on youtube just then. Seriously good.

Never been to Glasto sadly.

oh sorry not literally die -  "die on stage" means when a comedian is onstage doing their act but no one is laughing, and then they get heckled worse and worse "boo!" "get off!", it's horrible to watch. really painful. he kept trying to win them back, he wouldn't leave, but it just wasn't funny.

  On 11/4/2019 at 5:43 PM, caze said:

I was at that gig, was just after I finished my leaving cert. I nearly missed it too, though I had no excuse as I'd been there since the Thursday (it was on in the Avalon tent IIRC, which was a small one I hadn't been to before so it took a while to find it). I think it was the one where his brother joined him on stage for a duelling 303 acid-off (don't think he'd released anything at that point), was great. It's funny you say there was nothing else good there that year, and that you've been listening to Bob Dylan, because he played that year and it was great! I remember it had been pissing rain and the clouds parted and the sun came out just for his set, played mostly the early electric stuff. One of the best things I ever saw there. No longer listen to his stuff much, but still love Nashville Skyline.

Like the jams, 3rd one definitely sounds the best, but I'm not completely lost on the first couple either, I think if the backing was a bit more sparse a cleaner jazzy guitar part would sit with them nicely.

If you've not heard Pat Metheny's Offramp album definitely check that out (it's really great), some really good integration of guitar with cheesy 80s electronic sounds. Album version of this is slightly different (and better), but not on the youtube.

Another lovely tune from that album, this one isn't at all electronic sounding, but still very nice: 

 

Also agreed on that JJ Cale album, the following one is great too, Really. Not heard much else after that.

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holy shit! i can't believe Bob Dylan played that year. I had no idea who else was playing actually, we just wandered around seeing shit band after shit band. i remember thinking several times "this band is playing here because their manager or someone got them a gig here, it's got nothing to do with how much they have practiced and rehearse. what a bunch of shit"

very cool, thanks, i'll check out Offramp. one of my guitar teachers once recommended me Song X by Ornette Coleman which has Pat Metheny with his guitar synth. it's just a TAD too frickin weird though! Offramp sounds a lot more listenable :)

Enjoyed reading all this lol! Understand now!

started another track tonight. first draft: