Friday, 26 February 2010

Little Gaps.. Huge Difference!!

Just working more on some mixes for my friend Greg, and thought it was worth highlighting how much difference leaving space in the bass line can make to a groove. Take the first example, the groove as I received it. Notice there's no rests in the line at all, but it does follow the kick drum quite nicely :
Audio Clip - http://www.liamgaughan.com/nogaps.mp3


However, just adding a little rest before the second note, really helps those first two kicks punch a lot better:

The technique was really brought to light to me by Dr. Dre and his bass player Mike Elizondo who commented once in an interview that Dr. Dre really opened his ears and showed him how effective the space could be used. It can be heard in use all over the first two Eminem albums, and 2001. There's a tidbit for the day.
Liam



Wednesday, 24 February 2010

Transcription : Jamiroquai - Seven Days in Sunny June [Bass]

Made this for a student, and thought it was worth a share. Great work for looking at 16th rhythms and really being in the pocket with the kick drum. Also has a great set of chords, plenty of theory to chew on for the harmonies. Oh yeah, it also is great fun to play!

Monday, 22 February 2010

Working on Ashananay mixes.. and the joys of Pro Tools.

I think everyone who has used Pro Tools for more than a week has shouted some pretty impressive obscenities at it, at one time or another, and today has been no exception. Aside from random lock ups, and spikes in the CPU usage which make recording nigh-impossible after inserting one EQ into the session, I've been presented with this more than once, today being no exception:



Of course you can remedy this by trashing prefs, but why should we have to do that every time we want to just get on with some bloody work?! And why does it even happen in the first place? No one has any real answer, apart from regurgitating Digidesign spiel which covers their lazy asses for having such a buggy program.

That aside, I did manage to get a decent mix going. Mixing works okay (for the moment) as I can just crank up the buffer size and get to work, but if I want to track anything that's a different matter. I have to load a new session and record the new tracks there, and use the Import Session Data command to get it into the mix. I hate working this way, I had none of this trouble using a USB MBox2 Mini, and Pro Tools 7. Now I use a Firewire M-Audio interface (yes with the recomended Digi firewire card as well) and it's always been a real mess or various errors. It's about time they scrapped the entire program and started again seeing as some of the code is over 11 years old, and on top of that the developers have admitted themselves on the DUC that they daren't change some of the older code because they have no idea how it works. Great. To think I rely on this program to make some sort of a rep for myself, and sometimes even keep a roof over my head, continues to perplex me. It's certainly a love/hate relationship

Friday, 19 February 2010

New News/Blog Page

Hello there world! This is my first post to my new blog, which will hopefully replace the news page on my website. I also hope to offer the odd tutorial, lessons, sheet music etc. Just random musical offerings of all shapes and sizes.
Thanks for reading
Liam