How do you use the home studio creatively?

benmurray85

Bit of a meandering post this so apologies. 

For the past 10-15 years my guitar playing has been solely for gigging purposes. Ive knocked that on the head now and although I have spells of not touching a guitar for weeks occasionally I got the love back for it and can spend hours in my attic woodshedding.

Aside from guitar my other main interest has always been recording and the mechanics of it. I love micing cabs, messing withs mixes and all that. Im useless at it but I love it. However I find it kills any form of creativity. I find I can disappear into the attic with an idea but by the time Ive faffed with all the recording side of it Ive completely lost interest.

My main issue is I am useless (beyond belief) with IT. Id love to be better with the (sequenced) drums and electronic instrument side of things, i guess thats just practice though? Im hoping to repair my old macbook and use that solely up there for recording so at least that will be good to go but does anyone else has any pointers as to how to use the "studio" creatively? 

benmurray85

btw "studio" is a massive overstatement. Its a laptop with reaper and some acoustic foam on the walls!

TTony

benmurray85 said:

I can disappear into the attic with an idea but by the time Ive faffed with all the recording side of it Ive completely lost interest.

Get the idea down first.

As simply as you like / can, and then you can refine it in the studio set-up when you want without needing that original bit of inspiration and creativity.

I've started recording "ideas" just by putting my phone in front of the amp.  I got fed up of noodling around, finding something I liked, playing it for the next 30mins to refine it ... and then completely forgetting it all by the next time I sat down to record / develop it.  So now, switch on the voice recorder app on the phone and play.

Works for me.

benmurray85

Yeah i use the iPhone to grab ideas all the time. Thinking though (and I'm literally just realising this now!) I never ever go back to it to work on the ideas or take them further. I bet I have tonnes on there!

I think what Im missing more than anything is the interaction of playing with other people. I really need to work on my ability to use software to progress the ideas from guitar parts into "songs"

blobb

Can you generate synth lines with your set up? Grab a soft synth, pop a few midi notes into Reaper to create a pattern, record the audio for five minutes or so while you twiddle some knobs on the synth. Then grab a bass / guitar and start layering it up. I do this a lot and the movement you generate in the synth pattern usually gives you a good riff or funky bass line. You can add some percussive elements by shaking or rattling whatever you have lying around and recording that into your phone and importing it as audio.

Another trick I use is to plug guitar in and record some random playing for five minutes. Sometimes it's chord progressions, sometimes it's just nonsense. Then challenge yourself to layer it up as if what you played were deliberate. Give it a beginning, middle and end and no one will know it was originally just whatever came out at the time. Don't worry about making mistakes, there are no mistakes when you do this, just happy accidents :-)

spark240

I quite often drag a synth loop in, duplicate it a few times the play over it, trying riffs / chords etc.

I agree though, I do the same thing,switch on all the gear, spend hrs messing with plugging then turn it ll off !    

thermionic

I don't play in a band any more either, but enjoy recording stuff. About 3 years ago my long-term on-off collaborator sent me a demo he'd done on Fruity Loops on an old laptop. Very raw, but it made me feel like joining in, despite never really being into electronic music. He sent me the midi files but when I imported them they all ended up on a drum track. So I had to separate them out, and try and identify the various parts from the demo (throbbing bass, lead sound, pad etc). It was like taking it all apart and trying to put it all back together (using soft synths in Logic) to resemble the demo. Needless to say the songs didn't turn out anything like the demos, but it was a very enjoyable creative process. Then I added the occasional bit of guitar and bass, and again, not in my usual style. Took a while to find some guitar parts that worked, out of my comfort zone. Also very enjoyable to me was the whole production process, trying ideas, seeing what worked, looping things, cutting up and distorting vocal samples. Overall, probably the most rewarding thing I've done musically. We released a single on orange vinyl and it got played on Radio 1 - once only, and at 1:12 am on a Monday!

Before then I was very into post-rock - Mogwai, Explosions In The Sky, Godspeed You! Black Emperor. I thought it was something I could do myself - I'm decent at drum programming and playing simple bass lines. It was hard work doing it myself, mainly having to think of song structures outside the verse-chorus-verse indie pop I'd written before, when you don't have anybody to bounce ideas off. Composing, I suppose. I recorded 4-5 tracks of that stuff.

The other thing I do now is now and again I'll become somewhat obsessed by a classic from the past that I can play a bit of. It's very satisfying to work on the bit I know, figuring out all the other guitar and bass parts. It's very satisfying when all the tracks come together and it sounds pretty close to the original. Maybe not that creative, but a good learning experience.

benmurray85

Thanks for the advice guys. I think what Ive realised is that I really miss the interaction of playing with other guys. However thats not likely to change soon so what Im going to concentrate on is my ability to program drums. I think this will really help but my biggest barrier is that I'm absolutely useless on the IT side of stuff.

However I think Im going to purchase some drum software and try and get some tracks/loops together to jam over

hugbot

Ableton Live. the session mode specifically.

slacker

I use my studio (ok a tape four track, some cheap mics and a knackered drum kit) to write and arrange songs. I work on rough lyrics and rough chord progressions or riffs separately. Then I try to mix and match and complete both together. Then I'll record a song demo.

Catthan

When it's not for recording parts for other people, I though a backing track of a I'm working on in the DAW and record my playing-practicing of whatever it is I'm focusing on. 

Then listen back and make notes of what sounds shit  and go again trying to fix said shit-sounding bits

digitalscream

Why not get a cheap-ish (relative to how much you'd spend on an amp...) electronic drum kit and learn to play the drums?

I've found that the #1 blocker to me recording more stuff is that I hate the process of editing electronic drums, and it'd grease the wheels considerably if I could just play them. However, I have a couple of problems with that...

1 - No room for an electronic kit

2 - I have no rhythm

It's entirely possible you might have more luck on those scores

benmurray85

I can actually play the drums - arguably better than guitar! ;-)
I have been down that route in the past and I've found that the only way to get a great sound is to drop serious amounts of cash. I know you can get the cheaper ones but I never found one that I got on with sound wise.

blobb

^ Senneheiser DruMica is free (midi drum samples + some midi grooves). Not tried it but might be worth investigating? If you can get hold of a cheap ekit with midi out, you can use it as a trigger.

Neckwringer

Get a standalone recorder and fuck the computer off,much quicker to lay down idea's and just jam shit out imho.

Get a Zoom Sampletrack and rip off your fave drum parts n stuff.

benmurray85

Neckwringer said:

Get a standalone recorder and fuck the computer off,much quicker to lay down idea's and just jam shit out imho.

Get a Zoom Sampletrack and rip off your fave drum parts n stuff.

Ive been down the multitrack recorder route previously and although in terms of recording I find them easier I dont thinks theres a standalone recorder out there that can come close to a digital station in terms of flexibility.

Im not looking to jam stuff Im looking to create tracks. Essentially my end goal is to improve my knowledge and skills of recording and producing