Alright...I'm just tossing the idea out but don't really have anything to offer. I thought it would be a cool idea if folks recorded a bass/guit/whatever track that they're comfortable with and then posting it up here.

Then let someone else grab it and work their own licks into it. Hell, different people could be putting different shit to it at different times coming up with not just one mutated version but many.

Kind of like what was done in the poetry section last year, people can just add on to something to see where it goes. If one version sucks it'll just be dropped or refined until everyone has a polished multi-track recording.

I suppose one would have to assume the basics...like they have the equipment/software to record it onto the computer and then server space to dump a huge file for download by other people on the boards.

Even if the stuff comes to nothing folks like me could use someone elses tracks to practice on and hopefully we'd all benefit in some way.

...until someone snags our hard-worked community music and goes and makes a million bucks off of it on MTV without kicking down some props to the troop here at TDN. But we're all cool folks here, right? Besides if someone did that we'd just have to lynch their sorry asses.

I figure since I don't have the op to jam with people in person this could be another avenue to venture down. Who knows, some cool music might come of it all.

Again, I might never participate in this but it sounds like an idea with merit.

Got a bass track if someone's interested. It's a rough draft though.

Damn...
I've been thinking about something like this for a while. It's a good idea. I can't say I've actually got anything I can put up at the moment, but I'll keep it in mind while I'm recording.

I'm in... preferably on bass, but piano or sequenced stuff is fine too.

Maybe we could pick a key to get everyone on a similar track?
I'd probably vote A minor, because it works well with both E and dropped D tunings, and is easy as hell on a keyboard.

Anyway, I'll pitch an idea as soon as possible.

Im a drummer with a recorder, so talk to me if you need me.

i play bass too...if this picks up...we'll see what happens..

so i'll check back everynow and then...

i have recording ability so yeah...

Sweet...so the next step would be to just throw down.

I wouldn't even worry about it being a polished piece. Hell, let it be two minutes of some nice straightaway playing and I think most folks would be forgiving if there's some quirks or blatant fuckups in it.

psilomind's idea of sticking with a certain key might be useful..for the edjumacated musicians that know what it means to play in Am..which I don't ; ) I suppose that means pick an Am scale and work within those boundaries but uh...I'll have to get past that learning curve first.

Don't hold back and wait, rummage through what you have and select something to upload. I suppose there's also that whole 'constructive cristiscism' bit that's bound to come along with something like this but what the heck, leave your ego's at the door, right?

i might be able to participate but all i'm good at is writing one or two riffs but not being able to dedicate myself to hammering out a song i feel satisfied with

and i don't know theory/key/scales etc.. i just do my own thing and fuck with notes until i figure out what fits and what doesn't.

primarily what i like doing is just providing ambience/feedback/pickscrapes etc, kind of a nice trippy background sound that never really goes anywhere for the most part... when I try to get into making a kickass climax i just go into what feels like cliched metal.

i play acoustic guitar and electric bass so i'll write something and tab it out and i'll just post it on here and someone else can record it as i have no means of recording as of right now. is that cool?

I'd be voting for A Minor as well.
It's just gotta be the easiest for most instruments. Do you guys record to a set tempo?

Keen to see something up!

As Tant said, we may end up with more than one variant, so more than one bassist, or guitarist shouldn't discourage.

So when is someone going to post something? Looks like bass is taken, but we'll see. I could chop and arrange and mix and master.

I don't think it matters if someone lays claim to the bass or any other instrument. Meaning, if you play and can upload it than do so and folks will just have a smorgasbord of talent/instruments/styles to choose from. Just slap some of your talent down and let folks have at it.

I'd like to offer stuff up but I'm sure someone would probably say, "Well fuck, that shit Tant's playing almost sounds like the riff to H...." Being as how I don't have any original stuff of my own I'm a bit limited on the input at this point. Give me a few more months and maybe some of that practicing will morph into something unique that I could call 'my own'.

here's something i made quite a while ago (1-23-04) and it's kind of what I'm talking about in terms of ambience, it's fairly long (6 mins) and there is a brief part where I wanted to try to up the intensity but it sounded kind of crappy, other than that it's nice and trippy and maybe I could be of use in collaborating some sort of intro/outro to a louder piece.

some bass + drums throughout this kind of thing would sound good too, perhaps.

http://www.angelfire.com/hiphop3/hol...ty/1_23_04.mp3
4.5 mb

Ok...
This is a bassline from another song which I've come pretty close to finishing, but I thought it'd be fun to see what someone else could do with it.

Have a listen

I'm in it as much as anything for a bit of old fashioned collaboration. It may be interesting to see how different two versions of a song turn out.

Go nuts.

(let me know if it's not worth bothering with, I won't mind)

100 beats per minute,
A minor

I like it a lot, especially towards the end... I'll try to write something with it in mind.

That ambient thingy Holy made is pretty cool too. Maybe throw some chimes and a subtle tribal-ey beat in there. I think it would be awesome.

We need more people.

Elgyn the bassline was real cool.

Don't take this the wrong way but it sounded very POD like, and POD would be okay if they weren't so... well... never mind. The point is they have some nice grooves and yours kind of reminded me of that in a way.

Then it sounded like you were about to go into aerials at the end.

whoa...
I've hardly heard POD's music. Certainly not an influence, if that's what you're suggesting. I'll post the full song of mine when/if there's any other work done on it. Having only heard one POD song, I can't say for sure, but I'm pretty sure it's not their style.

Not that I'd particularly care anyway..

no it doesn't sound influenced, but they have those kind of funky, reverby like bass lines sometimes.

i'd like to put something acoustic on it but i don't have an acoustic guitar and i'm not sure what "key" you are playing in, by which I sort of mean "pattern"... since my way of recognizing what to play and what not to play is kind of based upon the pentatonic patterns of the notes that the riff consists of.

to a loose degree.

Hey that's cool. There's lots of nooks and crannies in there to play guitar to. I shall now go and piddle the fretboard.

I was piddling to Holy's after sparking up and ended up in some remote tangent 10 minutes after the mp3 stopped playing.

is that...... good?

Sure it is. I just ended up spacing out and obsessing over some particular fingering or repetitive lick and realized a little later that the music had stopped playing. = )

I'm a pretty decent guitarist, and I'd love to lay down some tracks for you guys. I'm working on a song right now for my class, and if all goes according to plan I'll have a drum track (a tabla loop I found), two guitar tracks and a bass one. Though I may substitute one of the guitar tracks or the bass one and use vocals instead, because we can only have four tracks.

I'm also somewhat of a decent singer. I guess I could do a cover of a song and post it on here and see what you guys think. If it works out ok I could put some vocals over any kind of finished product that may pop up.

By the way, great idea Tantobourne. I bet a lot of people have thought about this (myself included), but none of us actually put forth the effort to get it rolling. Good work.

I've got a few neat riffs I've come up with lately and I could post them in a few minutes probably.

well i'm not sure this is up anyone elses alley, but how about we write a porno song?

That was just me messing around with my digitech rpx400.. I finally set it up to record today after having had it since christmas, and though it's hella conveniant I can't stand how damn digitally it sounds, the distortion sounds like someone taking a dump, especially the recto model, yet it sounds find coming out of my amp (well, usually it sounds tolerable, but sometimes I randomly notice the harsh digitalness)

So anyway, one nice thing though (about direct recording) is the acoustic sim, damn it sounds spiffy once I amplify the hell out of it so I can hear it.

Does anyone have any tips on how to not make your direct recording sound so damn chunky and artificial?

Or should that be rectal model?

I'm just downloading your (first) song Holy. Maybe I can add wierd/cheesy synths or some drums.

the first song sounds pretty good as it was recorded with my comp mic...

the distortions sound sucky directly into the comp from the rpx400, but going into the amp they sound adequate for the most part, which was how the first file i posted in here was recorded.

i should probably ebay this thing (it's in like new condition)

Thought this might help some people:
The A Minor Scale

Though, you don't really need to know that... but it wouldn't hurt to learn.

Anyway, me wrote a sort of La Mer-ish bassline for Elgyn's thing, again in Am (err, technically B Locrian). I should have it uploaded sometime today, so long as my brother doesnt steal my bass for band practice.

I just noticed this thread.


Seems like a great idea.

I play piano and I have a fairly decent keyboard (Yamaha MotifES8) that I can play around with sounds and sequences on.

A minor is an easy scale...

This is a great idea, but not for me. I don't think I could create music with an ensemble...with no ensemble. I don't know. You guys have fun. Besides, I'd be the nth bassist.

Locrian!?!?

Are you serious? I rarely hear anything written in Locrian. I have got to hear this to believe it. Are you sure that you're in Locrian? It takes a very skilled composer to make a piece work in locrian, my guitar teacher has written a set of preludes in the 7 modes and the one in locrian is very twisted and 20th century sounding. Locrian mode is easily the least used out of all modes. You realize the tonic chord must have a flatted fifth.... Is this song very metal? If it really is locrian I will be surprised at the skill of TDN musicians. Not exactly starting simple though... It would have been much easier to just start with something in straight up a-minor.

Well, for starters don't use the presets. They always blow. You're gonna have to edit the fuck out of it. It's time-consuming so be forewarned.

If you listen to Elgyn's clip, that he says he used A minor with, it starts on and works around a B. If I'm not mistaken, this would change the mode to Locrian (notice the half note between the first and second interval).

Either way, its on bass and chords aren't much of a concern. A less experienced guitarist would probably want to play along in minor though.

EDIT:
Heres a smidgen of the thing I wrote - www.angelfire.com/bug/poon_returns/slap_bloc.mp3

See. Nothing profound.

Well b is definitely the tonal center, but I don't think you're actually in locrian. If you could put a transcription up I could confirm this suspicion, but on first listen it sounds more like b-minor with reference to b-phyrigian and the tritone B-F. If I were harmonizing this section, I would probably start with an open fifth b chord which would utilize the F#. Because next you clearly have a classic phrygian movement similiar to "Reflection" of the B-C-A-B (obviously with embellishment, but in general the bass line moves in that way. Then you go to the tritone B-F right? From there the pattern goes to a variation. But the mode is ambiguous because the tonic tritone can be manipulated to function in any key.

Chords certainly should be a concern. Unless your writing 20th century counterpoint or gregorian chant or you're a serialist, you're utilizing harmony in some way.

i'm not using the presets, I realized they blew the first few minutes I spent with this thing.

i'm using MY presets but into the computer they sounds way too ... static-y.

Well, I didn't use an F# because that would make the scale phrygian (I think), and we're (or at least I am) trying to make it in or relative to A minor for simplicity's sake. After all, a lot of people here don't even know the scales, and confusing them with all this mumbo jumbo might scare them away from writing something. It really doesn't have to be that complicated.

Here's the tab:
That's B Locrian if I ever seen it.

By the way, you wanna join this thing?... we have a high bassist to guitarist ratio that needs fixin'.

I see. Have you tried adjusting your settings while you monitor your tone through your computer speakers? You'll definitely need different settings for recording direct than playing through an amp.

I believe my suspicions were correct. Let me explain, because many people would make this same assumption: all natural notes, b tonic, must be b-locrian.

I know you didn't use an F#. But the harmony under the b octaves would be a b-minor chord because you have B-D. See the thing about harmony (and if this old news to you, please bear with me) you can leave out the fifth of a chord and the harmony can still be implied. So what it sounds like is a shift from b-minor to b-diminished. Because you throw in the TT (tritone). That's the thing about locrian, the diminished chord is your one chord. Which makes locrian most commonly used in developmental, dissonant sections of pieces. Whereas the dissonance in this riff is so intentional that it doesn't sound like locrian. You've got minor seconds all over the place. This makes the TT sound intentionally placed out of key. At least to my ears plus the fact that (like I said earlier) the B-C-A-B thing is so classic Phrygian.

Alas I would only compound the problem, I'm a guitarist. And I play nothing else well.

A side note. I would play this in 7th position rather than 2nd, fingering wise. No shifts. Are you playing it in 2nd to avoid using your low e?

well I can't really figure out how to monitor it (through the comp speakers vs through the amp) so I just fiddle with the settings, record a chord, see how it sounds, etc.

basically the key seems to be cutting the mid, treble, and level of the eq down a lot and switching to the mic 4 cab option.

but.... I'm not using the pro-tracks or whatever software they gave i'm just using cool edit, so I haven't messed with most of the recording features they mention in the book, and I'm not sure how to set up a monitor through cool edit.

Damn, there is some crazy theory talk going on in here. I love it! The two of you definitely know your shit, as far as modes go. That's pretty respectable, as not many people know anything beyond major/minor and the occasional harmonic minor.

Thanks I think. It's really a very logical system, most of the time....

Not to mention the fact that my form and analysis class obliges me to know what I'm talking about....