Musician Wanted

Guitar Hero II: Play in moderation

Jeremy Brayton — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 17:27:00 GMT

I received the shipment of Guitar Hero 2 yesterday roughly at Noon. I didn't disconnect the controller until 9:00PM (give or take 30 minutes). I took maybe a 1-2 hour break if you combined the couple of minutes in between songs. In total I'd say I spent a good 6-7 hours playing and I'm greatly feeling the effects of it.

Here's a basic injury rundown:

Left forearm is tight. Muscles got a workout but the tendons received a beating. This was the most agonizing injury as it made sleep impossible until the waves of pain subsided.
Left hand tendon tension focused at the second knuckle from the base (forgive not giving the technical term). This is a direct result of pressing and releasing the keys. A good indicator of the problem is that it hurts to make an O.K. symbol with my hand.
Right hand thumb blister. The strum key caused the worst blister so far and there's no easy way to prevent it. I tried just flicking the key, using my whole hand, or gripping it in different ways. If I could only somehow use a guitar pick, it wouldn't be so bad on my fleshy digits.
Various calluses on my left hand. These are due to the keys and me holding the controller in various positions.
Super callous on my left middle finger. I've had calluses from straight guitar playing and this beats all of them combined. After cutting into my thumb blister to reveal the inner damage (and to pop what was basically dead skin), I can only imagine what a beating it took.

Needless to say, I'll be taking a major breather from the game for a while. I could say it's fun and addicting but I think my injuries speak for me there. I knew I had minor pains while playing but it wasn't until I could actually quit for a while that everything caught up to me. If I could only devote a fraction of that eagerness to my guitar, I might not be so mediocre. I will say one thing though, regardless of whether or not the game improves my actual playing ability it has given me an appreciation for playing that wasn't always there.

As of now, I've started one song on the hard difficulty level and I'll probably be there for a while. The game does a good job of progressing in difficulty and speed so that once you've mastered the easy level; medium isn't that much of a stretch. I made the mistake of putting a song on medium the very first time I played on my friends PS2 and I couldn't come close to finishing it. Now? I feel like a demi-god when I can thrash "Killing in the Name" or "Dead" on medium and I've yet to even touch Expert mode.

Anyway the game is great and possibly one of my best purchases for the 360. Even though it seems short and you're essentially playing the same songs all the time, it'll be very hard for me to put it down. I'm thinking about taking a limited play session when I get home, hopefully my injuries won't mind a slight discomfort. Here's hoping I'm not going to be stupid and spend another 6+ hours on it.

My Music Gear

Jeremy Brayton — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 18:23:00 GMT

Guitar
Peavy Axcelerator [Red]($599)

Bass
Jackson C20MJ [Dark Purple]($199)

Drums
I have no drums. I don't even play drums though I can sort of keep a beat to some extent. I have drum loops with a more techno feel but I'm looking for straight rock sounding drum samples. I can tweak normal samples to sound as I need them musically but I've yet to find a good source. I want to use someone I know or someone that doesn't really mind me using it. I don't plan on making a profit yet but if I ever do make money, I'll be more than happy to offer something then. I'm doing this as a hobby now just to see if I'm any good so I don't want to pay money for something I may never use.

Mic
I forget, I'll update soon

Pedal
Digitech RP200 ($150)

Guitar cable->Sound card
1/4 to 1/8 converter picked up at a local Radio Shack

Computer
Refurbished Dell Dimension XPS B866
P3 - 866 MHz
384 MB Ram

Sound Card
Sound Blaster Live! 512

Software
Sonic Foundry Acid Pro 4.0 - music composition, track merging, looping, etc
Sonic Foundry Sound Forge 6.0 - track recording, track effects and tweaking

A steal
I got a steal on both full products from musiciansfriend.com. $150 dollars for both of them. Sure I don't get 5.1 like Sony's Acid now has but I want to make CDs with my music now, 5.1 can wait. I also received something like 6 acid random loops packs which retail from 30-50 bucks a piece. It was a great deal and still is. Sound Forge is up to 7.0 but I'm really not missing anything yet and I probably will plan to upgrade which will probably still be around $150 for the two rather than try to pay something like $5-600 for them all retail now.

The hookup
I have a 1/4th stereo chord running from my guitar or bass to the DigiTech RP200 Input. I run a 1/4th stereo cable from the output to the sound card as if I were plugging it into an amp. The problem is a sound card jack is 1/8th so you need a converter. No problem. I may not have gotten the best quality out of the converter but the recording sound is really quite good considering it is a PCI sound card.

Both the bass and guitar pick up quite well. The bass is a lot lower in octaves so it needs to be cranked more on the record settings. You can use a automatic volume adjuster to tweak the windows sound settings to desired levels and switch back and forth as needed. I also use this for headphone volumes when I want to record something only I can hear or want to crank up my sound when no ones around.

The thing is you don't really need a effects pedal to record your guitar/bass on the computer. I've been able to use just the converter in my sound card and hear a straight guitar sound (just as good as my pedal I might add). I use the pedal basically for the effects because a straight guitar sound is good but there's just so much more you can do with a guitar by tweaking it.

Conclusion
I'll post some pics of my setup when I have a better camera source. I have a cheap web-cam that won't really do this justice and I think by seeing the setup, you'll understand how incredibly easy it is. Anyone with a computer, a guitar/bass, their stereo cables for an amp, and a $2 part from Radio Shack can record music. You can even use Sound Recorder and tweak it to allow for bigger wave files. It does have huge limitations but it can work.

Software is the most important part of my setup. Without proper software all I'm really doing is just making different sounds. The software is what will pull it all together into a composition. If you're working on a budget I would suggest Acid Xpress, which is a free version of Acid. It only allows for 10 tracks but I believe you can consolidate tracks until you're down to just one. Take this example: you have a guitar part which is made up of about 6 tracks. You can merge them all into one track as a wave file then re-import just that track into Acid. Rather than work around music like this, I thought I would just buy Acid (the deal came along and I couldn't pass it up. No one in their right mind would have).

I hope this inspires some of you to start your own ventures. I truly believe that anyone can and should at least try to make their own music, if that's what they want to do in life. You may not want to be a musician now you can at least see how well you could do without spending a fortune on parts. This way if you really aren't cut out for music, you'll know (because it's all you, no one else helping) and you didn't spend an arm and a leg on the costs of trying to be a musician.

Good luck

My music

Jeremy Brayton — Wed, 10 Mar 2004 20:46:00 GMT

I've had a guitar since I was probably 8 years old. I never learned how to tune or play it so I would often tune every open string into a chord so that I could simply use one finger and play a chord each fret I went to. This in most ways is like drop-d tuning but I also fiddled with the last two strings to make it sound better.

I played a good number of years this way until I had a friend in a band show me how to tune his guitar and play some of the basic chords (Dane, thank you). I've been playing the right way ever since. Lucky for me he taught me harmonics early on too so that I could easily tune my guitar now by ear even though I still use a tuner (because I don't change my strings often and by ear doesn't necessarily produce the right sound).

Now I play every couple of days for a decent amount of time. My left hand tends to cramp very easily so I'm either not holding it right or not fingering things correctly. I really don't care at this point because I simply play songs by ear and have grown to get pretty decent over the years. Now that I'm somewhat good I've been thinking of getting some of the music out of my head and into a song so that others may enjoy it. This isn't easy being alone but it's never stopped me before.

I own two important pieces of my band: a guitar and a bass. I could produce them electronically but there's something about having the ability to play these that make this entirely worth doing. I have no drum machine or kit so I'll most likely use samples or electronic samples produced by some popular software. If anyone out there can produce a library of drum sounds for cheap (free) then give me a buzz because I'm looking for some good clean sound that I can manipulate into sounding heavy rock because that's the type of music I plan on playing mostly. I will have some slower songs (because I can't scream all the time) but for the most part I'm into heavier rock like Tool, Creed, (they're not that heavy but they're not Nirvana or something), 12 Stones, Spoken, Chevelle, System of a Down, P.O.D., 311, and a couple of others I can't seem to think about right now. I know you may not think 311 is heavy rock and they really aren't but they do play some good clean music that anyone can listen to, which is my goal as well.

I plan on using samples and loops heavily as I've just learned to play bass somewhat. I can tune it, I can play some of the notes but that's about it. What I'll probably do is come up with patterns and record those as cleanly as I can and then simply manipulate those into entire songs so that it sounds like I can really play well when I can only really play a particular pattern well. I can also lay on multiple tracks this way, extending the instruments I play so that I can have 2 guitars going at once (even though I'm the only one playing) or multiple bass parts that fit together nicely (as A Perfect Circle did on their latest CD). I like to think I can sing so I also have the vocals part down in which I can play a whole song in its entirety. My voice is my greatest instrument as I've had it in tune and been practicing on it ever since I first heard Michael Jackson's “Thriller” album on record (don't laugh, I'm still a fan and I probably still have the album somewhere).

I plan on making clean music that anyone can listen to. I realized relatively early on that whenever I hear vulgar language that I tend to repeat it whether its in movies, television or music. Music is probably the worst because the music itself seems to open up a door into your soul. The lyrics are then deposited there and possibly are never forgotten because they are truly that powerful. My grandmother heard a song the other day she probably hasn't heard in about 25-30 years yet she could almost sing every word of that song. Imagine us in 20 or 30 years hearing the first few lines of Naughty by Nature's OPP and then us spouting out the lyrics as if we were the ones singing it (I should know, I've done it before and I haven't heard the song in a good 5-8 years).

I'll make sure all of my lyrics are structurally sound as to not invoke any kind of negativity because we already have enough of that in music. I don't want to make music for one group of people but I'll have ways of including as many people as possible so that they can enjoy it as well. I know I will never fail though because I will always adore any music I decide to make into a song. I'm an extreme perfectionist so if I think that something is worthy of being in a song or an album then its definitely worth me listening to as much as possible.

I love the way computers have progressed for musicians because just about anyone can make good quality music now which was at one time seemingly impossible. I'd rather learn and play my own instruments but I realize that I often don't have the time to learn at the pace I want to. I'll be using some tricks and techniques to make me sound good when I can really only play mediocre. I'll do my best to break down the techniques I use in my songs as I post here so that others may learn from my success and failures. I figure if I can do this, practically anyone can if they have enough desire to do so. It's not about the money to me simply because music seems more natural. My current job seems too much like work and not enough like play time yet when I play music, I simply don't want to stop. If I can get paid to do something like that and make decent money why would I ever want to do something that seems like work? I realized pretty recently that the reason I know this technology is to simply better my career musically. Sure I could make good money as a SalesLogix admin, DBA, CCNA (I got certified in May 2000) or any other acronym positions but it would seem too much like work. I just hope the business of music doesn't make me want to slap the crap out of people involved in it. I have a feeling it might at first until I can start to produce my own music but I plan on doing that very early on because I can't stand someone trying to control any kind of content I put out, period.