PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Off-Topic not as easy as it looks

over spring break we got together and messed around with the tracks part. we had a heck of a time stayin with the beat. its easier to just play together. its nice havin extra guitars and parts though. still need to figure how to have parts sometimes and stop in others. how do you hear other parts in songs we want to make? is that what they mean by polished? some songs we want to do just sound like real songs. like radio songs. i dont know how to say it. the production parts.

Staying on the beat.... this is a critical musical skill to learn. If you're planning to do any sort of studio recording, you must learn to play in time and stay on the beat. And it's not as easy as some folks think. It's easier just to play together..... that's because none of the players can follow a beat either, and you can all wander aimlessly as a group. Don't use a click.... use the drums in the song. Be sure you can hear the beat clearly. If you're playing too loud to hear the "on time" parts.... turn down and learn to play on the beat. Kill 2 birds with one stone.... stay on the beat and play at lower levels, both of which tend to be hard for beginners. Practice keeping the beat.... when you're listening to music... start singing along... have someone else turn the volume down to zero for 5 seconds and you keep singing.... after 5 seconds they turn it back up. See if you are with, behind, or ahead of where the song is. As you get better, make it longer. Professional musicians can keep the tempo of a song very consistent from start to finish. It's a skill everyone should have.... especially drummers who are some of the worst offenders.

Parts that stop and start... I'm assuming you mean a piano or guitar part that comes in on certain areas in the song and not in others. I use a DAW to do that on my songs. Each instrument in it's own track and an automation volume envelope in the track to control when it comes up or down in volume. Real Band allows you to use volume envelopes.

How do you hear other parts in songs we want to make. Not sure I understand this question. This could be any number of possible answers. Obviously, I can't hear parts in your songs that aren't made.... but I'll jump to a conclusion and say.... perhaps you're talking about how does one come up with a part for a song that one is working on. This goes to the experience level of the writer/producer. The more you know about this aspect of working on music..... mostly from doing it time after time in live settings, it becomes easier. Nothing beats being on a stage in front of people and trying night after night to be creative, for teaching you how to come up with parts in songs. (Is that what you meant?)

Polished ... to me means, I have taken the rough and raw waves, put them into a workable song, and then used my skills with mixing and engineering to smooth over all the rough edges. I use EQ to shape the sound of the individual tracks if they need it, adjust the levels with envelopes so they fit appropriately in their proper place, and use some reverb to give it some space. I remove all the clicks and pops, smooth out the transitions and edits, and make the song as "polished", or ready to go to radio or TV for airplay as I can get it. A bit of limiting and compression and some other things, are all a part of this polishing stage. Some folks incorrectly call it "mastering", which is a very similar process but applies more-so to doing this with a group of songs to make them all cohesive and consistent for an album/CD project. I use both terms..... polishing and also small "m" mastering. To me, the same thing.

hope this helps

You can mix your tracks exactly the way you want them in any DAW. You can create stops, holds, etc by selecting the appropriate chord options in BiaB. RT's and RD's are amazing but you have to be the engineer and producer - just like you would if the actual RT/RD musicians were in your studio. My solution to this when I started was read, read, read. Staying on the beat? RT/RD's are played by top tier musicians. Let them establish the rhythm and hang in.

J&B

I am.

Oh wait, all I saw was your sig...

When you mentioned specific parts of a song that's called doing a cover. Biab it not set up to do good covers because of copyright issues but it's great at creating good jam tracks in all the different styles. If there's a specific beat, bass line, guitar lick or whatever you'll have to record those yourself or many times you can find those parts online. Youtube has lots of good backing tracks that people have done and just posted for free. Just search the song name and the words backing track.

I'm not saying to use these to replace Biab or RB although if you find a good backing track, why not? You can take those parts and either use them as a loop or put it on the audio track. This is explained in the various PG videos.

Bob

If you're using BIAB, use F5 to turn on and off parts. If you're using RB or another DAW, just use volume envelopes or mute where you don't want them to play.

As for timing, it's very important to learn to play in time, that's a given.

However, there are songs out there where the tempo changes as the song goes along. For example the chorus may be sped up a little bit from the verses. You'll have to learn to listen for that in your covers and adjust your tempos accordingly. That is one possibility that could be causing it to not seem to feel right like the songs you hear on the radio when you're playing to a steady beat.

The way you learn parts to put in your production is by listening preferably in good headphones so you can hear all the parts in songs you want to emulate - what instrument, when did it come in, where was it panned. Then it's trial and error in your own productions.

Hope that helps you some.

gettin' better and figurin' things out. we turned us down a bit and the tracks up. now were just playin like band. nice have extra parts in there. jazz i will have to look for those. are they separate tracks? thanks for all the help.

It depends on what Styles you have purchased.
For Jazz, just go to the StylePicker and Select Jazz from the Category options

Easiest way to train your "staying with the beat" skills is to start small. Take a familiar song slow it down. You have that capability without changing the pitch. Take a short phrase lets say just 8 bars. Play your rhythm guitar along with the Bass, rhythm Guitar and Drums, mute the other channels if there are 4 or 5 parts. Some people say count the beats, but I have never been able to count and play at the same time(that's why I am not a drummer) Unfortunately you are not going to be much of a musician if you cannot play on the beat. So just don't challenge yourself at the beginning. Do a simple song that you'd like to learn and CONCENTRATE. Eight Bars at half time. Strum along, pick a song that changes chords every other BAR.

In 4/4 time that means you strum 8 times before you have to change the cord if you strum on every quarter note. I always cheated and skipped the last strum (#8) to give me time to change the chord. And actually that is OK most songs accent the 1st and 3rd strum of each bar. SO if you miss the 8th strum here and come in strong on the first beat of the next measure you are getting the correct feeling for good rhythm playing.

Gradually increase the speed of the track that you are practicing. In BIAB you can slow it down from 100 beats per minute to 5 if you want. The point is its much easier to practice parts of the song at slower speeds and then speed them up. But, there is also a very good reason to play the same song at different speeds. That is good ear training for "staying on the beat" just what you want to accomplish.

It is really quite basic train yourself to feel the rhythm of one of your favorite songs. 8 bars at a time. A short 8 bar excerpts of a song is real easy to create in BIAB. I assume you can do this or just post a question. I think the default setting in BIAB is always 3 choruses, and 36 bars or something like that. Change the choruses to 1 and start at bar 1 and end the song at bar 8. Enter a chord in the 1,3,5,7, bar. Loop the entire song and with the 4 beats count in you have a practice loop.

Have at it. I know this sounds like its too basic, but, do it. You will get better. You will train yourself to be a good rhythm guitarist.

videotrack sorry for saying that wrong. i meant to say jazzmammal not just jazz. i think i started typing and got distracted for a sec. ha ha. we do know how to play and play together just playin with the computer a stretch. we could play with a cd so we figured we were doin somemthing wrong. just needed to turn it up to be as loud as we play. that solved it. i like hearing those extra parts. they fill in the holes. i dont know how people will like it out at the bars but it's worth a try. need a lot more practice first

I believe you have a typo here. I believe you meant that you strum on every 8th note. If you strum on every quarter note the you would strum four times a measure. Note that I consider a strum one stroke, either down or up.

In my example I was using an 8 bar loop. Changing the chord every 2 bars. so there would be 8 total strums in the 2 4/4 measures.

For example
count in.........
4/4 Tic Tic Tic Tic
..1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8.. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 (dots inserted to keep the numbers inline with the strums)
| A / / / | A / / / | D / / / | D / / / | Repeat

However the original post solved his problem by turning up the BIAB sound so they could hear it over their instruments. If someone else is reading this post practicing along to BIAB songs is easier if you use headphones, as a individual player. As a group several companies sell headphone amps that allow multiple users to plug in and play and listen all at once. These units are great for practicing at low volumes in an apartment for instance. The only set back is the drummer who is not using a digital drum set.

Maybe try thinking of it this way....

1&2&3&4&

Makes it easier to follow. If you’re playing a guitar, mandolin, etc. with a pick and you’re using an alternating picking pattern with 8th notes over 4/4 timing, the notes that fall on the numbers will be downstrokes and the notes that fall on the “&” will be upstrokes. (Except when you intentionally vary the pattern or screw up).

Good luck, have fun and welcome to the PG forums.

Staying on the beat. When we down-sized (due to economic reasons) that electronic drummer couldn't keep good time at all in some songs it would rush, and others it would drag --- it just wouldn't follow us at all.

The more we played with it the better it got.

Of course it wasn't the drum machine.

The more you do it, the better you will get at it, and the better your internal sense of rhythm will be. It's like practicing with a metronome, only more fun,.

As I got better at rhythm, I noticed songs on the radio that had slight timing differences, a couple of which are (a) rushing the "B" section of the song (b) getting faster and faster throughout the song (c) dragging multi-beat triplets. There are more, and some deviations apply to some songs, others to others and still others are rock solid all the way through.

So now when I make my backing tracks, I sometimes incorporate slight, expressive rhythm changes into the track.

Like everything else musical, the more you do it, the more you find new things to learn, and that improves your skills and allows you to make music that reaches your audience even better.

Insights and incites by Notes