Hello Folks, for the 1st time I actually needed a solo for a song: normally I collaborate with folk who provide melody and solos as I'm rubbish at both. On my latest track I couldn't find anyone willing or able, due to personal time/work/life/rubbish song constraints, to sing or workout & play a solo. I managed, rather poorly, to approximate a vocal track but couldn't get a solo happening. Every attempt I've made over the decades has sounded like a bass track played on a guitar! I resorted to BIAB to fill the gap but the solo instruments RealTracks I have are few & far between - in terms of guitar I could only pull up three different slide parts - one southern style solo, one southern style background and one blues based solo. No standard guitar solos anywhere. I even tried sax etc but the styles they were based in fitted worse than the slide stuff. I've looked through the stuff on the PG site but it seems I have to go through each RealTrack set to search 1:1 for soloists. Is there a more efficient way to find solo suited RealTracks than trawling? I'm prepared to buy a RealTrack set to get something decent but the process is arduous. Any/all help will be greatly appreciated.
Cheers rayc "What's so funny about peace, love & understanding?" - N.Lowe
In Realtrack Picker, click on the "Tempo" header of the column so that RTs are sorted by tempo. Then scroll down to those tempos that are around the tempo of your song. There's a bit of leeway. Usually, -10 bpm to +15 bpm is a reasonably good range of variations that work for most RTs.
For example, if your song's tempo is 93 bpm, then Realtracks designed for tempos between 83 - 108 (say 80 - 110) will probably work fine.
If you can't see all the text of a column in RT Picker, position the mouse cursor on the right edge of the column in the heading row and drag to the right.
For those who read this and are not sure how to enter Realtrack picker, have look at the top image below.
I have been able to find good, appropriate solos for every song I've produced that needed a guitar solo. (and I've done close to 200 songs using BIAB).
What version of BIAB do you have?
Alternatively, you could ask the guitar guys here on the forum to offer up a solo for you. Tommyc did one for me - he's does some amazing guitar work (posts many in the Showcase). ROG might give it a go. Herb (Guitarhacker) might throw one at you. Dave (BlueAttitude) does nice guitar work. PeterF has been putting out some sweet guitar... Why not ask one of them?...
Stanwell Park that's where the Citi Bank tv ad is with the hang gliders, next to where Lawrence Hargrave used to fly his box kites back in the late 1800's.
Ray, In Realtrack Picker, click on the "Tempo" header of the column so that RTs are sorted by tempo. Then scroll down to those tempos that are around the tempo of your song. There's a bit of leeway. Usually, -10 bpm to +15 bpm is a reasonably good range of variations that work for most RTs. Regards, Noel
Thanks Noel, That's a bit of a short cut and will get me there faster, thanks. Though it still requires an actual read of text/description to find a "solo" track. i'll give it a burl tomorrow.
Cheers rayc "What's so funny about peace, love & understanding?" - N.Lowe
ray... What version of BIAB do you have? Alternatively, you could ask the guitar guys here on the forum to offer up a solo for you.
Floyd Jane, Thanks for asking. 2011 is my version though I've bought three additional sets of RealTracks subsequently. I seem to have bought the sets that don't have much in the way of solos I suppose. I did start reading through the contents list for ALL the other sets I don't own BUT there's very little to indicated that it's a right for the solo maker. Searches based on SOLO are useless as they bring up all the demos of instruments "solo" rather than in ensemble. I'm quite happy collaborating but have yet to establish a rapport on forum within which I'm comfortable to ask. I'll get there & there's certainly enough talent around. Thanks again.
Cheers rayc "What's so funny about peace, love & understanding?" - N.Lowe
Rayc, you may also want to expand your search to include 'slide' instruments other than just guitar. I can't say what instrument may or may not work with your particular song but resonators, fiddles and pedal steel guitars all are slide instruments and a quick RT search produced a list of 200 instruments between the three.
I sometimes use more than one instrument for solos, so if you have an 8 or 16 bar solo, you could use two or more instruments to play different sections if you can't get a decent solo from just one instrument. If you get a one or two measure of a great riff, use that and then bring in another instrument for a number of bars and then cut/paste the riff into the solo again.
If slide isn't critical to your song production, pianos and electric pianos work with almost every genre we see frequently here on the forum and there is no shortage of RT's for these instruments.
I hope you get your solo worked out to your satisfaction.
It seems I was unclear. I want guitar solos but there aren't any - SLIDE GUITAR is the only type of guitar solo in my ensemble. As a short term thing I've comped together a couple of slide solos and added some effects to make it better suit the style BUT the song is begging for a clean, sparkling guitar solo to which I'd add delay and possibly a shimmer through reveeb or a TINY bit of chorus, of the sort Magazine, Souixie & The Banshees etc did (mostly with the same guitarist for those two & he used a Roland Jazz Chorus stereo amp). I've been through the demos online for ALL the available RealTrack sets and found several solo guitar parts but only found one that is clean and not heavily blues inflected & or quite noisy amp based (that's a prob as the noise often stops suddenly when the segments are stitched together much like some ride & crash cymbals in RealDrums). I'll get there. Thanks Pipeline & Charlie for you pointers. Pipeline - yes, I'm at the bottom of the hill that LH used. His boxkite, aero prop & lightweight engine designs were purloined by a couple of bicycle makers who became rather more famous than he.
Cheers rayc "What's so funny about peace, love & understanding?" - N.Lowe
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