Ableton Forum

+1 find more people to jam with. creating music in a vacuum is limiting.

I actually decided I should stay away from Live more and play more guitar / sing yesterday. I've got into the habit of staring at my screen for hours, fiddling with intrumenrs and coming up with mediocre stuff I don't finish. I'm planning on getting back to writing an song on an instrument and THEN recording it. I can easily put cool synths over a song at that point, but if I try to begin with the fancy synths I end up spending hours/days/weeks polishing a turd as I go along and becoming more obsessed with the production than the song. Sure, if you can PLAY synths and are a crap guitarist, maybe it's not for you, but if you're a "mouse producer" you'll gain from playing something "real" IMO.

Also, playing guitar IS therapeutic. Instant cure for melancholy.

Wow you guys really know how to motivate someone. Some of your comments are inspiring.

I think I'll stick with the guitar and focus on integrating it more into my production workflow.

Right now I'm treating my guitar playing and my Live production like two completely independent hobbies which is pretty stupid when I think about it...

I'll probably never have the soulful feel of Rory Gallagher or the technique of John Petrucci and I'll probably never be a truly good guitar player in the classical sense but I can still use my mad sound design and production skillz to make my recordings more interesting.

Wanna sound good? There's an Effect Rack in Live 8 called Guitar Hero, it's absolutely amazing, I jam a good hour on that every now and then. Record it and listen back to what you actually played, and laugh.

BoddAH wrote:Wow you guys really know how to motivate someone. Some of your comments are inspiring.

I think I'll stick with the guitar and focus on integrating it more into my production workflow.

Right now I'm treating my guitar playing and my Live production like two completely independent hobbies which is pretty stupid when I think about it...

I'll probably never have the soulful feel of Rory Gallagher or the technique of John Petrucci and I'll probably never be a truly good guitar player in the classical sense but I can still use my mad sound design and production skillz to make my recordings more interesting.

been playing for most of my life, it'll never amount to anything but amusing myself, love it, could never put it down. I do go through peaks and valleys of playing and not playing. once you get over the noob learning curve you can never go back, IMO. tip: don't keep it in a case, leave it out on a stand, preferably near your favorite chair. makes it much easier to get back into playing after going through a slump.

I know when first starting with live, I felt the total opposite as you stated in your first post (still do acttually)
I want less computer interaction and more real hands on. Synths are great but listening and making constant synthesized music does get boring to me. Nothing is more immediate to me than a real instrument especially one that does not need electricity.
Who cares if your not going to be a rock star, you know no new rock stars have really existed for at least a decade. I think the era of the mega star is gone and now its back to being a musician. Also who cares how old you are, Now that mega rock stardom is done it does not matter how old you have to be to "make it" If an 80 year old man was to make an album I liked I would listen and even go see him play. Age was for marketing. That era is over, so do whatever makes you happy.

Tone Deft wrote:been playing for most of my life, it'll never amount to anything but amusing myself, love it, could never put it down. I do go through peaks and valleys of playing and not playing. once you get over the noob learning curve you can never go back, IMO. tip: don't keep it in a case, leave it out on a stand, preferably near your favorite chair. makes it much easier to get back into playing after going through a slump.

I'm playing my guitar right now and you're so damn right.

I don't know what went through my head. I guess when I'm done making a track with Live and haven't played my guitar for a few days for some reason I tell myself that I should just ditch the guitar and focus on my PC.

But then I pick it up again and for the time I'm playing and an hour or so afterwards I know I should/could never quit.

You're right about the "noob learning curve". Four years ago I would have no trouble quitting, it would have been a relief more than anything in some ways. But now it's just too much fun.

As I said I'll stick to it. I work now and haven't got that much free time for hobbies. That's why I wanted to bite the bullet and quit pointlessly noodling around (even if it's fun) on my guitar instead of doing productive work with Live. But I'll do something else. I'll integrate my guitar playing into my productions and stop treating them as two different things.

Record it and use it to make other crazy sounds. You get the expressiveness of playing the physical instrument your way, and the infinite repertoire of soundscapes and effects that the computer supports.

merges wrote:Record it and use it to make other crazy sounds. You get the expressiveness of playing the physical instrument your way, and the infinite repertoire of soundscapes and effects that the computer supports.

This is exactly my philosophy.

In my tool kit right now i have Live, operator, sampler, M4L and my guitar.
I'm not using any other sounds other than sampled drums-(i've even used my guitar and sampleR to do away with those on occasion)
I would say about 90% of all of the sounds on my soundcloud page have come from my guitar, either straight, or heavily processed using 100% live and live devices either played live and in real time, or bent using sampler, M4L, or FSU using warp markers and re-pitching clips.

+1 for using it for crazy sounds!!

It is always good to have someone that can actually play something live! Programming will always sound clinical and wrong. Real recordings with the guitar can bring so much life into your sound!

+1 for selling it.


Oh wait, no one has said that yet.

make a track or two by just using the guitar... assuming its a acoustic guitar you could use it as percussion and all.

then...remix those tracks into the direction u want to try... and marvel at the awesomeness that is a "traditional" "analogue" instrument.

and i don't agree with the view that one has to categorize things and be best at one of those categories. u are the center of your "musical world" what ever u pick up might inspire u to be awesomer(yupp, thats a word now..)

Interesting topic... I just sold my electro-acoustic yesterday, time spent playing guitar could be used to deepen my understanding of sound design and elctronic music creation imo,

however after reading this topic it does inspire me to get my classical nylon string out and record some apregios with is and slam them into Sampler for some sound design.

if its ur only guitar keep it and pick it up when the mood takes you

Silence wrote:make a track or two by just using the guitar... assuming its a acoustic guitar you could use it as percussion and all.

then...remix those tracks into the direction u want to try... and marvel at the awesomeness that is a "traditional" "analogue" instrument.

and i don't agree with the view that one has to categorize things and be best at one of those categories. u are the center of your "musical world" what ever u pick up might inspire u to be awesomer(yupp, thats a word now..)

I have done that. Strangely enough even something as simple as playing two guitar parts, rhythm and lead, and nothing else is very satisfying and sounds pretty good. No complex processing or mixing, nothing. I just panned each part slightly to the left and right respectively. Basically just jamming with myself. And I haven't even explored all the possibilities Live effects, clip editing, signal routing, mixer automation, Sampler sound design and elastic audio offer.

I own an electric guitar for info and I mainly play it with my audio interface and software guitar amp/effect plug-ins. I guess those can come in quite handy as well as default Live has a distinct lack of good distortion effects.