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any guitar instrumental musicians here?


mbengs1

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I do, but it's not specifically guitar instrumentals, but improvisational ambient music.

 

Regardless, some questions:

Why do you feel it has to have a chorus?

Why can't you approach the chord progressions and melodies of the chorus as if you were writing something that had singing?

 

This is an example of the guitar stuff I'm doing in case it helps.

 

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I do, but it's not specifically guitar instrumentals, but improvisational ambient music.

 

Regardless, some questions:

Why do you feel it has to have a chorus?

Why can't you approach the chord progressions and melodies of the chorus as if you were writing something that had singing?

 

This is an example of the guitar stuff I'm doing in case it helps.

 

That is pretty cool Ken. Have a couple of questions if that's cool.

 

1. Did you compose the music around the video?

2. All the textures are cool, but the lead guitar tone really grabbed me. So round and full and beautimous. Care to share on the axe used and the signal chain? Wonderful tone.

Like the fact that the video has shots all the way up to Skylab.

Cool work.

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That is pretty cool Ken. Have a couple of questions if that's cool.

 

1. Did you compose the music around the video?

2. All the textures are cool, but the lead guitar tone really grabbed me. So round and full and beautimous. Care to share on the axe used and the signal chain? Wonderful tone.

Like the fact that the video has shots all the way up to Skylab.

Cool work.

 

 

Thank you for your kind words.

 

1.) No, the other way around, if anything. The music existed for months before I created the video, which was all done from video in the public domain.

 

Many of our videos are of outer space. We were inspired by the achievements of The Mercury Seven, and named our musical project after that. We're also inspired by Brian Eno's 1970s ambient work as well as "Shutov Assembly", Can, Stars of the Lid, Cluster, Godspeed, You! Black Emperor, Vidna Obmana, and others, although I don't think we really sound that much like any of those guys.

 

2.) I used a Girlbrand Kanji Girl guitar. I wrote about it here on my Eleven Shadows website, including text, interviews, and photos that I took:

http://www.elevenshadows.com/travels...rlbrandguitar/

 

463girlbrandguitar.jpg

 

The signal chain was: Girlbrand guitar > Pigtronix Echolution > Carr Rambler amp > Lawson L251 tube microphone > Neve Portico preamp > FMR RNP compressor > Apogee Rosetta 800 > Pro Tools

 

The guitar is one of the most beautiful guitars I have ever seen. Or heard. It's like magic. Someone from Germany emailed me last week, asking if I would sell it to him for US$6000. I said no. They are no longer made, and rarely sold. If I sold mine, I would never be able to play or record with it again. It plays like a dream, and I love the tone.

 

Thank you very much again!!

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This is an instrumental version of the "Linus & Lucy" theme from Peanuts:

 

 

The greater set/album is available for streaming here:

 

I play guitar on all of the tracks except for "Wes's Lament", "G-Fonk", and "Punktual", where the fellow who plays bass on the tracks I play guitar on, Wes Wienman, plays guitar while I play bass.

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If you're having a hard time composing a chorus, try and hear what a vocal would do in that part then just copy it playing the notes on the guitar. Our minds are well trained in hearing vocals sing parts to all the songs we hear. Often times thinking like a vocalist spurs that part of the brain which would place words musically in the song. You can later spiff it up using rests and double harmony notes.

 

I often compose music with the melody and harmony later. I'll get the chords percussion, bass and any key riffs recorded first with only a vague idea of what might be the melody. Then when I go back and add vocals, Its often writing those parts on the spot based on what I'm hearing at that moment and what I can fit into those time spans. A good deal of the lyrics come then, at least enough to be a skeleton to work from and I can then go back and rewrite good lyrics that will fit with that melody.

 

In essence its like jamming on guitar to a song you've never heard before except you're using your voice to express what fits well.

I have done it plenty of times the other way around, but I usually have to have a good groove rolling through my mind that's strong enough to carry through.

 

I actually had an instance Sunday where I played two chords and heard a strong melody and fully formed lyrics in a chorus. It was so darn familiar, I went and Goggled it up trying to find the author of the song via the two lines of lyrics I could remember. I spent two hours doing that and came up with zip.

 

I knew more of the song would come back to me as it often does. It was one of those things were it was so close you could taste it.

Next day the vision of the song was clearer and wouldn't you know it, it came from a song I must have written 30+ years ago and simply forgotten it. I pulled out one of my first original lyrics scrapbooks and there it was. I don't even know If I had recorded that one and searching through 5000+ recording on all media types would have taken months.

 

The mind remembers though. Don't ask me what trips it off like that. Sometimes it happens when you're half asleep in dream mode and other times its just creeps in by bits and pieces. I do know I've had a few experiences where the music was so loud and so clear, I was actually shocked by it. It sounded more real then actually hearing a live concert.

 

I can only imagine what a Mozart heard when he wrote music. He must have had that kind of clarity to hear all those parts and wrote down complete orchestrations without a single draft or mistake. Its probably why he didn't live that long either. No one can face the power of genius for very long and survive it physically or mentally. It takes a tremendous amount of discipline just to experience it no less control it. Its is a fine line between genius and insanity. Without the right training, genius can easily be infiltrated my human weaknesses and be turned toward the dark side and destroy those who stray too far form the path.

 

Sounds kind of corny but you'll find that to be a truth that permeates ever great writer/thinker/artist etc. Most of your great Masters envisioned Gods artistry working through them instead of the self center views many artists take today when they think its all "Me". I did this and I did that. Its ingenious at best because we all know we picked up bits and pieces from all the music we hear throughout our lives and if we have maybe 1% of real honest creation to give back to the art for art sake that isn't borrowed from someone else that's actually about as good as we can hope for.

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I find that a good tune needs three independent good ideas. I'm usually pretty good at coming up with one or two' date=' so I have a bucket full of snippets.[/quote']

 

I do the same thing creating blocks of music. When you're able to get 4 or more really well matched parts connected together it can really become interesting. Stringing them together becomes more challenging as you go beyond the normal pop tune format containing a verse, chorus and bridge. Those have to be strong too, but that can become even stronger with additional blocks added that take you away from the main theme then cleverly bring you back to resolve the song.

 

Like my posting in forums like this which tends to be too long, I often have to watch the clock on my recordings or they can wind up being too long for even me to listen too. Taking a surgical knife and cutting away the redundancy editing the musical arrangement and leaving only the best is often one of the harder things to do. I therefore try and keep a clock going when I'm tracking and attempt to keep things under 5 minutes.

 

 

I can usually tell when I'm tracking, if I'm getting board half way through the 5 minute mark, its almost always a musical arrangement issue. I'm not being challenged by having to think ahead and predict what's coming up, the part is too simple to play, and I'm left watching the clock counting the seconds for the song to be over.

 

Other songs may require me to write a script of changes that all need to occur within that allotted time. When you add in the ideas that may spark up along the way or those magnificent mistakes that could never have been planned and just fit like magic I may say screw the clock, I'm fitting this in no matter what.

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Like my posting in forums like this which tends to be too long' date=' I often have to watch the clock on my recordings or they can wind up being too long for even me to listen too. Taking a surgical knife and cutting away the redundancy editing the musical arrangement and leaving only the best is often one of the harder things to do.[/quote']This is true of any kind of composition. It's definitely true for lyrics! I've seen a lot of hopeful lyricists post lyrics that go on for pages. They might be great if they'd trim it down to the 25% that they just can't bear to cut.

 

A good college paper should start out at least 40% bigger than the target size, and then you whittle it down to meet the requirement. I always got my best grades by turning in a paper that barely hit the minimum (or often, even below it, depending on the prof), but where every word counted. Sorry, I don't edit my posts to do the same; they'd be a lot better if I did!

 

Sometimes I wonder if it isn't somehow true for paintings, too, but that's way outside my ken.

 

BTW, by "three ideas", it's not necessarily verse, chorus, and bridge. Ideas come in all shapes and sizes. There are great songs with great ideas, that have very simple, predictable bridges, for example. And of course, it's a good thing to occasionally toss the verse/bridge/chorus structure entirely. Whatever suits the composition. I confess I'm terrible at tossing the structure, but I'm not a great composer by a long shot!

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I find that a good tune needs three independent good ideas. I'm usually pretty good at coming up with one or two' date=' so I have a bucket full of snippets.[/quote']

I only write instrumentals because I can't sing or write lyrics and it's always been hard for me to find people who can come up with decent words and melodies for my songs.

 

I've got buckets and buckets of snippets. (actually boxes full of various types of tapes and several hard drives worth of unfinished riffs and chord sequences). Sometimes I will write a song and finish it in one sitting with all the parts intact but more often than not I will piece together a song over time.

 

Sometimes I might work on a verse section and or chorus section then put it away for a while and come back to it later. Sometimes I might come up with an idea and store it away not knowing if it might be a verse or a chorus or a pre-chorus or a bridge or an intro or an outro or whatever. Lots of times I may use an older idea that I never really developed for a bridge or a verse or whatever in a new song.

 

Lots of ideas never go anywhere and most pieces of music I've written never get finished. I've also forgotten way more ideas than I remember. Every now and then I will go through old files or tapes and hear stuff I don't even remember writing or recording. Some of them I think are pretty good but I just don't have the time to work on them.

 

Here's one that's kinda sorta close to being finished :

 

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