Intro (rant)
I play my guitar(s) a lot. I get lost in it. Love the way the neck feels, you know? I’ll play anything really but lately I am working a lot on my bebop chops. Playing over complex chord changes. That dense stuff. A lot of Monk. Ugly Beauty for example in 3/4.
Here’s a nice video of Monk playing while producer Teo Macero has forgotten (!) to run the tape:
That’s why we don’t need producers anymore… anyways… What is possible with this lovely instrument which is called the guitar is endless. I keep on learning, listening & loving. A lifelong journey. Enjoy the ride!
I am also working on guitar tones/sounds. Mostly using Reason. I am testing some new rack extensions and I am working on some impulse responses and patches. Sometimes I think my tone is very important while on other days I don’t care for that and just want to play.
Are we overly concerned about the sound? It’s all in the fingers… more or less.
And by the way: what is a good guitar sound? And how many good sounds do you/we really need?
Back in the day we used to own an amp with some pedals but now with software we own so much stuff we hardly ever use it at all. Plugins/REs, presets, impulse responses. Loading impulse responses in Reason’s RV7000 MkII is great fun I must say. It’s like owing 100 speaker cabinets or maybe even more. So probably I need to do my own IRs and just pick a few which are very useful. Stuff you can always depend on. Minimise the rack. Stop making complex decisions, just play that fucking guitar!
I guess the issues nowadays is not the amount of sounds, it’s how to find The Goodies. Native Instruments Komplete Ultimate comes with over 18,000 sounds. Who has the time to really audition them all and pick the ones he or she really likes?
How can we ben creative and productive when we have so much stuff available? Stuff we need to choose from. If you know there are over 2,000 bass-drums available in your system, are you sure you’re using the right one? Tomorrow you might feel there’s something wrong with the mix. Maybe it is the bass drum…
How much stuff do we really need? For me I will always return to my guitar(s). I can even use it as a sound source. I can sample drum sounds out of it. I can make endless bowed string sounds with it. A guitar and a sampler/editor is a killer combination. An imo it’s my most creative Self. Me creating all the sounds with guitar, bass and some cool tools.
Check for example this track I did with an acoustic guitar and the wonderful Ableton Sampler:
Or this one I did in Reason with just my guitar and a jazzbass:
https://soundcloud.com/raaphorst/ondertaal-9-persoonlijke-omstandigheden
Yes that’s me singin’ without pitch edit, autotune or anything like that. It’s not perfect but I like it.
Ok, thanks for reading this. Rant is over now.
Stuff too read (and maybe think about with your brain)
The week’s weekend edition will be minimal. ’cause minimal is the new XXXL. And ’cause I wanna go back to playing my guitar.
Keep it simple, stupid!
Keep it short and simple!
Keep it simple & straightforward!
Keep it smart & simple!
A newly released platform about creativity is posting some cool stuff. For example:
- Philip Glass on controlling your output and getting paid for what you make
And:
And for something completely different: working too hard can kill you. We hear this all the time but yet we don’t believe in it. Here’s some stuff for you to read:
- Death from overwork: Japan’s ‘karoshi’ culture blamed for young man’s heart failure
- In China, 1,600 People Die Every Day From Working Too Hard
That’s it for now. Have a marvellous weekend!