Hi tedm, just wanted to say that I've listened to bits of your last 3 music samples... interesting stuff. I'd like to offer some constuctive criticism: 1) lighten up on the effects. Your playing is getting buried in the overall mix whith a lot of phaser/flanger/chorus/delay/reverb. Try adding just a little to enhance your tone. 2) practice with a metronome! This fast picking in this clip was all over the place - try with a slow setting and work the picking until its lock-step with the metronome. Then speed it up A LITTLE and do it again. Keep at it and it will eventually be easy. 3) keep at it - I've heard bits of musicality and melodicism in each clip, but its sparse. I hope you take this in a positive light. One good thing about recording yourself - you'll be able to hear improvement over time by listening to older recordings. Kevin
I appreciate the comments. I sync my tap tempo to the beat in 4/4 timing usually sometimes I only tap once or twice per measure so I have that visual cue, but my music isn't really meant to be robotic syncy'd and quantized to a metronome. I mean do I try to start the notes on the beat and stop before the next click or what's your method of having the metronome increase my picking speed?
Tedm, try initially setting your metronome (or click or drum machine) at around 120 beats per minute. Try to pick one note for each click, right on the click. Work that until you have it rock solid. If its too hard, slow the tempo down. These are quarter notes - 1 note per beat. Once you've got that consistent, you can either set the tempo faster, or try to play 2 notes per beat - one right on the click and one exactly between the 1st note and the second click. These are eighth notes - 2 notes evenly spaced per beat. Once you master that, again bump the tempo OR go on to triplet feel. That is, 3 evenly spaced notes per beat. Practice it as "TRI pl et". If you really put in the time and practice it perfectly at a slower tempo, it will be easy to do faster and faster. Also, you can do this initially with ONLY your pick hand and an open string just to get your timing good. One of the best bits of practice advice I ever got was: turn off all your effects and distortion. They will hide TONS of bad technique - if you can make it sound good bone-clean, imagine how awesome it will sound once you spice it up! Kevin
If I concentrate on just timing, I can do single notes or double notes at ~ 100-120bpm or higher, but if I concentrate on the playing and content, I can't guarantee a phrase will end up at the end of a measure or if I decide I want to play a sustaining note until it dies out, I have no idea where the drum will be at that instant. So I am thinking that where I need to work on is when I restart after a lead phrase, I need to start at the start of a measure, or it is skewed from that point on. However, to show you that I can hit an open or simple fretted or basic scales at ~100bpm, here's a non-musical clip of me basically doing that: http://www.tedm.com/mp3s/100bps.mp3 also, picked a clean drive DI patch on the gp-100, no big fx or delay here.
After listening thru the 1st few seconds, I thought you had it down, however you were playing whole notes, not quarter notes - but your timing was good. As soon as you increased the frequency of notes, your timing went out the window. Honestly, I think you need to ONLY worry about practicing your timing for a while. Your phrasing will need to wait until you can play non-musical ideas in time. Also, try practicing to a straight 4/4 pattern, not a swing beat... Kevin
I'm beginning to think so... But I find it hard to believe that someone has that much time on their hands (no pun intended). Kevin
I don't think he was banned, more that the threads had to be locked immediately after he posted them. It is certainly an interesting form of public performance. Bryan
I don't hear it like this, other than a couple of flub ups, I hear most of my quarter notes on the beat. So what you're saying is that if I stick to whole notes (@ ~100bps), my time is OK, but when I move to quarter notes, I'm off time? I hope you can hear many (most) of that last clip being in time with just a few flubs, otherwise we're hearing things different. However, I will try making some clips with whole notes only, I have nothing against slow playing, and would be curious if we'd agree at that level that I was in time.
I think these whole notes are right on the beat (@100bps), with the exception of a glitch or two when doing some 1/2 notes or slide up/downs. What's your take? www.tedm.com/mp3s/wholenotes.mp3
Hi Ted, oh my god you are striking again My 2 cents : I think your approach of cuing measures after measures is not valid for a lot of stuff. Bear in mind that lot of melodic lines are starting up any beat (eight notes) and ending after the beginning of the next bar , then often there is one bar breath and the melodic line starts once again up the one or the two or the next ..... Now i must admit i didn't listen to your clips, but according the comments i might be not that wrong. Then what do you think o the BOSS 1600 CD , recording box ?????