Yes @joergkutter, it is a bit time consuming but not as bad as it might sound. The cool thing about it is that it’s like tearing apart an engine and then building it back up again - or maybe like tearing apart a house and rebuilding it? I always learn something new, or maybe hear or do something just a little different. Once I finish all of the drum tracks and lay my base and rhythm tracks down, I remove the original song track and am left with pure rhythm that my buddy can do as he pleases with - his style is somewhere between Gary Moore and Popa Chubby, so you can get an idea of the song style we typically play.
We’re getting ready to work out one of our original songs that we wrote back in 1971 when we were stationed at Submarine base Pearl Harbor called “Boones Farm” that we’ve modified several times already and we’re getting ready to do it again… A really great gig ender that leaves 'em all wanting more…
This might give a better visual of how I pull drums into my songs. I’ll start by loading the original song onto a GarageBand track. I’ll then filter and pick out the kick beat and lay that track while playing the original song. When I move to the Toms, I’ll mute the Kick track, re-filter the song to help bring out the Tom beat and then record that track while playing the song again. I then just repeat the same process until I have each drum sound played as individual tracks that I can then record and play bass and rhythm to. One of the cool things since I’m new at bass is that I’m also forcing myself to relearn how to listen to specific drum beats in order to better my bass groove. My ears are old and pretty worn out, so anything I can do to help focus on something other than the lead singer or the lead guitar player certainly helps… I just like, enjoy, LOVE making music @joergkutter.
Interesting. Do you mean you had imported a song’s audio into a single track and so you couldn’t edit out (or lift out) the cowbell?
You should be able to add new instrument recording anywhere along the timeline (or drag pre-recorded tracks anywhere) but if everything is imported into a single track it’s tough to edit, yeah.
Thanks for clarifying, @Lanny! Awesome that you revisit and revive old songs and bring in your new skills on the bass. It’s what I am dreaming about, too, but I am still undecided on how to best tackle the challenge…
After reading through this thread multiple times, @Lanny, @howard, @terb, and @joergkutter, all I can say is that you guys are absolutely LIGHT YEARS ahead of where I’m at
I’m blown away, gobsmacked, and humbled . . . I just use YT videos to jam with.
Maybe I need to go back and get an MS degree in computer science before continuing?
Now don’t go selling yourself short @Jazzbass19… As for myself, I pretty much have to use what I have available…
I use to use YT to jam by several years ago when I lived in the burbs of Atlanta and had plenty of high speed internet available. Way different for me now a days living out in the country using nothing more than a cell phone “hotspot” to connect my computer to the rest of the world (No Internet, phone lines, water, gas, etc - just electricity out here)… Sometimes it’s frustrating for me to play along with a @JoshFossgreen online lesson and keep any type of consistent beat when my computer is constantly buffering - so I just kinda have to do what I can (make my own tracks) in order to be able to play… “Adapt and Overcome”…
It does appear that way in today’s society… Sometimes I wonder if I’m actually playing musical notes, or simply a series of one’s and zero’s…
However, back on track… I am working on several (8) different songs that my buddy and I have written and done together years ago and since I’m more of the ‘Computer’ dude, I’m the one who does pretty much all of the recording and mixing - don’t really need the internet for that.
Sure wish I knew how to play drums though… Would be so much easier - especially when my buddy has way better ears than I do and as a result, we may send a single track back and forth several times - all with notes on what and where to edit various riffs…
Yeah, the playing for sure - the recording - not so much! Correctly tuning, miking and mixing drums (and trying to get rid of stuff like the clicking of the foot pedals etc) is really tough.
I think it is just different trajectories in music… some of us had/have the great opportunity to play with people who want more than “just” playing other people’s music. The results are not always awe inspiring or even fit or intended for being made publicly available, but it’s a ton of fun.
And… once you start making up your own basslines, you are starting to make your own music!!! Next step might be to put down a chord sequence and then “invent” a melody to go with it… and a bassline… and, voila, you are creating music!
oh yes, recording properly an acoustic drum is a true nightmare. but hopefully the current electronic drums offer a good alternative.
me too, I’d like a similar interface with USB connectivity to program a drum machine on the computer, but I don’t know anything to this kind of hardware
also those trajectories are not finished, we all have plenty of musical things to do
Just checked out that channel and subscribed to it.
Looks very useful, too . . . I like the way he flashes the chords as he plays, and this can help me get a better feel for being in tune as I make up basslines to go with the guitar.
Also good because there is a variety of music styles to choose from, and I can save favorites into a playalong list as I go.
Yeah for sure. In my case it’s not due to any innate talent with music software, it’s just because it’s just what my friends and I always did back in college, so when we got back in to it it was naturally the first thing we did.
In fact before I even bought a bass I was remarking to my friends about how awesome the software has become. I have been following and wanting something like Reason for years. Except now you don’t even need that - just GarageBand/Logic/Pro Tools/etc is fine.
Drum pads always looked fun, probably because I am not a drummer
Layering is pretty much what I do all the time.
I have several synths, that I build some patterns on, as well as a midi keyboard.
Along with plenty of software based musical creation stuff (Native-Instruments , Maschine) I make a lot of little melodies and groves and then figure out what and how things can fit together. My whole goal for wanting to learn bass is that I love basslines, and that’s normally how I start when working digitally, then fill in around that core bassline. But learning to actually play the bass, vs just dropping notes in with a mouse pointer, i believe will give me a much better ability to be creative and iterate easily and often.
An interesting lesson I learned in connection with music composed on a workstation, which is ultimately intended to be played on a real instrument, is to learn the (physical) limitations of that real instrument first. You can create almost anything with a mouse these days, but whether it is actually possible to be performed on a certain instrument is a different thing altogether
So this past weeks practice consisted of Pink Floyd’s “Money”… Wow! Roger Waters really put his magic into this piece!! I’m still working at it - especially on the octave change and the chugging section (and timing of course - I tend to rush a bit at times) not to mention that Waters has several timing changes (7/4; 8/4; 6/4; 4/4). This was a totally FUN song to learn and is a real blast to play along with.
for me to play along with a 
when I don’t have much time and just want to play 5-10 minutes, those backing tracks are perfect ! I like this channel especially : 
