Music Collaboration

[Seppo Ilmarinen]

I wrote little bit of music yesterday (intro and verse with chords and rough idea of melody). Should we wait for more participants or perhaps start experimenting with what i made? I haven't put it on computer yet so it'll take few days because i'm quite busy this weekend.

 

[mocachapeau]

Thanks for bringing the Cassband project back into the light folks. No idea how I missed these more recent posts.

Mocachapeau, I think your ideas are great and like Aragorn, really appreciate your initiative and experience.

My time is in a little less in demand for the next month or so I'm in too. My hangup recently has been recording quality but I think with a good amount of experimentation with Audacity(I haven't yet tried their 'mixing' options) it should come out good. The rest is all good quality tools/gear.

Also, imho we shouldn't get too hung on any certain order to instruments in a recording necessarily. For example just a person playing a simple acoustic guit or piano with accompaniment on vocals is a good start. That's usually how I introduce songs to our band, others layering on top. Could always pull out that guit or piano at a later stage.......I think?

I'll have a Reverbnation visit now. Can someone PM me the password.... ?

Hi Cholas,

Sorry about the time it takes me to reply. I'm having a heck of a time getting near my computer recently.

I'm glad to see you're still interested. I think we are up to 5 that have expressed interest so we might be able to try something out. Although, so far we have 2 guitarists, one singer/saxophonist and one set of finely tuned ears to help with the final mixing stages. I'm not sure how far we could get into the process with just us. We might be able to write something but I don't know if we have all the elements to carry us through to a final product. Mainly, we need a core group of musicians to play on the final recording. Most of us may be good, but the final performance needs to be played by those that are great, and hopefully have good recording equipment. But maybe we could try to write, and if we come up with something nice it might attract some other instrumentalists.

I agree with you about not worrying so much about the order of instruments added to a tune, but I think it has to be one person at a time. If you submitted a guitar/vocal thing and posted it on reverbnation, it would be important that the next person to work on it does so without anyone else adding something to it at the same time. That person needs to be able to have the chance to come up with one or more ideas, run them past the others (most importantly you, the composer) to get opinions, change things when it is deemed necessary and come out with a part that everyone agrees on, before it gets passed on to the next person. We can't have others grabbing it off the site and just adding things willy-nilly, because the person who is adding their part at that time wants to be working with everything that has been added up to then. If it changes while they're working on it, they might have to go back and start all over because they don't think that their part marries too well with whatever was added. Bad sentence forms, but I hope that makes sense.

I don't think we should worry about recording quality for the moment. I would only start thinking about that after an entire song has been written, in a rough form. Once everyone has added their bit, we then have to decide which tracks are good enough for a final product, and the ones that are not will have to be rerecorded, either by the same person or by someone else. There will always be the possibility that someone's idea might be dynamite, but they don't have a good enough system for the recording, or maybe they don't play it solidly enough.

I also want to suggest (if it is not already being done) that we only send mp3s back and forth during the writing stage. We only need to send original wave files when we send them all to the person who will do the final mixing. Waves are big files and make for big down/uploads. I'm in Canada so I have a stinky, monthly download limit.

So if you have something to submit, please do, and we'll have a look at it. Unfortunately I, too, do not have the password for Reverbnation so someone will have to PM it to me, as well.

I wrote little bit of music yesterday (intro and verse with chords and rough idea of melody). Should we wait for more participants or perhaps start experimenting with what i made? I haven't put it on computer yet so it'll take few days because i'm quite busy this weekend.

Take whatever time you need Seppo. We will all do what we can, when we can. My hope is that something might start to take shape that gets us all excited and then we'll want to MAKE more time for this. For now I'm just looking forward to hearing what you've written.

If no one here has the password for Reverbnation we might have to start a thread with that in the title, or maybe PM some of the people who used the site before.

 

[cholas]

Your ideas sound very good, imo, mocachapeau. I went to reverbnation and had a listen.....definitely quality problems with the song I submitted and would like to redo it here in the near future. The others sound much clearer.

I was wondering, if song ideas were added to the point where we had a small library of material there, a post here(or on a separate thread) could say simply:"cholas adding cowbell to #3" etc. And a followup: "Finished". We'd all know to leave #3 alone for a bit.

Seppo, We'll try to get you that reverbnation password asap so you can add your ideas. Thanks!

Moderators: Is there any way to retrieve 'sent PM's'? I've sent the password out but can't find where it was written down(housecleaning in order ). Would it be ok to PM members who I sent the password to way-back-when requesting only this info?

Thanks.

 

[Seppo Ilmarinen]

Take whatever time you need Seppo. We will all do what we can, when we can. My hope is that something might start to take shape that gets us all excited and then we'll want to MAKE more time for this. For now I'm just looking forward to hearing what you've written.

If no one here has the password for Reverbnation we might have to start a thread with that in the title, or maybe PM some of the people who used the site before.

All righty, i was finally able to put my idea to computer. Here is a link to it:

http://maihinnousu.net/s/17492

Song is in 6/8 time signature and has intro and verse so far. It's all midi with Propellerhead Reason sound banks. Intro is in key of B minor with a simple instrumental melody. Verse goes in D major and the melody is a rough idea that could be used as a guide if someone wants to write lyrics.

I put the chord/melody sheet into attachments.

 

[cherokeemist]

Sounds like a great idea! Lets jam!

 

[mocachapeau]

All righty, i was finally able to put my idea to computer. Here is a link to it:

http://maihinnousu.net/s/17492

Song is in 6/8 time signature and has intro and verse so far. It's all midi with Propellerhead Reason sound banks. Intro is in key of B minor with a simple instrumental melody. Verse goes in D major and the melody is a rough idea that could be used as a guide if someone wants to write lyrics.

I put the chord/melody sheet into attachments.

Seppo, this is really good! Nice melody, and I really like the harmonies you chose with the background strings. VERY cool!

We really need to get the Reverbnation password and get started. I don't know what I would add to this, though. It's already quite well orchestrated. Someone could write lyrics for it, but it might be helpful to whoever does that to have an idea of what you were thinking, or feeling, when you wrote this. You know, what kind of sentiment you associate it with, if there is one, or something like that. I'm also wondering if it might remain an instrumental because it really is a beautiful melody.

 

[Seppo Ilmarinen]

Seppo, this is really good! Nice melody, and I really like the harmonies you chose with the background strings. VERY cool!

We really need to get the Reverbnation password and get started. I don't know what I would add to this, though. It's already quite well orchestrated. Someone could write lyrics for it, but it might be helpful to whoever does that to have an idea of what you were thinking, or feeling, when you wrote this. You know, what kind of sentiment you associate it with, if there is one, or something like that. I'm also wondering if it might remain an instrumental because it really is a beautiful melody.

Thanks! I think there can be a lot of things you (and all others) could add: You write good lyrics so that could be one option (and maybe sing it on the later track) ?. Instrumental song is also a good option so let's see what happens, if no one writes lyrics we could keep it instrumental. :)

There's also different parts to be made, like pre-chorus/chorus, interlude, outro etc. maybe people could post their ideas here, chords changes, melody etc. Here's one suggestion to song structure: Intro-Verse-Intro-Verse-Chorus-Verse-Chorus-Interlude-Chorusx2-intro/outro. It can be open to change during the process of composing but we could first keep it as a guide map.

It's always quite subjective when writing songs. When i composed this i sometimes tried to keep in mind all the things that relate to this forum, Work, being aware and self-remembering. Just to have a connection in all this what i've learned and why i'm participating in here and trying to understand the external and internal world. So maybe that could be the commong thought with all of us when participating in this project.

 

[monotonic]

Try to keep ultrasonic and interference signals out of the recordings and mixes. A good spectrogram viewer like Baudline can catch almost anything.

 

[mocachapeau]

Hi everyone,

I just wanted to apologize for disappearing from this thread. I really wanted to try and help get something going, but when the kids went back to school, and their activities, in September my schedule got pretty crazy with all that it put on my plate.

I should have said something earlier but I kept thinking I'd be able to get back here and continue with things. But a number of issues have crept into my life that I really need to deal with, so for the moment I'm going to have to leave this project aside. I've only had one day since August that I actually wrote any music at all.

Again, I'm sorry for not having spoken up earlier - that was sorely lacking in external consideration.

 

[Seppo Ilmarinen]

Hi everyone,

I just wanted to apologize for disappearing from this thread. I really wanted to try and help get something going, but when the kids went back to school, and their activities, in September my schedule got pretty crazy with all that it put on my plate.

I should have said something earlier but I kept thinking I'd be able to get back here and continue with things. But a number of issues have crept into my life that I really need to deal with, so for the moment I'm going to have to leave this project aside. I've only had one day since August that I actually wrote any music at all.

Again, I'm sorry for not having spoken up earlier - that was sorely lacking in external consideration.

No problem mocachapeau. I think it's fully understandable that our personal lifes can be sometimes so hectic that there's just not enough time for writing music. It can take a lot of time to compose something that you're satisfied and usually it requires unstressed enviroment.

Since this topic has been quiet i could use that piece i wrote in my own projects, because i have to make music every week for my composing classes and other school projects (unless someone else has continued writing the piece?). I'm still open to this project if you or others will later have time to write music together. :)

 

[Str!ke]

The reverbnation page is this:
http://www.reverbnation.com/cassbandproject/

About the PW of the reverbnation page, I don't know the username but the pw yes, how can I give it, should I post it?