12 Dec
2009
12 Dec
'09
4:50 a.m.
Brent Busby wrote:
On Fri, 11 Dec 2009, Ken Restivo wrote:
That's sort of like me. I'm horrible at deciding beforehand just how
fast a piece should be, or what time signature it should use. (I'm still
trying to figure out the time signature of the little riff in the
improvisation I posted a few weeks ago - and I've been playing that riff
for 4-5 years now.) So I'll arm a track in Rosegarden and just start
playing - then have to sort through the resulting mess when I've finally
played my way to the time/tempo the song wants.
Perhaps I should request a new feature in Rosegarden: a "no time
signature" mode. Just let the notes come in as they may - and clean it
up afterwards.
I just asked about that on the Rosegarden-users list, will see what
comes of it.
--
David
gnome(a)hawaii.rr.com
authenticity, honesty, community
On Tue, Dec 08, 2009 at 08:20:09AM +0100, Atte
Andr? Jensen wrote:
Sometimes I do like to turn off the bars/beats/ticks ruler in Ardour,
forget about quantizing (or throw sequencing out the window entirely),
and just record, and let the quarter note pulse come from me. Then I
can just record layers over it. It's almost as free as 4-track
cassette...but *much* better audio quality... Ken Restivo wrote:
That's an excellent question. Freewheeling is great for "loopy"
stuff.
Other than that, I can't think of anything better.
The best workflow for recording that I had, back when I was doing a
lot of recording, was a hack involving Seq24 and Hydrogen. I'd sync
them up with JACK transport, start with a beat or bassline, using
16-bar or 32-bar "loops" (seq24 is a loopy thing too), and then put
64-bar "loops" over the top which were basically solos. I'd come up
with several variations of the beats and stagger them in some order
using Hydrogen. Then hit play and start turning loops on and off.
Sometimes I'd mute drum tracks or mess around with Hydrogen.
But, again, that worked only for flat, jammy, unstructured, DJ-style,
groove pieces, which is what I was writing. There may have been a way
to use the same tools for more structured pieces, but I never explored
it. Seq24's song mode didn't work on my 64-bit system (still might
not; haven't checked in a while). Never ceases to amaze me how the stuff I dash off
in 20 minutes as an
experiment or test, is often more well-liked and effective than the
stuff I furrow my brow over and scratch my head over for weeks.
It's called
flow :-)
Seriously, you're an improvising musician, and shouldn't be surprised
that the more you compose under the same premises (no going back, first
idea makes it), the more it's gonna feel natural to the listener.
I try to compose as fast as possible. Then I listen to the result,
sometimes for weeks, mostly just the next day, and rework parts that for
some reason doesn't work. I also have no problem with throwing an entire
composition away, I'd rather do that than sit and stare at the paper.
There's always another composition to work on.
What you (and I, so I should say "we") should really wonder, is which
piece of audio software under linux *really* supports this way of
working. Besides freewheelin (which only works with certain types of
music), I can't really think of any :-(