Re: [LAU] Cowboy composing

On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 9:00 AM, Leslie P. Polzer <sky(a)viridian-project.de> wrote: I think the hardest things when starting is to get a tempo you can build in. It requires one of two things: 1) A first player who can play all of the song (or major portions) on tempo or 2) That you use a metronome of one type or another an play along with it. If you're new to this try it both ways but my experience is that most people cannot play the right tempo by themselves for long periods of time so you might be better off with the metronome, either something external or just using Ardour's click track. It also depends on how you see yourself adding drums, assuming you intend to add them at all. If you're going to record them then get a rhythm track down first. If you're going to use loops, then grab a few loops at the right tempo, build the drum track from the loops first (i.e. - those are the metronome) and play along with it to build you first audio tracks. Later dump the loops if they aren't right for the song. However, if you're going to use MIDI to do the drums then you'll almost certainly want to build a MIDI metronome using a MIDI track and a few drum samples to keep time. Personally, being a guitar player primarily, I often grab a synth and playing some pad setting will record all the major chord changes. When I record my first guitar parts - usually rhythm/backing guitar -I find that easy to play along with. One of my favorite Windows tools - Acid Pro - makes it easy to graph out major parts of the song so that I can see changes coming. It also allows me to easily change tempos inside the song. That makes my guitar playing a bit easier. When I get something good I'll then consider moving it to Ardour on Linux if the project is likely to be a totally audio project. I never do MIDI on Linux personally. Don't know if this really answers your question. Hope it helps though. Cheers, Mark