The Process

[guitarded88]

I was just wondering what everyone's song writing process is?

Prior to my introduction into the world of home recording I was a huge Guitar Pro fanboy, and wrote a crap load of arrangements.

Now I'm looking to move to a more recording centred writing process, but that is still quick and easy.

For Guitar, I run the preamp of my 5150 (effects loop send) into logic and then add impulses, which is quick, easy and yields pretty good results.

Then when it comes down to drums and bass i get stumped. In the past I have imported my Guitar Pro 5 midi files into logic and then ran the drum midi into superior Drummer 2.

The problem is it brings all this other midi data that moves my faders around and pretty much fucks everything up. Then I get discouraged and the song doesn't get done. In addition it takes me hours to find good synth sounds, tweak drums and VST bass sounds and in the end they all sound like shit anyways.

What do you guys use to do quick and dirty recordings to get ideas down (please give me something more than "real drums and real bass")?

Is there a program that integrates better with logic than guitar pro, but still makes for easy quick midi arrangements (piano roll is good but not great).

 

[guitarded88]

And then I discovered Ultrabeat...

/thread

lol jk... but wow, wish I knew about this before.

 

[Fox Mulder]

And then I discovered Ultrabeat...

/thread

lol jk... but wow, wish I knew about this before.

???

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrabeat ???

 

[LeSedna]

first, about midi, i had the same pb. It is simple to solve : in cubase at least, I opened the midi track file and I could see all the midi infos, and in the beginning, there were a lot of CC change etc that guitar pro included, dunno why. Just delete them, and the pb is solved you have a clean midi track that you can run in EZdrummer or S2.0.

About bass... I have tried many things, the only thing possible is to have a shitty bass hidden in the mix cause it's too "machinegun". It takes too much time to avoid the machinegun effect, and I'm afraid that the only trick is to buy a bass, even a cheap one would do the job. I'll buy one. For the moment, running a shitty vst into some impulse does the job well enough.

Guitars : in a line6 toneport and then nick crow + impulses. free and quite close to perfection for sofwtare guitars.

Synths : shitload of every vst freebie I could find. And that is really enough for metal ! You just have to mix them and process them.

My processng : write on guitar pro with my guitar close to me. Then export midi bass and drums, put vst on it. Record DI and use impulse preset chain that I have saved.
I used a lot guitar pro, and now I'm so quick its my best choice to record music. And a friend of mine who writes with me in our band, loves it too. So we just have to send to each other our files, and work on it as quick as a lightning would do. Its a bad idea if you're about more progressive or groovy music, but for our swedish melo death stuff, its perfect.

 

[guitarded88]

Nice reply LeSedna!

Yeh I've used guitar pro for years... I guess if it works it works. I'm going to check in logic to see if I can delete the extra midi data like u mentioned. Good tip! If I can figure that shit out i might just stick with gp. Or if I can get my head around ultrabeat it might be a good option.

???

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrabeat ???

http://www.apple.com/logicstudio/instruments/

 

[LeSedna]

It's 100% sure you can delete those data, just find how. In cubase there was a special way to edit midi, dunno the name, that showed every event in a list. So there were the notes but also everything else that was added before. I guess it's not a specificity of Cubase. Ask a pro of logic if you can't find it.

 

[GarethSE]

I used Hip Hop Ejay for everything I do.

My secret is out, sorry guys!

 

[Sweetnothing]

Nice reply LeSedna!

Yeh I've used guitar pro for years... I guess if it works it works. I'm going to check in logic to see if I can delete the extra midi data like u mentioned. Good tip! If I can figure that shit out i might just stick with gp. Or if I can get my head around ultrabeat it might be a good option.

In logic you have a list on the right ( sorry I don't know the name since I have it on other language, the tab could be called "lists", and then "events", but that being a quick and dirty translation) with all data, including note data and position. Select them ( with the midi passage highlighted)and delete.

Ultrabeat is really easy, if you're used to grid programming, drum machine like.
The bad thing is you can't stack samples with velocity switching on the same key, but that's what exs is for, even being a pain to edit or create a patch because of its horrible interface.

 

[Machinated]

program your drums with the hyper editor in logic, really awesome. i actually prefer it for the most part to cubase's drum map. can apply notes and velocity with one click.

 

[guitarded88]

I actually am still quite new to logic... going from garageband I only know how to do the stuff I used to do in gb...

I'm going to play around with both ultrabeat and the hypereditor to figure out which works best for me.

Amazing... every time I start looking for a tool or effect i need... I eventually learn that "logic does that".

I'm going to order some macprovideo tutorials this week and really get my hands dirty learning logic.

Actually I'll probably get my girlfriend's hands dirty during breaks