Musician's Thread

I used to make cassetttes for all my friends - for their parties, for certain moods, whatever - in fact, my boss at the time borrowed some on one of our long car journeys (from Berlin to Bern once a month - was 1,000km just to the Swiss border, I hated that trip!) and kept the lot of them! I used to mix the tracks into each other and splice little repeats etc and of course having the right tracks in the right order was crucial. To finish off, an apt title for the 'album' was the topping.

Would never have considered myself any kind of a musician for that, though. A good ear, maybe, but that would be all.

Anyway, Simon, you said you weren't keen on the Strat-style Ibanez electrics because their "horns" were too extreme. I bought this one a year or two ago and I think it's fairly reasonable:

That horn is not to shabby at all, normally I find they all have that really long sharp look to them - with that guitar I thought I was looking at a Peavey before I read your post. The neck looks great too - I am all for maple necks on guitars, I have a few rosewood fret boards that I do love - but I just think the maple necks look cooler.

@Brixmis "What really gets my goat up is DJ's calling themselves musicians."

Elevated title DJ's bestow on themselves, after having not learnt to play an instrument. If they want to call themselves Live Sound Producers or Engineers no prob!

Wikipedia suggests

"A musician is a person who plays a musical instrument or is musically talented.[1] Anyone who composes, conducts, or performs music may be referred to as a musician.[2] A musician who plays a musical instrument is also known as an instrumentalist.

Musicians can specialize in any musical style, and some musicians
play in a variety of different styles depending on cultures and
background. Examples of a musician's possible skills include performing, conducting, singing, rapping, producing, composing, arranging, and the orchestration of music"

No mention of Dj's here, all to do with methods of physically playing/producing notes live.

@Bagnet I'm not at all against musicians using sequencing/Loop machines for drums etc, i use myself to write a bit.  It is music pre-created entirely on sequencers grids, same repetitive beat from start to finish, that pains me;)
The Who, Floyd etc all used some of these methods too enhance certain tracks, but played live around it.

I compose music in LMMS from time to time.
My main instrument is a computer keyboard. Not a music keyboard, but a keyboard keyboard.

Does that count as being a musician? 

Yes :)

Edit: On reflection, at least I would say you are a composer. According to Luke's quoted definition, that makes you a musician.

This is also how many TV series theme tunes have been composed over the years.

Exactly Brixmis - composition is a form of theoretical musicianship. If you are able to work within the realms rhythmic, melodic, and tonal theory you are half-way there to being a musician.

As for use of computers when it comes to composition and orchestration - I use them myself all the time, but I don't consider it a song until I have added human elements to the project.

https://theheavyjack3.bandcamp.com/track/shift-change-instrumental

I recorded the above song using an iRig and iOS garageband - in garageband I programmed the drum rhythm to create a song structure, then added additional percussive instruments throughout using the tap drums. Once that was done I recorded bass, guitar and a broken plastic toy ukulele to create the song overtop, and then recorded a few synth overdubs using the virtual instruments within the app. I meant to back up the project file on to PC but sadly lost it during a phone upgrade so the only track I have is a bounce from the mix I did on my phone.

It is pretty amazing what you can use your phone for these days.

That's wild :)

Yeah, I use mine to play backing tracks to play along to - have the Songsterr app on it, and plug it into my PA amp. Not brilliant, but does the job at home.

Come to think of it, I've got GuitarPro on my tablet, too.

Thanks Brixmis!

I love Songsterr - I use it both on my phone and computer when learning songs. So much easier to learn music now a days - in the beginning it was all guitar mags and song books for me and I'd take the music out from the library if they had it. Now I use Songsterr and Youtube/Spotify.

I used to have GuitarPro 3 I believe it was - I mainly used it for learning tabs on the internet, I did not have the patience to write in it. In fact I really don't like writing music down - I was in school band for a few years, and part of the curriculum was writing music. I found it archaic - when I could at the time just record it to a tape cassette if I needed to remember it. Still the courses did help me learn rhythmic theory which is super important across all music.

Keep me away from writing music down..uargh.
I remember times where I had to tab out songs for my bandmates because they couldn't keep it in their head...used Guitar Pro 3 as well back then. Terrible how many hours went into typing out every single note for both guitars. Especially how to note fast rhythmic changes between palm muted and open strings. Classical notation is really some kind of archaic system for some use cases.
It fascinates me how, especially in classical music it is possible to get the emotion out of written, boring notes.

I struggle to remember notes regularly. My excuse is I'm on a min of 140g of morphine per day, so I have a large stack of printed blank tab sheets. If I'm writing my own or transcribing a song, I jot it down in tab, every phrase. I did learn to write music at high school - picked it up pretty quickly - but that was a looong time ago :D

I have a few exercise books full of written tab from when I've learnt new tunes for bands. Both 6 and 4 string. It's not that I forget whilst I'm playing - it's for the ones I don't play for a month or three - those I will almost certainly forget at least some of. I'm getting old...

I just tried modding that Ibanez maple neck. It's better than it was, but nevertheless, I think I will have to buy a new one. That means a new set of hardware, nut etc as well. Why are all my hobbies so expensive?

I was contemplating swapping pick-ups around my guitars and did a test. The difference between the Tele and the Peavey was massive. Clean, there wasn't much difference, a bit fuller from the Peavey, as you'd expect from the humbuckers - but through a Marshall ED-1 compressor into a Digitech Screamin' Blues it was incredible. The Tele sounded pretty weak, tbh, and the Peavey just belted out at the same settings.
Can't just be the fact of it being single coil v humbuckers because the Ibanez wasn't anywhere near as big a sound as the Peavey, either. Must admit to having used that Peavey mostly for clean and lightly overdriven tunes up to now, but wow! I've found it's role and I know what I'm going to be doing with it from now on.