Okay... enough about everything. After rereading some of my latest expulsionary claptrap I've come to the conclusion I likes cheeseburgers. It makes no sense if you really think about it. I should probably talk more about recording and music. So I figure this week I'll talk about how you can develop that original tune that's been sort of on the back burner for the last decade or so. You know the one. If you're reading this it's a safe assumption you're a player or writer of music. If you're not reading this it's likely you are completely unaware this even exists. In fact, if you're not reading this it's likely I don't know you exist either. Sure I'm fully aware you're not reading this but I'm not aware of you not reading so.... I ummm... I'm obviously talking to the wrong person again. Anyways. Nowadays there are ways to develop a song into a finished product you can be proud of without breaking the bank. Something that's happened in the last few years is using midi and samples for almost all instruments. Here's a brief primer, feel free to skim if you know all this. Hilarity and whining will recommence afterwards. A midi signal is not audio. At no point in the life of a midi signal was it ever a sound wave. All it does is tell a program what note or sample it should play when, where, and how hard. Midi signals are recordable instructions to a sample player or synthescissor. A sample is audio, a recorded soundwave. To record a sample a real player sits down at a real instrument and records one note or one drum hit or whatever. Then they go to the next note or drum or whatever and record one hit on that one. The sample player loads up all the samples and awaits instructions from the midi track. Then the midi track tells the sample player to play the recorded samples. There are two ways to use midi and samples. First is to build a midi track yourself one note at a time, then loop it and add fills or whatever. Looping is like it sounds, it plays the same pattern over and over. The other method is to record midi signals from somebody actually playing. Pianos have midi outs, and there are electronic drum sets that have them, so you can get a real player building the midi track on the fly by playing the song. In some of the songs at my website the drum tracks are midi drum samples built one note at a time. Many of the piano and organ tracks are midi tracks played and recorded live. Some of the piano is a combination of audio and midi'd samples. Techniclacky speaking any electronic piano is the same as midi, if not actual midi, I'm not sure if electronic pianos use midi internally or not, but it's the same concept. Hit the key and the flappamawhasitz tells the fledgeramanator to make the appropriate noise, unt vwala, noise issues from the speakers. Depending on the intrument and quality of samples, much of the time a midi sample track is indistinguishable from the real thing to most people, including musicians. This is not to say they sound as good, just hard to tell from a real instrument, because they actually are real instruments sorta. Some instruments do well as midi controlled samples, others not so much. Piano and organ, drums, horn sections, or string sections usually work out pretty well. Much depends on the quality of the sample library. When they score a movie track with a symphony quite often they do a mock up using samples first, and if it's a big budget picture they then take that to a real symphony to record, smaller budgets they use the midi sampled track and it's hard to tell the difference. You can spend ten grand to just get started on a good sample library. Audio is hard to record, or rather, is a slightly different set of skills. Samples and midi are easier to use. They're all somewhat premixed and well recorded. Where samples fall down is in any focused parts like solos and voice. They also have weak areas to do with over perfection, a somewhat lifeless and uninspired feel, although they're working on that and it's getting better all the time. If the budget is decent then using accomplished real players beats midi and samples hands down, but you won't really notice a big difference. The music groove goes deeper with real players, and the sounds have a certain gel you don't get with samples. There's a feel with real players which involves minor mistakes and squeaks here and there, and when the groove is locked some instruments will hang back a few thousands of a second or they might be ahead. It all adds up to a certain somethingerother you just don't feel with sampled midi. On the recording side, when you put a mic in front of a guitar amp speaker or acoustic instrument there's an almost subliminal organic feel as if you're right there. Even when you don't mic it perfectly, or the sounds you're capturing aren't the best guitar amp ever or whatever, it still beats samples and midi. There are those that would disagree and say samples are better most of the time. They may be right. I mean, they're not actually right, they're actually deaf and stupid people who should go die somewhere, but they might be right nonetheless. The point being it's a fairly minor detail to the well being of a song. If it was a major detractor top 40 would sound quite different. More like music. Soooo anyway. Here in the Room Of Pain I quite often use sampled drums. They're cheaper and you can tweak them until they're right. You can tweak audio real drums too, but it involves more time with editing. I also use sampled horns and symphony instruments. Ya know, I was sitting here tooling along typing away and suddenly went limp and fell out of my chair. Inside my head there's a large hole in the floor full of tech stuff that I spend much of my time tottering on the edge of. Sometimes I fall in and some sort of cerebral vortex of boring induces total loss of muscle control. Suffice to say, bring me your ideas and we'll make them good and it won't cost you too much. Initial consult is free. I have a better idea for this week: recording cover tunes versus originals. I'll keep this short for fear of listlessly keeling over again. If you're going to record a cover tune, try to bring something new to the table, or do it better than the original in some way. Anything that makes the song better than it was, or adds a different spin. Because if it isn't better or interesting it does nothing for you or your career or anybody listening to it. If you're recording a cover to get gigs then do it live on video. A studio recorded cover doesn't count as promo. Club owners know. If you're not a songwriter there are tons of great unknown songs out there waiting to be covered. Most famous musicians aren't song writer types. They buy the tunes, or more commonly, change a word or two them claim they co-wrote it. For example, House of the Rising Sun is a traditional folk song in the public domain. It was first found on Alan Lomax's field recordings through the southern states in 1937. Look it up. You can hear some of those recordings at the Library of Congress and it's way worth checking out. Way way. Those recording have been pretty well picked over for songs to record, but listening to an actual prison chain gang singing in the 1937 deep south will give you chills. As mentioned before, sound is resonance and often a deeper connection than visual. Peering at a moment so long ago through the veil of hisses and pops puts you right there on the porch with the heat of the day fading and the joy of a moment with music. You can feel the deeper connection to music before the media blitz made it mundane. I get the feeling music was homemade, almost religious, and precious back then. More connected to the soul. Time was put aside to enjoy it. Music was something to look forward to at the end of a long day. Nowadays uninspired music surrounds us constantly through mass media and the connection has faded. Midi and samples have something to do with that disconnection. I get more feeling from a crappy ancient recording from 1937 than I do with midi and samples. They don't know who wrote House of the Rising Sun. Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly among others did versions of it in the forties. In the sixties Eric Burden managed to put a copyright on the chord pattern that someone else came up with. Slick work ya greedy bastard. The point being there are millions of unknown songs out there waiting. Why it isn't more common to record unknown songs is beyond me. There are a whack of websites hosting original unknown material out there. Many thousands of seriously great songs on reverbnation and soundcloud among many others. Start listening to the top lists on any of these sites and you'll hear some really good music. When you find something that grabs you just ask the writer if you can cover it. I suspect most will gladly let you as long as they get full credit and the percentage in the event of airplay. If they want money move on to the next one. So now to your reward for dodging the vortex of boring reading this far. This is what you might call bringing something new to the table. Disturbed: Sounds of Silence. Now go forthwith thusly and find some great new songs to record.