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Free Preview: Demo: Building a Basic Groove with Guitar

Here's the idea. We've talked a great game about his drummer, too, and we've kind of showed you some real world applications to some extent, but now we want to take it to the next level, and what we want to do is we want to actually record drew playing some guitar, and then we want to see how easy it is for us to put some drones under that start to create a song. So the process will kind of work like this. So drew his brought his guitar. I have no idea what he's going to play literally. He didn't find out he was going to be helping me do this. You have no idea until yesterday, so we're doing this all in real time, and I have approachable session open on my laptop, so, like we did with easy drummer, just kind of a quick gear updates, so still running the same mac book pro one approach was eleven on. I have track armed, actually with drew's guitar and he's going through to contracts, easy mix to plug in. So easy mix too is a really cool plug in that to track developed that ultimately giv...

es you a lot of different control over aspects of your mix and one of those kind of cool functions and easy mix too is there's some amp emulation and some cabin relation so drew's playing straight directly in approach tools I've got an easy mix to plug in on him were actually I haven't picked an amp ian I'm going to have him play a little bit then I'll just kind of scroll through some, but I'm choosing from our classic camps pack and then actually we have a groove loaded in easy drummer too pull that up we've got just a little groove, luke I'm gonna let you hear it it's very impressive and it just does that over and over again, which is great and again remember the purpose of this is to sort of emulate the way maybe you work on a real song you get together with someone you know or maybe someone you just met and you want a gm the's the tools at your disposal so we've got easy drummer too loaded and then we also have an instance of easy keys that were going to use in a little while we'll talk more about that later, but right now on lee because I know he's chomping at the bit wildly to show his guitar chops off for you we're going to get drew just kind of playing, jamming some stuff around and we're going to record some stuff and then what kind of have another conversation take it from there so let's start if you just want to play a little bit I'm going to scroll through some presets in easy mix to and if there's a guitar tone or something that you dig where you really like have me stop otherwise I'm just gonna bulldoze the whole session and for you what I like you tell how I like to hear it so just playing anything what kind of just get themselves I like that that's kind of easy okay waiver here. You okay? So again very real world very off the cuff again a first a creative life first there's only prepared it's not a cooking show there's no cake in the oven folks if this doesn't work for the next two segments is going to knock knock jokes and that's not going to be good so let's pray that everything works the way they wanted to sew. All right, I'm gonna pull a piece drummer we've got easy drummer now opened as a plug in in pro tools as you can see here on something that's unique just so you know right now the temple of our approach was project is one hundred twenty six bpm and I have a button enabled in these drummer too. This is follow host. So the timeline in this song track actually lines up to the time line approach. Also, when I rewind and then I play, it starts at the beginning, which is nice so the two are sink so that I can work on the groove and easy drummer too, before actually exported to approach was track. So without further ado, ladies, gentlemen, what is soon to be a hit beyond compare? We now are going to track drew playing some guitar he's a drummer too and it's funny because the audience right now is on the verge of this better worker it's going to be embarrassing for everybody and this is never going to work. It's going to be embarrassing for everybody. There's, no hope anywhere in the room except right here, folks. Two thumbs and a beard full of hope. Here we go through is going to start playing and then we'll kind of settle on a structure and then we'll record. It should be pretty easy way let's, I'm gonna take it back, give yourself just a little lead and then we'll just kind of count that in I'm going armed pro tools and then the rest is my man, here you go, fantastic simple enough now you notice that I had easy drummer armed record too and it wasn't recording anything, so I'll apologize for that. Let me clear that but we've got drew's guitar part let's listen back to it let's solo it let's listen to it and it all of its glory through easy mix too. So what's interesting is what we've really captured his direct signal because a zay bypass easy mix to you here that it's no longer there so I have total flexibility attn this point plan am that I want which is kind of a nice function so that's cool we have a basic song structure there let's grab like one war yeah, but you know what? Because I'm not necessarily the brightest star in the sky what's detail those chords real quick, I'm going to need those. So what do we start with? Says I was on e way so I got a lot of a lot of a lot of and then it just yeah just isn't g and a yes, thank you. Guys are all very, very unimpressed at this point. It is fantastic praise buddha he's like I don't know what these guys doing I'm out done so let's let's grab, I'm gonna I'm gonna actually kind of move this guy down I'm going to maybe the same loop so I could do some editing there, so maybe just think of something that would be in the same vein. That's more of like a course part. Of course. Yes, of the basic only don't overthink it is all I'm going to say. All right. Are you with me? Yeah. Ok. So what's arm you to record. Here we go. Way fantastic. That is perfect. That is what we needed. Okay, I'm going to tell you what, you've been such a good sport. I am going to deem your part of the segment. We're down complete. That's you've blown the doors wide open. All right, now we're going to create something with it. Now you've left your work with me. I feel bad for you because yeah, it's gonna be good, though. So I think again, this is really supposed to be indicative of how real human beings work. I know that in the world of music, there's a lot of mythology and there's a lot of lives that so and so doesn't have toe bang out to everybody works at a different pace and most people start this way, whether it's one or two people an idea, a rhythm, a groove, a melody, and then it grows from there. So the first thing we're going to do is we're going to just put these guitar parts together to make sure that they work for us and then we're going to start to use easy drummer to build a groove underneath this song fair enough, some good everybody okay? So I'm gonna go back in a pro tools here and I'm going to kind of take a look I'm going to mute easy drummer just so that can hear the guitar he actually won't okay, so he starts right there, so ok, cool, let me make this little wider let me come in and there's a lot of things going on, obviously that we wouldn't normally take the time to do here I'm going to make my grid a little bit small, eighth notes, but we just want to make sure that everybody gets a feel for what's happened, so we will start here, right? So there's, where we're going to start our course right there it's going to be simple pop structure so we just everybody with me so far because everybody here the hit potential of what's happening ok? So I'm going to duplicate the's so that we have the same structure repeated twice, okay, so here's what I want to start with so we're in pro tools and we're working with easy drummer to first now and go ad move this back over so you kind of see my mixer channel here, so I have his guitar have easy drummer to have easy keys and I have beat station affectionately known as station, so I'm just going to kind of run through what I'm going to doing with each one of these actually move this, so have it so obviously easy mix is where we started and I was dialing and just some basic, you know, guitar tones, we're going to do a little bit more of that later, but right now, without a groove, all we have is this guitar part and that's really not a song because it's not complete, so you'll notice that his part is obviously the audio is here on the track. I haven't committed any meeting to my track yet and that's because, as I mentioned earlier, easy drummer to right now is just sort of locked to the host tempo and it's, allowing me to stay in the song track and easy drummer, too, and this is important because the song track in the actual environment of easy drummer, too, is where all of that manipulation of the many can happen. Once I dragged my many track out of easy drummer, too, to a pro tools track, I'm going to be kind of limited to whatever the piano roll editor can do it I won't have access to all of the functions that I have in the song track, so the follow host button is a great tool for that. So again, we've got something really cool let's just see going to duplicate this again so we can see how far we go and let's copy this let's paste it, and we're going to start with just this groove, uh, that we have so what's kind of move this down here put on, I'm going to start whistling when words start becoming too or done enough and making noises, so if we we rewind back to track, so this is where we started simple enough. Now all we've done is cut copy the same group, which is very standard, a lot that's where a lot of people start, and for a lot of people, this is kind of where begins way rock out a little bit, right? We've got our course it's very simple, but very effective. Now you might be able to save yourself there. Uh, that's all I need that's how my demos were done and that's great, but this is an easy drummer to master class, so we want to show you where you can go from there, so I really enjoy this group, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to take it and I'm going to drag it to tap to find because I want to see other groups that are similar to it now, clearly, I could go in, as we've shown in the last segment, and I could just start to edit things right off the bat, but I like to start with a little more organic approach and again with tune track, we've already done the work for you because we've hired great session drummers to come and play these group, so are many performance is up, I'm never worried if they're good or if they sound great, you're looking for something with same vibe, something really simple, so we've got one hundred percent match and see that's more basic than when we have our original groove it's a little different, right? So we'd come down let's in ninety eight percent match the pre course group you can hear it's comes from rides and also there's some differences. I like where this is going, and we could do this. I mean, the pop country genius, let me just get rid of that. And now, let's see, we've got let's see, we've only got one filter, and that filter is the tap to find that's, actually what we plan, and so I just want to come down and now, that's kind of your standard rock and roll I mean, it doesn't get any more rock and roll than that, so what I can do is really simple I could take this groove and I could drag it down here so I could get rid of this altogether remove and I could extrapolate if I wanted to argue, just cut copy and paste this let me drag my cursor here and again, the reason we haven't left easy drummer to yet is simply because we want to make sure that we have all the options we want to make sure that everything we've done we can work with before and now I've got a space here and that's kind of cool because it's, to me, it feels like there should be a phil there, so I'm going to go, let me I can actually come in and sort fills now and see how this works a little too much in the beginning. That's her open something simple enough. I kind of like that it's, effective let's, drag it to our empty space and watch a conform. Now you see, obviously you've got kind of a different color because our fills as we know are color coded is very specific way we were in our song creator, and then we come into this part. That is ultimately like a chorus part let's go ahead and let's let's listen to it a team is a team effort by the way it's like so many cameras I don't know looking if you're watching and you have ideas you need to let drew no and you should also tell him how amazing he is and thank you for even putting up with this nonsense because he really was last minute and he had no idea what he was doing and it's it's pretty awesome that he was willing to step up and put himself out there like actually I'm gonna stop and give not a golf clap on a real clap because that's the school that doesn't happen everyone see my man he knows what time it is all right? Cbb knows here we go so we're going to go ahead and listen to this let's move this over what's connor rewind back and let's take a listen wade got simple crash way, but that was natural that's good okay, so stop these drummer so here's what we'll do so I like what we've got so far and I think everybody feels good about it, but I don't like the crash every four minutes, so really simply I'm just going to add a place style quickly or not and then come back out there so quick I didn't want you guys to see it there we go and I could just kill the opening crash on each one of these so that it's not there I didn't mind it at the beginning of the phil though that seemed a natural like a drummer would do that so let's let's listen to this again let's it's just very consistent but you know ok how's that feel so far it's mean we're trying to pull together the elements of what a real player would do and depending on the experience you've had as a musician with a real drummer that's going to vary but to me it sounds natural it sounds organic it sounds good I want to go in and I want to just highlight a couple things let's go back into at a place style here I'm going to change this articulation the first time around two a m a tight tipped the first two times and then just sort of have it open up a little bit and then we'll do open one here will go ahead we're going to do open to write so it gets progressively rock and roll here if you will is that a word it is now so we're going to save this because rule number one folks wherever you're working with digital audio save as often as you can it doesn't matter whose program it is if you have something you're doing and you wanted to be there for you, I don't know fifteen minutes later you never know when you're attempting the hands of fate you never know when they're going to be a brownout a power surge a software glitch these things happen in the real world at major studios all the way down the bedroom studio is it's not a unique scenario things happen save your work all right let's listen to some of this dynamic now and see if we like where it's headed so here would be my observation I totally hate the tight high height of beginning that I just put in there so I actually like the high hat that's in the second phrasing for the whole thing so I'm just going to come in there and then copy and then I'm going to come here and I'm going to paste and I'm gonna pace that high hat and we should be good to go which again simple enough I just want to point out that that process would have taken fifteen minutes it's beforehand and I would have had to leave the program going to the piano roll move an entire column of things down a justin velocities but when you grab those many notes and you copy them it's strange to think of it this way but what you're doing is actually grabbing someone's performance and adding that you know it's very very cool in a very organic process it doesn't always work to the result you want but man what a great sort of thing so we've got kind of this building we've got this course I could tell you right now that every course needs a tangerine I don't have to listen to it to know that the course needs tampering and I think drew was in my head is like, you know what I'm gonna do all right? Of course where we can use it a marine and he was in there that's why we will probably start a band a super group if you will when we're done super because we're both awesome to begin with that's why that's the question you were just asking so ok, we've got a tangerine but I want it down the velocity back just a little bit because I don't want to be super loud and I don't know where the articulation is that so we'll listen but let's, listen now and see kind of I'm going to pull the guitars back a little bit and let's just isn't musical are we there yet? As they say with some basic music stuff your memory but it's not shaping like I wanted to shake so I'm gonna go back in here make sure it's highlighted wait now I grew a little over and it's completely different saw it doesn't sound good right now, but it's a completely different song so we can fix that there's there is a way to fix that clearly