Kevin's Watch

Its been long over due.

There are many musicians/song writers/music enthusiasts resident here at the Watch and it was about time we all had some excuse to interact in some way.

Ideally we'd all get together in some musical Elohim Fest but failing that there is another way, on line collaboration.

Though he is no longer an active member David Williams recently asked me to see what I could add to a piece of music he was working on and I have agreed. He sent me the song file and I intend to import it into a Sonar Producer project file and see what I can come up with. Once complete I'll send the file back and David will get to hear my take on his base track.

It instantly occurred to me that we could do something similar so I looked through some of the incomplete pieces of music I had available and chose the beginnings of a song to share with you. See below.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3fRbA ... sp=sharing

This piece is something I was tossing together for soundtrack music for a short film I was working on. I think I actually used at least some of this for the film but really never thought much more about it. I think adding drums, guitar, bass or whatever would transform this into something completely different. Sampling parts and repeating them and adding additional tracks or just building on what is here would be fun for me to hear.

If you are interested simply download the file and import it into whatever music editing software you have and see try your hand at adding something unique to my song bit. I don't plan to use this piece for anything else so feel free to go nuts and change it, add to it, edit it, enhance it or even delete it.

I would love to hear what any of you would be inspired to do with it.

In addition if you have a song idea or part of a song or whatever music you've created that you would like to submit to the group to see what we'd come up with please make it available here with a link.

Of course this is but one way to collaborate. We could probably come up with a variety of ways to create music together. Someone might throw out some lyrics and we all see what kind of music we could write to it or something similar.

I'm open to ideas.

-Tom

Sounds like a great idea. I am a little clueless regarding music editing software. I think the piece has lots of potential for some heavy double kick drumming interlude, and then cut off to the calm nature of the piece. To me, it sounds like it wants to erupt

If you can recommend some software I'll give it a go... can you add drums and guitar in a software program, or is it just editing what's there (sort of embarrassing that I know nothing about it!)?

StevieG wrote:Sounds like a great idea. I am a little clueless regarding music editing software. I think the piece has lots of potential for some heavy double kick drumming interlude, and then cut off to the calm nature of the piece. To me, it sounds like it wants to erupt

If you can recommend some software I'll give it a go... can you add drums and guitar in a software program, or is it just editing what's there (sort of embarrassing that I know nothing about it!)?

Stevie, I had the same kinds of ideas for this piece. Either this was an intro, buildup toward a fairly heavy rock explosion or I imagined that it might serve as an interlude or bridge section to something much more energetic.

As to music editing software I have always used Cakewalk/Sonar programs but I know others that use Audacity which I understand is free to download and use.
Almost all of the software supports multiple tracks so you can import my piece into a new project and assign it to a single track and then build upon that, adding drums, guitars, bass and vocals all on separate tracks so that you can explore whatever ideas you come up with and mix the entire project any way you like.

Once you created your take on the song just export the project to an mp3 or Wav file and share it with us.

By the way the tempo for the example piece I've provided is 140 beats per minute and I recorded the song to a tick track that matches that BPM. If you create a new project in your software see if you can set the BPM to 140 so that everything matches up easily.

Let me know if you need any help.

I find this whole thing very interesting and can't wait to hear what you or anyone else will come up with.

Tom

I've downloaded Audacity and imported your stuff into a new project. I think I'm going to need some time to work out what to do! I only have another day or so to work it out, then I'm back to work and probably won't get a chance to look at it. So here's hoping I can at least get something done soon!

I suppose I can play some ominous bass parts.

Yes, dAN. By all means. Let me know if I can help.