Power duo | Forums

[digitalox]

I can vouch for the Bse, one of my guitar teacher's bands uses it. They have two of the towers that they use playing in a small pub. It sounds great.

[mbarsott]

As I sit and write this on my MacBook Pro (LOL), I will tell you that there's plenty of software, but you're better of creating on a drum machine or drum machine input for your PC. Alesis, Zoom, and Boss make excellent drum machines that you can pre-program and drop in presets. The more $$ you spend, the more you will be able to save. You'll be surprised how many songs you can do with nothing but a few presets in a drum machine. This is coming from a solo artist who has laid down his own rhythms with a looper (I use a Line 6 HD 500 now) for years over a drum track so I can solo over myself. Most midi tracks for famous songs you can download from the Internet all day long, so you might Google away and find them. Cakewalk and Cubase are great, but they are expensive as heck. Widisoft and Anvil are inexpensive.

It's my opinion that midis sound like crap or I wouldn't take the time to make drum tracks and loops. That said, you can use the software to make backing tracks, which is a nice way of saying that you're doing karaoke to pre-recorded music. Don't take me wrong, there's nothing wrong with that, if that's what you need, but it's what you're using. Why do I do loops? Cause I like to show off. :^)

Rock on, mbarsott! Looking forward to hearing some of your stuff.

PRS, I cannot thank you enough for the valuable and concise advice...
Alright here's the current status:
I got the free Anvil software to get a feel of what this midi is all about, and downloaded a couple of midi songs from the Internet. This is pretty awesome. Anvil can show you the scores for each instrument in the midi. So, for example, in a few seconds I had the bass scores for Home By The Sea that I had previously spent 3 hours trying to figure out, cause I did not find any bass tab on the web. But you are right, midi sound like crap. That's what took me to the next step... I got me a Roland midi to USB cable and decent software. I got a bundle of Cakewalk softwares. It is a Roland brand, has a lot of tutorials on YouTube and hundreds of virtual instruments recorded by professional studio musicians. My hope is that I can replace the crappy Windows Midi Syth with the virtual instruments. I am still downloading all the stuff. We will see how it goes. The idea is exactly that. Play karaoke with the midi backtracks on virtual instruments, maybe a few of my own recoreded tracks, like base guitar, for all the other instruments we are not actually playing. My hope is that we can use the keyboard as a midi controller that fires up some of these tracks on the software. I will check what is possible. As for the PA, I loved the Bose product and I hope I can afford it in the future. For the drums I am thinking about using the same midi/virtual instruments approach, with Cakewalk/Roland drum kits. Is it possible? What is the disadvantage over using a drum machine?

Thanks again

[rcole_sooner]

If you ain't after original stuff, then there is always guitarbackingtrack.com.

They have some excellent backing tracks.

[mbarsott]

If you ain't after original stuff, then there is always guitarbackingtrack.com.

They have some excellent backing tracks.

This looks pretty cool, nice for solo guitar players! As far as I've seen you can only get the backtracks in mp3, right?

Thanks for the link!

[rcole_sooner]

Yeah, probably MP3, I've never looked for any other format.

[PRS_Rocker]

Drum machines or drum interfaces are typically easier to use than trying to do it with your keyboard and mouse. Many of them connect to software like Anvil and Cakewalk. Keep going, mbarsott.

[mbarsott]

Oh man! This Cakewalk stuff is absolutely ridiculous! I never imagined things like these were possible. After half a day playing with it I can create (of course, canned) songs with the same audio quality as anything we listen on the radio. And I only watched a very small part of the tutorial videos. I played the midi files on the digital piano (and they sounded great, by the way), I played dozens of instruments (and any type of sound, not only instruments) using the piano into the computer, I changed the software synthesizers, and drum kits... lots of Alesis and Rolands here, BTW. There are thousands of other instruments I still have to try. Telecasters, Les Pauls, SGs, Stratos, with every imaginable effects. Tube Amps, string orchestras. Unbelievable. But most unbelievable of all is how easy it is to put an entire song together. They have dozens of sections ready that you can mix and match (and stretch, and shrink, and fade, and change keys, and who knows what else)... verses, bridges, choruses. All instruments together, and it sounds just like stuff we hear on the radio. Man, I'm having a blast here!

PS. I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I think I will have no time for the challenge this week.

[muzac989]

If you want to move on to the next level, I suggest Ableton Live. It is an extremely powerful and unique sequencer/DAW (digital audio workstation), and is designed specifically for playing music live. It's used by a lot of electronic artists like NIN, Hot Chip, Daft Punk, and a whole slew of famous DJs. John Scofield uses it while playing live, as does Bruce Springsteen (at least, his drummer does). When it comes to Rocksmith artists, I know the Horrors use it. It'd take pages for me to extol all the virtues of Ableton, so you should just check it out for yourself.

[PRS_Rocker]

Here's a drum machine that you might like... http://www.arturia.com/evolution/en/...ark/intro.html

[mbarsott]

Here's a drum machine that you might like... http://www.arturia.com/evolution/en/...ark/intro.html

Pretty cool... I'll certainly consider this as an option when I go for the drum machine. For now, I'm just over the budget for the next 6 months or so. The Cakewalk drum kits wil have to do for a while