Songwriters on Songwriting
Check out Disc Makers’ free guide “Songwriters on Songwriting”. In this guide five successful songwriters weigh in on topics such as: how to write a great song, writing through writer’s block, co-writing, finishing a song, and much more!
Who doesn’t like bass? Especially synth bass. Z3TA+ 2 is the answer to all of your sound design needs especially when you are looking to improve your production in the low end. I’ve put together a short tutorial on how to make a simple bass synth inside of Z3TA+2. Once you understand how everything works together you’ll be able to really start to make this plugin work for you.
There are times when you are in a bind and need to get a solid bass line down, but there is not bass player in site. Well, now in SONAR X3 you can easily record your bass parts on any instrument and convert it to a virtual bass instrument using the new ARA integration.
First let’s plugin the instrument of your choice. For me, the closest instrument was an acoustic guitar. I’ve been playing around with some chord changes recently and I need a solid walking bass line to jam along with. Unfortunately I don’t have a bass guitar close-by so I’m going record the bass line on the guitar Continue reading “SONAR X3 Quicktip: Play Guitar, Convert it to Bass”
Guitar month is almost over but we’ve saved the best for last: All customers can now download the Guitar Month Bonus Pack, which includes a selection of Craig Anderton’s AdrenaLinn loops that he sampled using Roger Linn’s famous AdrenaLinn effects pedal.
Download AdrenaLinn guitar loops
Craig has also designed a one-of-a-kind Bass Guitar Instrument for Dimension Pro that samples one of the eight basic sounds obtainable with a real Gibson EB 5-String electric bass, and includes five programs based on these samples.
Download Gibson EB-5 Bass for Dimension Pro
And, in case you missed them, here are two free guitar FX Chains that Craig posted on the blog earlier in Guitar Month. Now go make some music!
Tuning your guitar differently can produce some incredible new sounds for the creative process. Open tunings in particular produce shimmering and complex overtones when you play with a lot of open strings. Here is a quick rundown on four different tunings for you to experiment with when you’re looking for a bit of inspiration.
First you have the good old Standard tuning that everyone uses. This tuning is mostly in fourths and is called “Standard Tuning” because every guitar comes stocked with it’s strings tuned to E A D G B E.
Playing a major shape in this is tuning is rather easy and introduces the use of the “power chord”. To constructively show off the different tunings I’ve used a progression of G, A, Bb, A as a reference for the rest of the tunings. The major shape in this tuning looks and sounds like the following:
DADGAD is my personal favorite alternate tuning due to it’s suspended sound. The stacked 5ths and suspended 4th produce an incredible harmonic series above just about any passages you play.
The easiest way to get your guitar to DADGAD f Continue reading “Guitar Tips: Open Up Your Guitar Tunings”
TH2 Producer amp sim can do more than you might think
By Craig Anderton
Overloud’s TH2 Producer offers amp modeling with multiple amps and cabinets, as well as several effects. So while it’s a perfect subject for guitar month, and hopefully the following will give some inspiration to guitarists, let’s also consider what non-guitarists can do with a processor designed for guitar.
The power of parallel. Parallel processing is one of my favorite techniques. Fortunately TH2 not only accommodates parallel processing (the signal path follows a serial—> parallel—> serial protocol), it also provides different “flavors” of parallel processing.
The parallel section starts with a crossover, so the parallel split can:
For extra flexibility, a “swap” button reverses the outputs (e.g., if one output was highs and the other lows, swap reverses that).
The output mixer sums the parallel paths back together again, with Phase Inverse, Delay, Width, Pan, and Level controls, as well as a Balance slider. The TH2 Producer manual can fill you in on the details.
Bass wah. Let’s start off by not straying too far from guitar, and looking at how to use TH2 Producer with bass. A problem with putting any kind of filtering or distortion on bass it that it thins out the sound. You can solve this problem by using the crossover to separate the low end and keep it clean, while adding wah to the midrange frequencies (Fig. 1).
Fig. 1: Parallel processing can keep the low end clean, but process the highs (click to see the entire image).
Again, we’ll use the Normal Splitter mode, with 490Hz as the split frequency. The Crying wah pedal handles the higher frequencies. The rest of the controls are straightforward Continue reading “TH2 Producer: Not Only Guitars”
Overloud’s TH2 advanced preset saving introduces a great way to store, call-up, and switch presets on the fly. Instead of relying on the internal saving methods of SONAR X3, TH2 uses a series of Banks, Sounds, and Variations to better suit a guitarists setup in a live situation.
When you first open up the program the top of the window displays some number values. The first 3 digits on the left refers to “Banks”. TH2 can hold up to 999 User Banks and 999 Factory (non-writable) Banks. To switch through the Factory Banks simply use the up and down arrow keys next to the 3 digits as seen here Continue reading “TH2: Understanding Memory Locations and Variations”
When programming complex orchestrations, getting that authentic “feel” can be a big challenge for any producer or composer regardless of the DAW at hand. It takes many years of use-case scenarios along with a full bag of MIDI tricks of the trade. Longtime SONAR user and MIDI-manipulator Jerry Gerber possesses both of these elements, and will be sharing his secrets at the 2014 NAMM show. Interestingly, the workshop is not targeted for just SONAR users, but rather for anyone who wants to create the most artistic MIDI recordings possible with the technology they have available. Continue reading “SONAR User and Composer Jerry Gerber to Give A Power-workshop on MIDI at NAMM 2014”
Let’s de-construct an FX Chain, and find out how to optimize distortion guitar sounds
by Craig Anderton
I like big, rich, smooth power chords—harshness need not apply. While TH2 Producer’s presets were a point of departure, I wanted to take them further.
So I got to work on an FX Chain, and I’m happy to share it with you. The final FX Chain ended up as Continue reading “Anatomy of an FX Chain: CA Power Chord (Free Download)”
The charts outlined in this blog article take a bit of a different approach when constructing guitar chords and their shapes. It simplifies finding chord voicings by outlining the root notes and what intervals each neighboring fret represents.
Before examining the chord chart let’s talk about intervals and their meanings. An interval is the amount of distance between two notes. Both chords and arpeggios are made up of many different types of intervals. Continue reading “Guitar Tips – Advanced Theories Behind Chord Structures”
