Tim Smith

He probably couldn't play guitar and resorted to something he could squeeze to make noise.

Thanks. I hope I didn't miss anyone. I appreciate all comments. Keep em coming !

Doing this on an electric would of course be a lot easier. Longer fingers? I think you might be thinking of something else. Thanks for your advice. I will give this a go. It probably isn't you, but I'm not understanding some of this. I played a lot in D tuning but it isn't very versatile for all around playing. Some metal bands even tune to C or C#. Then we are getting into baritone territory. Tuning in E sounds interesting if I could work around new chord structures. Right now I play Em on the 2nd fret A and D which is easy peasy. I just changed my strings to 52-11 s coated instead of 12s and that seems to help. I believe the setup is pretty good but maybe could be set a little lower. I say that because I have had guitars with terrible setup and you punch holes in your finger tips with those guitars. This is decent as far as I can tell. I have been using that double finger technique for F chord on the E and B and that seems to work. Being more of a finger picker I can just play only the strings necessary If I barr all but the last string I can play a decent chord minus the lowest string. I am not comfortable with any of that yet though. I am just grabbing the F Chord with the first 4 or 5 strings. I imagine that's all some guitarists ever play, especially if you are multitasking. If I leave off the high E it's some pleasant minor thing going on that fits sometimes. Hmmmm. I could just capo that 1st fret so I don't accidentally play it, but no then I would be a half step higher. That would be a brain game for me. I'm going to try it though, maybe on my old Martin. Thanks! I am playing a Chinese made Alvarez that's a cheaper knock off of the Yairi. Not hand made and not from Japan, but it has some of that dna and a beautiful sound. I did sand the bridge but I don't think I hardly took anything off of it. I was afraid I would go too far, so it.s maybe only a couple of thousanths less. Thought about taking the bridge down some more. Hesitant to play with the nut as it's glued in place and probably hard to change if I goof it up. Most of it is probably just me needing to work up hand strength. On a scale of 1-10 set up is probably an 8 or a 7. Not too many of those around here in my area. There is guitar center, but I'm concerned that would be like giving a jet to a six year old to fly. I hate to say that but they don't exactly exude professionalism around here. I will give it another look though. It isn't a top tier guitar but I don't want inexperienced hands messing with it. It's my little baby, and for what it is, it's very nice. Duly noted. What do you think of GC for guitar setups? Luckily I'm in the callus stages, but yeah I need to look one of those guys up and have it done right. I will sit and noodle on the thing all evening. Like I mentioned, I have had bad set ups and was too naive to know what the problem was thinking all guitarists must have leather fingers and extra muscles in their hands lol. You have huge hands. I always thought that was an advantage. I am more like your teacher was. Lots of advantage there in reaching distant frets IMHO. Like you say, gotta use what we have. One guitarist I know of is missing part of a finger and is world class. At least part of it is the fingers getting the instructions from the brain to do the right things at the right times. I'm not totally there yet. Muscle memory is beginning to get better.Thanks Rain. The important thing is, how does it sound? If it works is it cheating? Not in my book, however to advance my playing I think barrs are in my future. Just seems very different from the way I think. It's going to take some practice to get there for me. Until then I can still play. I totally get health issues. Two of my fingers were numb for awhile because of medication I was taking. Will give that a go. I don't guess I'll break my guitar neck.

I know most of the basic guitar chords. I have been using a few 'cheater' chords to get by. I wasn't blessed with long fingers and since I fingerpick I can generally just play the strings I can fret on chords like F . I had been playing the cheater F which is close to the C chord and really works well. The action on my acoustic is somewhere in the middle. No where near as easy as an electric but not bad either for an acoustic. One of my buds has a Yairi and it frets SO easy. I don't have a Yairi, so I need to play this thing. If I can get to a barred F I can carry that down the neck to other chords. "If". For those who play those barred chords a lot on acoustic guitar, can you give me any tips? Give up guitar? I won't do that. I can get by on that cheat F, but would prefer to learn the barrs.

I wanted a completely wireless setup on stage, so I took my old Casio PX5S 88 key synth which can be powered with internal batteries. I recently ordered a Lekato wireless midi connector. It recharges on litium battery, has both in and out and isn't technically bluetooth. 2.5 khz I think? I can report back on how it worked out. I also made my guitar and mic wireless. My idea was to play through a vsti on my laptop.

I have never seen the need to use two DAWS. I simply build my stuff as audio takes in on my left monitor on the loops section. Then I arrange it to my liking. I have both loops and linear on two screens. Then I hit record and it all records to the right screen or linear.(there is a dedicated button for that process) I will then either load the export as a wav into TRacks or Ozone for mastering. If at any time I wanted to rearrange the song it's simple since the loops section is most similar to Cakewalk's arranger section but works much better. JUst drag things where you like them and make another take to linear. I have Cubase pro and see no need for it.

I would agree. Cash cow is a good way to describe it. I almost went deaf with their vocoder plugin when it decided to cut loose full gang in my headphones.

1.56 gigs zipped? Maybe 10 gigs unzipped at most. Could be more like 5. That's a pretty small footprint compared to many others. If the whole thing is only 1.56 gigs were are almost into rompler territory.

I wouldn't do this with some DAWs, but I do find myself using the compressors and Eqs in standard 11 a lot for basic track control. Guitar amps are meh. I would rather use Guitar Rig 7. Another benny of Ableton is the tons of hardware made for it out there. My Arturia MKII is flawless with it. I have tended to use 3rd party instruments, but maybe I should look at what's in there. I haven't ventured very far into that territory as of yet. The DAW is generally pretty cpu light for what I do in it. I would say more so than many others with the exception of maybe Reaper, but I never got on well with Reaper. Using the stuff made in the stuff for the stuff has to have some benefit. They seem to have maximized things very well in the ecosystem. I was looking for just a nice piano sound in Omnishphere the other day and could not find one. They are all the weird dreamy ones. A couple of solid keyboard bread and butter sounds would be nice and I would likely use them if included. There's a lot in even 11 I never used. I'm not really a synth tweaker to a large degree and I just play stuff in midi sometimes making small corrections. I don't write from start to finish in midi sequencer style, but apparently many do. It's great for that. One thing that I really liked was the ability to slow down or speed up the tempo of a pre recorded song audio and midi and still have it sound realistic. You can select the algorhythm and yes "if" you change both the speed and the key it might begin to sound funny all depending. Even in standard these's a lot in there. Max has a decent orchestra in it. That isn't something I ever see myself using very often and I don't tweak much I put things in that work and use them. I have my download license. Just a matter of finding the time to do it.

I guess my expectations are maybe lower and really you have it right, that they should support and update. At this deal though I still think it's great if a person can run VST2 ok in their DAW. Reminds me of Acid pro. Those guys sat on that for years. Did little in the way of improvment. Another bought it. Finally wrote it to 64bit Windows 10/11. Not a top notch DAW but pretty ok for looping. Looked similarly like they lost most of their user base.

Yeah for anyone with a collection of plugins and vsti I don't see the need to pull the trigger on Suite. My upgrade path price for standard was 127$. Only real advantage to suite would be that all of the files are organized and most anything you need is there if you are new to mixing and don't have anything, I think it's a good tool kit for that. I probably would not buy it for the asking price as a noob, but I have seen licenses for sale used which might be a way to do it. Noob would be better to start with the basic free version first to get a feel for it IMO. My updrade to suite from 11 standard was 225$ not bad if I didn't have anything else, but one can't hardly frequent this section of the forum and "not have anything" If my computer blew up tomorrow and I was forced to reload everything, I might consider it then and just omit all of the half crap plugins I have I never use any more. Stream line things.....maybe. I hate to tell you I was clearing a lappy yesterday and Cakewalk went bye bye. It's still on my desktop. For now.

Non drummer here, so please take my comments as maybe uneducated and with a grain of salt. My goal is to pull a beat I think works with a song idea period. I would prefer a set of beats that sound uber realistic and have built in fillers that sound like a real drummer. Most of the drums in my mixes are simple and probably not to the liking of an experienced drummer. I still think BFD has probably one of the best collection of drums in the industry and they were ahead of their time when it came out, so for me, other than the VST2 thing I would pull it in a heart beat if it had something I liked. That's the other thing with this. Some of these drum programs are released with barely anything decent while others are released with plenty. The idea being that, yes you bought the software but you also need this and this and this to really have something you can use. They are all pretty much like that now and since it's hard to test 500 drum paks, it's nice to have like a good starter set. I believe BFD 3 has that. When I bought it paying much more, I intended it to be my only drum program ever. It did stand up to that expectation for a long time for the most part. When InMusic bought them it was underwhelming for me. And no one told me. I just tried to launch it and got a " this thing won't work" screen. Then I realized it needs to dial into a server blah blah blah. I have used it since, but man what a pain to always wonder if I need to once again connect with their server. That's really been my only hang up. I honestly wondered if they were going to hang around after that. I didn't want to come back to a mix a year later and not have working drums. If I was a real drummer I would have figured out how to build realistic tracks from scratch using maybe just the samples in Sampletank. I have way to many drum programs at this point, and almost dread looking through all of them to find something, so for awhile there I just settled on AD2 and it worked well. I tried EZD new version and like it so far, so maybe it's my new main drum program. I had issue in trying to match a track to drums using the AI in it, but my tempos tend to be different sometimes.

Man they are practically giving it away now.

I guess it depends on how a person works. I seldom get an entire tune in my head all at once, so it's great for immediate tracking in the loop section and then all of that can be put together to make something. I don't think any other DAW does that as well. If you track bands and have large counts then I could see Studio One or PT. However plenty use it for this too.

The scales and keys addition looks interesting. 38gigs for standard. I went for it upgrading from 11.

Trying to decide if I'm upgrading right away. What I have now seems to work fine for what I need. I must be getting old. Gone are the days when I upraded because I felt like it was the thing to do. Most of the updates lately on my other software mainly dealt with the new macs. Not something I care much about. Ableton is my main DAW right now, sooooo maybe?

Now there's something uncommon on most forums and something I actually miss. Deep discussion. I guess the things we value are not the things many other value, or at least our priorities are far different. When I listen back to a lot of my stuff I dislike it. After a few years go by I know I could have done something better, and maybe this is all just a learning experience for me. Like Google, most of these large music platforms are search engines and it's easy to fall behind unless you either self promote or hire someone to do it. It's all about promotion and visibility. I know we have a lot of very good musicians that come here. I've never heard your music, but I'm sure it's as good as any other. I have heard many a track that I think SHOULD have had far more attention. I know that musician spent literally days to make it and the plays are pithy. Soundcloud which is the platform I use is largely hip hop.

I am pretty much genreless, so I have a mish mash of recordings I've done. For awhile I was a church pianist vocalist and maybe 5 years later one individual who knows someone I know asks for me or wonders if I'm coming back. I have had several tell me they liked what I did. The worst comment came from a little old lady who told me I was hitting the keys too hard. I constantly run into people in grocery stores and elsewhere who stop to chat with me and I have no idea who they are. I guess after 10 years of that playing to larger groups I can't remember everyone. Lately I've been playing guitar. I admit I am a hack on it, but I seem to get by pretty well faking everyone out that I can actually play the thing. I squeak by on some of those chords playing whatever version of the chord I think I can pull off and not be noticed that it was a lot harder to do than I wanted it to look. Playing fingerstyle and then strumming means I'm mostly without a pick. I'll be up playing it soon on and off. I guess we'll see how that all turns out. I never really looked at myself as playing anything particularly well, but if I can make it look like I'm playing they won't know any better.

Probably the wrong area to post this.

It seems some musicians just like to play music and to heck with the tech. I have a friend who tours a good bit and even he doesn't seem to have a very strong connection with music tech, even though he plays regularly to backing tracks. He plugs in, makes a few adjustments and plays (guitar). A very layed back gentle guy. I think I must be somewhere in between. I mean, I like tech if I feel comfortable with it. If I don't it adds to uncertainty. It seems to be different in a studio environment because then it's like my little sandbox to play endlessly with music tech. I don't mind that. It's more when I need to utilize it for playing live. If something doesn't work or goes wrong it could seriously shake up what I'm doing. I don't do it very often and maybe that's part of the problem. I don't have a system down that I feel ok with. The last few days I have tried different hardware setups and checking my wireless setup to make sure I can be ok with it. That was when I found the 1/4" plug into my guitar wasn't always making contact. IF I pulled the plug out very slightly it works, so that's an issue I need to fix. Backing tracks are another thing. I pulled out my old RC-300 looper that can hold 3 hours of .wav audio. It has rhythms but they are cheesy and no change ups. It's like a drummer stuck in one loop all the time. Then I realized I could dump tracks from my computer into it but I need a roland driver. I had almost forgotten the days when you needed to download a driver for everything. New OS recognizes a lot more than it once did. Apparently not this. The RC-300 has a lot of little details that need to be ironed out or you'll be playing a song repeated not wanting to and other similar stuff. I have realized how much I dislike menus and submenus. If I knew exactly what I was doing it would be far easier. Keyboards that once sounded pretty good now sound terrible compared to my software synths. After two days messing with various keyboards and stuff, I guess I'm back to square one which is either a DAW for tracks or I'll just plug in and play acoustic. I don't have a comfortable feeling yet with backing tracks, even if I make them. I can't say exactly why. It seems writing command strings into a midi controller is the easiest thing ever for some people. I mean it's hexidecimal, has 16 channels and values range from 1 to 128. For me it would be a challenge to get all of the program changes exactly right times with the songs. I prefer straight up easy to use guitar effects and that's probably why I use the stuff I do. So really it's like I'm of two different mindsets depending on whether I am messing about in my studio or if I'm playing out. Some of that probably has to do with no worry if I make a mistake in the studio. Everything can be edited and changed or even deleted there. Playing live is, well, full of unpredictable things and the more gear I add to it, the more chance for problems there are. Could just be me not accustomed to that envronment as much.

So far it has done the job for me. Do you play that banjo in the pic?

I second that and why I normally just upgrade to standard which is everything but the extra vsti and libs which amounts to orchestral stuff and some other things I didn't need. Quite a bit comes with the suite package. My upgrade before the end of Feb from 11 to 12 is $127.00.

I think going without Alexa is the safer way to go. I guess I am unsafe. I just tell her what I want to turn on or off. I have a fan for white noise that I could schedule to just turn on through Alexa, but I verbally tell her to turn it on. Most of the house is verbal commands. Even my cooling system. Alexa is an app too, so if I'm in another country I can look at my blink cameras or command things I want to turn on or off. If I loose wifi in that other country though I obviously loose that control. I had the blink set up in my great room to motion sense but decided to only have it on if I'm away. I got tired of watching myself go across the room in my underwear. Alexa sometimes reads to me at night when my eyes are tired and I usually ask her the weather every day. I dropped all my cable TV and went to Roku for everything.

Future FOH guy "Well it's either McDonalds or this. I think I would love knobs and faders." Disclaimer- A good sound guy is hard to find. They do exist, and for you we are appreciative. Our ear drums thank you.

Good to hear experiences of others here. The table I have isn't a made for music kind of thing, and maybe not ideal, but it has a solid sort of ironing board leg layout where it unfolds and has two long 'feet' at each end. Seems pretty stable but a little low to the floor. About 3ft. high. Lower center of gravity but need to bend to access computer if I use one. I like the table you linked much better. I would be standing. As monitors they seem to work very well for them. I am seriously looking at it. Would be dual purpose as I could use it for a small 'gig'. Well I guess you would never have issue with not hearing the mix, that's for sure. The volume of your show must be high. Alternatively I could freeze recorded tracks in Omnisphere and add them to a show using Ableton. I had planned to solo though so it gets complicated. Here's a vid you might find interesting on backing tracks. A lot of musicians are only using a laptop, so I could save myself 2k on a PUSH 3. Push 2 used would be much less, but still, not sure if I really need it. Ableton can map to any midi controller for things like song start stop next song etc. Theoretically a song can be one long loop or it can be broken into segments and 'fired' off a controller. Some musicians who write their own tunes and play alone or with one other don't even use a click track if the have decent monitoring. Four drum stick counts in and they can follow the rest. I would be tasking two things at once instrument and voice plus managing the tracks with some kind of a controller. One task would be better and I don't want a guitar part in a track I could be playing. I have the 4 channel looper too. In an unplugged set that could be very useful.