Nutty1

Hey Ice9 my profile picture is of my Epiphone LPS ii plustop. I do not play it much but it looks nice on my wall! I thought about selling it once but it is such a nice looking thing that I just could not do it, I am glad that I have kept it. Perhaps one day I will do some work on it myself.

I like it!

Hello Greg, another way of doing it would be something like this. It works via the headphone port. You can plug a guitar and headphones directly into it. https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_1_6?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=irig+2&sprefix=irig+2%2Caps%2C1925&crid=1F9T2ICYH1SDW&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Airig+2 I use this on my iPad Air.

Yep, ideal!

Thank you rkl312 you are very kind. ?WANTED RHYTHM GUITARIST ? Please can we have a volunteer to do the rhythm guitar, there must be someone out there who would like to do it? (tip - you can slow it down to record your part and then speed your recording up again if you want to!)

Sorted! Sorry about that folks.

Whoops, sorry I forgot to say that I recorded the bass track at 60 bpm and I forgot to speed it back up again. I will replace them with the correct speed as soon as I can.

Here is a quote from Steve Krenz. I think it is beautiful. "Let me explain. Playing guitar, as with any creative endeavor, for the vast majority is not about "being the best". (Forgive the upcoming metaphors) It's about breaking through something - it's about creating something. It's about pounding against the concrete layer put over us in our daily lives by this hardened world to eventually find a crack to burst through our flower. It's about saying to this hardened, cynical world, there's more to me than just my role - I was made to create something. I'm not putting this as eloquently as I would like but I hope you understand. We create because we were made to create. It's why we try to paint, to sing, to play a guitar. Learning guitar is not a talent show. It's not about who sings the best or plays the best. It's about getting the music that's inside of us out."

Hello Tpettygirl, I am so glad that you have posted on this forum. I see you have been given some great advice already. I remember getting frustrated with the chords early on myself. I have small hands and when I first started doing them my finger placement was terrible, they sounded dreadful and they hurt so much that I could only do a couple of bars at a time. My chords did not really blossom until a lot later. Here is what I did. I practiced the 2 chords for short bursts each day in between doing my other learning from the course. It was ages before I could get them right and they stopped hurting me. Now that I look back I understand that there were 2 processes going on. The first was that by practicing the chords I was gradually stretching out my hand and building up the muscles necessary to be able to play them. The second was that I was building up muscle memory. Its kind of like eating while you are watching a dvd. You do not need to concentrate when your hand goes up to your mouth because your brain/muscles in the arm, fingers and hand remember how to do that. You are an athlete in training! I hope this helps. Keep in touch with us to let us know how you are getting on. Mandy

Hello Fretless, I have just made the Soundcloud file downloadable and put a .wav file of the bass without the drums in the Box folder. I hope that is ok, please let me know if you would like anything else.

OK folks, I have created a bass track for our song. I recorded it using my Lindo Purple Dove bass guitar routed through a Yamaha THR5 set on clean and I used Modern Stack as the amp in GarageBand. I am not a great bass player so do not expect too much!

Yes you are right, the main course is now £14.99 here in the UK but the Vocal Warm Ups course is still free as I type this! Hummm I bet my husband would have paid it for me too (and possibly this forum would have passed the hat around for me also!).

I am in. I just wanted to bump this post because it is getting buried.

Thank you for this Ian, if I ever make the jump up from Garageband this information will be invaluable.

Wow! @WATSON43 very well played and sang, very enjoyable, great rhythm! @V7#5b9 I love those songs! Your playing was great (even back then) and I could hear every word that you sang which is important especially with such lovely songs. @Wim VD Beautifully played. I did not know that tune was called Misty. I really enjoyed it.

I love it! It has definitely increased my understanding of the different genures. ?

Yes, great advice. I have always found that it is good to have a bunch of song ideas developing at this stage. When the bass guitar and the rhythm guitar tracks are done then you can start laying your ideas onto the track. I have often found that the strumming pattern of the guitar part suggested the number of syllables in each line. I am working on the bass and rhythm guitar parts just in case we do not get any takers. It is good experience for me.

For those of you who enrolled in the free singing course and have not visited it lately, it has just got even better. Nathan has added more videos and they are great! I have just checked it today and it looks like it is still free so for anyone who has not enrolled in it yet then try the link in my original post above. Nathan has also just brought out a vocal warm ups course that is also free at the moment, please see the link below. https://onlinecourses.ooo/coupon/become-better-singer-warm-ups-exercises-busy-people/

Hello Greg, I created a new one this morning on my own account after realising that we can only upload small files directly to this forum. I invited Fretless to be an editor of the new "GG1" folder. I recieved a message saying that Fretless had accepted the invite so I think that it is working. Thank you for asking Greg, I really appreciate your kindness and help.

OK, the bass track is next. Any volunteers?

Interesting video rkl312, thank you for posting it. You can do quite a few of these techniques on acoustic guitar and Steve does teach them further on in our L&M guitar course (probably not the whammy bar stuff). Just off the too of my head: bends, hammer-ons, pull-offs, slides, tapping and there is lots of great stuff on soloing. It really is an amazing course. Some of these techniques are really great for acoustic blues to name just one instance where they are used. You are going to love it!

I have produced a drum track for this collaboration. It is just something I cobbled together from GarageBand. I confess that I am not very good at drum tracks so I hope this will work. Please feel free to comment on this as I really really need to learn more about this. GG1 drums - 03:02:2018, 22.34.mp3

Wow that is brilliant Gerald, thank you for posting it. I learnt a lot from that too.

Here is a breakdown of the intro. To make it clearer I have illustrated it with an easy strumming pattern.

Thank you Greg, I hope you enjoy your trip.