When I started out as a sound engineer in the early 80’s there were no drum loops to edit and create a rhythm track.
If you need a drum track, you had to record them and then edit them to make a bed track
Today you can purchase loops by some of the renowned players out there. How cool, I can have Omar Hakim (Sting and Peter Gabriel’s drummer) play on my recordings. (Available at Loop loft ).
Here is a rough track I started out with.
When I get together to jam with anyone these days, I try to record everything that happens (if I can) to use in my song writing.
Then when I struggle through the playback I find a few nuggets/moments that I can use.
This comes in handy for:
I have been using an old Sony Mini Disc Deck, and running a few mics through a 4 channel Boss mixer to the deck.
The mics I use are:
It takes about an extra 15 minutes to set up, do a run through and then I let it record until the disc is full or we are finished. (Which ever comes first).
Here is a clip of Jeff (Gauthier) and I doing some on the spot improvising.
I usually play back the recordings and make note of the times and titles of those wonderful moments.
Then I put them in a loop so I can play along and improvise to get something more concrete to work with.
Now that’s just me and it gives me lots of ideas for new music to create.
Any ideas or thoughts on how you come up with new music?