The DijonStock Digital Home Recording Support Forum

How do y'all use the G as a songwriting tool? Or do you only use it to record the finished work?

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-Denver Rob

"Work is the curse of the drinking classes"
http://www.robroper.com http://www.myspace.com/rroper

Now there's a smart question. The G as a songwriting aid...one of it's greatest strengths. Possibly - for me - it's greatest strength.

I constantly use it in the following way -

1. Drum track down on tracks 9/10 for a duration of ten to twenty minutes. Apply the first XP preset from the DYN library and about -36db of roomverb.

Ready Track 1 for recording. Black Stingray on, hit play ( L O U D ) and jam.

Ready Track 2. White Stingray on and repeat as for track 1.

Ready Track 3. Ric 4003 on and on...I do this over a number of hours/days/weeks until I feel I have exhausted the bassline potential for any given drum track. Tudan beats (cut/sliced/looped) are a total inspiration for this kind of thing.

Now with a fairly comprehensive ready-made library of bass lines and licks I can develop each good idea, adding guitars and (more likely recently) keys to get song ideas going.

Then the ability to move tracks around and store mixes and ideas to scenes makes the G a truly inspirational songwriting aid.

I've though about selling it occasionally, but when I consider and accepts truths such as this, it's difficult to accept the G as anything other than indispensible at this time.

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"You think you are going to die...and then you don't." © Robbie Jukebox - 23rd July 2004.

Very definately a songwriting tool. It's ability to edit is truly amazing to me and a far cry from the tape machines of bygone. Having effects , editing, and a recorder all in one machine is very very cool.

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THE MUSIC IS DOWN IN HERE
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Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.

So far I've been using it in a more primitive way that y'all, but still effective. After I already have a minimal music idea (chord progression, whatever), I then create a song, call it something like "mus-Am-fast", then record the acoustic guitar; maybe a vocal melody too. The main reason is so I won't forget it! I've come up with so many ideas, but never recorded them, so by the next day they're forgotten. I used to use a cheap cassette boom box for this, which works ok, but there's rewind time, etc. Not to mention bad fidelity. With the G, I load the song, set the guitar track monitor on, and hit play.

_________________
-Denver Rob

"Work is the curse of the drinking classes"
http://www.robroper.com http://www.myspace.com/rroper

Anybody ever mess with the song clip feature? I tried it once for about 5 minutes and it seemed to keep cutting off the beginning of my recordings. Maybe I should read the book.

Read the manual?!! Are you a man or a mouse?!!!
But seriously.... I can see no benefit to the sound clip thing. As far as I can tell, it's just a song that's limited to 1 1/2 minutes or whatever. Better off just making a new song.

_________________
-Denver Rob

"Work is the curse of the drinking classes"
http://www.robroper.com http://www.myspace.com/rroper

I think it's intended purpose is to allow a speedy capture of inspirational ideas. You know those moments when you perhaps stumble over a difficult-to-play idea and know from experience you risk losing the moment if you don't capture it RIGHT NOW?

Aye, but it begs a question of the time limit - why didn't that make it about 5 minutes and thus provide enough time to cover typical song lengths?

Still, better to have it than not at all.

Bob: I've used it from time to time and I don't recall losing the start of my recordings. Dunno what's going on with yours.

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"You think you are going to die...and then you don't." © Robbie Jukebox - 23rd July 2004.

Well the 1 1/2 minute thing might explain it Anndra. I didn't even know about that. I probably just went over my allotted time.

In the utilites menu , the time can be adjusted upwards for the sound clip length. I'm not around the G right now but if memory serves it can go up to at least 3 minutes. One neat thing about sound clip is that stuff can be exported and tweaked just like any song. It's handy when one runs outa tracks or wants a place to temp put stuff.

msg

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THE MUSIC IS DOWN IN HERE
____________________________________________________

Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.

I checked the Manual. Default is 30 seconds. It keeps the latest 30 seconds; overwrites the stuff older than 30 seconds.

In Utility > Prefer, you can set it to a max of 180 seconds.

_________________
-Denver Rob

"Work is the curse of the drinking classes"
http://www.robroper.com http://www.myspace.com/rroper

Uh 180secs / 1 minute equals 3 minutes? Not bad for an old mans memory.

_________________
THE MUSIC IS DOWN IN HERE
____________________________________________________

Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.

Resurrecting this topic...

I've been stashing musical ideas on the G for about 2 years now.

I also get thematic or lyrical ideas, without music. I write those in my songwriting notebook.

Historically, my problem has been that I can't think of lyrical ideas for my music, and can't think of music ideas (other than bland ones) for my thematic ideas.

So I starting making crude mixes and burning about 20 of them to a cd at a time. I selected a thematic idea that needed music, and listened to the cd until I found a musical ideas that seemed to match the theme.

I've written two songs in the last 8 months where I did this. Everybody's songwriting process is different, but this worked for me, so I thought I'd share it.

_________________
-Denver Rob

"Work is the curse of the drinking classes"
http://www.robroper.com http://www.myspace.com/rroper