Home Recording Articles, Tips, Tricks and Advice

Loopmasters launch new webstore dedicated to selling music plugins!

The Pluginboutique is a brand new venture from the team at Loopmasters which is dedicated to selling Instruments, Effects and Studio Tools from leading music software companies worldwide.

The website was designed from the ground up to provide a custom solution to sell downloadable products such as Soft Synths, Music Plugins, Studio Effects and Synth Presets – and launches with some great names already involved including Fxpansion, Ohm Force, Flux, PSP, D16, Sinevibes, Waves, Sonic Charge and G-Sonique alongside many others.

The website features product ratings, instant download and authorisation, a service to ensure all your plugins are up to date, one login to see all your plugins from different manufacturers, free plugins, trial versions, and a virtual cash scheme which rewards you with each purchase.

Matt Pelling, Director comments “With such a fantastic amount of Digital Music Software currently available, we felt we could use our experience and knowledge in this sector to create a great looking website where all the best products could be easily compared, so producers can research, purchase and download the best audio plugins for their projects, and start using them immediately”.

As an introductory offer all first time purchasers at Pluginboutique will get a Free Sample CD from Loopmasters sent to them. Plus until the end of May every additional £100 you spend entitles you to another free Sample CD.
To claim your free samples simply leave a comment on the Pluginboutique facebook page with your order number and the type of music you produce – your mystery sample CD/s will arrive in the post

How to create a quick and simple bass line using GarageBand on the iPad.

The great thing about GarageBand it’s simplicity.

Especially for guitarists, beginner or expert.

Creating a quick and easy backing track can be done in a matter of minutes.

This turns the iPad into a great practicing tool and a very fine notepad for composition.

For this tutorial I’m going to use a previous project that already has drums created.

This project was created in a previous tutorial on creating a quick drum track.

Let’s get started.

Open a previous project with drums or create a new project. It’s up to you.

Dropbox free online storage

Looking for an easy online storage system that can sync files between all your computers?

Well Dropbox is in my opinion the perfect solution.

As a user for over a year now I have it installed on two pcs, my laptop, iPhone and iPad.

Primarily I use it to sync files across all my devices to save on using a USB stick.

Works flawlessly on all my devices syncing chosen folders across my network.

I use it to share and as a backup for my important files.

You can also share folders with other users of Dropbox which comes in useful for collaborations and teaching.

If you get a Dropbox account you can also get added storage by inviting people to join.

If you share files with those invitees you get more storage!

The only negative is that you can’t write protect files.

This means that if someone decides to delete a file it will delete it from Dropbox.

My advice is to share only one folder and ask that users do not delete anything.

Apparently there are lots of requests for write protected folders on the Dropbox website so fingers crossed.

You can of course pay for extra storage if needed.

Brilliant service and well worth it.

Check it out.

Dropbox free online storage

What is a capo?

‘A capo (short for capotasto, Italian for “head of fretboard”) is a device used on the neck of a stringed (typically fretted) instrument to shorten the playable length of the strings, hence raising the pitch. It is frequently used on guitars, mandolins, and banjos. G.B. Doni first used the term in his Annotazioni of 1640, though capo use likely began earlier in the 17th-century.’ – WIKiPEDIA

Using a Capo can be quite a difficult thing to get to grips with.

A lot of songs on the internet will state whether a capo is used a few don’t.

But besides playing a song in the way it was intended we can us a Capo for other reasons.

transposing a song to our voice without having to change chord shapes or when trying to avoid too many barre chords.

Why avoid barre chords?

The first obvious reason is that when we start playing guitar the barre chord is a deal breaker.

It’s damn hard for new guitarists to move freely to a barre chord and sometimes dammit you just want to play that song!

The other is that when finger picking we can use open chords to play more elaborately, also the preasure needed to apply barre chords while picking can be very wearing on the fingers and hand.

Below are some tables showing the transposed open chords when the capo is applied to each fret.

The ‘Black‘ letters indicate the Original Chord, mainly Open Chords apart from the ‘F‘ and ‘Bm‘ which can be Barre Chords.

The ‘Red‘ letters indicate the new chord.

I’ve used the most common chord shapes to keep things simple.

The way to use these tables is to write out your chords on a peice of paper and then look for the best solution.

Find the chords you have in the red row and then move the capo to that fret. Using the chord shapes form the black row will now give you the transposed version.

 Capo 1st Fret

C	D	Dm	E	Em	F	G	A	Am	B	Bm	B7
C#	D#	D#m	F	Fm	F#	G#	A#	A#m	C	Cm	C7
Db	Eb	Ebm			Gb	Ab	Bb	Bbm

Capo 2nd Fret

C	D	Dm	E	Em	F	G	A	Am	B	Bm	B7
D	E	Em	F#	F#m	G	A	B	Bm	C#	C#m	C#7
			Gb	Gbm					Db	Dbm	Db7

Capo 3rd Fret

C	D	Dm	E	Em	F	G	A	Am	B	Bm	B7
D#	F	Fm	G	Gm	G#	A#	C	C#m	D	Dm	D7
Eb					Ab	Bb		D#m

Capo 4th Fret

C	D	Dm	E	Em	F	G	A	Am	B	Bm	B7
E	F#	F#m	G#	G#m	A	B	C#	C#m	D#	D#m	D#7
	Gb	Gbm	Ab	Abm			Db	Dbm	Eb	Ebm	Eb7

Capo 5th Fret

C	D	Dm	E	Em	F	G	A	Am	B	Bm	B7
F	G	Gm	A	Am	A#	C	D	Dm	E	Em	E7
					Gb

Capo 6th Fret

C	D	Dm	E	Em	F	G	A	Am	B	Bm	B7
F#	G#	G#m	A#	A#m	B	C#	D#	D#m	F	Fm	F7
Gb	Ab	Abm	Bb	Bbm		Db	Eb	Ebm

Capo 7th Fret

C	D	Dm	E	Em	F	G	A	Am	B	Bm	B7
G	A	Am	B	Bm	C	D	E	Em	F	Fm	F7
					Db	Eb

Capo 8th Fret

C	D	Dm	E	Em	F	G	A	Am	B	Bm	B7
G#	A#	A#m	C	Cm	C#	D#	F	Fm	G	Gm	G7
Ab	Bb	Bbm			Db	Eb

Capo 9th Fret

C	D	Dm	E	Em	F	G	A	Am	B	Bm	B7
A	B	Bm	C#	Cm	D	E	F#	F#m	G#	G#m	G#7
			Db				Gb	Gbm	Ab	Abm	Ab7

Note:

These charts show only the basic chords so as to avoid confusion.

Only one 7th chord is used and no sus chords have been used.

If you find that your chord progression has any of these follow the chart below to replace or add.

C	D	Dm	E	Em	G	A	Am	B
Csus2	Dsus2		Esus2			Asus2
Csus4	Dsus4		Esus4			Asus4
Cadd9
C7	D7	Dm7	E7	Em7	G7	A7	Am7
								Bdim

 

 

First we need to create a new song.

Start up GarageBand if you haven’t already.

Look for the icon I have circled and tap it once.

This will create your new track.

First we’ll create our drum track.

To do this we will keep things simple and use smart drums.

On the main screen swipe the screen until you find ‘Smart Drums’

Now tap the drum to enter.

By tapping the screen where I have circled we can change the kit sounds.

For this example we are going to use ‘live rock kit’ – I’ve circled it in red.

Tap that part of the screen.

If you want to change kit you can tap the the icon circled in yellow/red.

You can if you want randomise a drum kit by tapping the Dice circled in green/red

For now though ignore these.

The parts we’re interested in are the arrows and the kit elements to the right of the screen.

The arrows point to 4 different style elements.

Loud, Quiet, Complex and Simple.

By grabbing a kit element eg the ‘Kick’ we can drag it onto the grid in the middle.

Placement on the screen will determine it’s volume and it’s complexity.

Take a listen and if your happy do the same with the snare and hi hat.

So now you should have a simple drum pattern, have a few listens.

If you want any element louder drag the icon up the grid, quieter drag it down.

If you’re happy with it’s complexity make sure you maintain it’s position.

If you want it more complex drag it to the right, simpler drag it to the left.

And there you have it, a drum beat created in GarageBand.

If you intend to keep it or add another instrument then you will need to record it.

To carry on you have a couple of other options,

Enter multitrack or add another instrument.

For the moment let’s check out multitrack.

Tap the multitrack button circled in red.

The screen above shows the multitrack view.

At the moment it shows a drum pattern in green.

If this is not then case something went wrong.

Pressing play will loop the pattern allowing continuous play, perfect for jamming chords out.

I’ve highlighted the instruments button again so that if you want to you can add another instrument or recording.

If you want to add another instrument look for the ones that have ‘smart’ in front, these will be easier to use.

I will be going deeper into this at some other point but for now that’s all folks.

Enjoy.