Low Production Blues

 

I manged to sort out the latency problem in Ableton using "Track Delays". 

I generated the backing track with band in a box software and exported as a wav.

The wav is dragged into Ableton and the I play live over it using a USB microphone.

After recording there was a latency delay and I fixed it in post production with a track delay of -70ms.

The process is all currently new and there were a few learning curves such as Ableton not being aware of the USB Microphone, fixed by.....you guessed it , turning it off and on again.

On a positive note: I can now add backings to my lessons , its pretty low production level but the job is done. I could do a video every day with backing if I wanted to. Learning curve done.

First bar is a F Triad.

Second Bar is Bb triad and then B diminished arpeggio

Third bar : F mixolydian intervals 3 1 13 5 1 13 5

Fourth Bar : rest

(Note the thematic linkage from bar 1 through to bar 3)

Bar 5 and 6: B flat 3 b7 then b7 3

There then follows a I7 VI7 II V I

Bar 7: F mixolydian 1 9 3 5

Bar 8: D7 arpeggio : 3 5 1 b7

Bar 9: G minor : b3 4 5 b7 9 1 b7 5

Bar 10: C7 : b9 b9 13

Bar 11: F7 riff : 1 13 5 D7 : #9 1

Bar 12 : rest.

Adding backing tracks to Music in 2023

The latest YouTube lesson that needs a backing track

Years ago I had a Tascam cassette player 4 track portable recording studio.

This was great and I knew how to multitrack really easily, then I upgraded to a digital portable studio but found it much more awkward to use. 

Finally I upgraded again to Ableton which runs on my laptop and it does everything except the most basic thing a non DJ style musician needs which is quick multitracking. It will multitrack but there is the worst thing ever and a new problem that the old equipment did not have. It has latency, that means that when you play a note there is a slight delay and the tracks dont sync correctly. 

Now I say the software is at fault since the other old methods dont have this problem. Now begins the many many attempts to fix this! Update drivers to something called ASIO4ALL etc etc etc. This may take weeks to fix. Its not the laptop since it has SSD drives , but they do say it may need 8GB of RAM and on and on it goes to fix a problem that is basic to any recording studio. 

It is interesting to note that most people give up at this point. If you watch YouTube guitar lessons there are only a few providers that use high production values such as a DSLR camera, editing and a separate synced soundtrack. These are the ones who make a little money which as far as I can tell is £3000 per 1,000,000 views. 

I saw a promoted clip of some grifter holding up a fake cheque for $121,000 in the thumbnail and a "How to make it on YouTube" , he had 2,000,000 views total . Pathetic.

Of further interest is how provincial and territorial local jazz musicians are. In a attempt at promotion I have followed a lot of people on Twitter  All the composers follow back . Hardly any of the jazz musicians do. Don't they get the idea of advertising? 

YouTube to me is very interesting, but a lot of people just use it for a clip or two of their band. Also guitar teachers tend to promote a sale of a PDF of music or a Patreon site. To me , its probably better to just improve your production values and use the YouTube site itself.

How I made Guitar Lesson 10

 This was not easy. The problem with computers is when you want to do something other than browsing it gets complicated and can take time. The hardest bit was remembering how to record live sound, its not that good but much better than the internal computer mic. So how was it done?

• Worked out the riff , (this is the easy bit for me)
• Transcribed the riff into Finale software and took a screenshot
• Made a Thumbnail using Microsoft Paint 
• Recorded Classical Guitar into Microsoft Voice Recorder using USB microphone
• Realised that voice recorder is not WAV but M4A format 
• Converted M4A format to WAV using an online website
• Used Ableton for post production effects reverb and signal boost
• Put Finale screenshot into Microsoft Video editor and selected custom sound.
• Made the video and saved.
• Uploaded to YouTube and uploaded thumbnail as part of process.
• Published video.

So that's quite a lot of work , but it takes me about 20 to 30 minutes now as I know how to to do it. 

Why all the "Microsoft" stuff, well its built in to my Windows 10 and is free. Its all free except Finale , Ableton and the USB microphone. 

The next stage is streamlining the process more and playing direct into Ableton and getting a better sound track. 

Why do all this? 

• I want 1000 subscribers and 4000hrs a year watch time so I can make some money off the streams
• I need to improve my video production skills as they very useful in the modern internet world
• Eventually I can improve video production and do face to camera lessons with overlays of music for composing lessons etc

Motivation is currently "GET 1000 SUBSCRIBERS" . To think about making any money now is ridiculous. I have been looking at other YouTube creators and they take about 3 years to get going. I suspect that the algorithm tags the video in certain ways for promotion and that the format of just music is pretty low in the hierarchy. 

I plan to do at least 1 video a week. I don't want to over promote though as it gets annoying.

The mandalorian

 

Quite pleased at how this Guitar arrangement I did looks and only takes up 3 pages including TAB and Chords!

https://www.sheetmusicplus.com/title/the-mandalorian-digital-sheet-music/22418891

I decided to do a lead sheet first and then opted to remove the atmospheric intro:

It was difficult to do as the excellent score has a lot of subtlety going on as well as some strong counter melodies. 

Once I head the lead sheet I then arranged for other instruments such as tenor sax , trumpet and violin etc etc. I opted for a "solo instrument plays along with the recording" format so the instrumentalist can enjoy being part of the band.