I forgot I made this.. lol

Prelude to a piece of a successful online band

August 26, 2009. It was a cloudy afternoon. I just finished setting up my studio. Took a quick practice to see if it runs smoothly. Loaded up a draft from one of my bandmates and tried to mix it with some recorded instruments. After a while I thought, how did we successfully end up like this? How far have we gone through and as a music arranger, where did I start? Am I "there" yet??

Tracing my experiences in the "digital music" world I found out a lot of things that I have forgotten. As I moved on so many things that shaped my musical style have been buried. These were so critical, although accidental, that I cant be what I am now if even one of those things didn't touch my curiousity. And now reminiscing these things could improve myself and could evolve my musical style for good. Hopefully.

When I daparted from my homeland, I was so homesick and I missed my friends who were actually my bandmates for the last 10 or more years. When my brother in law noticed I've been staying in my room doing nothing he tried to help me get a job, and I got one. I meet one of the clerks who is about to move and his "bag" is pretty much packed, he can't take his guitar with him. Lucky for me.

So I played and played during my free time. Then I started making poems, and I though 'heck why not merge lyrics and guitars to make songs?'. Made a couple of it and during that time I thought it was good enough. I started to make some more, then I realized that I start to forget my previous compositions. I need a "reminder". I don't know how to make or even read music sheets so I could only do this through recording software. I was aware of that kind of programs that time but never actually tried one. I searched and the first thing that got my attention is Audacity. Audacity is a pretty slick but easy app. Long before I encountered this program called Cool Edit. But it was so complex to me that time and never actually tried to record anything. Probably because Audacity is a "one workspace" app.


So I tried to make things work with Audacity and now I'm ready to record my songs, only to find out I always sing out of tune. I cant actually provide myself with a detuned "reminder". I searched again, feeling I couldnt find what I was looking for. Then I found a software calle Psycle. But what caught me are the two abbreviations featured in the app; VST and MIDI. When I found out that VST stands for Virtual Studio Technology I though 'this is the one I'm looking for'. I also downloaded Psycle.

It took me weeks before I could finish my first song in Psycle. But one thing amazed me is that you can just type in the right tune and you can save it for later. Plus, you can compose not only the notes for lyrics but arrangements for the whole song as well.

It took me almost a year to make about 15 songs. Then I started to feel the discontentment for it. The quality of music is too "digital", meaning I can really tell that it was a computerized music, compared to acoustic and live music from a live band. Once again I sat down and searched for a better music app as they started to pile down right before me. Most of these were commercial apps like Cubase, Cakewalk, Reason, etc. but I cant take the risk of getting into piracy so just sticked to freewares. And the only thing that's got my VST experience and freeware desire is Jeskola Buzz.

I've become a fan of the software and made more than 30 arrangements as of now. Buzz also introduced me into variations other than VST's like Soundfonts, DirectX, LADSPA, and others, it also teached me the fundamentals of a synthesizer (oscillators, modulations, multi-effects, Attack-Decay-Sustain-Release, etc), and the sound wave file itself.

And now my last problem, vocals. I continued to search the net and since I cant sing, I was down to two options, risk piracy and use the Vocaloid music synthesis that I found, or, I can just look for a "real" vocalist and try to work things out somehow.

Actually I started both. I started studying singing synthesis and at the same time I started looking for forum sites where I could find something I'm looking for.

And then ideas came to my mind. Why not just "e-mail" the music file to a vocalist, load the music in Audacity and record the vocals. If so, then the same thing can be done in guitars, as well as other instruments. It doesn't matter if it was a VST, or a real instruments, as long as everyone could e-mail their music file, that is in-sync with each other in beat and in notes, then we can actually make a full song.

Since then I've become a member of Symbianize forum site. Its specialty is in mobile phones but it has grown into a large community, where even forums about everyday lives are included. I found so much talents in each aspect, its like every sub forum has at least one talented specialized in that particular subforum.

I took my chances, made a topic about an idea of an online band. And lots of people were interested. But after the given requirements and the responsibilities, we were down to two bands, one became inactive almost immediately, and one almost "made it". The immediate downfall started after a personal encounter between two vocalists in a chat room. The band immediately broke up after 1 demo song.

It was not a very good experience. Although I was grateful that a demo was made. It even paved the way to a new band that everyone knew and loved. A proof that I'm not crazy thinking about a band that can exist even if the members were thousand miles away from each other, brought together by a piece of wire and a small modem.



***TBC***