I'm hoping that we can use this thread to collaborate on songs!!!

I'll start. Here are the audacity files to a song I wrote called "Backstage". Currently the tracks consist of a click track, three vocal tracks, a placeholder bridge vocal track, and two guitar tracks. Very simple and rough.

This is the first day I ever tried to do this, and I only spent a few hours on it. I'll continue working on the song but these tracks are the foundation. If anyone wants to add tracks of any sort, I would be thrilled - it could use harmonies, other instruments, some sort of percussion maybe. I could provide the chord progressions if you want.

The file is big, of course. I tried to send it to the Treehouse gmail but it didn't work (or took longer than my patience could stand). I was able to get it onto sendspace, though. It's here:
http://www.sendspace.com/file/7mulbu

An mp3 of the rough mix is here:
http://www.sendspace.com/file/rh2fwt

Hope this is of interest. Would love to hear your songs and see your audacity files.

This is actually really cool to do between two people. My friend in new york and I trade mp3s back and forth adding stuff and breaking it down.

this is a nice song. what kind of mic do you record with... even with my new mic I can't get that nice sound you have...


anyway. here is a bunch of demos I just recently compiled.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/9l4ead

My mic is the only thing I could find around the house today. It's an el cheapo mic from a Radioshack headset that I bought a few years ago so that I could make cheap telephone calls with my laptop using Skype. The headset probably cost me $10.



I just plug it directly into my laptop as if I'm making a telephone call. Audacity does the rest. It's great for vocals because I can listen to the click track and other tracks through the headset while singing. But it's kind of ridiculous for mic'ing the guitar. I have to wear the headset to hear the playback of the other tracks, while leaning over so that the attached mic is near enough to the guitar to pick it up reasonably well. :D

So, radiowires needs a real mic. Seems that clouds could use one, too. Does anyone out there have advice on a mic for running into a computer?

Can you pull mp3's apart into their constituent tracks for manipulation?

No, but if the separate tracks are requested(only once) we share them.

also I'm pretty sure my mic is good, it's just new, and as such I haven't worked it out to its full potential. The demos I linked are a mix of my old cheap mic and my new mic. But with my new mic I turn it up all the way, so there's a little white noise + the air conditioner in the background.

Since I'm new to audacity, this may seem like a dumb question -- but can you pull an mp3 file into audacity as a track, so that it can be manipulated (as a whole) like any track could be? E.g. pieces of it clipped, volume adjusted, summed with other tracks? I'm inferring that this is what you and your friend do...

you can. most mp3s show up in audacity as stereo tracks.

there's an "import audio" option in a dropdown somewhere.

cool - I have tons of old songs that I converted from cassettes to mp3, and now I can maybe improve them, at least to some extent, without having to re-record them. That's wonderful.

That would be great. I'm too lazy to figure it out.

___Asus2_______________Dsus2__A__Dsus2_A______G__________E7
6/4__/__/__/__/__/__/___|__/__/__/__/__/__/___|4/4__/__/__/__/|__/__/__/__/__|
_______________I had to__close my eyes _and re-___cede__________just a minute

___Asus2_______________Dsus2__A__Dsus2_A______G__________E7
____(4/4)__/__/__/__/___| 6/4 /__/__/__/__/__/__|4/4__/__/__/__/|__/__/__/__/_
_______________I never__know _just what ___I_______need_______when I'm in it

etc.

Sorry for all the underlines, it's the only way I can keep the spacing accurate here, to show the relation between the chords and the rhythm. Hope it makes sense. The Asus2 is just an A with high B string open. The Dsus2 is just a D with high E string open. I don't use bar chords; I like the sound of as many open strings as possible. These are just Guitar 101 chords with modifications.

There's another progression toward the end of each verse, I'm not sure what the chords are. I use a lot of 'made up' chords that just sound good and logically step along the fretboard. You'll have to go by ear on that. Maybe I'll make a video showing it, just to be clear.

The bridge: just alternates between four chords. The key sounds a little different from the main verses because I'm using A and never Asus2 (so it's more of a major chord feel). The chords are A, a dissonant F (keep top B & E strings open - just like an E moved up one fret), E, Dsus2. Repeat 4x. I don't know what the "dissonant F" is called formally.

Sorry for the weird chords and weird time signatures. I've been doing this so long that I get bored with the regular chords, and shifting time signatures just kind of happen with me. I like the sense of being off-balance, maybe. And undoubtedly my mind was warped permanently by too much Rush exposure back in the day.

Just be glad it's in standard tuning! <_< :)
cheers

video showing the end-of-verse chords. Basically they are formed by an Asus2 that slides up and down the neck, with an added index finger on the B string two frets behind the main chord in some places.
http://www.sendspace.com/file/19x6qq

you could just show the chords like this... say you are playing E, it would be 022100 where each number tells you where on the fret you're playing.

OK, let's do that from now on, I didn't know if everyone would know that notation.

thanks radiowires

I'll work on some stuff today.

i just listened to the song and it sounds pretty great the way it is. all i can think to add myself is a shaker in some parts, maybe some instrumentals after the 2:08 mark where it's just you humming. perhaps a neat ambience of background noise. i dunno.

yeah, instead of lyrics for the bridge there (where I'm humming) I've been thinking of maybe adding an instrumental. It would kind of represent the intermission of the play (which is the setting of the song). I think I'm having trouble with lyrics for the bridge because I've pretty much exhausted what I want to say in this song... extra words feel superfluous. Yet I don't want to jettison the bridge, either... there's no chorus, so a break of some sort is needed after verse 2.

If anyone wants to add an instrumental solo there, please go for it. A saw! accordian! In fact a whole orchestra pit arrangement would suit the song's setting quite nicely and provide an interesting contrast to the more stripped-down verses.

And a shaker is an amazing idea.

Thanks, Pele.

when i first heard the bridge, i thought some sort of strings (cello, viola, etc.) would sound fantastic there. but alas, i cannot provide those.

i added a guitar part to the bridge, but that's about it. i would have gotten a bit more involved and done the shaker and some other stuff, but i actually have sort of a bad cold right now. as soon as i set up my mic, i felt like having a sneeze and taking a nap. =(

here's the song with the guitar part in:
http://www.sendspace.com/file/o0lpx9

and here's the guitar part on its own as one mp3:
http://www.sendspace.com/file/3535h9

with the song, i mixed it sort of low. my mic picks up way more sort of "room noise" than yours.

Holy guacamole, thanks Pele - that sounds very cool. When I have time I'll delete the la-la-la placeholder track so it doesn't interfere with the solo.

OK, here's a second song. Spent the afternoon recording it. Whether or not these songs are any good, it's really nice to finally get them out of my head and documented.

"Jen Again": http://www.sendspace.com/file/gbizfe]http://www.sendspace.com/file/gbizfe

This one starts soft and gets loud, so mind the volume controls. Like the other one, it's a rough cut. It sounds OK through headphones but could use some engineering.

I'm uploading the audacity files, too, but it will take about an hour. I'll post the link when it's done.

Edit: It's done. Audacity files are here: http://www.sendspace.com/file/v42vg4

Pele--- what kind of guitar are you playing? And is that a banjo in the background (or ukulele?) Both instruments have a very captivating sound.

Pele -- new version of the song, with your solo featured during the bridge, is here. I took the liberty of silencing the last few notes of the solo because I like unresolved chords, and because I still need to improve the segue into the 3rd verse... I plan to layer other instruments onto the melody you created. THANKS it sounds so great!!!

http://www.sendspace.com/file/9i8xue

glad you liked the track! the version you uploaded sounds nice.

the guitar is an acoustic-electric walden performed acoustic. really low in the background is a ukulele.

this is a pretty cool song, gents

thanks!

City songs...

Being in NYC this past weekend made me remember an old song I wrote and recorded on a boombox. It's about this girl I used to visit at NYU, but it's just as much about NYC itself.
"Incomplete": http://www.sendspace.com/file/lquyja

And that made me think about city-themed songs in general. This is a song I wrote about a period of my life in Boston, when I was lonely and bored and young and felt abandoned but was strangely happy and hopeful. Again it's as much about Boston than anything else.
"Your Lazy Sins": http://www.sendspace.com/file/e6u2fm

Maybe this weekend I'll add some backing tracks to them on audacity, harmonies or other guitars or percussion or something. As always, if anybody else wants to do this too, be my guest.

Anybody else have any city-related tunes they can share? I was hoping this could be a more general forum for our music, not just the radiowires vanity show. :)

--> clouds, can you tell us something about the demos you posted above?

hahahhahaha and something I just found that I forgot I had....

16-year old radiowires covering Toto's "Angela"
I love where you can hear me turn the page of the songbook.
And I love how the bridge totally kicked my ass.

Why did I record this?!!? (and why am I *sharing* this?)
hahahahahahahahhhahahahahahahahahahahahahahhah

Listen if you dare
http://www.sendspace.com/file/1pql2s

i have dozens of horrible recordings by sixteen-year-old me.

what's worse is sixteen-year-old me was just last year.

well, that's pretty much the oldest one that I have, so it's stupidly precious to me. ;)
One more piece of juvenilia, which I wrote for my high school band, about a girl who wore too much makeup, recorded when I was about 17.
"Karla": http://www.sendspace.com/file/j1y9tj

Pele, someday you will look back fondly at those old recordings; keep them.

haha, your renditon of "angela" rules. most of it actually sounds great.

it beats my first solo recording... it's a cover of "i wonder" by the willowz. i had just bought my first guitar and i had no idea how to play. also, if it's not obvious, i was pretty embarrassed about my singing.

2-14-06 "I Wonder"

i only used three magical chords in the entire song.

I totally remember sitting on my bed on a cold winter day in South Dakota recording it. :lol:

I'm listening to it right now. Is the tape hiss on purpose?

You have a really good voice. And for a newbie guitarist you're hitting the chords nicely. This is a really sweet recording -- post more!!!

clouds, could you re-link your demos? I didn't have the opportunity to dl them before and now I WANTZ THEMS

the hiss actually comes from my shitty recording method... i recorded the song using the lame microphone that's built into the laptop.

and, for the first batch of songs i ever recorded, i didn't really know how to overdub properly while using audacity. what i did was, i'd record one track, export it as a .wav file, then listen to that track through headphones in windows media player while recording a brand new track in audacity. then i'd try to sync them together by hand.

it was literally months before i found the setting in audacity where you can listen to tracks while recording.

while i'm digging through the folder, this is the first guitar song i recorded that i wrote music and lyrics for.

the tracks are really out of sync throughout.

3-20-06 "The Uglier Extremes"

it's called "The Uglier Extremes". it's not great, but you've got to start somewhere, eh?

I like!

the out-of-sync guitar tracks are pretty cool, actually. I like happy mistakes like that.

it grew on me quickly because i realized that the crunchy out-of-sync guitars reminded me of how trains sound. and trains are neat.

EDIT: haha, by the way, "karla" makes me want to wear plaid and dance in public places. i have no idea what the fuck you're saying at the 1:38 mark but it sounds AWESOME.

rocktagious!

"Pile it on
trowel it out
...scrape two holes for looking out!
paint the colors in a whirl
you're my psychadelic girl
Karla"

the way you say "scrape two holes for looking out" and "you're my psychadelic girl" is just too fun.