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[manchot66]

Two new UFO songs ready if anyone would like to try and let me know what you think.

 

UFO - Natural Thing for L & R, no bass.  Easy power chords, simple solo, and a tricky bridge part.  I could play this rhythm track til my hands fell off.

 

UFO - Mother Mary (Live) for L, R, & B.  Tuning is up a quarter tone at A452.9.  More easy power chords, long solo that gets insane at one point, and a tough riff.  Bass has a cool up and down slide in its riff.

 

Thanks.

[albatross213]

@@manchot66 - I'll try to check out Mother Mary on bass momentarily.

 

Anyway, today I bring you three Stones songs. These are still pretty early versions of them, so there probably will be some rough patches. The best bass tabs I could find were usually at least a bit off on the rhythm, so there were a number of corrections that I made to them and it's likely that in the process I put something at the wrong pitch. I haven't played through them yet but I'll try soon, and hopefully then I'll have a better idea of whether the notes are at the right pitch or not. After a cursory glance the guitar tabs seemed not horrible (especially good for the first minute of Under My Thumb, I think, which I checked reasonably thoroughly).

 

For the tabs, if there are any more accurate tabs that people could point me to, or could point out fixes, that would be a great help. If anyone wants to collaborate and do the guitar parts I might be able to make that work as well.

 

For tones I was lazy and just used the Satisfaction bass and clean tones for the moment. If you have recommendations for the different songs (and especially the part in the chorus of 19th Nervous Breakdown), they'd be really useful.

 

Lastly, for some of the songs I was unsure what to call "Lead" and what to call "Rhythm". Is there a pre-standing convention for Stones songs that don't have any solos or anything?

 

19th Nervous Breakdown for LRB.

 

Under My Thumb for LRB. Bass should be pretty fun to play.

 

Street Fighting Man for RB (or LB? I forgot which I called it. Probably R). The rhythm of the guitar parts seems a little bit simplified, and at the very least I expect I'll want to put a bunch of accents onto some of the chords in the song. I think the bass part should be pretty good, but there's one fill (just after Mick Jagger finishes singing "revolution" here).

 

Also, I'm guessing these will have a good amount of nostalgia associated with them and get a good number of downloads, so I think I'll try my hand at doing the lyrics for this. Does this tutorial cover pretty much everything I'll need? Do any of you have any special tips that you've picked up over the course of making your customs? How much time should I expect to spend on doing the lyrics? Thanks!

 

Lastly, I have another song that may be of interest to you guys, though it would be a stretch to call it classic rock given that it came out three years ago (then again, maybe the band's earned it?).

Rush - The Anarchist for bass. The bassline isn't 100% done yet, and I haven't done much of anything to polish it (sustains, slides) yet. There's a guitar tab on ultimate-guitar/songsterr if anyone wants to add it to the GP file as a collaboration.

Edited July 23, 2015 by albatross213

[albatross213]

Alright, I fixed the sectioning in the above songs in case anyone saw them before my most recent edit. Now for the real reason for this post:

 

@@manchot66 - I played Mother Mary on bass and it played quite well! The first time that (chorus?) riff showed up it threw me for a bit of a loop. Then it evolved and threw me for a loop again! Second time through when I was prepared for it went quite a bit better.

 

I didn't spot check the sync in RR and didn't score attack (which gives more timing information than Learn a Song), so I can't say I really delved into the sync, but it seemed like a good sync from what I could tell (and from what I'd expect from you).

 

Bass tone and volume was good. I'd maybe touch the volume up a hair (.5 dB), but wouldn't really worry about it.

 

The one "odd" thing I noticed was that the last time there's the 8\3 slide on the A it's unpitched, while the rest of the time it was pitched. Was this intentional?

[manchot66]

Lastly, for some of the songs I was unsure what to call "Lead" and what to call "Rhythm". Is there a pre-standing convention for Stones songs that don't have any solos or anything?

 

Does this tutorial cover pretty much everything I'll need? Do any of you have any special tips that you've picked up over the course of making your customs? How much time should I expect to spend on doing the lyrics? Thanks!

 

Lastly, I have another song that may be of interest to you guys, though it would be a stretch to call it classic rock given that it came out three years ago (then again, maybe the band's earned it?).

Rush - The Anarchist for bass.

If there's no solo in a track, I would usually put the track with the main riff in the lead.  The rhythm could be the track that's mostly chords, but I'll check it out and let you know.

 

That tutorial for lyrics is pretty good, that's how I learned.  Use USC, but don't worry about being really accurate with the words as far as if they are in exactly the right spot or not,  because you'll have to line them up anyway in EoF.  Make sure you put tails on the lyrics just like notes in EoF..  Also, make sure you highlight the whole line/phrase of lyrics once you've got them lined up and then hit Ctrl + M to group them together in EoF as well.

 

I'll play anything, it doesn't have to be classic rock.  I've done some blues and Crossbolt does some more modern stuff.  Nice change of pace to play some different stuff.

[manchot66]

Bass tone and volume was good. I'd maybe touch the volume up a hair (.5 dB), but wouldn't really worry about it.

 

The one "odd" thing I noticed was that the last time there's the 8\3 slide on the A it's unpitched, while the rest of the time it was pitched. Was this intentional?

Thanks for the playthrough. 

 

Will kick up bass .5db.

 

Not sure about that slide.  I'll have to check it out.  Thanks for spotting it.

 

Will play the Stones tonight.

[Crossbolt242]

manchot66 played lead on both songs

 

UFO - Natural Thing this was fun not bad to play until solo

crazy moving there but plays really well

tones sound right on

 

 

UFO - Mother Mary (Live) this one RS told me I need work

fast solo and harder to play but seem to be right on syncing

the solo tone sounded loud to me but I was having hard time

keeping up but did play well and tone sounded good just a little loud

at solo might just be me

good work I think lead play well and hard

[manchot66]

@@albatross213

 

Played lead and rhythm on the Stones songs.

 

19th Nervous Breakdown - Might need a little brighter tone for the lead.

 

Under My Thumb - On the lead track, the notes are about a second behind the song.

 

Street Fighting Man - Acoustic tone could be brighter.

 

Charting and volumes are good on all songs.

[albatross213]

@@albatross213

 

Played lead and rhythm on the Stones songs.

 

19th Nervous Breakdown - Might need a little brighter tone for the lead.

 

Under My Thumb - On the lead track, the notes are about a second behind the song.

 

Street Fighting Man - Acoustic tone could be brighter.

 

Charting and volumes are good on all songs.

Thanks for the feedback! Not sure how I didn't notice the issues with the lead in Under My Thumb - some of it was just some weird offset that got in somehow: it was I think over a measure off to the right. Re-import from guitar pro and it's mostly in the right place, at least in the intro and first verse, but seems to go off track by the second chorus, when there's that little lead between "it's down to me" and "yes it is". I might need a little help with that part, but I think what's in this tab looks about right and will let me fix that part and other similar things.

 

As for the tones, I'm always looking for ways to improve my knowledge of how to make certain tones and improve ones that I already have! For getting a brighter tone I gather it has something to do with reducing bass frequencies and boosting mids/trebles? What would EQ settings look like for a warmer tone vs. a brighter tone (or point the way to tones that I should look at, as I can import and see the EQ settings myself)?

 

Anyway, I'll try to update Under My Thumb with a proper lead and while I'm doing that give it a go with lyrics and such. Hopefully have something by tomorrow.

[manchot66]

@@albatross213

 

If you wanted to brighten up a tone definitely adding treble and mid and reducing bass will help.  Turning up "presence", if the amp has it, can sharpen it up.  Or some amps just have a duller sound than others.  Sometimes changing mic position on the speaker cab can help;  "dynamic cone" give you the brightest sound.  If it's a clean electric, I'll usually start with the Marshall Plexi amp, turn down 'loudness 1' and turn up 'loudness 2'.  If it's an older sound but clear, like Beatles or Stones, you can mess around with mic position to get an 'older' sound to it.  If I come across something today that might work, I'll let you know.

 

Went to bed with a little toothache, woke up with half my face puffed up.  Fun.

[albatross213]

Thanks for the feedback and tone advice, @@manchot66! I'm still more or less working in the dark as I don't have a guitar (though my bass can hit most "non-solo" guitar notes), but it will be very helpful in the future. Before I really start mucking around too much, do you think there will be other Stones songs that would work for some of those tones? Several songs on here from around that era...

 

Anyway, I uploaded an updated version of Under My Thumb with lyrics but no lead guitar track while I'm reworking that. Probably needs a more mellow bass tone, too. I also made a video in case anyone wants to see it in action without playing it, or analyze parts of it more closely, or whatever. Let me know how I did on the lyrics and I can see about doing it for the other songs.

 

Also another sort of retro-rock thing that I worked on in case anyone wants to check it out. It's Goodbye Gemini by Blood Ceremony (LRB). Described as 

"Jethro Tull meets Jefferson Airplane meets Blue Oyster Cult with Black Sabbath riffs"

in a review on metal-archives, it's pretty cool stuff IMO. Bass playthrough video also available if anyone wants to check it out that way.

 

Thanks!

[manchot66]

@@albatross213

 

Yeah, it's going to be tough to get those lead tones down without a six string.  Same here for bass.  Even using the bass emulator, I can't really recreate what the tone is going to sound like on thick strings.

 

Let me take a look at those tones you used and see if I can tweak them a little.  I'll let you know what I find out.

[manchot66]

@@albatross213

 

Lyrics on Under My Thumb are good.

 

Blood Ceremony is a cool song.  Might want to speed up the track a little so the chord panes don't overlap since the riff is a lot of relatively fast chords. 

 

You can make these three notes an arpeggio.  The pattern repeats itself with each of the different power chords.  Just makes it easier to play because you don't have to think about moving your hand to play those notes if the apreggio is there.  Check it out:

 

http://i.imgur.com/6QbdGab.png

 

Another example:

 

http://i.imgur.com/X4z5jrk.png

[Crossbolt242]

this should be a fun one to test love this tune 

so Please test and give Feedback helps me a lot 

Pat Benatar - Hell Is For Children L,R,&B

Thanks for Testing and Feedback

Cross

[albatross213]

@@Crossbolt242 - I played through on bass. Tone seemed very nice and sync was on point (there was maybe one place late in the song where it felt like I started playing somewhat earlier than the song - probably a small issue with the tab being an 1/8th off for one measure or something rather than sync).

 

Some other things:

 

The A3s and B6s in the chorus should be staccato rather than sustained. See pictures below for an example.

http://i.imgur.com/VJmQgiM.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/VBq5fUi.jpg

And there were maybe a few other things like that outside of those parts.

 

 

@@manchot66 - Thanks for the feedback! As I don't play guitar and a lot of the songs I've done aren't heavy on chords, I sometimes forget that the chord panes can obscure the view a lot and require faster scroll speeds. I forget what the scroll speeds were for the song - almost certainly 1.5 for rhythm and 1.4 for lead. I'll try bumping those up to 1.2 or so and uploading a new version.

 

A similar thing goes for the arpeggios. I learned how to do them fairly recently but still don't really look to do them unless there are really obvious arpeggiated sections of the song that last for a long time.

 

Also, how were the guitar tones? I think I took Paranoid-era Sabbath tones and turned the distortion down a good amount and also turned the tone (on the distortion pedal) down a bit (which I looked up and it sounds like it acts like a high pass filter? Not sure I should really have changed that...). I figured that should fit pretty well, but as usual I'm not really sure about volume or how differentiated the regular and lead tones should be.

[manchot66]

@@albatross213

 

The tones and volumes sound good.

 

Even though that's not a long line of arpeggios, it would be useful here.  Otherwise, you literally have to use a more difficult fingering than you just had your hand positioned in.  Not totally necessary but would be nice.

[Aludog]

Nice. Blood Ceremony is a great band. I thought about doing a track of theirs but didn't want to make one with bass only and wasn't really interested in the ones that have available GP files. Hopefully I'll be able to do a full transcription of "Witchwood" one of these days. :D

[albatross213]

Alright, here's the updated version of Goodbye Gemini. I think I caught all of the arpeggios, though it's possible that I missed a few. On the topic of the arpeggios, is there a way that I can set them up in GP/TuxGuitar? Sometimes I need to re-import the GP file and it would be nice to have it all set up automatically each time rather than having to do it manually.

 

I made the scroll speed 1.0 for lead and 1.2 for rhythm. I don't think that the lead needs to be faster than the rhythm as it seems the main need for speed is probably in the chords in the verses, but figured I'd do it that way so that you could test at both of those speeds and let me know which is better, or if some other speed would work better than those.

 

@@Aludog - yeah, I found out about them pretty recently and they're great! "Goodbye Gemini" probably wouldn't be in the top 3 (or maybe even 5) songs of theirs that I'd want to do if we had perfect GP files for every song, but I figured it was interesting enough to bring on here. They also fit the "relatively obscure but good" profile of a lot of the stuff I try to put on here. And the GP file was almost perfect, which is always nice.

 

Anyway, I guess you must be pretty busy these days between Tubular Bells and Quadrophenia! I hope things are going well on those projects!

 

Edit: Apparently I wasn't paying any attention when I was filling in the Band and Album information into the toolkit. The link should have the correct artist information and everything now.

Edited July 27, 2015 by albatross213

[manchot66]

@@albatross213

 

Link to your song is bad.

 

I don't think there is a way to mark arpeggios in GP, at least none that I could find.  Pretty sure you have to enter them manually every time.

[albatross213]

I think the link should be fixed now? If not, it should be in the previews folder in my signature as version 1.1.

 

I'm pretty sure I've seen some songs that have arpeggio handshapes marked into the GP file. Not sure I've ever worked with one of them though, and whether they import properly. I'll look into it a bit, but you're probably right that they have to be placed manually after import as you have much more experience in the matter than I do.

[manchot66]

@@Crossbolt242

 

Played Pat Benatar.

 

The lead tone has a lot of distortion compared to the one in the song.  I like it better the way you have it.  The solo tone has a lot of wah on it.  Might want to try Phaser 363 instead of wah.  363 gives that howl kind of sound like a wah without all the other stuff.  I like the tones you used.  But you might hear complaints from the assholes out there.  Charting looks good.

 

The rhythm track is awesome to play.  Tones and volumes are good.  Really starts rocking toward the end.  Charting is good.  Lots of fun.

[Aludog]

@@albatross213 The only way you can mark arpeggios in GP is with the "Let Ring" marker but that won't import into EoF, so you'll have to do it manually anyway.

[manchot66]

@@albatross213

 

Played Blood Ceremony again.  Everything looks and sounds good, except me trying to keep up with it.

 

Arpeggios are a big help.  Speed seems fast at first, but once you gets those chords in your memory, it's good.   And all the chord panes are easy to see.

[Crossbolt242]

Ok made some changes to Pat Benatar - Hell Is For Children

albatross213  I think i got the bass now can you try it again and tell me if that is better

manchot66  I adj and changed tones for lead  can you try it again tell me if that is better

Thanks for Testing and Feedback 

Cross

[albatross213]

@@albatross213

 

Played Blood Ceremony again.  Everything looks and sounds good, except me trying to keep up with it.

 

Arpeggios are a big help.  Speed seems fast at first, but once you gets those chords in your memory, it's good.   And all the chord panes are easy to see.

Just checking, this was on the lead path? I made the lead and rhythm somewhat different scroll speeds (I think 1.0 and 1.2 respectively) in case you wanted to test out how the different scroll speeds worked. Just want to make sure that I use the right one when I make the release version  :)

 

@@Crossbolt242 - I'll check it out in the next few hours. Thanks for the updates!

[albatross213]

@@Crossbolt242 - Played through again and it looks great! Might kick the volume on the bass tone up a dB or two as at times (mainly during the solo section) it was quite hard to hear myself. Not sure why I didn't notice that the last time I played it  :lol:. But I think the bass path's pretty much good to go.