| Home recording and general music post from the archived Yabb Recording Website Message Board. Some of the info here may be outdated but many of the audio recording and home studio tips are still good. Note: The only tags I made and attempt to convert are italics, bold, center and underline. So if you see some gibberish surrounded by brackets, just ignore it.
Recording Website Archived Yabb board Post
Febuary 2001 Yabb Message Board Archive
Subject: Unique ideas for making music?
by Ally | 03/05/01 at 16:32:04
I had a friend who used to tape a large coffee can to the outside of his speaker in order to add a special affect to the guitar. Any other unique ideas anyone has come up with for recording or playing?
Subject: Re: Unique ideas for making music?
by Jon_B | 03/08/01 at 10:45:06
One fun thing you can try is playing an instrument you aren't familiar with. I'm not suggesting oboe or anything, but something you can get your hands on that isn't hard to pick up on. I have an antique mandolin, a Washburn model 1915 that has been in my family for generations but which nobody realy played much. Breaking with family tradition, I took it out of its case, got the tuning for it & started playing. I found that if I played a melody on the first 4 strings (ddgg) that went along with the last 4 (aaee) played open, it had a kind of "Appalachian sound" if that's what one would call it. Kinda spooky! :)
And you might keep the recorder running in case you come up with some good ideas.
Subject: Re: Unique ideas for making music?
by Silent_Bob | 03/17/01 at 21:02:43
one thing I've done it run my guitar through one of those delay pedals with an analogue feedback loop. Turn the rate all the way up as well as the feedback & it starts to generate it's own tone that you can tune & change by varying the feedback & delay rate. It creates sort of a synth/messed up radio sound. I've also found that purring a little 10 watt practice amp inside a suitcase with a mic & burried it in towels it makes a pretty fat sounding recording.
Subject: Re: Unique ideas for making music?
by John_A | 04/03/01 at 12:08:45
The following techniques are not meant to produce music for public consumption. But if your public likes it, hey, so much the better.
take an intricate funk or Bo-Diddly type groove and play something in a different meter to it - like 3. The reason I say intricate is because if there's a lot of stuff going on in a groove, there's more stuff to lock onto when the going gets wierd.
get your favorite groove going, then play a lick, but start it at different points in the bar. like at the 'and' of two or whatever.
take a two liter soda bottle and put the mouth near a mic (or your ear) and drum on the bottle with your fingers. You can move your hand over the mouth of the bottle to modulate the pitch. Make sure the bottle is empty, of course.
last but not least, if you can get your hands on a sampling delay a la an old digitech time machine and a footswitch, you can riff out for hours.
Subject: Re: Unique ideas for making music?
by My Igloo | 04/13/01 at 21:48:04
Well I bought a ukulele. All of a sudden even the most cliche progressions sound unique!
Subject: Re: Unique ideas for making music?
by Left_out | 04/15/01 at 20:29:45
I put a napkin in front of a mic to cut down on sound screwups and stuff;D
Subject: Re: Unique ideas for making music?
by Crippled_Rich | 04/15/01 at 21:10:33
Most of my ideas come to me in the shower or on the toilet. No kidding. *laughs* Either that or anytime I DON'T have an instrument in my hands nor are able to get to one anytime soon. I filter out good ideas by those which I still remember when I do have a guitar or keyboard or something at my disposal. Otherwise the idea gets disposed of.