Ooooh I understand now Well, I'd be curious to hear it at the top speed you can play it now, but keeping in mind that it has to be clean and in good timing and articulation

Hey Cosmin
here is the verse
And I was thinking this need some chords outside of key to make it sing

What do you suggest? Right now its Ebm7, Abm7, Bmaj7
Could with fit in a chord after the Bmaj?

What chord would that be?
And are there any specific rules about this?

Very nice! I will make a video for ya and talk about what possibilities I'd use Stay tuned!

Here we go:

"Dont make anything advanced just beacuse you want to make it advanced"

You are right about that Cosmin, and I have fallen into that trap sometimes.
But that is not the case here

I want this kind of sound, this kind of outness.
I attach to you a soundfile, back when I played around with these things.
Its straight C major, but I try to put in some stuff from the C minor scale there as well.

Well I have no idea what im doing, thats why I ask you about this, but I want this sound

This is done without chords, but dont you think, at in the parts where I put this outnotes
ESPECIALLY the ending lick would sound great?

Hey mate I will ponder on it - a video will come your way, as usual

alright

Hey mate, hope I got close enough with my thoughts:



The idea here is to use a chord progression that combines two keys for instance and see what notes create a smooth passage between those keys, making things sound out but not quite You can try the concepts in this lesson on a progression such as the one I suggested:

http://www.guitarmasterclass.net/ls/Common-Notes/

Thanks Cosmin I will do some thinking about this
Now, this might be much to ask.

But could your provide me with correct fingering for the arpeggios in Muris Extreme neoclassical?
I guess I have to roll my finger, even backwards (how that now is possible) in a video perhaps?

And YES im serious about this haha!

Ive been at a teatcher that has helped me in my technique and given me exercises to help me in my playing
I will include this piece in my praticing

Hey mate I will make a vid for ya - now, my technique is not that proficient in this area, simply because I don't use it, or at least I haven't used it in a very long time. But I will tell you what I know that you have to keep in mind in respect to this style of playing. Stay tuned

Here ya go:

Hey Cosmin
I will have a theoretical drum lesson with a friend

Now I was thinking of recording riffs to a metronome in different time signatures and then write drums to these riffs as lesson pratice.
How do you do that?

Best thing is to start with a metronome click sound right and record it to that.
Then I just try different grooves, but how would you do

how do you know in what time signature you wrote the riff, i only try to see what suite me best
I want to improve this

Hey mate Thought a video might explain my ideas better, so here we go:

Good as usual cosmin
Do you have any furhter pratice advice regarding counting, praticing building grooves and rythm knowledge?

Also, I was thinking, I dont pratice all musical concepts everyday. Is there really a need for that.
That would take a lot of the fun in the playing out which wont be good for me.

What i do everyday is right now: fretboard/theory, legato (1 hour) going to start with sweeps, all inversions.
Ear training from learning pieces, imporvising and learning rythm/solo works by others.

Doing piano training, sight reading and everything everyday i just wont
Did you do that or how did you pratice?

Hey mate Glad I could help

Well, in respect to my learning process, I picked things up along the way and cemented my knowledge A LOT while teaching

Otherwise, now I think it's a great approach to take things one step at a time, not trying to stuff yourself with everything but understanding principles and applying them. Once you will be at ease with the fact that you can't learn everything well, all at once, things will be much nicer and easier to tackle I have a hunch that you are craving to know everything, fast, as fast as possible, right?

Cosmiiiin how are you doing?
Okay, we lost our singer for the small concert we will have.

Btw I will play still hurts from Marco Youtube cover up soon.

Anyway I will be singing on smoke on the water!.. jesus
Now I will probably visit a vocal coach soon.

But Cosmin this is bad but I am not lying about this so be honest I have not sang in years
This is a bad record but I wanted to send you a first time record

How can I reach the notes im missing?

Dont cover your ears!

Hehe! Welcome to the world of singing

Buddy, my first suggestion is the following - what key is the song played originally? If your voice is not meant for that key, in this case, lower the key until you feel comfy

It's the first thing to think about - find your comfort zone and practice there. Reach pitches correctly, sustain the notes, be rhythmical and learn to breathe and sing from your diaphragm A vocal coach is of the essence if you wish to make progress, tho!

Our keyboard/singer dropped out so we did an instrumental gig, too bad
I would have loved to do that smoke on the water G3 version. (3 solos)

Okay so Cosmin, I think its time for me to make music.
I have learned a lot and got so much to learn still. Its been a great year for me at the music academy.

But I like what I produce, what I hear in my mind, the music.
Im only 20, but I cant learn my whole life, just learn.

time for my first EP got material for 4 songs, should be a good choice right?
Making a 10 song instrumental album feels like, none of the 10 songs will be that good/will take huge amounts of time.

I attacted a sample of what kind of music the EP will be
Its an intro + outro for one song, just keeps going, repeating, makes it heavy with a beatiful touch

Hey mate!

Good choice Learning for the sake of learning is not necessarily a good thing ya know

Making music is the whole thing you should aim for - this sounds a bit like Devin Townsend I like the ideas and I think you have shown wisdom in approaching the situation like you described:

4 songs to make an outstanding EP are far better than 10 Do they have a story already? You know, knowing what you write about, will always provide a strong boost in creative music writing

Of course
All songs have a meaning cause a lot of things happend recently in my life.

There will be 3 songs that are fixed. Then I will se if I will do a remake of my fusion song now that my knowledge is at another level.

But starting its the :

Sad/beatiful, in the previous post.
The happy song
And the mysterious one.

They all have a meaning, I will show all the ideas, recording right now

Looking forward to hearing them

Mate, I am asking this, because with my band we recently realized how important it is to offer not just a concert, but a whole audio-visual experience - so each song has a story which is projected live under the form of a visual animation depicting the story as well as possible. With hidden symbols, hints, ideas and everything. Each moment of the story is correlated with specific lighting.

In the end - we are still working on this - we should end up with all the stories tied up together creating a massive story - no breaks between the songs, everything being tied up through musical interludes and the nicest part - actors Each visual story should be supported by acting on stage. Slowly but surely we are aiming for a musical

It's so exciting to do it and I can't wait to have it all done! It's always good to know what your music is about, so that you may give it any form you want when you play it live. Of course, all of the above cost a lot and in order to put them on stage, we need sponsoring. We managed to pull one show, with visuals, lights and interludes. But it was pretty darn expensive for us...

Cool Cosmin, hidden messages especially in song titles I like that
Link me your band page I think I remember the name, Aria? Didnt fint it

Here you go cosmin.
The EP template.

1. The first one (name not set). The first song I composed to completetion got to be in here, but with a remake The track is really nice, and after this years hard work my playning has become a lot better and this one will be on the EP

2. NMT this song is called. I did this one in november, with my friend who plays piano. This one might also have a bit of vocals on the verse, maybe even lyrics?
I like the track, more than when I played over it so, I think maybe lyrics for this song. I attacthed is NMT.

3. Name not set (moving on/on the way). A "happy" low tuned song this song I also got some questions about we can talk about later.
Pretty cool song, goes a little unhappy, returens to this playful riff, going to have an arpeggio part where you play an arpeggio followed by riffing.

4. "End It All", name set. The song I showed you in previous post

NOTE: as you may notice I still need to pratice some parts of these songs to get them tight and well sounding And there is no drumwork right now, just a template

Hey mate

I checked out the ideas - they are indeed still raw and you need to work on structures and orchestrations now. That piano interlude is very melodic - I like it the most so far!

You should be able to think about the songs, more in terms of a whole than just in terms of one riff here, one theme there... Hope I am clear with this - more of an ensemble view and then the details.

Here's my band's FB page and website:

https://www.facebook.com/DAYS.OF.CONFUSION.OFFICIAL.PAGE
www.daysofconfusion.com

Hey Cos
Would it be a smart move of me to have a singer?
Cause I think it would be good, I like her voice and I think it could blend with this heavy but calm music.

Okay, know it wont be THAT much singing, like only 2 verses, do you think that will be inappropriate?

I will end up in some kind of "borderland" between instrumental and normal songs with lyrics.
I think it can be cool what do you think?

Hmmmm Mate, having a singer is always a good idea - you will reach at least 10 times the people you can reach with instrumental music

Now, the singer is the make or break factor in a band. If the band has a bad singer, well, the chances of success are pretty much low, regardless of how good the others are, because the voice is the first thing that the listener focuses on.

Having this in mind - the way in which you employ vocals in your music is your own choice, but do it wisely and you will gather the rewards

What I thought.
She wont sing a lot though, hope that wont feel weird! rythm combined with instrumental and some vocals.
Hopefully will be cool

Oh, and I got a new guitar, again.. 7 string
Now im broke.

Action pretty low, same solo ability as my 6 string, similar.
Even though the low action, the riffing is amazing, sounds great

Heh - you are free to experiment mate Don't hold back, I mean, if you don't try things, you won't know how and what and when and where

What guitar did you get? Specs, pics? Maybe a vid?

Here it is, Suhr 7 string, only one I found in the whole UK.
Next to my 6 string.

You can always keep looking and, its endless "the best guitar for you".
But after having that suhr 6 string for 1 year I can say its the best guitar I have ever used and I want to play only these guitars now

So that 7 string made my guitar selection complete, and its brutal.
Low action, high playability, still I love the riffing and the sounds, tuned drop A flat

Video coming soon I hope, my friend: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFKswPaxDtA
Is a keyboard player and dream theater fan, we will do a couple of unisons togheter on his channel.

The "unison" from still hurts soon enough

Wow - that dude has some skills and the video looks amazing!

Good call mate - I hope you two will do a good job together. As for the guitars, pff.. Suhr is a name that I have always associate with high quality gear but also with pricey gear How much was the 7 string?

Too much so I have to sell of other guitars to pay rent! in euros i think 2000 euros.

Here we go again cosmin.
I think my drums sounds so bad, I will of course record my material in the studio, but the pre made grooves feel bad even for making ideas

And my riffs always end up in 4/4 xD

I wrote a cool riff in 6/8, but it didnt become musical cause i thought of the time signature.
All good musical riffs are always 4/4 that I come up with

Whenever I write for another time signature I think of the groove, and the musical idea is gone, strange

Oh no way man It's a very good way to go I remember listening to an interview with Richard Patrick from Filter - he stated clearly that he always begins writing a song when he has a steady groove on which he can base the song on.

It's not by far a bad way, but you need to go with the grooves you find and see how you can make them musical - keep in mind that ANYTHING is allowed, don't think 'ah, that's too jazzy, or ah, that's too not metal' Give yourself a chance to create man

ok

Lets have a look at my ideas and structures and you can comment on them.
For example, I have a riff in 4/4. All played 4/4.

Then i play like, triplets, like 123-123-123, or 123456. Works over 4/4, but wouldnt it be cool with a change to 6/8?
Didnt get a chance for this to work though

Haha Frankly no! I would keep it like that, exactly as you said it, because it sounds a lot more interesting Check this out:



The sort of riff at 04:10 that's the sort of pulse I'd like to hear! Sorry for the shameless pluggin But that was the closest example coming to my mind!

Nice one Cosmin, are you singing on this one? Sounds a little like your voice

One of the biggest challenges while composing for me is the transitions between different tempos and time signatures, to make them smooth with whatever methodes there are, like bass slides, fills, panned riffs and all.

I will soon present to you all the templates for the 3 new songs to be recorded and we can talk about this

Thanks man - yeah, I am singing

Regarding the transitions between tempos and pulses - here's a great example in my opinion:



The shuffle pulse alternating with the straight 4/4 pulse both having different tempos Looking forward to hear the tunes, man!

Yeah they are coming up.
Thought we could have a look at all the structures.

So you can check if there is any error or anything unsmooth, give your point of view
and It can help me make the foundation good for the songs.

And then its time to write the solos

Sure man Shoot'em up my way.

You know, I think it's best for you if I will act as a listener at first and then we'll get into the perspective of the player/writer, deal?

It's VERY important to be able to open up a channel to the listener - you decide what type, but you should make sure it exists

Here we go, first song, think I showed this before, anyway here it is

This is basically it. This will be more of a typical structured song with verse coming again with lyrics
and the guitar does the chorus for this one

And on the verse I will try to play the same melody the singer sings.

So here we have all the rythms for the song.

Riff, simple, and it sounds good to me.
I have become mature in my playing and try to make it musical instead of techincal.

After listening a month to this idea i still like the vibe of it, and the whole song

So questions

how will this verse fit the singer?
Structures of riffs, backing? listen to the chorus with the low tuned guitar and piano, i can remove the melody and send you
a track without it aswell

Hey mate

The vocal has a lot of space to come up with lines, but first you need to create a structure - I could only hear a riff, a piano part and a guitar solo. When I am talking about a structure, I am referring to having an idea about how the song will go from the beginning to its end:

Intro - verse - chorus - verse - chorus - bridge - solo - final chorus - maybe outro.

You can't really come up with a vocal idea that easily when you don't know what's coming next I mean, from my experience, it either goes like this: we work on the instrumental until it has an almost finished shape (90%) and then I start working on the vocals

or

I come up with the chord progressions of the song on the acoustic guitar ALREADY having vocal lines to go with them and THEN we create a structure based on the chord progression and the lines.

Have you thought of things like this?

Of course
The thing is, its not a guitar solo, its part of the song and its the chours, now i dont know if i will have it this way.
This will have to be experimented with.

But I will do as you say, I will present to you the whole track, with ONLY the instrumental structure, and i will explain the parts

Also Cosmin, would it be worth trying to get hold of "techno" kind of person to record for me
I think this modern ambient stuff adds a lot to the composition as you can see I add some stuff I made myself with the guitar.

It removes the "dryness" from the tracks with only guitar, bass, drum I think.

Or should I do this with my guitar?
Works decently

The more organized you are, the better things will go and furthermore, the easier it will be to explain to other people what you want to do



Yeah, by all means - I mean, I would do that It's always cool to have some pads and ambient sounds to 'thicken the soup' If I can say it like that.

In Days of Confusion, we have this backing track that has all sort of pads/synths that goes from a laptop and plays along with us when we are on stage. It is on a separate track because we don't have a 6thguy to operate pads/ambients in real time. But it has to be there - it REALLY makes a difference

Damnit cosmin, all recordings lost.
Somehow, so difficult to recreate EXACTLY what you made, pianist doesnt remember what he played and so on, doesnt have time and..
guess I have to remake the other songs.

I just created out of joy and passion, and when its gone, as it is when you have lost your recordings trying to re-record them its frustrating

Pfff... damn man. I know what you mean.. I should start making my backup files these days, as you never know what might happen. Don't you have any back ups prepared?

Nope, now I have though, trying to put everything in "REAPER Media" and back it up once a week.

Now Cosmin, how do you write lyrics without ending up with sentimental mainstream phrases?
I can do nothing but that.

"oh baby i miss you" "thinking of you" haha.

If I would relate this to guitar phrasing.
Its like im a guy who just learned the pentatonic scale over a 1-4-5
and trying to create some modal fusion lead.

I got words, but no way to put them into context
Cheers

Hey mate

Well, first of all you have to know very well what you want to transmit. I for one, have written all the lyrics on the Days of Confusion songs and I have only written about things which I have personally experienced. No mumbo jumbo, just facts. Be it in the mind or in everyday life, the lyrics reflect happenings, thoughts and situations that the Cosmin who's writing this right now has fully lived

Make a list of the most important experiences - good, bad, sad, happy, scary... it doesn't matter AS LONG as they have had great impact on you. You will discover a lot about yourself when writing. After having this list, see which ones you want to tell a story about.

That's how you begin

Hello Cosmin
I have a question about a song Im transcribing right now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAz2z2viJ7s

Its a drummer solos album, with the guitars programmed!
I did the first intro part which I also belive is the trickiest and Im now at 100 %

A thing that confuses me though

At 0:44-0:58

Im almost certain he does not change chord, its the G power chords all over
But the groove of the track almost make you think.

But he doesnt right? im 99 % sure just wanted to check with you

Hey man! I know Anup Damn awesome music this guy makes! Indeed, it doesn't sound like he is changing the chord there, to me as well

How's life and practicing otherwise? I'd love to see a recording of this tune from you!

Its been a good year for me here in England
and I will return home in the summer.

That year I will work again and focus on the styles I want to play.
here I have more focused on music in general and a wide stylistic approach to become more
"complete".

So I will focus on my own stuff now and music I think is cool

I will soon put togheter a home recorded medley of the song ideas that might feature on my first EP.
Only thing is I dont have a good way of marketing it since my youtube channel is not grown you know.


Im at 80 % at the moment in the song, still needs to work at a few things in the intro.
For example the muting, and the "bam" sound, you know when you strike it so
the note almost change it.

In the song it does a rythm like BAM - mute - BAM which is really tricky at 100 %

Hehe This is not bad at all man - you are djenting And I like!

It's of course a matter of patience and focused practice here, as with all that requires execution at a certain level.

I am looking forward to hear the medley and about the EP Don't hurry mate, at some point in our discussions, I remember you told me about it and the ideas, but I figured it's maybe too early and that's why you haven't mentioned anything anymore

Songs like this Is why I want to learn drums also.. no way I could come up with a groove like this right now.
Anyway Cosmin.

My 7 string is really good quality, its standard scale though, I have it slightly dropped, Drop A flat so a half step + 1.5 step on the 7th string.
And for this song I hit the G one more step.

Now the thing is besides this modern metal I also like shredding, like instrumental rock as you may remember.
So this 7 string is also for lead playing and has a medium like action with balanced pickups.

Well now something that im wondering about

Well for example this song is programmed guitars with perfect bass mix and everything.
To make the guitars sound like that, is that a production thing or do you need
like a big scale 7 string with "djent" pickups and high action?

I was kind of wondering that, cause if that is the case I might as well had bought a baritone 6 string you know.
Cause I use my 7 string for mulitple purposes.

What do you think?


EDIT

Lots of questions today! hope you can answer both
Okay second question, im sorting out the song and Im on a good way.
Im gonna sort out this part and I will first sort out the chords.

Which sounds like G - Eb - C
I attatched the soundfile, I only played the chords, non rythmical to the track.
Does this sound right to you? Listen to the original as well

This low tunings confuse me, I think I need to get a thicker 7th strick as well.
Im on a .64 in G (normally Ab)