ATTENTION piano and/or guitar players!

[Lynx]

I can't believe there's no music sub-forum here.  Does nobody play an instrument or sing?  Maybe I didn't look in the right place.
 
(Guitar players, scroll down.)

Anyway, to the topic at hand:  Music making with a keyboard and a computer.  I have an 88 key keyboard that connects to my computer.  In my computer I can load virtual instruments and play them.  My personal objective is to make soundtracks to sing with at church, and so far I've made some pretty good ones for Children's Church choir to use.  You could also use this to play instruments live, from drums to flute to trumpet to piano to synths of any kind.

If you can play the piano you can do this.  If you have a keyboard you probably have all you need except a simple, cheap adapter to communicate from the keyboard to the computer.  You should hear the trumpet I found, it's amazing!

What's that?  Oh yeah, guitar players.  You can use a computer for FX instead of wiring together multiple stomp boxes.  You can get a metric ton of FX for free, and they're pretty good.  Turn them on or off, stack a whole bunch on one channel in any order, etc.  You probably already have the computer and the guitar, and Radio Shack has the cable that plugs into your guitar at one end and the computer at the other end.  I set a friend of mine up with a computer and his guitar and he spent a good while just fiddling around... I heard some of the strangest sounds coming from there.  He knew more about these FX than I did, and it was my computer and my FX I downloaded!  I finally had to cut it short because I needed my computer back.

Anyone interested?  Anyone already using computers in music and want to share?

[Melody]

I understand what it does on a piano but not a guitar.  I have an accoustic w/ the plug in the bottom for the amp. Does that qualify?  What does it do for the guitar then, or does it simply record it as something different as you play?

[Lynx]

No, it functions basically as a real FX box would.  Takes sound in, alters it, spits it back out, all without having to deal with (and pay for!) multiple FX boxes, short patch cables, finding which stupid cable has a short in it to cause that buzzzz, etc. 

The FX is a plugin.  The program that hosts the plugin is the DAW, or Digital Audio Workstation.  The DAW accepts incoming sound, runs it through the FX stack and spits it back out as audio out. 

The cable you are talking about "for the amp" is a 1/4 inch mono.  Get a simple adapter to 1/8 inch mono (tell them at Radio Shack, they'll show you what you need) to get the sound from your guitar into the computer.  It *might* depend on the guitar, but with my friend's guitar he didn't need even a preamp - the computer's own sound card preamp worked fine, just a simple cable from the guitar directly to the computer.

[Lynx]

Here are some examples of what I've done so far in a Digital Audio Workstation:  http://www.box.net/shared/ibk9qmzl0s

There's some other junk in there too, but "Give Him my heart" and "Make a wish" are some soundtracks I made.  The original songs from BTC and Wayne Watson are there for comparison/template/demo purposes.  "Make a wish" is an old version I have since improved on. I sang to a much better version with a low flute intro last Wednesday night at church.  I'll see about updating it later.

EDIT:  Uploaded the latest version of "Make a wish."  It sounded great Wednesday night, but my voice kept cracking.  I knew it would.  I just feel this song deeply. 

Also added demo (from Woodlawn Sanctuary Choir) and soundtrack (from my computer) of "Jesus is a rock."  It's amazing how easy it is to do this techno-ish stuff.  I should have done this one years ago, it would have been great for my self confidence.    You can start the demo and soundtrack playing at the same time, mute one, then mute the other, and they sound almost identical except for the singers in the demo. 

[Tricia Lea]

I will try to get my son on here, He's into playing guitar.


Thats his collection. I am not sure about the other stuff you were talking about but he might know