What Happens When I Combined Guitar with Electronic Music

Hello everyone, I just made a new song. Basically I experimented with mixing and blending traditional rock instrumental guitar music with electronic music. This is the result:

I was trying to explore new genres of music such as electronica, trance, dance and dubstep. While they are all definitely cool sounding music, I always felt that a little bit of rock guitar melody could enhance those music a little bit. Hence, my latest project was born.

In case you are wondering about the equipment that I used, I utilized my MIM Standard Stratocaster with a combination of BB Preamp and Radial Tonebone Hot British straight to the Mesa TA-30 to the Radial JDX to my USB Interface. Then I added essential plugins such as reverb, delay, compressor and EQ in the Reaper DAW.

For drum, I still use Hydrogen and I find it quite difficult for me to switch to other drum machine because it just feels very natural to me to create beat patterns. I also experimented with some plugins such as Valhalla Shimmer as the ambient reverb for some tracks, Up Stereo to enhance stereo and loudness, TAL Noise Maker to generate some weird synth sounds, and Aquestone to create that weird sounding vocal emulation.

There you go, my little experiment in the electronic music side of the world :) I hope you enjoy my music. Don't forget to subscribe at my Youtube. Cheers and God bless :)

The Current State of My Music Life

Hello all,

Just want to share a short blog post about my music life lately. To start, I am now heavily into recording and I don't do so much live guitar playing anymore. I also don't have easy access on guitar gear as I used to be so I don't buy new guitar stuffs as much as say last year or even the year before; I am much more laid back now and I don't have too much GAS going on in terms of guitar gear or music stuffs.

I also don't spend as much time playing guitar as I used to be, not because I don't have time, not because I love guitar less than before, but simply because I now spend more time creating small snippets of riffs or rhythms or melody ideas rather than just practicing on a song that I already know. I would then play those riffs after I'm done writing them but playing and practicing those riffs don't take as much time as regular practicing or playing over a record.

I now started to have some kind of instrumental songwriting sense. I shifted gear more toward music production rather than just focusing on guitar by itself. This doesn't mean that guitar is no longer important; in fact it's quite the opposite, I'm always trying to compose something that will make my guitar tracks sound more important on the whole context of mix and composition.

Looking back to my older gear posts, I now don't lust over Nitro vs Poly, Tube vs Solid State, DiMarzio vs Seymour Duncan, true bypass vs buffer, or the ultimate drive pedal. I simply don't think they are as important nor as significant as I thought they was. When you started recording and mixing stuffs, they just don't matter that much especially these days in the digital era. I can just insert an EQ plugin, some compressor going on and add some delay and reverb from free VSTs and all of a sudden I have a very nice sounding guitar track that I crave long time ago!

Heck, I can even just put a LePou amp simulator plugin with some Cab Impulse Response as opposed to real amp and cab, add some effect plugins from GuitarRig, and all of a sudden I have a very decent high gain tube amp sound! And the best part is, nobody knows that I'm not using both tube amp and real effects! How cool is that, eh?

Anyway, this is just my little reflection over what I've become now in my music life. I hope you enjoy this post, and I will post more!

Cheers and God bless you :)

UPDATE: JUST POSTED A NEW ORIGINAL SONG

Hello people, I was busy coming up with the follow up song for "Edge of the Mind". I spent the whole September to perfect my new song and ended up with a final version that I really like. The new song is called "Decisive", it is basically a Progressive Metal song with some experimentation of sound that I added in the song. I am particularly happy with how the rhythm turns out.

Apart from writing the song, the mixing was quite challenging. I have never dealt with so many tracks in one song before that I had to be extremely careful with the EQ and panning to avoid instruments clashing each other.

Talking about the gear being used, I am very happy with my new Ibanez GRX720 7 string guitar that I acquired earlier this year. I recently put DiMarzio D-Activator 7 string on the bridge as well as Blaze 7 on the neck and the change of tone is quite drastic to be honest and now it sounds very good for metal and rock. Palm mutings have never been this tight, sustain has never been this long; however, the pickups punches the amp way too hard and makes it distorts very easily so I have to back down the gain a little bit to avoid oversaturation.

I also used my beloved American Standard HSS Stratocaster on this record for the middle part of the song. It is still configured as it was previously with DiMarzio Virtual Vintage Heavy Blues 2 and AirZone.

Effects, I am using MXR Dyna Comp coupled with Boss CS-3 as well as Boss GE-7 and Boss NS-2 to get a very pronounced pick attack and then run them into my old trustee Radial Tonebone Hot British and BB Preamp in front of a clean Mesa TA-30. Delays and reverbs are coming from DAW plugins from Reaper.

Anyway enough talking, here is the new song:


I hope you enjoy this song and please help me to share this song to your friends. Cheers for now! God bless :)

Stay tuned for my next post soon!

New Bandcamp Site, New Song

Hi everyone!

I'm now available at Bandcamp. Now you can download my original song for free, just go to garywiryawan.bandcamp.com and from there just enter 0 dollar to download my song.

I am going to upload as many song as possible, and then compile them into an album. Most of the songs will obviously be instrumental as I don't have a singer and I am only a one man band.

Please check out my Bandcamp site, if you are gracious enough, please follow me too on Bandcamp and other sites. Thanks for listening to my music!

Bandcamp: garywiryawan.bandcamp.com

Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/bejo_sutarno

Youtube: www.youtube.com/user/bajigurwedangronde

Here's the new song that I wrote, please enjoy:

https://soundcloud.com/bejo_sutarno/edge-of-the-mind-remixed-remastered

http://garywiryawan.bandcamp.com/track/edge-of-the-mind

New Recording Project

Hello,

I have just uploaded a new video on Youtube of my new recording projects. I spent so much time to perfect my mixing and mastering skill but it's just not there yet. Hopefully I will get better in the future.

Gears used in this project:
MIM Standard Stratocaster with DiMarzio AT-1 and Cruisers
MIA Standard Stratocaster with DiMarzio Virtual Vintage Heavy Blues 2 and AirZone
BB Preamp
Radial Tonebone Hot British
MXR Dyna Comp (the standard non scripted)
Boss NS-2
Boss LS-2
Boss GE-7
EHX Memory Man Deluxe and Hazarai
RC Booster

Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 into the computer.

I used Reaper DAW as my main DAW and Audacity to make mp3s of the songs.

I hope you enjoy these tunes and I hope these tunes will help you to get a clearer picture of the kind of tone that I'm after with my guitar rig :) Cheers and God Bless

Omens of Love (Cover of T-Square vs Casiopea)

Hatiku Percaya (True Worshipper Instrumental Cover)

My Recording Project

Hello there, it's been a while since last time I wrote a post in this blog. Anyway, I just want to share with you my recording project. Been busy learning how to record and mix a song with multiple instruments. I also learned how to use Hydrogen Drum Machine to make a drum track for my songs and I must say it's quite a powerful software and the best part is that it is free.

Enjoy these videos:

List of gears used to record:

1. Fender American Standard Stratocaster HSS with DiMarzio Air Zone on the bridge and DiMarzio Virtual Vintage Heavy Blues 2 on the neck.
2. Some pedals: Radial Tonebone Hot British, Xotic BB Preamp, Boss GE-7 Equalizer, Boss NS-2 Noise Suppressor.
3. Mesa Boogie Transatlantic TA-30 with Mini Recto 1x12 Cab, connected to Radial JDX Amp DI.
4. From the Radial JDX, it goes to the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 USB Interface into my computer.
5. Ibanez BTB 775PB as my bass guitar.
6. Line 6 POD X3 Live for my bass guitar.
7. Yamaha PSR 710 keyboard direct to my Scarlett 2i2.
8. Hydrogen Drum Machine
9. Reaper x64 DAW as my DAW recording software.

Process

I recorded my drum track first on the Hydrogen, export individual tracks and import it to Reaper and then I EQ-ed the individual drum instruments and put compressor on some of them just to get the kick and snare to sound clicky and punchy.

Then I recorded my rhythm guitar tracks, I recorded the same track twice and then pan each one hard left and the other hard right. Then I proceed by recording bass track and then finish up by recording keyboard parts such as piano and strings. After I finished recording them all, I EQ-ed all of them to avoid the the tracks drowning each other.

I must say I learned a lot from recording and mixing songs. It really opened up my perspective about tone, it's not just about fantastic gear and everything, but really also about how you place your instrument in the mix to get it heard and get a good quality sound out of it.

I hope you guys enjoyed my recording videos! Cheers and God bless you!

IT'S BEEN A WHILE

Wow, I got really caught up with so many things happening in my life recently. Lots of things going on especially work related as well as some family things.

Anyway, I'm glad that now I have more than 15k visits on my page, thank you to you all who kept coming back to this blog. I haven't got any chance to acquire anything new for my pedalboard but I am currently tweaking on changing potentionmeters on my MIJ Stratocaster.

I'm also thinking about saving some money to buy a proper MIM Telecaster probably sometime early April. Been lusting for a real Fender Telecaster for quite some time, I hope I will get the right Telecaster!!

Anyway, I had this MC402 Overdrive Boost by MXR/CAE that I forgot to make a review of, I'm going to make some quick recording of it and post a review soon. I'm also going to post some new articles about basic things maybe more to the technical guitar playing stuffs just to add something different to this blog.

Okay, I will write more soon, so please stay tuned :)... Please help me recommend this blog to your friends so you can share more guitar-related information to them.

Peace and God Bless :)

It's That Time of the Year! Merry Christmas :)

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Sorry for the lack of update, here's a little classic "I'll Be Home For Christmas" that I re-arranged. Hopefuly you all have a wonderful Christmas either alone or with your loved ones. God bless you all and keep on checking this blog for more updates.

Stay tuned for more reviews :) Thank you for checking this blog out :)

RECORDING SOME STUFF

Hello people, I'm glad to announce that I will come up with something before Christmas this year. It's an amateur recording of popular Christmas songs that I cover using many different genres that are mainly guitar driven. It's gonna be an instrumental album and the title is going to be called "LAGU KRESMES". I will post more detail soon. It's gonna feature my Stratocasters and my new Ibanez AK95DVS.

Anyway, many of you might be wondering about my recording setup at home so I will explain how I do recording in my home. For the software, I use AUDACITY, it's a free recording software that you can download. It has tons of great features such as EQ, Noise Removal, Panning, Time Shift, Split Stereo, Leveller, Compressor, etc.

For the hardware, I am using a cheap but good USB Mixer called Yamaha MW10C. It's connected directly to the USB of my PC. It has 10 channels with adjustable knobs such as level, treble, mid, bass, compression, pan, gain, etc. I don't use studio monitor, but I got a free JBL standard PC speakers that I use to listen to the recorded tracks. It does its job properly so I don't use professional studio monitor.

To record my guitar tracks, I use a Radial JDX direct amplifier box that's plugged in between my Mesa Transatlantic TA-30 and my Mesa Mini Recto Cab. It's not totally transparent but I'm able to EQ the tone to get it as similar as possible to the real sound that I'm getting from the cab using the Yamaha MW mixer's EQ knobs.

The bass tracks are coming from my Ibanez BTB775 bass that's plugged into my Line 6 POD X3. The keyboard tracks are from my Yamaha PSR keyboard plugged into my POD X3 as well. The drum tracks also come from the Yamaha keyboard. I can't afford buying real drum set at this time, I have to save some money first.

That's all for now, stay tuned for some audio clips, and thanks for checking this blog out, today we hit 12000 views! Cheers and God bless :)

KEEP PLAYING YOUR GUITAR

Hello everyone, I just want to share a little bit of reflection about what's on my mind for the last few days. First of all, thank you regular readers who kept coming back to this simple blog, I hope you gained a lot from this blog although most of the contents here came from my subjective experience as a guitar player.

These few days, I kept thinking, why did I keep playing guitar until today, knowing that I don't plan to pursue  music-related career? I know some people who stop playing guitar after they start to get busier in their lives and I thought I was about to stop playing as well but apparently I don't. Here are some of the few reasons that I think caused me to still play guitar until today:

It's fun
Of course it is, so obvious. Learning how to play a guitar when you have never played one before is always a pain in the neck, but once you get past learning different shapes of chords and actually start to play a song, you'll feel like you've achieved something very significant and it's quite thrilling. Nowadays, I'm always learning new techniques from songs that I like to hear and I can still feel the thrill every time I tried something new.

We're just talking about playing guitar, but actually what's even more fun is the level of tweak-ability that you can find when you're adjusting your guitar especially on electric guitars. I play mostly electric guitars, so I always have to tweak the sound on my amp, I have to get some effect pedals going here and there to catch the vibes of some certain songs and the guitars themselves don't always sound the same everyday. Even with the guitars, you can still experiment in terms of tone by changing the pickups, strings, bridge, tuner, pots, and so on.

Tone
Every human has 5 senses and one of them is hearing. We can entertain our sight by watching movies or looking at some pictures, we can entertain our taste buds by eating good food, we can entertain our smelling by wearing perfumes, and we can entertain our touch sense by using pillow and comfortable chairs. On the same line, we entertain our hearing by listening to good music, which is basically a carefully arranged noise with some tonal qualities that had been prepared in a certain way. Listening to good tone and playing my guitar is an additional and significant way to alternatively entertain my hearing. I don't like listening to mainstream songs, so the tone that comes out from my guitar is sort of like an escape for my hearing.

It's been almost 8 years since I start playing guitar, it's kind of like my habit
I always sit down and play at least for a few moment everyday. It always feels weird when I spent a whole day without playing my guitar even for just like a couple of minutes. When you do something you like routinely for a long period of time, you start to feel like it's your nature and playing guitar routinely for a long time has that same effect on me.

Emotional investment

Obviously, after you play your guitar for so long, you will start to develop a connection between you and your guitar. My modded PGM-30 has bonded so well that playing it becomes absolutely effortless and I can easily get good tones every time I play that guitar. I started playing that PGM 7 years ago and the guitar had captured every moment of my musical journey as it has been my main guitar until today; it had seen my low moments when I'm still learning to play guitar but it also had seen some glorious gigs when I was in Seattle. It has keep me pretty sane during stressful days of work and it has been a tool for me to pour out my unexpressed emotion; it helped me to keep my perspective of the world and my sanity as well. To put it in another words, it has sort of become like my best friend.

My only advice for you my lovely readers is to keep playing no matter what. Developing this kind of relationship with your instrument will take a lot of time and sacrifice, but the end result is very rewarding. Whenever I play my guitar, I always feel trouble-free in my mind no matter how good or bad my playing is and no matter how happy or sad I am. I hope your instrument can free your mind as well.

I hope you enjoy this post, keep on playing guitar! Cheers and God Bless :)