Making music on the road

Anything about MUSIC but doesn't fit into the forums above.
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How on earth do people do it?

Just finding a quiet spot in London when you need one is a challenge by itself, but then getting into the right frame of mind to do anything remotely productive and creative within maybe 45 minutes of available lunch time? I'm finding that to be pretty much impossible.

Does anyone here actually manage to do that?

I doubt it myself..
My other host is Bruce Forsyth

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Nup. Completely agree.

I waste 2.5 hours a day traveling plus the hour for lunch. But this isn't a 3.5hour solid chunk of time which would actually be useful.

Besides even on the rare occasions I do do something on the train I feel like a twat with a laptop open and synthesiser on screen.

That said, rumour has it Higher States of Conciousness was written on a bus. The 303 line anyway. Josh took it everywhere he went.
"I was wondering if you'd like to try Magic Mushrooms"
"Oooh I dont know. Sounds a bit scary"
"It's not scary. You just lose a sense of who you are and all that sh!t"

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Mushy Mushy wrote: That said, rumour has it Higher States of Conciousness was written on a bus. The 303 line anyway. Josh took it everywhere he went.
I can just about imagine creating a bass line or a simple drum loop on a bus or train using one of the many iPhone audio app fads.
My other host is Bruce Forsyth

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Elvis Costello used to write songs on the tube going to work, and I think a lot of the songs on his first couple of albums were written that way. I think it depends on how much setup you need to work. If you have a guitar and notebook you can write songs anywhere. A laptop and small keyboard would work too, as would a tablet with the right software.

I think most of the problems arise with finding space and quiet really.

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I rather read a book or an audio magazine when I'm on the tracks or in a bus... :shrug:

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Being creative while on the bus or train, not so much. Repetitive tasks are good though: chopping up samples or preparing wave files for later - setting loop points, batch post processing, that kind of thing.

These tasks don't require a great deal of creative input and can be finished quite quickly once you're in the zone, but is the kind of stuff we might ignore at home because it's boring, time consuming and we'd rather be writing songs.

Peace,
Andy.
... space is the place ...

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I write lyrics anywhere/everywhere. I was thinking about this the other day - people who write on the road. I think that there's a tendancy to think that writing music is different than say, reading or drawing or playing a video game. Those who absolutely love to write music maybe just do it all the time, regardless of where they are. Certainly there must be people who are like this...

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back when i had to ride the bus for an hour each way to and from work, i did a lot of stuff with Beatmaker on my iDevice. i would slice up samples from older tracks of mine and make hip-hop beats out of them, just for fun. rarely would i ever actually use these beats, but it was great for practicing my timing (playing the beats in real time on drum pads), and for really delving into the creative possibilities of sample manipulation.

so while it wasn't necessarily productive, it was fun and i got to make music in a style that i normally don't create.

mushy, you said you feel like a twat with a laptop open and a synthesizer on screen? why? if you like creating music, why would you feel shame about doing it in front of others? there's no reason to be bashful about it!

you can check out Static Ghosts on my website, it's a free download. 8 of the songs on it were made with just my laptop while chilling at various coffee shops, sometimes while i was on lunch break. (one of them even has a recording of the interior ambience with people chatting and whatnot). i used lots of samples sliced out of older recordings of mine. (tracks 1,3,5,6,7,8,9,11 were all made this way). hell, i didn't even use a midi controller, just my QWERTY keyboard and lots of editing.

making music outside of the studio can be awkward and frustrating at first, given the limitations of easily-portable technology. but these limitations can inspire creativity out of necessity. several years ago, for a very brief period, i was homeless and unemployed and relied on performing street music to feed myself. when i started breaking strings and couldn't afford to replace them, i just flipped my guitar over and played it as a drum instead.

i believe a true artist will make art every day, any way they possibly can, wherever they happen to be.

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I can easily get some basic ideas down in Caustic on my android. Or just record me humming some rhythm, or lyric. Where there is a will, there is a way to make music on the road.

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funky lime wrote:mushy, you said you feel like a twat with a laptop open and a synthesizer on screen? why? if you like creating music, why would you feel shame about doing it in front of others? there's no reason to be bashful about it!
Good question. I've only done it in plain view of the public twice. On both occassions I had people pointing and staring. It was quite offputting. I think they were trying to work out if I was famous. LOL. As if....

That said, I often (ie, weekly) spend lots of time in Starbucks doing it. It's much easier in an environment like this because it's quieter and I can have my own little private space.
"I was wondering if you'd like to try Magic Mushrooms"
"Oooh I dont know. Sounds a bit scary"
"It's not scary. You just lose a sense of who you are and all that sh!t"

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xNiMiNx wrote:I can easily get some basic ideas down in Caustic on my android. Or just record me humming some rhythm, or lyric. Where there is a will, there is a way to make music on the road.

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That's Linux, isn't it?
My other host is Bruce Forsyth

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funky lime wrote: you can check out Static Ghosts on my website, it's a free download. 8 of the songs on it were made with just my laptop while chilling at various coffee shops, sometimes while i was on lunch break.
That's very enjoyable music actually.
Thanks for sharing.
My other host is Bruce Forsyth

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Any real-life recommendation for iPad audio software?

I'm using Yamaha's TNR-e, which is actually great fun.
I used to use Beatmaker, but found it lacking (and it was unstable). Haven't used v2.
I used SunVox, which is powerful but extremely fiddly to use to the point of being unusable, in my opinion.
Garageband, in a way, isn't bad but it's unstable for me.

Anything you guys would personally recommend?
My other host is Bruce Forsyth

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thanks, spaceman!

beatmaker 2 is a huge improvement over the original, especially on an ipad. you can run a lot more fx, and it can function as a keyboard-based sampler as well. it's got more powerful features, and you don't have to do that annoying BeatPack thing to load your own samples. it plays well with other apps too, and is just fun to work with. i've used it at a gig before, and it was stable enough for my purposes. i have had it crash a few times but it's more the exception than the rule, and it was probably from running too many effects on my first gen ipad.

thumbjam: this is just awesome. it might look like any other "swipe your finger and make beautiful music" app but it's really powerful, can do loop recording and you can easily create your own sampled instruments, there are well over a hundred different scales, tons of sounds for free download, and lots of possibilities for control.

TC-11: holy crap. i think i paid like 33 bucks for this thing, and never really got as into it as i should have. it's a unique interface for a synth that really takes advantage of every single aspect a tablet could have to offer. this thing screams live performance. if you are willing to take the time to learn this beast, you could create some pretty outrageous setups. not for the faint of heart. (the presets are cool concepts, but really just serve as launching points for your own experiments)

Tabletop: cool little modular studio, but very expensive if you want all the extra toys. fun for jamming out on ideas, but i wouldn't make a whole song with it.

DM1: THE drum machine. love it. use it all the time. the dual effect x-y pads are great... try putting delay on one of them, and distortion on the other, and just go crazy.

stochastik: probability drums, fun for live jams when you want something a little more unpredictable than a static drum loop. it's like de la mancha's old Erratic vsti, where you program your step sequence, and you also program the probability of each note actually playing on each playthrough of the loop.

polychord: kind of neat little app for coming up with ideas for chord progressions and jamming on them a bit. i wouldn't use it as a sound source so much as a songwriting tool, but it can certainly do both.

i bought so many more apps and never really used them more than the occasional play-around.

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I'm playing around with Soundprism these days and am trying to get into SunVox again, but the fiddly nature is probably going to piss me off again soon.

Something like Energy XT would have been nice, but it's pulled from the store I believe, probably because people were reporting crashes.
My other host is Bruce Forsyth

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