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What music/instruments have you been making/playing recently?
I recently bought a banjo and have started the journey of learning how to play. It's my first instrument but I have been having a blast so far, which got me wondering — what have you all been playing recently? This is not a reoccurring post, but maybe it could be, so let's use this as a place to talk about music-making related things: what have you been practicing, what techniques are you stuck on, what have you been playing around with, etc? Feel free to share or ask for advice.
I am actively learning "You Are My Sunshine" for piano currently. It's a simple song that I can basically play by just guessing the notes, but I am going to be playing it at my grandmother's funeral, and so I want to make sure I can do a worthy rendition of it. I'll be playing it before and after the funeral service so I'm considering doing a key change for the two parts, or perhaps introducing some light improvisation for a second playthrough. It's only a few weeks away, so I can't let the simplicity lull me away from practicing.
I also recently received an EMEO, which has sent me down a rabbit hole of learning all about saxophones and wind instruments. Ironically, the EMEO doesn't come with a saxophone VST since it claims it's only for practice, but I've been investigating the best way to reproduce the sound and feel of the real thing to reach the closest level of authenticity as I learn. I hope it becomes a relatively straightforward instrument once I can memorize all the key placements for each note (the saxophone was ergonomically designed, unlike most electronic wind instruments), but I'm also hoping it will improve my fluency with scales in general since that seems to be an area I prefer to learn intuitively rather than academically.
I'm also eagerly awaiting an Aerodrums 2 set to arrive as early as next month potentially. I own the original unit and it left a lot to be desired. I'm hopeful this updated version will address some of the main pain points and allow me to more naturally approach learning the drums by removing a lot of setup hurdles.
The reason I'm pursuing two virtual instruments is because I expect to expand my studio in the coming months when I move apartments. This will additionally let me get more into music production, and these two instruments will hopefully round out my overall music capabilities. They were intentionally chosen to be as close to the authentic experience as possible without taking up too much physical space or making too much noise since I'll still be living in a NYC apartment at the end of the day.
Otherwise, I've been working through a Bossa Nova song on the guitar, but I'm not too keen on taking on more new projects right now with so much change coming down the pike. So, I'm comfortable just keeping up my chops on the guitar for the time being.
As a drummer who hasn't played in more than a decade because of room/noise concerns (and not feeling great about investing in an electronic set), I saw the original Aerodrums and really had my interest piqued by it. I'm not surprised to hear something like that has a number of issues though.
If Aerodrums 2 is as good as the previews show, that's pretty dang neat. I've wanted a way to give stuff a more natural feel than simply just programming drums and this would be great, even as a way to get a basic drum track down that feels more natural and less robotic. Maybe at some point I'll consider that!
This may also be the first thing that has given me an actual interest in VR technology.
I play piano, piano accordion, button accordion (CBA), and melodica. (I've also tried guitar and ukulele but didn't really get into it.)
Most recently I'm getting into piano again. I'm learning the "easy" versions of some songs by Hiromi from this book. (They aren't actually what I'd call easy, but definitely doable.)
Although I'm mostly self-motivated, I sometimes think about getting a teacher to learn more about jazz piano. (Not the kind of traditional music instruction that helps you learn to play sheet music; I can do that already if I put in the time, at least for easy to intermediate stuff.)
A few months ago I started learning violin with no prior experience. I spent a while looking for a teacher who was willing to take on an adult beginner and found someone who is absolutely amazing, which very much helps because (as I became aware after starting this journey) the violin is a tricky instrument to learn.
Our old-guy cover band is just a guitar, bass, and drums, with me singing. To get some blues in our sets and also to give some more comp and fill sound, I picked up a full set of 7 blues harmonicas from Sweetwater for the outrageous deal of like $56.
If you don’t know harmonicas, all but the chromatic ones come in a single key, so depending on what song we’re playing, I grab that particular harp. Then it’s nearly impossible to play the wrong note, although practice is required to make it sound good.
So practice practice practice!
I really want to know who's making instruments here.
Coincidentally I am considering making a Picotracker as a fun project.
While I'm fantastic at listening to music, I really suck at making it, so I don't suspect that this will be productive beyond the joy of making it.
I built an accordion-like MIDI controller a couple years ago. Here's the Youtube video. It's a research prototype, not really good enough to use regularly.
I'm not working on anything right now, but I have ideas for the next version.
Neat! This reminds me that one of the things I’ve always wanted to try to make if I ever had the time was an orchestrion, complete with a bellows-style air pump to power the organ. Who knows, maybe one day I’ll start working on the pump to get it started.
I really dig your homebrew rotary encoder. I have no idea why I never thought to try to roll my own because I remember having a some ideas that could have used one.
I may have worded the title poorly — I meant "what music have you been making" and "what instruments have you been playing"! I didn't want to leave out people who may mix or otherwise make music sans instruments haha.
I did Science Olympiad when I was in high school. We took it 0% seriously and crammed all the prep the week before the event every year, it was just a fun week-long activity for us rather than a serious year-long commitment like it was at a lot of other schools (and we always did really badly compared to the schools that tried). One year, one of the events was to make "a musical instrument." So we went to the shop class room and were like "hey we need help with this" and ended up putting together a set of chimes made out of some metal pipe that we cut into sections. I don't remember at all how we tuned it, but we actually had a full octave & could play like Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, it was very cool!
I have been struggling to get my hand to fret chords with my thumb on the E string of my guitar. I can manage the standard major triad starting on the D string with thumb on the E (and don't have any problem with the D/F# shape for example), but doing the variation in which you use the index finger to barre the high E and B strings seems like a physical impossibility. I have been controlling for this inability thus far by just fretting either B or high E with my index finger, but the barred version is such a fundamental shape for country/blues fingerstyle. It doesn't help that a lot of videos on the subject are a bit 'draw the whole owl.' I have relatively large hands/long fingers, but I wonder if my guitar's neck is too thin, since part of the problem is that, thumb over the top, you have to push your palm into the back of the neck... I've just been trying to dedicate a bit of time to it every day in the hope that I'll eventually build the strength/dexterity...
oh! and I bought a Tanglewood TWCRT, a lil' mini-guitar to take with me when I travel for work, since I get quite depressed when I can't play for more than a few days, and I'm increasingly required to travel and for longer. It sounds great for the ~£100 I paid for it!
I fixed my bass the other day. Thought it just needed a new 9v battery, turns out the ground wire on the input jack had come undone. Soldered that sucker back down, and it lives again!
I also dabble in the harmonica, and I'm decent at singing, if you give me a bucket to carry a tune in.
I just pulled the bass off the wall for the first time in about year a few weeks ago. I’d forgotten it had active pickups and was momentarily worried I’d need to find a battery.
But it was good to go and still in tune. Couldn’t find my fuzz pedal though so Godzilla (Fu Manchu) wasn’t in the line up.
For those with a medium-powerful to very-powerful PC (or Steam Deck) and an interest in synthesizers/vocoders. I built a weird, digital granular synth that runs on Windows and Linux: Link to Synulator on itch.io
It generates independent waves for each "grain," with as many parameters as I could include. Lowering the grain count is easier on computer resources, cranking it to 1024 grains is only stable for really powerful rigs.
You only need 6-24 grains to replicate synth-y tones. Increasing the time between each grain turns it into an arpeggiator. Decreasing the time overlaps grains and changes how the tones constructively interfere.
I don't have a ton of places to share, but maybe some music makers here will be interested. There are also a few free VSTs and other neat synth projects submitted, many that run in a browser!
I'm doing my very best to be the most basic "old white man with a guitar" I can be. 20 years in and 100% self taught has probably slowed my development and imbued me with a universe of bad habits, but it's been so much fun this way. Every technique a discovery that I've worked into my playing style, then learned what the real name for it is from some person or other that's seen me doing it.
Recently, I've not been developing much new so much as recovering from a bout of illness over the holidays that did a real number on my singing voice. There's a lot to be learned abut how to put the pieces back together carefully and safely; a bit like getting back into a favourite sport after spraining an ankle.
I've been learning electric guitar which has been a complete blast. Whilst I love the electric guitar itself, I don't have a particularly strong interest in learning rock or metal songs, and have been really enjoying learning scales and other basics.
I've had to stop for a while to let my left shoulder heal, as I was getting constant pain in my shoulder from what I assume to be fairly poor posture and too much practicing (along with being too old to just dump hours of practice into something physically new without consequences). When I give it a few more days rest I'm going to try the classical position for the guitar to see if that helps along with daily time limits.