Hi there, maybe you know I'm a huge fan of grabbing offers when I can.
In particular, free LE editions giveaways (or for a very small fee, or coming as a bundle with your hardware/software) allow you to save big money in the future, upgrading from LE version to full version even years later, when the Black Friday madness (or what else) comes. There are several offers throughout the year, just subscribe to the mailing list of the products you're waiting for to be sure not to miss the offer. And be patient. That's the way I collected plugins and software for many thousands of dollars value, at a fraction of the cost, from 1/4 up to 1/10 (yes, a tenth!) of the retail price.
Also, LE versions could be all that you need if you're not "a professional doing it for living". Even if you can't go deep into programming details, there is often enough room to have some fun end record pretty decent stuff.
OK, OK, this post is not guitar-related.
But maybe you know I run and indie label with some friends of mine, and this guy called Pellegrino has just joined our roster.
This video is a preview of how his live-set will look like.
Minimal.
An Ableton Live Session with some controllers like the well known Novation Launchpad and the AKAI MPD32.
Images, animations and light show will be part of the performance.
"Carl Sagan" is a tribute to the well known astronomer (born in Brooklyn on the 9th of November 1934), who wrote "Reflections on a grain of Dust" which inspired the musician Marco Pellegrino's work. The description of the last photograph of the Earth taken in 1990 from the spacecraft Voyager 1 from a distance of six billion miles from Earth is the starting point a journey into darkness, floating in outer space. Pellegrino is a musician and video maker. He tells the story of Sagan using an eclectic, coded message which is Intense and dreamlike using images, sound and light and shade. Marco Pellegrino was born in Novara, Italy and now lives in Rome.
If you're just looking for chords and riffs you can find it everywhere on the web.
This is a slightly different kind of tutorial, focusing on the sound, the position you should use, how to practice, how to make your riffs sound as close as possible to the original version, and how to put all together in the easiest way possible, since the main goal during a live show is Don't stop the flow!
I had a great time yesterday playing this one!
There are a lot of different parts to learn.
The positions on the freatboard are not difficult, but it's a challenge for the right hand, instead!
Also it was not so obvious for me to learn the arrangement (even if I know Metallica wrote much more complicated songs) and keep focusing on each single part with the same power and timing!
Don't try to detect the right tempo in Pro Tools or what since there is not a single tempo start to finish, the tempo flows and it is on "on grid" unless you warp the whole song, and please don't do it!
Or you should write an automation lane on the master tempo track, and I don't think it worth the effort, I just add a 2 bars count-in click to start at the right point.
Here the "rendering" click option in Presonus Studio One 3 made my day, since I wrote down the audio click on a track just between loops marker. Just select 2 bars before the song, render the click, disable the real click and you're done!
About timing and playing, since it is a fast tempo and since it is played "live" and not "on grid", I really need a pair of headphones to match the song and playing along the song with a good amount of glue. Listening to it just from speakers is a little bit confusing, specially during the fastest parts, where your ears tend to identify the snare beat with the downbeat, while it's still the upbeat, and it is not so obvious to catch the perfect sync.
Headphones helps to be more "in the song" and play with the band.
I've met Eric on stage in Avignon during the OFF Festival one year ago. I was playing the piece "Elle(s)" with Sylvie Landuyt and Jessica Fanhan, and he was the sound engineer. I asked this guy to publish his album with my record label Lady Lovely. Finally he was not interested, but I'm playing the guitar in his band, instead. It's something like a francophone Giant Sand with a lil bit of electro generated by Ableton Live. Does it make sense? Yep!
