Some early plans and dreams (-> electronics)

General
#1

Basically I’m getting into shamisen to dig a bit deeper into the japanese culture and have some fun time with japanese arts, the classical arts being what has whetted my appetite WRT Japan the last 5 years or so (yeah I wouldn’t say enka is particularly trendy or modern). I didn’t have much ambition WRT playing, but have been looking forward to do some slow, tranquil improvisation. Maybe that could be some actual nagauta pieces down the road too. The first year will be just going through the basics and trying to play whatever I find on Bachido and feel motivated with anyway.

Currently I’m getting a bit more excited on music in general, and I’d like to do some covers, maybe it’s too much effort in the end but there’s just too many interesting pieces :slight_smile:

Probably my most succesful musical endeavor has been making music with computers, I made several pieces and I think it fell just a bit short of the quality of material I might upload to youtube (there isn’t much of a barrier for that :wink: ). The DAW (digital audio workstation) software of those days some 25-20 years ago were called soundtrackers. Honestly it was much more about composing than playing, a bit of sampling thrown in.

Could try that again with today’s tools. I found a good writeup about what’s involved at How To Make Electronic Music With Computer? Where To Start?. The entry level software is free, upgrade to eg. FL Studio for the DAW would be around 200 USD. At the start LMMS (supported on all my computing platforms) should work pretty well. The problem is choosing a musical frame of reference, since my taste in music is horribly varied nowadays. Probably some ideas will come, maybe some dubstep since it’s all the rage. In any case, most likely combining the shamisen (when it’s ready for it) with electronics as there isn’t much other options. I have a friend who plays the cello and another who can sing a bit in finnish and quenya at least, I’ll try and bug them with my fantasies tomorrow.

One nice idea could be to use the computer to provide a virtual orchestra and play along to that with the shamisen. Would be a nice challenge and experiment at least.

What kind of a musical context are you planning to apply your shamisen in?

#2

Personally, once I get better, I’m going to try doing video game music medleys with either the guitar… or my faithful GameBoy. I used to be part of the Demoscene where I would do circuit bending of old school consoles to make music out them. In the picture here, that’s a first Gen GameBoy I modified to do that sort of thing.

But that’s me. Not sure how I’m going to mix the two styles together. I might just start with the guitar/shamisen before going into the chiptunes :slight_smile:

#3

I think electro and shamisen are made for each other just like electric guitar works with electro. I say go for it both of you!

The only reason I haven’t posted more original stuff is that I feel my composing skills are too bad, which is something I’m working on to improve at the moment.

Some time ago I uploaded a song with electric bass and shamisen. Check it out: https://soundcloud.com/karl-hedlund/electro-shamisen-stuff

#4

Karl, I think that’s already a nice workable base! Since you have got this far, all you might need could be just some new rules of thumb that are yet missing or inspiration/ideas before it all really clicks.

Seems the shamisen fits in very well indeed, I’ve started wondering how much the electronics would need to be softened down from hard trance/acid to not overwhelm an acoustic instrument, but I may yet be surprised. (I think groups like Juno Reactor mostly use electric instruments alongside synthesizers, same as many performers use electric shamisen to go with other electric and many other instruments.)

20 years is a long time in computing. Back then it was just a few pioneers starting to make music on their home computers, now you have hundreds of millions of units that can run this software and DAW software has already been done from a scratch dozens of times so there’s lots of examples available. It’s much quicker to get started with all the sounds / synthesizer plugins readily available today. And improved usability of course…

I put this little experiment together in just 30-60 minutes today. Nothing fancy, just shows how easily one gets started - I installed LMMS yesterday for the first time… (It’s in .ogg format, many Linux players and Winamp should easily play it.)

I think my big weakness in composing was making some usable melodies. Fortunately in this kind of electronic music, melodies are not strictly necessary :wink: I didn’t bother even making the piano roll for this, will need to dig through sounds/samples/plugins to get my basic instruments. And I guess a soundcloud account too.

#5

dope electro mix Karl! I finally got a mic and am recording a piece now hopefully Ill be able to share soon as well!

#6

Cool! My recommendations are the free Audacity for audio editing and Massive from Native Instruments for all kinds of synth sounds. Massive costs a bit though. On the plus side there are TONS of presets and tutorials on how to make different sounds online.

Thanks Nathan! About effin time mate! Just go for it!

© 2020 Kyle Abbott