Shedding Giant Steps

[urb]

Hey

I decided to try filiming some early morning shedding on my iPhone - just me blowing along to Band In a Box trying to get round these changes - it's a bit rough and ready and there are good few mistakes but it gets going about half way through



Just a bit of fun... hope you enjoy

Mike

[Bilbo]

Hi, Mike. Its a nightmare, isn't it? I have tried this one on and off for years and have never got anywhere near anything credible on solos and even disappoint myself on the basic walking lines!

Despite the mistakes, your efforts are certainly better than anything I can pull off and you have, at the very least, inspired me to try again!!

[urb]

[quote name='Bilbo' post='1098482' date='Jan 22 2011, 11:22 AM']Hi, Mike. Its a nightmare, isn't it? I have tried this one on and off for years and have never got anywhere near anything credible on solos and even disappoint myself on the basic walking lines!

Despite the mistakes, your efforts are certainly better than anything I can pull off and you have, at the very least, inspired me to try again!![/quote]

Yes and yes again - and thanks for the words of encouragement Rob - I'm glad some of what I was doing sounds coherant - I do use this as something of the 'ultimate warm up' as if I can get my ideas going over this then I am pretty much as warmed up as I'm every gong to be! My approach is to try and balance melody with out and out harmonic concepts - it's the only way I can deal with changes moving this fast. The singing thing does help maintain focus and I find just letting band in a box cylcle round it helps me get into the head space of any set of changes - playing in one position on the neck and keeping lines moving in a direction up or down the neck are a couple of the things I'm trying out here - but as it's such a hard to tune to play anything 'definitive' on I'd rather post something that will hopefully show that it's more of a musical exercise, or study, rather than something more creative or expressive.

Thanks again

Mike

[supabock]

Nice one Mike,
What version of Band in a Box are you using and what packs do you have? Do you primarily use it for rehearsing your lines/ Jamming etc. and do you find it and intuitive easy package to use??

Steve

[urb]

[quote name='supabock' post='1098702' date='Jan 22 2011, 03:01 PM']Nice one Mike,
What version of Band in a Box are you using and what packs do you have? Do you primarily use it for rehearsing your lines/ Jamming etc. and do you find it and intuitive easy package to use??

Steve[/quote]

Hi Steve

I'm using the one for Mac and it's still the same old interface with about a million different options on it - it's a typical PC style program giving you a squillion different options for song style and all loads of different settings but it's not at all intuitive - I basically right-click on a chord box use the Chord Builder and select the chord I want, it does have an extensive set of chord extensions so your options are well and truly open there. I usually leave it on the default 'Jazz' setting which does a passable attempt at 'swing', obviously it's noting like playing with a real drummer or pianist but its one virtue is being able to loop a sequence/song over and over and it just repeats itself - which for something like Giant Steps is very useful. The other thing I like is being able to save the song as a MIDI file which you can then import into Logic and the chord comping is quite good and useable but with better sounds in a proper DAW.

Hope that helps - BIAB is not a favourite of mine due to the interface but it does work and it's a very useful practice tool.

M