Fretboard and Songwriting Theory for Metal Heads (and other genres too): Using ‘the secret’ to unlock the fretboard and your songwriting potential
Have you ever wondered how to get music out of your head and onto the guitar? Do you feel stuck in a rut creatively? Ever wonder how guitar gods can use the entire neck effortlessly? This book is for you.
In this book, I will explain how to unlock the fretboard and broaden your theory knowledge to help expand your songwriting potential. As a member of UK metal band Cradle of Filth, as well as a session musician and educator since 2007, I will show you the fundamentals that help me navigate my way around the fretboard in any scale in any key, show you theory ‘shortcuts’ that I thought could only be used by musical genius’, and help you to not be held back creatively by nothing other than your imagination.
Beats By Design: An Illustrated Inventory Of The Most Important Hip Hop Producers Vol. 1 PDF
With Beats by Design I wish to pay homage to the figure of the producer, artist, and visionary genius who often opts to stay behind the big spotlights while creating new musical trends and influencing entire generations.
There are 60 illustrations of producers in this first volume that contains the greatest exponents of hip hop culture, from its dawn to the early 2000s. The selection of producers was made based on the impact and influence they had and still have on rap music and other genres, record sales, and hits well positioned in the charts.
Each producer is represented by an illustration, as well as a short biography, their most famous productions, my personal list of their favorite songs, and an inventory of instruments used to make the music. There are anecdotes, teachings, and thoughts about the art of beatmaking, insights both into the music industry and the rap game, and so much more, everything told by the producers themselves through interviews released during their careers.
I hope this book can be a source of inspiration and study for all enthusiasts of beats and rap music.
Box Factory is a unique cinematic percussion library geared towards composers and producers alike, featuring a huge 40-piece ensemble of cardboard boxes, masterfully sampled in a concert hall. Built for the free Kontakt Player.
About The Instrument
We assembled six performers and 40 boxes of different shapes and sizes in a concert hall, and curated 13 unique ensembles ranging from large to small boxes with a range of stick types and performance techniques.
The sound of Box Factory is familiar, yet totally unique. It is presented in a way that will feel at home if you’ve used any other percussion library – you can approach in the same way as you would toms, taikos and snares – yet it offers a certain organic, raw and tactile sound that is unlike any conventional percussion instrument.
Whether used as the sole percussion instrument in a composition (as is the case with all the demo tracks on this page), or layered with other drums, the diverse tones and flexible sound-shaping controls offered by Box Factory will be an essential sonic ingredient for anyone looking to freshen up their percussion palette.
The Sound
We returned to the same concert hall where we recorded Glacier Keys, Frozen Percussion, Dulciano, and many others. Using a selection of 32 top shelf microphones from Neumann, Coles, DPA and Senheiser, we captured the ensembles from multiple perspectives in the room. From these recordings, we created four distinct mixes – Natural, Aggressive, Gritty, and Snappy – giving you a diverse palette of sounds to complement any musical style.
Natural – This mix is the closest sound to the source recordings. With just some gentle processing to enhance and polish the raw recordings, the Natural mix is perfect for those situations where an organic, un-hyped sound is required.
Aggressive – With a carefully selected processing chain, the Aggressive mix turns up the heat and adds some extra dirt and girth. The heavy compression and saturation in this mix bring out the ambience in the room mics, and this can be manipulated further with the ‘Punch’ and ‘Decay Trim’ controls to yield a wide range of results.
Gritty – This mix chain uses some pretty unusual processes (including running the signal through a bass amp!), and offers a very powerful sound with some real mojo, and a particular emphasis on the mid-range. The Gritty mix is our personal favourite.
Snappy – While the Aggressive and Gritty mixes are focused on hyping the raw recordings so they sound larger than life, the Snappy mix is the opposite. This mix offers short and snappy hits with sharp transients and a less roomy sound. With an emphasis on dynamic range, the Snappy mix is super responsive under the fingers and feels great to play.
Each of the four mixes include three individual microphone perspectives (Close, Mid and Far). These signals can be blended with ease using the ‘perspective’ slider, or controlled with greater precision using the separate microphone faders, letting you dial in the perfect amount of ambience, whether you want a dry ‘studio’ sound, or a spacious sound which sits at the back of a mix.
Sculpt Your Sound
When you first load the library, you’ll be presented with the Main Page, which houses all the essential controls for dialling in your own sound.
Punch – This shapes the attack of each hit, emphasising the transient and creating a punchier sound.
Decay Trim – In some situations, the natural reverb tail from the samples may be less desirable. The Decay Trim control allows you to reduce the natural room decay, resulting in a tighter sound. This is especially useful if you want the large spacious sound of the Far mics, but without the long reverb tail getting in the way during fast playing.
Saturate – From subtle tape warmth to aggressive distortion, this control can drastically change the flavour of each hit. The saturation is applied to each voice separately (rather than to the whole output) which results in a ‘cleaner’ tone shaping effect which doesn’t break apart when multiple boxes are playing together.
Squash – This adds compression to the signal, to add glue and cohesion to the ensemble. The compressor’s settings have been carefully set up under-the-hood to match the source material perfectly, letting you easily dial in the desired amount of compression with a single knob. Unlike the Saturate control, the Squash control is applied to the whole signal.
These controls are very powerful when used in combination. For example, pushing the Squash and Saturation on their own will add grit and character to the hits, but could result in the room tails building up or the transients getting lost, so combining these with the punch and decay trim controls lets you tame the room and add the transients back. This gives you a lot more sound sculpting control than could be achieved with external effects alone.
The Ensemble Stack feature allows the ensemble size to be increased by layering RR samples together. The Looseness control adds random timing variation between each stacked sample. At the lowest setting, each sample is played at the same time; at the highest setting, the ensemble will play with looser timing. The spread control randomises the panning and pitch of each stacked sample, resulting in a larger and wider ensemble.
Diving Deeper
For many users, the Main Page will be all you need to jump in and start creating music with Box Factory. For those users who want to take the library even further, we have provided an advanced Setup Page, which allows you to tweak each articulation in various ways, edit the instrument’s mapping, and even create your own custom patches that are tailored to your needs and workflow.
The controls on this page allow you to remove articulations, add new articulations (even multiple instances of the same articulation), and change the key mapping. Using the articulation settings panel, you can adjust the volume, pan, stereo width, low pass and high pass filters of each articulation instance. You can also save your articulation mapping and settings as presets which can be loaded into other patches. For more information on using the Setup Page, please see the in-depth instructional video below.
Rhythm Engine
The Rhythm page contains a step sequencer for easily creating tempo-synced rhythms. Velocity and lp/hp filter cutoff can be controlled per-step by dragging across the interactive tables. When the Rhythm Engine is engaged, pressing a key will play the inputted rhythm using the articulation assigned to that key.
Beyond Boxes
On top of the ‘standard’ instruments included in the library, we recycled the raw cardboard box recordings into a set of designed drums. These warped and mangled instruments feature multiple RRs and velocity layers, making them fully playable instruments, adding a whole new dimension to the sonic palette offered by Box Factory.
Epic Sound Design 1-shots
To push the envelope even further, we pursued the talents of Hollywood sound designer Karel Psota (Jumanji, Pokemon: Detective Pikachu, Wonder Woman 84) and trailer composer Benjamin Squires (Spider-Man: Far From Home, How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World) to create a selection of 70 hard-hitting cinematic one-shot samples. Incredibly, these sounds were created from 100% Box Factory source material, and perfectly complement the playable instruments offered in the library. The one-shots are categorised into booms, hits, whooshes and risers, and are accessible from a special version of the Box Factory engine, featuring a built-in sample editor for adjusting the timings and contour of each sample.
We have also included these sounds as standalone WAV files, which can be used directly in your DAW.
NKS Support and Kontakt Player compatibility
Features
13 separate ensembles, curated from 40 cardboard boxes
Recorded in a modern concert hall environment, with 3 mixable microphone positions.
4 diverse mixes, ready to use in any production.
Housed in our brand new percussion engine, with easy sound shaping controls and articulation customisation.
Innovative rhythm animator with velocity and filter sequencers
Full NKS support – works with Komplete Kontrol hardware.
3GB download size (NCW compressed from a 5.5GB sample pool).
Runs in the free Kontakt Player (v6.6 or later). No additional sampler software needed.
The Tiny Music Box is equally powerful at creating delicate, twinkling melodies as it is at producing dark, creepy ambiances, thanks to the unique ‘age’ parameter. The ‘age’ function adds some subtle (or not so subtle) detuning, as well as processing the sound to create a darker timbre, perfect for horror scores.
The built-in ‘atmosphere’ layer adds a dreamy sustain to the music box. Not quite a reverb, not quite a pad – this layer was created with manipulated music box recordings, and blends perfectly with the dry samples to create lush, otherworldly tails. The volume and stereo width of the ‘atmosphere’ layer can be adjusted to your taste.
Features
Intimately sampled metal music box
4 round-robins
Custom ‘atmosphere’ layer
Unique ‘age’ control for creating a range of timbres
It was always very difficult to make good sounding and stable 4/4 psytrance or trance bass that don’t have any unwanted clicks, random phase variations and overall instability.
123creative.com Psytrance Bass X1 changes everything. Now you can create very fast and easy, perfect sounding bass for following 4/4 dance music styles: psytrance, progressive trance, full on psytrance, dark psytrance / darkpsy, tech-trance, tech-house, acid, trance, uplifting trance, and also house or techno.
Many producers were always curious how to create normal sounding psytrance/trance bass and were searching for various “magic” tutorials “how to create good psytrance bass” using equalizers, compressors and special effects, because most of virtual analog/subtractive synthesizers produce unwanted clicks, they are having various phase and toning variations/instability and simply fast bassline sounds like from damaged jukebox.
Psytrance Bass X1 is bassline synthesizer that allows you to create perfect sounding bass within one minute. While very simple synthesizer, it allows you to create hundreds of different sounding basslines thanks to 4 oscillators, phase knob, osc saturation, 4 different low pass filters and more.
Top Features:
Bassline oscillator (Analog saw, Digital saw, Analog ramp, Digital ramp, Digital square) that works in poly and mono mode.
Osc phase knob.
Osc saturation knob.
4 low pass filters (German low pass, Low pass (standard), Vintage analog low pass, 303 low pass) with cutoff and resonance (q) knob.
‘Fill The Trap Vol 2’ by Apollo Sound is the next instalment of the label’s outstanding MIDI drum patterns and audio drum loops series. Just like the first part, this second edition is extremely useful for your modern Trap/Hip Hop production and even bigger and more flexible.
There are 50 folders in the pack with 8 bar hotshot Trap drum loops in each folder. Everything you like in high-quality Trap drums, you will find here: sharp hi-hat rolls, pitched snare fills, punchy kicks & MIDI drum patterns. Every loop is thoroughly processed, mixed and fully ready for use.
Beside full drum loops there are separate Stems in each folder: kick loops, hi-hat loops, and snare loops. There are also REX2 sliced versions included for each full drum loop & drum Stem. Perfect if you want to change the tempo without losing quality. Most importantly, of course, are 150 essential MIDI patterns of each loop.
This sample pack provides unlimited abilities and extraordinary flexibility in the creation of unique Trap drums for the shortest time. You can use the already existing loops as they are or combine Stems of different loops. Or, you can use the MIDI patterns as an inspiration basis and produce your own exclusive drum loops from your own drum samples. All you need is to drop any MIDI loop (MIDI pattern) you like into your DAW, switch on your favourite sampler and choose the hi-hat or snare, or kick sound from your own samples collections and start to create fresh hits.
Grab this now, your very own copy of this premium Trap & Hip Hop drum loops library inspired by the genre’s hitmakers like Metro Boomin, Boi-1da, Mike WiLL Made-It, Lil Uzi Vert, Travis Scott, Post Malone, Drake and more.
Please Note:
This is a drum loops pack only. The demo contains other sounds exclusively for illustrative purposes only and they are not included in this sample pack.
Music Theory in 30 Days: The Beginner’s Guide to How Music Works – With Online Companion Course
Do you want to know how the language of music works? Would you like to explore all the different elements that create the music we all love? Are you interested in building a rock-solid foundation for more advanced musical studies?
Then this book is for you!
With hundreds of exercises and examples, listening challenges, 1 final test and online access to audio files, you’ll learn:
The essentials of music theory
The complete system behind musical scales
How key signatures work (and why they matter)
How to build an endless variety of chords and where to use them
The fundamentals of musical analysis
How tonal music works (and why this is important)
And all other essential music theory details!
Stop searching the web endlessly in hopes of finding the right information and start learning from this step-by-step system instead. Hundreds of students have successfully gone through the School of Composition’s practical methods to learn music theory. Now it’s
Roundel Sounds give you a pack loaded from single shots. Those shot are part from previous pack mixed with some unique individual samples that were created by sound design using Tools such as Kick 2 for kicks and snares and mixing go existing sounds appealing distortion and UAD plug in processing to get the sharpest sound out of this shots.
No EQs no cleaning up. These sounds are as raw as they can be and more than enough to get you going. Given the fact that a number of sounds were sampled from go existing construction kits of ours we only find it right to low the prices as much as possible giving you the best value for money you can get.
The Ultimate Guitar Scales Book (Left-Handed Edition): Essential For Every Guitar Player PDF
Created especially for the left-handed players with left-handed scale boxes. All the other content is the same as the original book ‘The Ultimate Guitar Scales Book’.
A Must Have For Every Guitar Player!This book can be used as a learning, reference or practice tool to explore new scales and shapes to help improve your improvisational skills or practice routine.
Going from the simplest scales, such as the Minor Pentatonic scale, through to the more complex, such as Harmonic Minor and Melodic Minor scales, this book uses 3-note per string and CAGED shapes to connect the different shapes across the whole fretboard. This book can be used simply as a reference point for shapes to play for certain scales/modes, or to further develop your knowledge and practice routines to become the ultimate guitar player!
Put together by musician Karl Golden, who has been playing guitar professionally for over 10 years and is now a big influencer in the YouTuber community, with well over 48 million views on his content.
Over 70 Practice Exercises
Over 70 practice exercises with full notation to help you learn the scales and modes in this book.
Over 30 Scales and Modes
The Major Scale
Dorian Mode
Phrygian Mode
The Lydian Mode
The Mixolydian Mode
The Aeolian Mode
The Locrian Mode
The Minor Pentatonic Scale
The Major Pentatonic Scale
The Blues Scale
The Harmonic Minor Scale
The Locrian Natural Six Mode
The Ionian Sharp Five Mode
The Dorian Sharp Four Mode
The Phrygian Dominant Mode
The Lydian Sharp Two Mode
The Super Locrian Mode
The Melodic Minor Mode
The Dorian Flat Two Mode
The Lydian Augmented Mode
The Lydian Flat Seven Mode
The Mixolydian Flat Six Mode
The Locrian Sharp Two Mode
The Altered Scale
The Whole-Half Diminished Scale
The Half-Whole Diminished Scale
The The Whole Tone Scale
Also touches on more obscure modes such as Hungarian Minor Scale,The Persian Scale, The Hirajoshi Pentatonic Scale, The Arabian Scale and Scottish Pentatonic Scale.
Useful CAGED and 3-Note-Per-String-ShapesEasy CAGED box shapes that can be moved anywhere on the neck for any key as well as 3-note-per-string shapes. Don’t learn hundreds of unnecessary scale shapes!
The Ultimate Bass Chords & Arpeggios Book: Essential for every bass player! (The Ultimate Bass Books Book 2) (English Edition)
Learn all the essential chords and arpeggios to play on the bass that all bass players should know. Starting with the most basic major, minor, diminished, and augmented chords and arpeggios then moving onto the more advanced seventh arpeggios that add lots of flavour to your playing. Each set of chords and arpeggios comes with practice exercises and inspiring musical pieces to help you understand how to approach arranging music with them. This is the ultimate reference and practice book.
Put together by musician Karl Golden, who has been playing professionally for over 10 years and is now a big influencer in the YouTuber guitar community, with well over 50 million views on his content.
Over 50 Moveable Shapes To Any Key For Chords & Arpeggios
Over 50 moveable shapes to any key for both chords and arpeggios;
Major Chords & Arpeggios
Minor Chords & Arpeggios
Diminished Chords & Arpeggios
Augmented Chords & Arpeggios
Sus Two Chords & Arpeggios
Sus Four Chords & Arpeggios
Major Seventh Chords & Arpeggios
Minor Seventh Chords & Arpeggios
Dominant Seventh Chords & Arpeggios
Half-Diminished Seventh Chords & Arpeggios
Fully -Diminished Chords & Arpeggios
45 Exercises
45 exercises to help you practice the chords and arpeggios in the book as well as musical examples of how to incorporate them into your playing. Audio files can be downloaded from the webiste for these (links in book).
Practice Diary
20 week practice diary at the back of the book to keep track of your progress and help create a good practice routine.
Blank Diagrams & Tabs
4 pages of blank diagrams to create your own shapes or alter any in the book as well as 4 pages of empty bass tablature.
How To Write Chord Progressions
Section on how to write your own chord progressions for your own songs.
Studio wiz Gary Hiebner presents comprehensive Steinberg WaveLab Cast video tutorials! If you’re ready to take advantage of WaveLab Cast’s impressive set of audio tools for your podcast or YouTube videos, this is the course for you. Gary takes you through every aspect of this powerful plugin – from understanding the interface to publishing your finished audio – with clear and informative demonstrations throughout. These videos are for new WaveLab Cast users.
Gary welcomes you begins by showing you how to set up your audio interface for use with WaveLab Cast, followed by a quick tour of the plugin’s interface and workspace tabs. You’ll learn the difference between the two types of files used in WaveLab Cast – Audio Files and Audio Montages – what each is for, and how to load, save, and create them.
Next, explore the editing options within WaveLab Cast, such as fades, zooming, adjusting clip volume, copy/paste, and more. Also discover how to use markers and magnets, for quick navigation and organization within your project, and see how the various meters allow you to get a visual representation of your audio levels.
Throughout the rest of the course, you’ll learn about many more useful features, such as the Track Cleanup and Enhance Tools (easy-to-use one-knob functions that help improve your audio), adding effects to the Track Inspector or Master section, using the Ducker effect, working with video, rendering and publishing your audio, and more!
To see exactly what these in-depth WaveLab Cast tutorials contain, see the individual WaveLab Cast video tutorial descriptions on this page. This plugin contains many more features under the hood than is evident at first glance, and these videos will help you take command of them all, resulting in professional-sounding audio that you’ll be proud to share with the world. Give your audio the attention it deserves … watch “WaveLab Cast Explained®” now!
Synth expert Larry Holcombe presents comprehensive TAL-U-No-LX video tutorials! If you want that vintage Roland Juno sound for your tracks and productions, this virtual synth delivers. And, with these video tutorials you’ll learn all of the TAL-U-No-LX’s features and functions, as well as how to make warm pads, fat bass sounds, signature lead patches, and more. These videos are for new TAL-U-No-LX users.
Larry welcomes you and starts with a tour of the interface and an explanation of how to save, load, and organize presets. He then dives into the DCO, which forms the raw materials of each sound patch, and covers pulse width modulation, pitch modulation, and the noise module. Then learn about the amazing-sounding filters (HPF and VCF) that allow you to sculpt your tones by altering the frequency content and learn how to modulate them.
Next, explore the VCA and ADSR to hear how the envelopes work and check out the famous on-board Chorus effect! Then discover the many parameters of the LFO, including frequency, pulse width, filter cutoff, and more!
Throughout the rest of the course, you’ll learn about the synth’s other important features, including portamento, the Arpeggiator, the FX section, the Master section, MIDI learn, and more! Finish off the course by watching as Larry demonstrates how to create five different sounds: a dark bass, big pad, saw lead, synth brass, and analog drums.
To see exactly what these in-depth TAL-U-NO-LX tutorials contain, and how they’ll help you to create the sounds and tones you need for your productions quickly, check out the TAL-U-NO-LX video descriptions below. Learn how to make this iconic synth emulation an important part of your next production! Watch “TAL-U-No-LX Explained®” now!
‘Merlin Guitar’ by Earthone is featuring a set of relaxing mellow sounds of merlin guitar! It contains 124 professionally played and recorded loops ready to drop into your project!
Merlin guitar is a 4-string diatonic acoustic instrument and takes its inspiration from the classic hillbilly stringed instrument, the Appalachian dulcimer.
It has a thick and comfortable one-piece maple neck that’s hollowed out where the fingerboard meets the body and fewer frets than usual. Merlin is designed to be simple to play and to make and almost impossible to press down on the wrong notes provided you are OK playing in one key.
In detail, expect to find 641 MB of raw content featuring 124 beautifully played ‘Guitar’ loops at 90, 110, 130 BPM and includes a dry version (w/o any additional e.q, compressor or reverb effects) and wet version of each, giving a total of 248 files. All loops are Key and Tempo Labelled for ease of use. All sounds are ready to fit straight in your tracks.
This instrument has been widely used in many different musical genres whether you’re producing House, Hip-Hop, Jazz, Funk, Soul, RnB, Lounge, Electronica or even DnB the only limit is your imagination! If you are looking to add a rarely heard instrument to your production, this is the perfect companion. It is small in stature but big in fun!
Please Note: this is a ‘Guitar’ pack ONLY, other sounds contained within this Demo are for illustration purposes.
Pack Details:
• 248 Files
• 074 Guitar Loops At 90 BPM
• 084 Guitar Loops At 110 BPM
• 090 Guitar Loops At 130 BPM
• Key & Tempo Labelled
• Dry & Wet Files
• 100% Royalty-Free
Beautifully worn and naturally warped, Lost Piano is designed to create a mood and inspire the way you play. Instant cinema. It’s not a synthesiser but neither is it really a piano anymore. It’s the somewhere in-between that you won’t have been before.
Created for experimentation. Created to push the limits on what you thought a piano could sound like. Made from 32 sets of piano sounds that have been time-stretched and transformed through reel-to-reel, cassette tapes, guitar pedals and some unconventional plugin chains.
It also features our new custom Memories engine which generates an intelligent pattern of rhythmic sounds. More character and complexity than an arpeggiator. More curious and unconventional than a delay.
This is for the composers, creators and music makers that value the way a sound makes you feel. It’s time to get lost…
Piano sounds
There are 24 different sets of piano sounds and 8 texture pads that can be loaded into 2 sides of the instrument. They have all been painstakingly re-recorded, re-amped and re-worked from the original Alt Piano recording sessions. They have been stretched and transformed through reel-to-reel, cassette tapes and some of the world’s finest boutique guitar pedals. Some have been further manipulated with a string of unconventional plugin chains.
We also went back to the original piano and recorded some additional interesting sounds using wooden plectrums, drum sticks and muted plucks.
Piano textures
The 8 texture pads have been made using similar re-recording techniques to the other sounds. The feeling of an analogue synth, but with the soul of a piano.
One of our favourites is called ‘Muddle’ which uses the highly revered, Fairfield Circuitry “Shallow Water” pedal and an Electro Harmonix Octave generator. We re-sampled both left and right channels independently, constantly changing the controls of the pedals to give a truly original stereo sound.
Rhythmical underscore
We’ve developed a custom engine called Memories which creates an intelligent pattern of notes to accompany your playing. More character and complexity than an arpeggiator. More curious and unconventional than a delay. Turn a simple chord into a rhythmical and moving soundscape of complimentary notes and tones.
Choose any of the piano recordings for the Memories engine to play and then refine the sound of them even more. Make them feel like a recent memory or a long forgotten and hazy dream. We’ve created 12 presets just for the Memory page, to give you an instant starting point.
– Kontakt PLAYER 6.2.2 and above
– Over 2750 samples
– Over 9 GB uncompressed WAVs
‘Extortion’ by Famous Audio is a Riddim Dubstep pack featuring distorted and ferocious basses, hard-hitting drums, punching kicks, pounding snares, and hyped-up melodies for your next killer track.
This powerful collection delivers the essentials from hard-knocking drums to dynamic buildups, rumbling bass hits to punchy kicks, filthy basslines to catchy synth lines, crispy drum hits to skippy percussion grooves, moody and groovy melodics to snappy snares, energetic vox to atmospheres, FX, and more.
You can expect to find over 250 loops at 150 BPM plus 150 mind-blowing one-shots and five Construction Kits. These include five full mixes and 25 Stems. All loops & samples are key and tempo labelled for flexibility, so you can use these samples in as many ways as you desire.
‘Extortion’ is suitable for all kind of Bass music styles such as Dubstep, Hybrid Trap, Hardstep, Neuro, DnB, Heavy Electro and EDM.
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