Week #46 - Panic

Panic. Urgency. Tightness. Tension. I think all of these words could apply to the grooves arranged here:



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Description:

I tried to go back to a sort of soundtrack device, imagining a scene where our panic stricken victim is wrenched from her reverie to find an unknown threat haunting her space. The limitations of having written parts in 4 and 8 bar phrases, however, left me less flexible to arrange this idea as I'd hoped, so I ended up softening the edges and provide instead the short tension building phrase between sections instead as a substitute.

Tools:

Ableton Live 7
Studio Devil AMP
Puremagnetik LivePacks: Phazeform Vol.1, Upright, VoxBox, Vintage Organs Vol.1, and DIgital Beatboxes

Notes:

- There is no mixing or automation in this piece yet. I focused first on putting together riffs for the various sections, and then on arranging those riffs into a songlike structure. I'd love to delve into mixing this piece and hopefully that process would help me open things up to a more experimental arrangement as well. As it is, this is pretty standard for me - a theme and variation piece with a repeating section between the variations, but somehow I never end up feeling like these are "real" songs.

- I was really interested in groove this week and in building up riffs that I could try to employ to the desired effect. This meant compartmentalizing everything and ending up with a whole bunch of 4 and 8 bar loops. But ultimately I really felt limited by having everything in loop form this time around. I love these grooves, but turning them into a song was less than ideal. It's almost like on their own any of these riffs would make a decent 15 second advert soundtrack, but developing a full piece of music from them was impossible.

- Most of the riffs in this piece are based in Dm - it seems to be my favorite home key for some reason. I generally default to the key of Dm, 4/4 time, and 120bpm tempo. The exception here is the third long section which has sustained Am and Bbm chords. This could probably be considered as a sister piece to this track I'm working on:



- For sounds I decide to stick to the underused LivePacks I've been downloading from Puremagnetik.com over the last year or so. I have a few favorite patches, especially from the Microtron packs, but overall, I don't get into these too much so I decide to really explore them this week. Of course, I couldn't resist throwing in my guitar and playing around with Studio Devil's AMP plugin at the end.

- Speaking of the guitar, I'm sure the opening riff will be familiar to anyone who's heard my older music (or Jimi Hendrix's Foxy Lady for that matter). It's one of my favorite rifs to play and something I go back to often. In this instance it's tuned down a step from where I usually play it.

- As mentioned above, I dint use any additional effects or mixing so this is pretty rough. The whole thing is even in mono as I didn't pan the parts or anything. Clearly there is more work to be done on this at some point, but overall I like it, and despite my problems with the overall arrangement, I thnk the individual sections definitely et to the feeling of panic as intended.


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