Being as it's Thanksgiving, I chose Gratitude as the feeling for the week. But as my sister came to visit last weekend and stayed until we drove up to PA on Thursday where we spent a couple of days, I didn't have time to sit in front of my computer. Luckily, I got a new phone last week: the Motorola Droid. Details below, but suffice to say, I produced this song on my PHONE!
Description:
I didn't really get to the heart of gratitude with this piece, but as a first attempt at producing on a mobile device I'm pretty happy. I tried to pick mellow loops and samples to work with as when one is thankful, one is usually rather content and at peace. I went with softer bass tones, piano/electric piano, and horns for the most part.
Tools:
Motorola Droid
niko twenty Electrum Drum Machine
Ableton Live 7
IK Multimedia T-Racks 3 Linear Phase EQ, Opto Compressor, and Brickwall Limiter
Read more...
Notes:
- The Droid is an amazing device, and there are a few music apps available for it (nothing like the iPhone yet, but I feel confident the market will grow). I tried a bunch of them, and so far my favorite is the Electrum Drum Machine by niko twenty. Despite the name, it is really more than a drum machine. It's closer to an MPC sampler. I loaded my phone with loops and samples, and through the week in free moments on the train and at lunch I managed to put together a collection of song sections.
- While there is a loop sequencer built into Electrum, I ended up moving the loops to my computer and laying out the sequence in Live. Then as a final step I put some mastering plugins on the final product.
- I had to convert all of my samples to 22050, 16 bit, mono audio to work on the phone so the resultant layered loops were in that format, but I rendered the sequence from Live at 48000, 24bit, stereo - mainly because my audio hosting site wouldn't allow the lower quality file to upload.
- I started out by building a custom drum kit. The way the program works is that you have 6 "pads" and load a sample onto each one. You can edit your samples' start and end points as well as setting the level and pitch for each one individually. I do wish there was a mixer page where you could set all of the levels at once instead of having to go back an forth between each sample's edit page to tweak. You'll hear a fe spots where a sound really sticks out because it was hard to get the levels just right without a proper mixer. (I'd also love to be able to work in stereo, but it is only a phone, and such limitations can be a good thing to really make you focus on blending things together for a good sound.)
- Then you use a step sequencer to play the pads on particular beats creating patterns. My custom kits was made up of sounds from the Hip-Hop and Glitch sample packs for Electrum. I made three separate beats all using this same kit as a foundation.
- Once I had the basic beats, I'd export them as WAV files. Then I'd reload a loop onto a pad and replace the samples on the other 5 pads with either more percussion or bass and instrument loops. I could then program a new sequence, export it and reload to the first pad and add even more new sounds. I got up to about 4 layers before things just got too cluttered to be usable. When you load loops onto a pad, you can even set them to match the tempo as long as you've included the tempo of the original loop in the filename.
- It's sort of like working on my old Portastudio 4 track where I'd record 4 tracks, bounce them down to one and add 3 new tracks, etc. but with better editing of each sample like and MPC. Like an old school sampler, changing the tempo also changes the pitch, and changing the pitch either speeds up or slows down the sample. It's another interesting limitation that forces you to be careful and make good decisions to get things synced up.
- At this point, I could have loaded my completed loops onto the pads, set each one to play on beat 1 of a pattern and then made a sequence of the various patterns to create a song, but instead I copied my loops and patterns over to the computer and opened them in Live. I did not go crazy with further edits and effects on the computer. I wanted to stick to the limitations inherent in making music on a phone. Instead, I simply set out my sequence on a single track. I did, however, run final arrangement through a mastering chain to sweeten the sound a bit since I had to export my final mix at a higher resolution.
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2009-11-28
2009-11-20
Week #47 - Relief
A laid back groove I came up with at a cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains. It was quite a relaxing trip, and I felt like it embodied this feeling perfectly:
Description:
A weekend of massage and hanging out in the hot tub and in front of a cozy fireplace led me to write this piece. It's about getting away from the stuff that drains you in your day-to-day life and uncovering the real you again.
Tools:
Propellerhead Record 1/Reason 4
Epiphone Les Paul Custom electric guitar
Fender Jazz electric bass
Audio Technica 2020 condenser microphone
Read more...
Notes:
- Here's a video of the original rhythm guitar part as written in the woods:
- So I took the acoustic groove above, electrified it, and filled it out with keyboard, a second guitar, bass, and finally drums. I wasn't happy with the chorus and thought it would make a better breakdown section instead so I wrote a new chorus and put it into a pretty standard arrangement: intro-verse-chorus-verse-middle8-chorus-solo(2 verses)-chorus-outro. Once I had an arrangement, I worked out some lyrics and recorded vocals over the top.
- The verse is a sort of 12-bar blues pattern in F#m but instead of the standard 5-4-1 ending, the last 4 bars go: E | D | A | Bm |
- The chorus is an 8-bar pattern: F#m | C#m | F#m | C#m | F#m | C#m | D | E |
- The middle8 comes in a measure early and lays back even more. it's actually a middle9: C#m-Bm | A | C#m-Bm | A | C#m-Bm | A | C#m-Bm | D-E | E |
- The guitar, keyboard, and bass parts were all pretty much written and recorded in a single session. I kept things simple as a regular 5 piece band would perform it. I did think about adding horns or strings, but I thought it was best kept simple.
- The drums were written on my new phone (Motorola Droid) with a drum machine app called ElekDrum. I exported the MIDI and imported it into a Redrum module where I edited it a bit more. It's basically the same beat throughout with a variety of fills, and the drums drop out for the middle8 until the last measure and a half. I wrote a few fills and then just used the Alter notes tool to make variations on the rest so it wasn't the same the whole time. I went back and did the same thing to the main beat every few measures as well.
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Description:
A weekend of massage and hanging out in the hot tub and in front of a cozy fireplace led me to write this piece. It's about getting away from the stuff that drains you in your day-to-day life and uncovering the real you again.
Tools:
Propellerhead Record 1/Reason 4
Epiphone Les Paul Custom electric guitar
Fender Jazz electric bass
Audio Technica 2020 condenser microphone
Read more...
Notes:
- Here's a video of the original rhythm guitar part as written in the woods:
- So I took the acoustic groove above, electrified it, and filled it out with keyboard, a second guitar, bass, and finally drums. I wasn't happy with the chorus and thought it would make a better breakdown section instead so I wrote a new chorus and put it into a pretty standard arrangement: intro-verse-chorus-verse-middle8-chorus-solo(2 verses)-chorus-outro. Once I had an arrangement, I worked out some lyrics and recorded vocals over the top.
- The verse is a sort of 12-bar blues pattern in F#m but instead of the standard 5-4-1 ending, the last 4 bars go: E | D | A | Bm |
- The chorus is an 8-bar pattern: F#m | C#m | F#m | C#m | F#m | C#m | D | E |
- The middle8 comes in a measure early and lays back even more. it's actually a middle9: C#m-Bm | A | C#m-Bm | A | C#m-Bm | A | C#m-Bm | D-E | E |
- The guitar, keyboard, and bass parts were all pretty much written and recorded in a single session. I kept things simple as a regular 5 piece band would perform it. I did think about adding horns or strings, but I thought it was best kept simple.
- The drums were written on my new phone (Motorola Droid) with a drum machine app called ElekDrum. I exported the MIDI and imported it into a Redrum module where I edited it a bit more. It's basically the same beat throughout with a variety of fills, and the drums drop out for the middle8 until the last measure and a half. I wrote a few fills and then just used the Alter notes tool to make variations on the rest so it wasn't the same the whole time. I went back and did the same thing to the main beat every few measures as well.
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2009-11-13
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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Read more...
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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2009-11-06
Week #45 - Bewilderment
The irony here is that I feel anything but bewildered this week. In fact, I think this song is the best one I've done in 3 months. It's been a struggle lately, but it started to turn around a couple of weeks ago - I started getting ideas again, found more time to develop them, and writing and recording became fun instead of a chore - and now I feel like I'm ready to finish out the last couple of months strong.
Description:
I wanted to write lyrics to this, but once again I couldn't seem to put it together. That's the one hurdle I have yet to get over, and I think this piece in particular could have benefited from some wordage. It was very hard to hear what bewilderment sounds like. My thought was that we're often bewildered when circumstances don't live up to our expectations, so I developed this song around not meeting expectations. None of the sections are really far out or anything, but I don't think they necessarily lead to one another logically. In fact this song was developed quite organically one section, one part at a time.
Tools:
Propellerhead Record 1/Reason 4
Epiphone Les Paul Custom electric guitar
Takamine Jasmine acoustic guitar
Fender Jazz electric bass
Read more...
Notes:
- This song basically has 4 sections and the structure is A-B-C-B-D-A.
- The A section (intro/outro) is based around a little bluesy Gm riff. This was the first section I wrote so I decided to begin with it. Originally it was recorded only in the descending version, but then I thought it would be interesting to play it in reverse as well. You end up with these quick chords that start an octave apart, move toward each other, hit the #4th in unison and then move apart to end an octave apart. Meanwhile I panned them wide and put them through a tape delay to get things bouncing and swirling around in ping-pong fashion. This sort of represents confusion of being baffled.
- The B section grew from the first as I thought to make it contrast. It's still a Gm riff on the classic blues pentatonic, but I pushed the delay t the background and went for a more straight ahead, electric blues sound. The change sort of comes out of nowhere, but it's as if things were coming around and beginning to make sense.
- I didn't stick with that long before I changed things up again. This time the C section drops an acoustic guitar riff and changes key to Dm. It's a related key, not entirely jarring, but it also goes to a half-time feel.
- After going back to the B section for a more extended stay, I again through an acoustic change as a transition to the D section. This is a simple two-chord part: Am | G |. So thing have moved up a whole step, and the rhythm changes again to a slightly Latin rock feel (or at least that's what I was going for). This is the solo section so I improvised about 4 takes and comped together a solo.
- Finally, the A section fades back in for the outro, and it's again coming completely out of left field.
- As for writing the individual sections, there are a lot of guitar tracks, and that's where everything started. Once I'd built the guitar parts for each section and laid out the basic arrangement, I added a synth drone to provide a nice harmonic foundation for everything. It plays pretty much continuously so it helps link the sections together. Next up was the bass, followed by the drums. I know it's sort of backward to start with the lead parts and fill in the rhythm section underneath, but I thought it would be more organic this way. Often when I start with the drums or bass, I end up editing it so that it's so rigid that there's no room to be expressive. This way is tougher in some senses, but I like having the bass and drums follow the lead. I thought about adding piano, but there are so many guitars filling up the mid-range I thought it best to avoiding adding more clutter.
- With all of the parts down, I only had to tweak the arrangement a bit, adding some sustained guitar chords, comping the solo, and editing some sloppy drum playing (especially on the fills). The drums are my weakest instrument, and I could really benefit from a real drummer, or at least maybe lessons and more practice.
- Finally it came down to mixing. I rally like Record's mixer. It's so much better than the mixers in Reason. And even though Live's session view can function very much like a mixer, there's something to be said for the way Record is modeled on an actual physical unit. I did use the MClass EQ individually on most tracks, and the Compressor on a few, but I mostly mixed on the virtual board. With it's own dynamics and EQ, 4 master inserts, and 8 sends, it's go plenty of power and flexibility. I'm pretty happy with this mix. I'm still learning the program, but it was really fun to mix with - much more interactive (even though I"m using a mouse) than usual. Normally mixing is a chore at the end of the process, but this feels more like part of the creative process.
- I didn't put this through any further processing, but if i were to release a track like this I"d probably do some home mastering with the TrackS 3 plugins as well.
- My only real disappointment was that I once again didn't write lyrics when I intended to. I don't know why I have this writing block. Maybe it's just been too long since I've written much of anything, or maybe I'm too old to have anything worthwhile to say, but that's the one area I'd really like to get moving.
As a bonus, here's a short video of me playing through the changes for this tune on my alternately tunes acoustic guitar:
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Description:
I wanted to write lyrics to this, but once again I couldn't seem to put it together. That's the one hurdle I have yet to get over, and I think this piece in particular could have benefited from some wordage. It was very hard to hear what bewilderment sounds like. My thought was that we're often bewildered when circumstances don't live up to our expectations, so I developed this song around not meeting expectations. None of the sections are really far out or anything, but I don't think they necessarily lead to one another logically. In fact this song was developed quite organically one section, one part at a time.
Tools:
Propellerhead Record 1/Reason 4
Epiphone Les Paul Custom electric guitar
Takamine Jasmine acoustic guitar
Fender Jazz electric bass
Read more...
Notes:
- This song basically has 4 sections and the structure is A-B-C-B-D-A.
- The A section (intro/outro) is based around a little bluesy Gm riff. This was the first section I wrote so I decided to begin with it. Originally it was recorded only in the descending version, but then I thought it would be interesting to play it in reverse as well. You end up with these quick chords that start an octave apart, move toward each other, hit the #4th in unison and then move apart to end an octave apart. Meanwhile I panned them wide and put them through a tape delay to get things bouncing and swirling around in ping-pong fashion. This sort of represents confusion of being baffled.
- The B section grew from the first as I thought to make it contrast. It's still a Gm riff on the classic blues pentatonic, but I pushed the delay t the background and went for a more straight ahead, electric blues sound. The change sort of comes out of nowhere, but it's as if things were coming around and beginning to make sense.
- I didn't stick with that long before I changed things up again. This time the C section drops an acoustic guitar riff and changes key to Dm. It's a related key, not entirely jarring, but it also goes to a half-time feel.
- After going back to the B section for a more extended stay, I again through an acoustic change as a transition to the D section. This is a simple two-chord part: Am | G |. So thing have moved up a whole step, and the rhythm changes again to a slightly Latin rock feel (or at least that's what I was going for). This is the solo section so I improvised about 4 takes and comped together a solo.
- Finally, the A section fades back in for the outro, and it's again coming completely out of left field.
- As for writing the individual sections, there are a lot of guitar tracks, and that's where everything started. Once I'd built the guitar parts for each section and laid out the basic arrangement, I added a synth drone to provide a nice harmonic foundation for everything. It plays pretty much continuously so it helps link the sections together. Next up was the bass, followed by the drums. I know it's sort of backward to start with the lead parts and fill in the rhythm section underneath, but I thought it would be more organic this way. Often when I start with the drums or bass, I end up editing it so that it's so rigid that there's no room to be expressive. This way is tougher in some senses, but I like having the bass and drums follow the lead. I thought about adding piano, but there are so many guitars filling up the mid-range I thought it best to avoiding adding more clutter.
- With all of the parts down, I only had to tweak the arrangement a bit, adding some sustained guitar chords, comping the solo, and editing some sloppy drum playing (especially on the fills). The drums are my weakest instrument, and I could really benefit from a real drummer, or at least maybe lessons and more practice.
- Finally it came down to mixing. I rally like Record's mixer. It's so much better than the mixers in Reason. And even though Live's session view can function very much like a mixer, there's something to be said for the way Record is modeled on an actual physical unit. I did use the MClass EQ individually on most tracks, and the Compressor on a few, but I mostly mixed on the virtual board. With it's own dynamics and EQ, 4 master inserts, and 8 sends, it's go plenty of power and flexibility. I'm pretty happy with this mix. I'm still learning the program, but it was really fun to mix with - much more interactive (even though I"m using a mouse) than usual. Normally mixing is a chore at the end of the process, but this feels more like part of the creative process.
- I didn't put this through any further processing, but if i were to release a track like this I"d probably do some home mastering with the TrackS 3 plugins as well.
- My only real disappointment was that I once again didn't write lyrics when I intended to. I don't know why I have this writing block. Maybe it's just been too long since I've written much of anything, or maybe I'm too old to have anything worthwhile to say, but that's the one area I'd really like to get moving.
As a bonus, here's a short video of me playing through the changes for this tune on my alternately tunes acoustic guitar:
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