Brian Hazard of Color Theory does the uncommon good of sharing his experiences of the electronic music production process, including snippets of tracks-in-progress. While the Net has opened so many collaboration and behind-the-scenes opportunities, insecurity is still rife and I come across much fear of "spilling one's secrets". Thus, it's still comparatively rare to find computer musicians who find the time to share stories of their craft — understandable if someone is struggling enough for resources as it is.
Brian recently let me know in his post "Snippets 13-15", he cooked up his own dubsteppy take on my recipe for fried ride cymbals and it's included with two other song snippets. Thanks Brian for taking my, well, Theory and Color-ing it into action! He's got a great sense of exploring melody across styles, very catchy. In particular, my ears welcome the dancy piano grupettos in "Canadian Boards".
I also learned that Brian has been migrating to Ableton Live, and with the clean way he laid out that post with audio snippets after each step, it feels like Brian would be a natural fit for doing Audiotuts+ if he feels like it! Whaddaya think, Brian?
I get fixated on microcosms of sound. While describing them is only part of the story, I suppose it's rather like opening a (wanted) box of chocolates and luxuriating in each one's unique taste. I shall have an in-action example of this later, but I delight preparing the following recipe for "fried ride cymbals" in Able-town:
Perform a gently swung ride cymbal on a MIDI track. I tend to go for a 2-, 4-, or 8-bar loop. Preferably, with velocity switching for dynamics. I play in the pattern live so it has that natural groove, then I quantize 50% of the way, and another 50% if it's too "loose" (but sometimes you want that).
Apply the Saturator so you get some added sheen and even intentional distortion. That crisps it up.
Add heavy dynamic compression so it pumps, almost claustrophobically at times. Don't worry, there's a counterpoint to this.
Add some vinyl effect with hints of crackle — this is where we approach "it sounds like a vintage record sample without originating there".
Freeze the track, flatten it to audio. F&F are steps I do often, as some edits are more flexibility performed in the audio realm.
Chop out little bits here and there so there are gaps in the vinyl's ambience. Alone, this can be unsettling. Coupled with other drum tracks and more of a comprehensive arrangement, the spaces create intrigue and allow breaths for other instruments to make their mark.
Finally, shift cymbals around and add flavor.and variation. This can involve some subtle pitchbending on the clips to displace our sense of tone and timbre. I like occasions of extreme timestretching to provide surreal warp graininess; artifacts I've been making my own.
A similar sound in terms of shade can be found in the work of Amon Tobin, Four Tet, and others who actually sample jazz records. I've mostly done it the above way, altho I'm not opposed to cheekily nicking a hi-hat here and there.
Beyond the rawpass, perhaps in the future I'll do step-by-step tutorials of these thoughts which rush to the forefront of my mind. *gazes admirably at Audiotuts+* I've been musing over it awhile but tend to get carried away by digging into practical productions. OHMY.
With rare exception, Apple's user interfaces live up to the hype of being intuitive and satisfying. Except in recent memory, their Font Panel. I had a problem in Keynote 5 where I was trying to remove shadows from chart label text. Sounds simple enough, oui? I expected to find shadow with, oh, all the other text styles like bold and underline. However, it was in the Inspector. One of the shadows, anyway.
Wait, ONE OF THE SHADOWS!?
Yes, apparently not just one, but TWO shadow effects are applied. The other one has to be eliminated through the Font Panel — which would make sole sense, if only that were evident from the get-go. Y'see, the Font Panel plays a nasty trick on you, because it has numerous controls hidden until you stretch the panel wider, with no pre-evident guide to discovery.
Thanks to the rapid-replying Tulse for helping me figure this out; it should've been much easier to begin with. So I hope in Keynote 6, only one shadow is used, and that in a future Mac OS X update, the Font Panel is revised. I heart being able to sort my faves, but had no idea these controls were awaiting me.
And you, don't feel bad if you miss something only-obvious-in-hindsight like this. As you just saw, it happens to me, too.
Also, here's the making of "002 – Watermelon Patch", which gives a behind-the-scenes look at some of the steps I take to put a techno(logy-based)/electronica/computer music track together:
He's got a great sense of exploring melody across styles, very catchy. In particular, my ears welcome the dancy piano grupettos in "Canadian Boards".