Electronic Music

Final Project

2008-12-14T18:29:00.000-08:00

This is my final project.

I started making it about halfway through the semester without the intention of it being my final project. I tried to make the beat as bassy as possible, with three types of bass drums going. I was going for a very intense trance style song, but I don't think it can be confined to only trance. It also incorporates elements of techno and house.

The version I made is significantly shorter than a "full" version that would be played in a club. The first drop comes less than a minute into the song, whereas a full dance song would go for at least a minute or two before dropping out.

One of the most interesting parts of this song to do was mastering it, adding effects to the instruments and tweaking volumes to make the mix sound good. I added compression to one of the kick drums, reverb to the claps and a phaser to the bass. I believe that these made the song as a whole sound much better.

Review

2008-11-27T20:03:00.000-08:00

I will be reviewing Charlie Milner's song for assignment four.

The song starts out simply with a build and a tasteful thunder clap. The drums come in and set a nice, laid-back tempo. I liked how the snare is offset in the panning, so it stands out more than usual. The drum fill is decent, but it could have been better. The three snare hits just sound too similar.

The vocals start now. The sample itself could be a little better or more varied, but the effect is nice. The slight echo fleshes it out a little bit. I'm a little confused as to what the noise is in the second sample (oo-ah?). I like when the lower frequency comes in after that, it adds a nice feel to the song. The repeated samples sound even better with it added in. More thunder claps bring the song to a close. I would have suggested a fadeout at the end, rather than the abrupt finish, though.

All in all, the song is good, but there are a few tweaks that could make it even better.

Drum and Bass

2008-11-12T10:08:00.000-08:00

drum and bass

Working?

Boomp3

2008-11-11T18:35:00.000-08:00

So it appears that music hosting service boomp3 has taken a turn for the strange. It no longer lets me upload files and a good portion of my previous songs are not the right ones. I'm not sure where to put my new songs now, if anyone knows, I'd like to know.

Recent Projects

2008-11-02T21:07:00.001-08:00

Here are some things I've been making recently, outside of class. None are finished (or anywhere close) but I think they all show some promise.

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Done with a neat little percussion pack. Unsure about the arpeggiated lead at the end, though.

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The song I want to expand for my final project. Bumping bass for sure.

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Fiddling with FL's Wave Traveller.

I will hopefully have more polished versions of these songs sometime soon!

Assignment 3

2008-10-27T11:27:00.000-07:00

This week, we were to make a short song. I chose to make mine in the genre of house. I first made a rough draft in the program that I have used for a long time, FL Studio. I then transferred it into Reason and tried to improve it. I will present them both for your consideration.

FL Studio:

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Reason:

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Click Tracks: The Making Of

2008-10-19T13:13:00.000-07:00

Loop 1:

This was the first loop I did. I had an interesting idea of speeding up the click track so much that it would become a buzz sound which I could form into a bassline. This would flesh out the minimal sounding track that just clicks would make. I used three tracks of clicks for the beat: one for bass, one for snare and one for hi-hats. I added an effect to the bass to make it a bit more distinctive than just a lower-pitch click, and I filtered the hi-hats to get a softer and more realistic sound. The bass was not a simple four on the floor, but a more syncopated pattern that makes the loop a bit more interesting. The bass was just one note with the filter being modified over the course of the loop. I tried to make it come back to the starting point at the end to make it a true loop, and I think this might have limited what I could do with it.

Loop 2:

With this loop, I had a bit faster and more conventional drum beat, with the typical four on the floor and a steady snare and hi-hat pattern. One nuance of this, though, is that the snare sound is moved up a little bit, making the second and fourth beat have a sort of flam that sounds more interesting than having them hit together. I used the bassline idea again in this one, but instead of changing the filter, I modified the pitch that the track was going at. I don't remember the exact values, but I believe I used 50, 62, 74 and 86. These are offset by 12, which I picked because that is the default value that the pitch goes up by if you drag the target. Overall, this is the loop I like the most.

Loop 3:

The final loop has a "dark, German dance-house feel," according to my suitemate. It has more bass punch than the other ones, and the bass line concept turns into more of a lead, with a creepy sounding reverb effect. The snare is higher pitched than in other tracks, which I originally thought sounded better, but in retrospect don't like as much as a flatter and less snappy snare. I achieved this by reversing the click so it has a longer attack and very little sustain. The hi-hat pattern in this loop is somewhat subtle; it is somewhat overpowered by the lead, but it is an interesting, almost-shuffle beat. The sound of the hi-hats is a bit like a pair of maracas in this. I find it interesting that a series of four clicks could sound remotely similar to a pair of maracas.

Overall, I am astounded at the kind of music that I created with four, simple clicks, and I am very satisfied with my results.

Click Loops

2008-10-13T10:15:00.000-07:00

Commentary on these loops will follow next week.

Loop 1

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Loop 2

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Loop 3

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Electronic Music: Boring?

2008-10-05T17:56:00.000-07:00

DISCLAIMER: I write this post as a bit of an incendiary piece.

I think electronic music is boring.

I don't really like listening to it that much. I prefer rock and more traditional forms of music. I find electronic music to be too boring to listen to. As background music, or for dancing, it can't be beat, but I cannot listen to techno or house while I do my homework.

My main complaint about electronic music is the lack of change. Each song consists, usually, of one main riff and a few variations. These are repeated over and over with very little difference between the repetitions. My brother, an avid listener of electronic music asserts that "if it's good, why change it?"

This kind of philosophy makes a song that is remarkably boring, regardless of how good the hook is. There is more to music then just repeating one melodic line with different filters and bandpasses.

The lack of vocals is one thing that really shows this lack of change in techno and electronica. In rock music, or even rap, the same chord progression is repeated over and over, but the variation of lyrics accompanying the music makes each repetition a little different, and you can focus on the change in the lyrics, rather than the similarity in the music.

Don't get me wrong, there are a few electronic artists who keep their music fresh throughout their songs, and I do think dancing the electronic music is much better than any other type. But the vast majority of electronic music is just plain boring.

Ringtones

2008-09-28T19:08:00.001-07:00

I just finished my ringtones...

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This one is the 20-second one with each part different. I liked the forward/backward part of the classic telephone ring as a ringtone.

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This is the longer one. I feel that as a ringtone, most things made from field recordings wouldn't work too well (is that my phone or the traffic next to me?), but I tried to make this distinctively a ringtone. I do, however, think it would be better fleshed out into a full ambient track.

Bridge Music

2008-09-18T12:04:00.000-07:00

About a year ago, a project was started at a bridge nearby my home. The goal was to sample the bridge and create a symphony of the clatters, bangs and rattles of the bridge. The composer, Joseph Bertolozzi, plans to make a symphony using different parts of the bridge representing different instruments. He says on his website:

As an analogy, the bridge represents an ensemble including xylophones, chimes & bells (vehicular guard-rails, handrails, panels, and spindles), metallic drums (trusses, towers), rasps (fencing, grates), anvils (cable, girders), bass guitars and marimbas (suspenders) and deep, sustained organ-like tones (traffic light supports blown from actual pipe organ wind chests).

A group of technicians use contact microphones to record the samples while also minimizing the surrounding noises. The samples will then be used by Bertolozzi, who is usually an organist, to write the score, and the resulting piece will be performed on the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson's voyage up the river named after him.

At the time of this post, Bertolozzi has uploaded a sample of the music made on the bridge. The short song is entitled Bridge Funk (see below) and shows off the range of percussion sounds can be made on the bridge. In a New York Times article about the project, Bertolozzi says:

I’m actually using the bridge as an instrument ... It’s not aleatory. There’s no guesswork. I have an army of percussionists playing a percussion instrument.

This will be a truly amazing piece of music when completed, and the performance of it will be nothing short of spectacular.

First post.

2008-09-11T17:26:00.000-07:00

So I started this blog...