Archive for the ‘productivity’ Category
Collective Ableton Loop Project: Song Completed
Collective Ableton Loop Project: Song Completed
After quite a rough road of sorting out random loops sent in from my blog readers & twitter followers, I’ve finally completed the process of turning it into a song. The greatest challenge was editing & processing each loop in a way that not only made the parts work together, but also sounded like something I might write.
The next step was creating scenes in Ableton to make sense of which loops worked together & which didn’t. This way I was able to create different “movements” for the song. The best approach I found for creating scenes was to start playing individual clips & adding part 1 by 1 until things sounded good. Then I would use the shortcut Command/Shift/I to get ableton to collect all the paying loops into their own scene. Each of these scenes had a different mood, so it became my job to figure out how to best transition form one scene to another.
I dragged another song into Ableton’s arrange window and added locators at different sections of the song to give me a head start on how to structure the song. Once I got a few minutes into the track, I was able to abandon this structure & rely on my own arrangement instincts. Copy, Paste & duplicate were friends through this process.
I used simple delays and volume fades to introduce or cut certain elements throughout the song. I even used EQ & delay on the master track in a few locations. As the song was already pretty complex, I wasn’t too interested in doing anything too crazy effect-wise.
Below are links to all 5 videos documenting my overall writing process. Although nothing is perfect, I’m pretty happy with the results. There is also a link to download the full songfile with all the samples & loops so you can either reverse engineer what I’ve done or use the raw loops to build your own track from scratch. This is completely free but if you find my work helpful, donations are appreciated.
Enjoy!
happy music making!
Jason
P.S. – Don’t forget to comment & tweet (down below) & “like” (up above). All your feedback & support is appreciated.
Interested in Learning Logic or Reason?
I recommend the sites below:
Logic Courses
Reason Courses
Lets Write a Song Together
Lets Write a Song Together
*(Video progress reports below)*
I’m really excited about this new idea that came to me & I think some of you will find this to be fun as well. This is going to be the most interactive song I’ve attempted to date. I’m really interested to see how many of you participate. Your job will be to upload loops to me within the loose boundaries I specify. Then I will take those loops & build the ones I like into a song.
I plan to ustream my sessions live to take suggestions & comments. For those who can’t make it live, I will be posting the progress of our song until it’s completed. I’ll also share the uploaded loops with everyone so you all can have a go!
So this is going to be how it works:
We will make the song in the key of C Minor
If you aren’t sure about what notes make up a C Minor,
Ableton has a C Minor preset under the midi Scale effect
which will put anything you play in the correct key. Or you
can go here:
http://www.pianoworld.com/fun/vpc/piano_chords.htm
The tempo will be 125 BPM
The time signature will be 4/4 (feel free to use triplets though)
You will create a loop no smaller than 1 bar & no bigger than 32 bars
You can send as many loops as you’d like, but make sure each loop is only 1 instrument
You can create drums, bass, pads, effects, guitar, melodies, Vocals or anything you like
You can also send home recorded samples or field recordings
Files must be rendered as audio & sent in 320 mp3, wav or aif formats
Give each loop file a name followed by your name so you can be credited.
(Realize you are sharing your loops with me & the rest of the community license free)
Use Dropsend.com or SendSpace to send me the loops to MusicSoftwareTraining@gmail.com
I’d like to start this process on December 1st, so try to get me your loops & samples by that time. Once I start receiving loops I’ll begin constructing a song live at my Ustream channel and posting my progress at my Soundcloud page. I can’t guarantee I’ll use your loop, but if it works in my tune, it’s in. You’ll be welcome to leave comments during the process and make suggestions.
Lastly, I’ll share all the loops with my readers including any I make myself so you can go and create your own mix & share it with us. I’d be very interested to listen to everyone’s different results from the same source files.
Here are some of the important links you might want to bookmark:
http://www.pianoworld.com/fun/vpc/piano_chords.htm
Progress Report Videos
Let’s do some Music Making!
Jason
P.S. – Don’t forget to comment & tweet (down below) & “like” (up above). All your feedback & support is appreciated.
Interested in Learning Logic or Reason?
I recommend the sites below:
Logic Courses
Reason Courses
Make Music Now. Talent Not Required
Make Music Now. Talent Not Required
To those of you who listen to music but are afraid to attempt to grasp the music making process.
To all the people may have toyed with the idea of creating music but quickly realized that you’re natural abilities are far too limited.
To all the people who have dreamed of stepping in a stage in a packed room but lack the ability to lead a room of spectators on a worthwhile journey.
To all of you who have picked up an instrument, plucked, pressed or blew a hideous noise, set the instrument down & slowly backed away.
To those who think they’ll never understand what all those crazy knobs on that synthesizer do.
To all those who downloaded the trial version of a new software, gave their best attempt at something musical over the weekend and then deleted the software by monday in frustration.
To all the people who didn’t ask that technical question because “If I haven’t figured this out yet, it’s just not meant to be, so there is no point embarrassing myself”.
To all those who can’t tell a wind instrument from a plucked instrument, between live drums & a drum machine, between echo & reverb or a quarter note from a triplet.
To those who don’t yet understand how a compressor helps some sounds gel together.
To those who have heard of midi but have no idea what it’s purpose is.
To all of those don’t know the difference between an A Minor and C Major scale.
To those who don’t know what a pentatonic scale is.
To those who don’t even know what a scale is.
To those not familiar with middle C & where to find it on a piano.
To those who think or have been told they can’t make music until they have mastered music theory.
To those who can’t tell if there’s a little too much upper midrange on that mixdown or too much mud around 500hz.
I want to tell you with as much sincerity as I can muster. I was once where you are. My musical vocabulary was nil. I couldn’t distinguish between a rock band & an all synth band as far as instrumentation. I couldn’t read or write music notation(& still can’t). I had poor rhythm & had a hard time keeping my playing in tempo. I still only know a handfull of chords, the rest I just make up by ear. The first song I ever performed in front of an audience consisted of playing on only 2 strings of my guitar. I continued with 2 string chords for probably a year before someone suggested I try putting a 3rd finger right on the string under the 2nd finger. A revelation! To this day, the songs I write on guitar consist mostly of simple bar chords or slight variations that sound good to me. I’m no virtuoso but I don’t find myself limited by my lack of chord book knowledge.
If you think that I must then have been a computer whiz, easily programming my ideas into something listenable, think again. I didn’t even know how to properly turn off a computer, had no idea what a desktop or a folder was & the concept of cut copy & paste was completely foreign to me. I’m still haunted by this calm confident sounding voice sample that came with my Sony (then Sonic Foundry) Sound Forge (Sound editing software) that said “Sound editing keeps getting easier & easier”. Every time I heard that guy’s voice, I wanted to throw my computer out of a window.
Still to this day, I when I start a new song, I have a childlike naivety & curiosity in the process. I don’t know my scales, & I still create my music by ear. My writing process consists of a few approaches.
1. Listen to what I’ve already got & wait for a musical idea to come to my head then sound it out by ear.
2. Duplicate a melodic midi file, change the sound, raise or lower by an octave, move notes around til it sounds good.
3. Dick around until I’ve stumble across something that sounds interesting
Obviously, the more you write, the better your instincts & musical vocabulary become. You become better able to tell if something doesn’t sound quite right or if you’ve nailed it. I find that I rarely nail it. There is usually a point at which I accept not being perfect & let it be. Like Da Vinci said “Art is never finished, only abandoned”. This idea of perfection is not only elusive to the amateurs be also the masters.
I’m not trying to embarrass myself here although I simply don’t care how others view my knowledge or lack thereof. I want you to think of this complete lack of knowledge as your first stepping stone to mastery. It honestly doesn’t matter where you start, only where you want to get to. Tell me 1 thing you’re doing now that you didn’t at one point know absolutely nothing about.
I’ll wait………
Don’t ever think you can only create music when you stop having questions. Questions create possibilities where there once wasn’t. The day people stop asking questions is the day music runs out of ideas. I believe that having good taste in music is much more of a priority than having skill. If you have taste in music, you will recognize when you aren’t quite where you want to be yet & that will drive you to improve. As you improve, your listening with also improve & you’ll find yourself noticing details in music that previously eluded you, thus driving you forward once again. It becomes an upward spiral.
There is only one qualification for making music. Because you want to.
Do the world a favor. Encourage a friend to make music. The world might not recognize it as a favor for a couple years though, so I wouldn’t suggest an amp that goes to 11 just yet. 
Talent not required. Headphones maybe?
Happy Music Making,
Jason
P.S. – Don’t forget to comment & tweet (down below) & “like” (up above). All your feedback & support is appreciated.
Ghost Tracks
Ghost Tracks
I wanted to talk about a creative technique in songwriting that isn’t often talked about but can be very effective in inspiring good ideas. When you come to your studio with a blank slate, it can sometimes be difficult to decide what exactly you are going to do. There are several conscious or unconscious questions that will need to be answered.
* What style of music will I be making
* What tempo will the song be at?
* What key will this song be in?
* What mood would I like to capture?
Sometimes when you are inspired, all of these questions are naturally answered without any trouble, but without that spark of inspiration you are kind of wandering aimlessly hoping that some of your toying around with sounds or rhythms grabs your interest. This can be a long process or can end up with several false starts. A ghost track can be the solution.
What is a ghost track?
The process of a ghost track is very simple. Typically you find a song that affects you on an emotional level. Something that captures a mood & inspires you. You don’t have to know why it inspires you. No need to reverse engineer the song. Instead you are going to use the song itself as a template for your own work.
Drag the song into a new music project. From here there are several things you can do. You can use the song structure & chord arrangement as is, or you can grab a certain section & loop it. I like to grab a loop & work with that, preferably an instrumental section.
What you’ll do from there is simply play on top of it. Add your own melody, bass part, pads, drums. Just keep building until you have the beginnings or your own song. Just keep improvising on top of the loop for several minutes. Try to play something different that captures a similar mood for you. Later you will delete your ghost track & start picking out the good bits of what you’ve played. Soon, you’ll be on your way to completing your own piece of music with rhythms, structure & melodies inspired by the original ghost track.
It’s like having someone guide you towards something captivating & away from mental blocks. You don’t have the same pressure of making all these little decisions but instead you are just jamming to something you already love. What a great state of mind to be working from.
Great music inspires great music
It would be no exaggeration to say that much of the music you love was inspired by a song or songs that the artist loved. Many great songs have simply borrowed another song’s drum rhythm or chord structure. Sometimes a melody is hijacked noticeably, or sometimes it is altered just enough to disguise the original influence.
Think about how a genre of music is created. Do you think it’s just a bunch of unconnected artists that randomly ended up in the same place? Well, maybe there is a minuscule percentage of these cases, but overwhelmingly, someone does something that sounds fresh & a bunch of other artists jump on that idea & do their own version. They “borrow” 90% of someone else’s idea and put their own 10% twist on it.
But is it cheating?
This really depends on your idea of what cheating is. Where does cheating really start or end? If cheating is using someone else’s hard work for your own purpose, then pretty much any tool is cheating.
The piano is a beautiful instrument that has wonderful tone when played a certain way, but can you really take credit for how wonderful it sounds just because you assigned chords & notes to it? You’ve got to admit that some of the magic is in the sound itself, even if you’ve tweaked that sound.
Then there is your recording devices, the software in your computer (or hardware), the effects, the mixing engineer & the mastering guy. That would be a lot to take on to make something completely original.
You can’t take credit for the sound itself, just as a cook can’t take credit for the knives he uses or even the ingredients. How many people have made lasagna, or an omelette? Even though people make them at least 80% the same, there are those minor details that makes an average cuisine amazing. Imagine how awful it would be if there was no theft allowed in cooking? There can be only 1 spaghetti sauce. Only 1 peanut butter. What a waste of a chance to improve upon a good idea. Often times the artist might consider the magic moment as a mistake or a failure, but may inspire a whole league of loyal followers unexpectedly. This is creative evolution & nothing can be more natural.
We are always standing on the shoulders of giants with anything we do creatively. Nothing is 100% original. We are using tools that are improvements of other tools and so on. The tools are constantly being tweaked and refined for different preferences. These tool allow us to inject our own skills into the process without having to reinvent every necessary wheel. We get to focus on our strengths while benefiting from the creativity of those who came before us.
I think this kind of borrowing & theft can be a wonderful thing, even though some theft gives more creative results than others. This borrowing allows us to fully explore a sound with different artists coming at it from a different perspective. There will always be hacks that don’t really add anything to the pot, but then there can be a magic mixture that may only have a 2% tweak but it affects us in a very positive & special way.
The whole art of music is really a process of imitation & tweaking to one’s taste. This can pretty much be said for any kind of creative work. You learn the rules & then you break them. Are you trying to live on your own creative island or are you willing to interact with the magic that is all around you? I give you permission to join the party. I’m not giving up the ghost any time soon 
Happy music making!
Jason
P.S. – Don’t forget to comment & tweet (down below) & “like” (up above).All your feedback & support is appreciated!
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