Posts Tagged ‘computer music’
5 Ways to Cut up & Stutter Vocals in Ableton
5 Ways to Cut up & Stutter Vocals in Ableton
I was recently asked through email if I could help explain some ways to create a vocal stutter effect. In thinking about it, I realized there are several ways to approach it, so I decided to make a video to show some of the ways you can accomplish this effect. In this video I show simple editing tricks, an autopan technique, gating effects & the “slice to midi” option.
Below is the video:
Happy Music Making,
Jason
P.S. – Don’t forget to comment & tweet (down below) & “like” (up above). All your feedback & support is appreciated.
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
The Suck Factor
The Suck Factor
I was talking to an artist I met the other day & was intrigued that he was not only getting by with his art, but that he was living a pretty good life from it. Most of what he makes sells out pretty fast, and it’s not like he lives in a big city, so I was impressed. Naturally, I had to investigate what made him tick & what separated him from all the starving artists.
I already had learned that he was very good at what he did so I figured that he obviously was born with quite a gift.
well… yes & no…
He definitely had a gift, but it wasn’t as an artist. A least not from the start. His gift had more to do with his ability to plan for what most artists would consider red flags for any artistic pursuit. Sucking.
Where most people would try something once & fail, try again maybe a year or 2 later, failed again, then give up, he didn’t look at things the same way. His art of choice was ceramics, something I tried once or twice and gave up (anyone need an ashtray?). What really surprised me is the story he told me & how he viewed his experience. It’s not the way most of us approach things or define the experience at all.
Apparently, this artist was far from naturally gifted at ceramics. I guess he started off as a hell of an ashtray sculptor himself, but he came from a physics background & instead of feeling like a failure, he looked at his artistic venture in a more scientific way. If one approach didn’t work, he would take note and try again slowly improving his technique. Sometimes it would take 10 or 20 tries just to figure out where the issue in the process was. It seemed that in his mind, he already knew he would nail it given enough time. Keep in mind that he wasn’t even thinking yet about selling or even showing his work. He was still getting the process down.
After about 1000 attempts he was prepared to show his work & people bought it up right away. Some things obviously sold better than others. There was also pricing to keep in mind. He didn’t want a $20 piece to devalue his $500 pieces but he knew he needed both to make a good living. He didn’t really have an artistic conflict about one thing selling better than another because he simply enjoyed the process of creating, not necessarily the specific piece. He knew that his art was a job, a job he could love, but a job nonetheless.
This really hit me hard and made me take a good look at my creative beliefs, my work ethic & my definition of failure & success. Was I willing to try something 10 times? 100? 1000 times? until I had mastered my creative art? If I am being honest, I’d have to say no & the reason for that is that I was defining failure as a certain number of times I don’t succeed. Sound familiar?
Remember, there is a huge difference between the art you make and the art you share. Don’t let the art you are making now deter you. If your goal is to be great at something, plan for a lot of sucking & missing the mark. Try not to let it get you down.
Remember that many people have to go to college for 4-8 years before they are prepared to do what they do well. Can you imagine someone judging their architecture skills on what they were about to accomplish & understand after a week of schooling? So why then would we judge ourselves on our art or music before we put in the proper amount of time? From that point of view it sounds a bit silly doesn’t it?
Now once you become a “natural” at one aspect of music, don’t think you weren’t meant to explore another style just because your work is not nearly up to par with the style you excel at. How about making 100 attempts at it before you judge?
I can give you a perfect example for myself in how I will use this new process. I am not great with many soft synths. My strengths would be Ableton’s Operator, Subtractor (reason), and TAL’s Juno 106 clone. Most soft synths I just poke around on the presets, tweak the knobs I understand & then use EQ, Filter & fx to get an interesting sound. If I don’t get the sound I’m looking for, I go back to the familiar. This, I must admit, slows me down & limits my options.
You could argue that less options is a good thing & I would strongly agree, however I believe that too many options mainly becomes a problem if you are not already skilled or familiar with the tools you are using. For example, you can’t have too many words in your vocabulary unless you have no idea what the words mean & how to use them in a conversation.
What I’ll have to do to get better at more synths is put the breaks on making songs & take a week (or a month) on 1 new soft synth until I can consider myself proficient at it. Then I can add it as another option. I predict that doing this process a couple times will make the process go a bit faster each time as I find similarities and common themes among different tools.
What is it that you can apply this to?
What is it that you think you are a failure at?
Do you think you will still be a failure after 100 or more attempts?
Are you willing to let go of instant gratification to allow yourself to improve at whatever pace is necessary?
If the art you make doesn’t satisfy you, pat yourself on the back for the improvements you made since your last attempt & then refocus on perfecting your weaknesses in your next attempt. When you attempt something new, set aside some time for the “suck factor”. Maybe that’s why they call it suck-cess 
Happy music making,
Jason
P.S. – Don’t forget to comment & tweet (down below) & “like” (up above).All your feedback & support is appreciated!
How to create a Drum kit Selector in Ableton’s Drum Racks
How to create a Drum kit Selector in Ableton’s Drum Racks
The title of this blog might seem a bit confusing for some of you. Don’t worry, all will soon be explained.
In the past, when I used to make drum beats on a drum machine, it was pretty easy to assign specific sounds to each drum pad, thus quickly building a drumkit that fits my current songwriting mood. These days you have some advantages and disadvantages when it comes to drums when using your computer. On the plus side, it’s pretty easy to make unlimited drum kit presets in Ableton from a nearly unlimited library of samples. On the down side, none of these kits are guaranteed to have the exact sounds you want from the get go. Also, having too many choices can slow you down from what is most important. Making music.
This is where my current solution comes in
I’ve discovered a clever way to make a single drum rack instrument that is immediately customizable. You simply assign a few simple Macro knobs and you can select the perfect kick, snare, hi hat or pretty much anything else you can think of. This gives you an immediate hands on approach to building your perfect kit on the fly.
Below is a video showing you how it works:
For those of you interested in the drumkit in this video as well as drum racks kits for over 70 Vintage Drum Machines, look no further than my new sample collection. It really has about everything you would need to make any electronic style you want. There is a full Vintage drum machine list at the link below:
Ultimate Drum Machine Sample Collection
Happy Music Making,
Jason
P.S. – Don’t forget to comment & tweet (down below) & “like” (up above).
All your feedback & support is appreciated!
I recommend the sites below:
Logic Courses
Reason Courses
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