this sound was the first one I developed in my initial sound design session, but I
was using a different sample initially, and swapped later for this 'Fluty' sample
but I didn't really change much from what you see in that beat making video
I'm using a neighbor track to get some extra effects movement, a comb filter to
add some resonance, some delay and reverb, and a bit of compression to smooth
things out, because this track gets pretty nasty and spiky with all the
weird processing that's happening, especially the comb filter which has a
tendency to produce pretty nasty transients. The odd relationship between
the sample playback track and the neighbor track p-locks adds nice movement
to a rather simple basic pattern, but the real magic with this sound happens on the
scenes, where I get to play the sound a bit, transposing the sample pitch and
sometimes the comb filter frequency as well. This general technique of mapping
various pitch transpositions to scenes is something I like to use if it works
for a particular track, and it's what allowed me to play some of the melodies
that pop up in the A section. The part I used for the B section doesn't have
quite as much pitch transposition stored in the scenes, and those scenes are
primarily textural and rhythmic, although they do shift the pitches around a bit
here and there. As you can see these scenes also change parameters on many of
the other tracks, and for a given pitch I often have more than one texture available
notice that the sample playback track has been slowed down on the second part
I was able to accomplish what I wanted with this sound using only eighth notes,
so I opted to slow the track down instead of using two bars at 16th note
resolution. I always prefer to use less pattern pages and steps for a particular
sound if it makes sense to do so. Here's how this primary sound gets affected by
the scenes on the third and fourth patterns, which are associated with the
second part. Relatively few pitch changes on these scenes but plenty of comb
filtering
up next we have the bass track which also uses a neighbor machine in a similar
cross-rhythmic processing pattern. Since I put a phaser on this track it messed
with the phase of the low end quite a bit, and I felt the need to massage the
stereo field of the final mix in post-production to reduce some of the
phase cancellation issues. This trash sample is also particularly nasty in and
of itself. You can see the waveform clipping right there. I did not do any
stereo adjustment for the audio I recorded for this footage. Other than
swapping the sample for the A section and putting some modulation on the start
point of the sample, not much changed on the bass track from the original beat
making session. Just a lot of gentle massage and then scene tweaks so the
bass would fit with other things, depending on what I wanted that scene to
accomplish. Mostly it's just getting filtered or effected in different ways
to emphasize different aspects or add little variations
I didn't map any pitch transposition to it. I also put some fill trigs on this
track for some of the patterns so I could dynamically increa se or decrease
the density of the bass notes during my performance. One thing on this bass part
that adds a bit of extra interest on some of the scenes is that it engages an
LFO mapped to the sample rate reduction of the lo-fi effect. I think it's easy
to forget about mapping LFO speed and depth to the crossfader
but it's really quite amazing what possibilities it offers
on the drum track, I didn't deviate much from the very
first two bar pattern I developed. Mainly I added in fill trigs and some
conditional trigs for variations on some of the patterns, and I also changed
the sample locks around. There are a lot of small individual tweaks to many of
the trigs in each pattern to produce different beats and textures all built
on the same two-bar foundational drum pattern. Changing the sample locks and
filter settings per trig has a big impact. In terms of processing on the
drum sounds it's primarily just a filter and compression, with a bit of pitch
change sprinkled in, particularly on some of the scenes. Combining pitch, filter, and
re-triggering control can produce fun variations with percussive samples. Note
that grid recording mode and latched fill mode don't play well together :(
which is unfortunate. Here are some of the sample locks and filter settings for
those locks. I'm also moving the sample volumes
around quite a bit on a per trig basis. Between the different patterns I'm mainly
changing the auxiliary sounds, although a couple times I change up clap and snare
sounds as well. These scenes here are set up for glitchy variations on the
percussion track using different retrigger amounts and retriggering times, as
well as re-pitching the samples a bit and moving the filter around
in this footage I'm not trying to time my pattern changes so maybe you've
noticed this already, but I kept the pattern quantization setting at its
minimum value for this particular performance. I usually prefer to have the
most direct control possible over pattern changes, even if it comes at the
cost of making some mistakes. Also the way this particular track's pieces fit
together and the way I perform it, I desire direct and immediate control over
the relationship between performance phrasing and section changes. The phrase
length that I produce through my performance is often fairly fluid, and I
want the ability to dynamically change the 'master length' of the patterns so to
speak. Track six is a chord stab which changes to a minor pad sample on the
second part. Just some typical amplitude envelope, filter, and delay processing - the
sample really does most of the work. This track is also cross-rhythmic with a
length of 24 steps. Like most of my tracks there's a bit of sneaky
modulation, in this case on the amplitude envelope and the filter frequency
you can see here in the percussion track I have some sneaky filter modulation as
well. As you can see the default amplitude envelope has a very short hold
and release time. This chord track gets transposed around and filtered a number
of different ways depending on what scene we're on. There are also some
patterns that contain fill trigs for this sound.
you've probably noticed quite some clicks in a lot of what I'm doing; it's because I'm kind of cavalier about
where I restart sample playback. This sound has some modulation on the start
time, as well as the filter on this part
my approach here was purposefully harmonically adventurous, and this next
channel is actually just another chord sample on part one. I used to listen to a
lot of jazz and my choice on this production I think were strongly
informed by those sensibilities. Once I had the basic raw sequences, fitting
together these different parts that all have quite a bit of harmonic information
was a focus of my scene development and more subtle later stage sound design and
mixing decisions. Jamming on all these possibilities was when the track really
started to take shape for me and feel more complete. When I start to feel I
have enough options for a performance, I don't want to delay by going backwards
and developing more raw material - I want to focus on capturing a good
presentation of the ideas that I already have.
the Starfall sample that track seven uses on the second part is very fun also
as I have an LFO on the start of this sample to produce further variations
this approach combines very nicely with using scenes to transpose the sample
on the master track I'm running a compressor for the first effe ct adding a
bit of gain in a parallel compression set up, with the RMS value set to maximum.
The second effect on the master track is a delay, which is set up for beat repeat
effects in conjunction with the delay control mode. Click the card that just
popped up and it will take you to a video where I discuss a bit of details
on how to set it up the way I have it here. The second part's master track is
set up very similarly, just with slightly different parameter settings
now that we are listening to the whole mix instead of just individual parts, I'd
like to discuss some of the ways I think about scenes, and how I tend to organize
them. Generally scene 16, all the way on the right, I configure as a 'breakdown'
or 'reduction' scene, where one or more tracks gets heavily filtered or reduced
in volume. There are usually other transformations that go along with this,
but the primary purpose is to change the mix by taking away or reducing elements
Typically I will have one or more of the scenes grouped on the right-hand side of
the Octatrack. Often I also like to have a more extreme breakdown scene that
cuts the volume parameter of all tracks to negative 64, and tweaks a bunch of the
reverbs and delays so there is a sort of 'pause wash' available that can be used in
many different ways most often is a transitional device. Along with the
reduction scenes that I generally group on the right-hand side I also like to
have some 'intensification' or 'fill' scenes to work with. Usually I place
these just to the left of the reduction scenes. These particular fill scenes on
this track often control a wide variety of parameters, but notably a few of them
re-pitch and re-trigger the percussion track. If I'm setting up a series of scenes as
a pitch transposition keyboard, I'll often start by grouping them on the left
side, although when I take this approach is not uncommon for various pitches to be
scattered around quite a bit on different scenes. In this project I organized it so
the pitch transposition scenes on the left hand side contain less parameter
changes overall, whereas the scenes on the right hand side tend to have more
parameter changes that affect more tracks in more dramatic ways. You may notice this
scene on part two is separate from the other scenes, and it's because no other
scenes are similar enough to the effect that it has, and I wanted to make sure it
was easy for me to distinguish during performance. You'll notice that I tend to
enable and disable the scene 'A' button and I tend to associate it with scenes
on the far left. I tend to leave the scene 'B' button
always activated, and I prefer to leave it on a breakdown scene rather than a
fill scene, just in case I forget what I'm doing later on. Similarly even though I
have left some scenes blank, partially for visual organization,
I do not switch an active scene slot to a blank scene, and prefer to deactivate a
scene slot to know with certainty I'm hearing the default state of the part. I'm pretty
flexible overall but I do try to follow some conventions, just so I don't end up
confusing myself. Part of what gives this track its rhythmic feel is a bit of
slightly different swing values on some of the tracks; some of the tracks aren't
swung at all, though, and also on the percussion track a few of the key trigs
are slightly micro timed
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