The battle of the red round button

I’ve made it! It’s a day later than I had set my deadline but to me, after weeks of work, finishing is what counts the most right now. 

This song was recorded at one of bands’ practice pad with two microphones. My goal was to record a live take and use my gear as much to their potential as possible.

Things I had to do while playing the song:

• record a clip of the main theme melody when starting the song
• launch and stop pre-recorded melody loops in the right moment
• play bass sounds from a drum pad
• add and control effects on the go
• record and play live drums

All at the same time…

The battle of the red round button

Before recording, I had to do figure out which sounds would come out from which gear.

In front of the snare drum, I put my drum pad which I loaded up with bass notes. On the right side, I put Ableton Push and used it to play & record the main melody, loop pre-recorded melodies and twist the effect knobs on top of the white grid.

As far as drums go, I used a bass drum, snare drum, hi-hat cymbal and a ride cymbal (absent in the picture) to provide all the percussive parts.

The whole recording process was more arduous than I expected. It felt like a battle against time, my gear and body coordination skills.

It took several takes after to get the song arrangement finally sorted out, since every take was a little different to each other in length.

And there were a lot of mistakes too. Sometimes in the heat of playing the song, I hit wrong buttons that launched wrong clips at wrong time to mess up the structure completely.

Other times, I had the drum pad to battle with. It kept changing it’s settings without warning mid-song if I didn’t hit my drum stick just at the dead center of the pad. When this happened, all that could be heard from a particular pad was mere silence.

This was infuriating at times and the whole process actually took several days to complete.

But!

After trying long enough, I managed to record a full take that held it’s form together well enough and I wasn’t messing around with my playing.

After some very amateur mixing and mastering, the track was ready!

And here it is (click here if it doesn’t work):

Remember my last post where I turned random objects into instruments? There’s some of them in there too, but I’ll leave you the task of finding them!

It ain’t over yet!

I still want to record a video of me playing this song to prove that I can actually play it live, which is the main goal anyway.

So this project is not quite over yet!

 

The Mad Sound Scientist

Starring in today’s feature…

 

A McDonald’s coke glass

A coffee measuring spoon.

A coffee jar, and…

…a squeaky bathroom door

Have I turned my music project into a cooking/design blog?

Not exactly!

The perpetual challenge an artist faces in a creative project is simple. The end result has to sound original and a wee bit personal.

Personally, I couldn’t think of any instruments that I definitely wanted, except my drums of course, but their melodic range is as long as my patience is short.

Sounds of life

So instead of using pre-made audio samples like I did earlier, I decided to record something myself. With my skills, though, any melodic instrument was pretty much out of the question. Luckily, digital music softwares provide a chance to try a different approach.

I began to wonder what would normal everyday objects and materials like glass or a piece of furniture sound like as an instrument. Judging by this Vice Thump article, some of pretty inspirational artists seem to be doing it too.

At that moment I happened to stay at my parents house, so the potential source for them lied in their kitchen. All I needed was my iPhone, a sound recording app and some household objects that made interesting noises.

Hell’s kitchen

After some careful kitchenware investigation, I concluded that an empty glass and a metallic coffee jar were the best sounding objects there. They made a short tinkling sound that could be useful to me.

To get some variety from single hitting sounds, I recorded a coffee measuring spoon dropping to the floor. The result was something close to a jingle bell sound. But I still needed more variety than tinkling and jingling.

Earlier that day I remembered thinking how squeaky the bathroom door in that house sounded.

Hell’s bathroom

(Now there’s a reality show I’d like to see Gordon Ramsay host.)

So I walked to the suspiciously squeaky bathroom door and started swaying it back and forth.

Making music in 2017: recording a squeaky door with an iPhone recorder.

The hinges were making a squeak so weird, that I knew I wanted to try turning it into something (at least vaguely) more musical.

Final touches

By themselves, the objects’ sound samples didn’t sound very exciting. But after using this article by Adam Burucs as a guiding reference and experimenting with different effects, I found that they can be turned into pretty interesting new sounds!

The coffee jar and McDonald’s glass along with a hint of saw keyboard became a pretty decent sounding combination that resembled a robotic music box.

The dropping coffee spoon became an awesome, laser-like rhythmic pattern. To make things more melodic, I mixed it with another keyboard arpeggio sound.

And the door? I transposed the high pitched squeak waaaaaaaay down and well… it’s a bass sound now!

I was genuinely surprised over the impact of adding effects made to the objects’ original sound. The glass and jar noises turned into a cool substitutes for keyboard sounds and the door squeak, together with a spoon drop, became a weird but interesting rhythmic pattern.

The Mad Sound Scientist

The whole experiment of recording sounds from everyday objects turned out to be huge fun. I could spend all day making new instruments out of, well, anything.

But I can’t get stuck on this point, because I have a track to finish.

Deadline

I feel like I should set myself a deadline of finishing this track. In the midst of these last few posts, I have been at the practice pad playing drums over the stuff I’ve created. I can tell you that I’m really close to being able to start recording this stuff.

So, here it is, my promise and an ultimatum:

I will have this track finished and recorded by Sunday, September 10th.

I’ll see you in hell if I haven’t.

Get graphic, son!

Creating a good sounding theme melody for a track is a win in itself. But one melody isn’t enough to make the whole track. So how can I grow that one part into a complete, finished track?

After coming up with my first melody in the previous post, I was so excited that I couldn’t contain myself from going back to the drums and try playing along it in reality.

I loaded the drum pad with basic bass note samples that match the melody, put up a microphone and this happened (click here if the video doesn’t work).

Playing along that one melody part was fine enough at this point, but I found it hard to continue the track with anything that sounded exciting. And I can’t really play just that one part for three or more minutes and call it a song. That’s boring as hell, right?

Something interesting and notably different has to happen. The problem was, I had no idea what that could be.

I was stuck.

Help is on it’s way

It was time to grab the holy book, Making music, to help this poor bastard out. And it didn’t take long until it provided me with the help I needed right now.

The solution for my of lack of inspiration was to listen carefully to a track that inspires me. The objective is to make a list of different elements I heard in it.

Those could be things like what kind of sounds and instruments are being used and – more importantly for me – at what point are they being used?

I chose Bonobo’s track ”Ten Tigers –  Bengal Edit” for this experiment. I listened to it over and over again paying close attention to:

What instruments are being played?
When are they being played?
How long is the intro?
How many other song parts are there besides intro? How long are they?

However, as I was listening to the track countless times, I felt I needed to go further than making a simple list.

Get graphic, son!

To get the big picture of the track I was listening to, I started drawing a visual arrangement of the elements I was hearing:

The result was a ”start to finish” timeline view of the track. This way I got a sense on how many song parts and instruments the track contains.

Bonobo’s Ten Tigers – Bengal edit (as I heard it) and a quick Finnish lesson!

I then draw a similar ”map” for my own track using Bonobo’s track as a reference. It’s a timelime of sounds and elements that should be enough to make my track sound interesting as well.

And here’s a structure for my track!

This map helps me stay focused on the composition process by giving clear boundaries on the track structure and elements.

Better yet, when I play the track on drums, the map should help me focus on playing the pre-recorded clips in correct order and not get distracted by being uncertain of what part to play next.

The most important thing, though, is that I have a clear vision of what I need (and create) in order to finish this track.

What next?

So from now on things are getting really interesting. Next time I’m posting I should have a ready structure for the track, which means I’m ready to play it live on the drums from start to finish! Yikes!!

Go home, you’re blank! Part 2/2

So the big question remains: How to start a track? There are millions of ways to begin.

Prompted by other people’s experiences and strategies I found out in Part 1, and listening to music that inspires me, I found new clues that could lead towards the inspiration I was looking for.

Since I have been lately listening to Bonobo a lot, I took it as my beacon of interest.

I discovered that the things I enjoyed the most in Bonobo’s music are a result of some really skilled and creative “sampling”.

Inspired by this finding, I set in orientating myself into the topic of sampling. I found this article, written by Cristofer Odqvist, to be very useful in my research. It discusses the legality and plagiarism matters that revolve around the use of samples.

(Suddenly I pictured myself sitting in a jail cell and didn’t like what I saw.)

The article provided me with good tips on how to approach sampling in a creative and legal way.

The “Get out of jail” card

I decided to purchase ready-made music samples from Samplephonics. They are perfectly sufficient for composing a short melody for this purpose. Also, this way I’m avoiding any copyright infringements.

So now that peace of mind was restored, I put together a short clip of music using different instruments from the samples I downloaded.

I then, encouraged by Odqvist’s article, modified the sample by reversing and transposing it.

Slice it up!

I found a cool way to re-organize the melody I compiled. It’s a function, which allows me to slice the whole music clip into little pieces.

Playing the sample like this turned the airy ambient sound into a nice rhythmic pulse, once I added some effects into it. It actually felt like drumming!

The best part, though, was that this technique makes the end result sound like something I created, even when the original file consisted of ready-made melodies. Check it out:

Back on track

I found sampling to be the best way to find inspiration in my situation. It feels like a fun and familiar way to create a melodic foundation for my track.

And after all, I wasn’t far out from my comfort zone with “drumming” the chopped melody! 

I’m now able to make great progress with my track and soon return back to jamming in the practice room! Yay!

Go home, you’re blank! Part 1/2

It’s back to the drawing board -time. Before I can return to the drum kit, I have to solve a problem. And it’s a big one: What do I want to sound like?

So when I double-clicked to open Ableton Live and set about creating stuff, I was treated with the most terrifying sight I can think of.

A completely blank project file. I’m staring at an endless void of possibilities.

Pure horror.

Into the void

Having endless possibilities sounds like a good thing. But in a situation like this, where I need to draw creative inspiration out of nowhere, it’s actually stressful.

Being a drummer in different bands, I never had to provide much melodic input. Other musicians were responsible for that, while I was able to concentrate on bringing the beat.

Considering melodies lead me to more questions.

What tempo should I go with?
Which instruments do I want to use?
What effects should I apply with them?

There’s exactly 52 197 691 different options to each question. Should I just go through all of them?

Ain’t nobody got time for that!

To combat this nightmare, I have acquired a book called 74 Creative Strategies for Electronic Music Producers, written by Dennis DeSantis. It offers practical and concise strategies to help a music maker power through a creation process in a software environment.

I’m going to utilize this book probably through the entire process, it’s my favorite book of all time right now.

I also consulted other electronic music makers through Reddit and IDMforums for fresh thoughts about incorporating drums into electronic music. I got some really inspiring comments there, thank you to the people who shared their experiences!

“Usually, I’ll come up with a cool melody, bassline, or chord progression on the keys, then I’ll drum along to it a bunch of times until I settle into a good beat.” (PattycakeMills in Reddit)

In addition to this, I had a helpful suggestion from my bandmate Jussi of Haraamo. He encouraged me to just start creating the song without thinking too much about the sounds. The fine-tuning will come later.

Time to get cracking

With all of the above in mind, I set about trying different approaches to figuring out a good sounding foundation for the track.

Find out what I came up with in Part 2 tomorrow (Sunday)! It contains the first audio samples of my project.

Stay tuned!

There and back again

What is the difference between composing a piece of electronic music compared to a rock song? I found it out the hard way in my first playing session.

I was sitting behind my drums, about to start jamming with myself (if that’s a thing?). But looking at my weapons of choice, I discovered a problem. I had imagined the creative process completely wrong way around.

Here’s what I learned today:

Weapons of choice

As the platform for all composing, recording and any digital noodling, I’m using a software called Ableton Live 9 through my computer.

What about the hardware, then? Using my computer keyboard as an instrument doesn’t really strike me as a worthy solution. Imagine how strange that would look in a stage? You couldn’t tell if I was playing music or watching Netflix.

Ableton Push

Alesis Samplepad Pro

To partner the drums with some exotic strangers, I’ve summoned my Ableton Push (left) and Alesis Samplepad Pro (right). I planted them in midst of my kit so I can reach them when sitting behind the drums.

Now I’m able to reach the sweet loving union of electronic and acoustic sounds! And that means, it’s….

…time to jam!

So now that the gear was all set, I was able to start jamming! But I soon discovered that jamming in a digital environment doesn’t really work the same as in a traditional band environment. Loading up sounds into the computer wasn’t exactly the same as plugging a guitar or a bass into an amp.

And also, what sounds? I hadn’t thought this part through at all. The software has a great bank of default sounds in it, but I didn’t have time to go through and audition every single sound and instrument. There’s like a thousand of them.

It was clear from the first minutes that I was unprepared.

Am I playing music or watching How I Met Your Mother S07E18 ?

A New Hope

(Can you tell I’m a Star Wars fan?)

I would have to prepare the entire song structure, create melodies and suitable chords to play before I can go play the drums. When that is in order, I am able to actually perform the track.

So I ended up in concentrating on getting the setup right this time. Now I would find out if my idea could actually work in practice.

Even though I didn’t have great sounds to play with, I was able to perform pretty well with my weapons of choice. I left the practice room feeling that I can totally do this! However, the real work is just about to begin.

So it’s back to the drawing board, then! I’ll be back in couple of days with another post about how I’m getting into creative mode at home.