MinimL [172]
https://soundcloud.com/rallenj/miniml-172
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After posting my beat last night, I created a new drum rack in Ableton live, which process basically entails just going through all of my samples and picking out my favorites. When I say that I pick out my favorite samples, that's generally true. However, the sound files I choose must also intuitively seem to go together. It's hard to explain how you know when a certain kick sample "goes together" with a certain snare sample whereas another doesn't, but still this is the process I began last night.
After I got my samples together, I arranged them into my favorite keys on my Korg nanoKEY and had a bit of a jam session. While jamming, I would occasionally stop to sculpt the sound to add movement, interest, etc. To "sculpt" a sound, one can add a delay, saturation, reverb, eq, filter, etc. This process is done for two reasons: 1) To make the drum rack feel more robust and "locked in." 2) To add intrigue and make the resultant pattern greater than the sum of the parts used.
After I've chosen my samples, ordered the samples, and sculpted said samples, I have a fairly strong idea of what pattern works best for the rack I've created. It is tricky to start composing a track by starting with the drums, but last night's pattern/groove was created first.
After the groove was created and recorded, I created a synth from scratch using Ableton's Wavetable synth. I'm not going to go into the specifics, because that would most likely bore you to death. When I had the synth sounding beautiful and fat, I played back the groove I recorded, and after jamming along for a few minutes, I had a vamp-able lead synth part. From there, I spent about an hour layering a couple of interesting synth patches behind the lead part, and voila -- I had my "minimL" idea created!
I have to interject here and talk about my newfound love for resampling soloed reverb and then using that ambience to create a rhythmic synth part! Okay! Whew! Let's move on.
After the basic ideas were all laid out and sitting nicely in the mix, I threw a bunch of filters and assigned the filter frequencies and resonances, as well as reverb and delay to my midi controller. Having these parameters to fiddle with intuitively in a live recording is extremely fun and creates a lot more opportunities to sculpt how the arrangement of the track works out. I made a few passes last night and a few passes this evening. Got a fun one recorded and bounced, uploaded and now I've gotten my post accomplished!
Didn't know I was going to share my process with you today, but haha! here you go I guess! I hope it helps to know a bit more! If you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them for you!
Sending you love and positivity this weekend! xx
Hello @rusty-jernigan, thank you for sharing this creative work! We just stopped by to say that you've been upvoted by the @creativecrypto magazine. The Creative Crypto is all about art on the blockchain and learning from creatives like you. Looking forward to crossing paths again soon. Steem on!
Really liking the "Fat" sounding synth in this one. Hard to separate all of them. The bass sounds like voices, the mids sound like they come from the bass.
You wouldn't be boring me to death, this is the most fascinating part to me! I've gotta watch you sculpt a sound from start to finish someday