Okay, this is the first piece I started working on (working name “blahhhhhhhh” – that’s 8 H’s). I started throwing it together while some of my room mates and I were in a coffee shop down on commercial Drive, about mid-November. So far, I have the first verse, and part of the first breakdown. My reason for not going any further is I know it’s missing something crucial, and I don’t want it to be just another trance track, where the beginning and end sound basically the same. You can hear what I’ve got so far here.
The percussion is all straight out of Ableton Live 6’s presets for Impulse (the ‘Techsas’ patch, under ‘Electronic’). The line for the first synth that comes on is some other trance track, but I can’t remember which one. The second synth line (the keys) is mine, as far as I know.
First off, a deeper look into the percussion. The drumkit is the “Techsas” patch for Impulse, which comes with Ableton Live 6 (not sure if it does in all versions). That long, drawn-out bass noise is, aptly, called “bass.” As far as I can remember, the only thing I did to it was gave the reverb on it a lower cut on it’s filter, and that just cut out a bit of the high-end noise. I don’t think, at this stage, that it makes any huge difference to the sound of the track. I just prefer it a bit cleaner.
I actually made two other copies of the drumkit so that I could have my hi-hats and shakers separate. Pretty stupid move, really (eats up more processing power, etc. My computer’s not brilliant to begin with), but that’s alright. This way I can get a better look at what’s going on. I find it truly sad that so many house and trance producers fail to make more interesting use of their percussion. Here we are, with the most basic element for creating rhythm, and it just goes “thud-ksh-thud-ksh-thud-ksh-thud-ksh” over and over again. But then, I don’t have the faintest idea of how time signatures work, so I guess I shouldn’t be one to judge 
.
Anyway, I’ve split the bassline into two parts. A 4/4 line and a more broken-up one. The great thing about having that bass noise separate is that you can take the occasional note out to break up the pattern without removing the kick drum, which is what keeps it moving. Having two patterns like this, I use the broken bassline to break up intervals where the synths are doing a second repetition, and things are getting a little boring; and the consistent, unbroken one to keep things moving forward, in one direction (at least, that’s the sort of emotional response I get).
The second thing I’ve used to break up the track is the shakers. I’ve used them to hilite certain beats. The shaker sound has an almost echoy quality, and if you leave the Techsas patch the way it is, it’s got that little “Random” controller set to almost 100%, which makes it sound fairly different each time you trigger it. This detracts from their “presence,” lets them draw attention without being overbearing, and gives the track a bit more depth. This also leaves the hi-hats, which are a pretty blunt sound, with just enough decay, to give the track the high-end drive it needs.
I’ve also got a few other percussion elements later on in the verse, but those honestly sound pretty bad to me, so I’ll pass on an explenation of them. I added those based on input from my room mate, Joe, who figured it needed a bit more depth (and with who I wholeheartedly agree). I’ll be replacing those with some more carefully constructed sounds, later.
Onto the synths. That first line, like I said, is shamelessly ripped from some other trance track I heard on a mix CD or at a live set some time. I have absolutely no idea what the track was called, but I liked it. It was a lot darker, and more mellow than most trance I hear (I need to find more of that stuff). If you find it, I’d love to know.
So far, I haven’t made any real use of any synths except Operator (the one that comes with Ableton Live). It’s a little weird at first, but as far as I understand it, it’s a pretty simple Frequency Modulation synth, with a few nice features, like pitch and filter envelopes. It’s nice because it has a number of routing algorithms you can use. I can’t personally understand why you would want to chain four oscillators together like that, but that’s alright. Anyway, I’m pretty sure that the rest of Operator is all pretty standard FM, Subtractive synth stuff.<
As it is, I’m only using one oscillator anyway – the basic sine wave, with a slight attack, a low decay, and a fairly long release time, filtered with a lowpass filter (set at around 500Hz ad a 0.30 resonance – nice, mid-to-low sound, and none of that ringing noise over it). Nice, simple, and it does the job just fine (well, until I hear it on some proper monitors through a good sound card, anyway).
The key synth (the eerie, horror-esque one) is almost as simple, with the one addition of a Ping-Pong Delay. This acts just like a regular delay, except that it alternates its output from left to right. It sounds kind of trippy, and emphasizes that crystalline sort of sound.
The settings I’ve got are pretty simple: I have “Synch” selected, which makes the frequency it replays at synchronized with the track tempo. The number buttons determine what fraction of the tempo it returns at. 4 is once each beat, 1 is 4 times per beat. 16 is once every four beats. Pretty simple. I used 2. Underneith it is a box with a percentage in it. You can use that to adjust whatever frequency you selected by +/- 33.3%. My track works just fine without any weird deviations, but I’m sure there are loads of reasons you might want to use this. Feedback is how long the delay takes to fade away, and Dry/Wet is obvious. The graph is a bandpass filter.
The piano roll for the keys is pretty simple. The first bit sounds pretty cool on its own, and could most likely be used just like that, but I have a real dislike with bland, one- or two-bar synth lines that are repeated throughout the track, so I went with the extra highlight. It gives it some emphasis, and adds more progression to the track.
The pad (I suppose it’s a sort of organ-type sound) is pretty low-quality. I didn’t put much time into it, and at this point my initial inspiration had ran out (I threw out a good three hours worth of work after hanging out in Starbucks with my roommate Kirk), so I’m going to pass on the explanation for that as well.
EQing is the one other thing I did to the track. I slapped an EQ Eight onto the first two synths, and tuned the main synth to a mid-low range, and the key synth to a mid-high, shown below, in that order. It makes a world of difference.
EQ Eight is pretty easy to use. What you have is a standard EQ graph that allows you to have anywhere up to eight control points. Each of those control points lets you pick the way it treats the graph – “bulge” at the controller’s frequency (for lack of a better word), rise to the left, rise to the right, cutoff to the left, cutoff to the right. Sadly, you don’t seem to be able to use it like a notch filter, but there are plenty of ways around that, and I’m not sure just how useful it would be, anyway.
I think the best way to use this plugin when throwing together drafts is to just turn on 2 or 3 controllers, move them to the general frequencies and decibel levels you want, then add two or three more until you get the shape and sound you’re looking for. It’s really a less-is-more kind of toy. In my experience, EQ spikes don’t sound pretty, so the less extreme it is, probably the better. At any rate, you likely won’t need a whole lot of controllers to get the sound you’re looking for.
EQ Eight also has a scale parameter, which basically lets you change how extreme the EQing is (multiplies the decibel values of each controller). Nice and simple.
Looking at the track as a whole, so far, I know it’s missing something, and that drop from the verse into the breakdown with nothing but the keys sounds just plain weird. No hype, no climactic feel, and nothing that leaves you with a whole lot of anticipation.
Anyway, I realized a while back that what the track needs is some good, old-fashioned electric guitar. About six or seven paragraphs back up, I realized why, where it should go, and what I should do with it. I’m hoping to enlist my brother, Finlay, in that while I’m here at home, and my plan is to start it off as a slightly cranked-up variation on the first synth, with more notes. Probably a slightly altered arrepegio that hits the same highs and lows. But, since my brother’s really more interested in guitar than the music in general, I’m going to try to get him to see what he can think up. I’m hoping to get him to make it more and more complex as the track builds, then replace the keys as the breakdown’s main instrument.
Well, that’s about it. Let me know what you think. No promises as to how soon I’ll get anywhere with this, but I’m hoping it’ll be soon. Feedback is appreciated!
~ Patrick
P.S. I’m trying to figure out how many different kinds of stupid that song “Ghost Ride” or whatever the hell it’s called is. If we say stupid topic, stupid message about topic, stupid lyrics, stupid appeal… 4. Somehow, I don’t think that quite covers it. My God, hip hop has been abused beyond comperehension. What the hell happened to intelligent lyrics, THOUGHT provocative (not stupid provocative) subjects, interesting metaphores, poetry…? Whatever…
Posted by Pat 
Posted by Pat 
Posted by Pat 