As promised, this post is about drums. I'll try to get in to the details and explain how I make the drums in my tracks.
The kick
Most of the time I start my tracks with a kick. Yet, I wouldn't say it's the most important part of my production, far from it. I just like to have some sort of a metronome to which I can make the rest of the music. Most of the kicks in this project originate from Wave Alchemy's sample pack called 2 Keyboards Worth of Kicks. It's a really nice and especially varied kick drum collection that always seems to have some sort of a starting point for me to mould the kick to my liking.
After I've picked a kick sample that I happen to like at the moment, I start to process it to fit my needs. The first thing I usually do is to simply edit the amplitude envelope of the sampler software. I use a freeware sampler called Grace by One Small Clue. It's fast, simple and free. There are probably better commercial alternatives out there but I'm satisfied with Grace. The envelope editing is a very important phase, as most raw samples are just that, raw samples. Many drum samples, kicks included are quite long and I usually prefer shorter, more defined sounds, so I usually edit the envelope to shorten the kicks and occasionally mess with the attack phase of the envelope as well, as sometimes kicks have quite aggressive transients that are simple to smooth out with an envelope.
With a quality sample and the right envelope settings you should have a decent kick going on already. The next phase is turning something decent into one monster of a stomp. The secret sauce to that is proper EQ'ing. Classic Pulteq style EQ especially. I obviously can't afford a real Pulteq or currently even a commercial plugin, so again, I turn into the freeware world. There's a really nice Pulteq emulating EQ called SonEQ by Sonimus (tipped to me by an online friend Ronny Pries, to whom I'm grateful for his help). You need to register to be able to download it, but believe me, it's definitely worth the trouble. It's not a jack of all trade kind of EQ, but for kicks it does magic. I don't really understand how it works internally (you boost and cut the same frequency, which is counter-intuitive but just works), but just semi-randomly turning knobs leads into happy places pretty much every time. SonEQ isn't a surgical, fully parametric EQ, so I occasionally use a second EQ for kicks, typically Reaper's built in one. If I hear (or see with a frequency analyzer) some frequencies that bother me, I just cut them out with finely tuned EQ.
What about compression then? I'm not quite sure whether it's my lack of a proper tool, lack of skills or what, but I don't use compression on kicks that often. They often seem to suck the life out of the kicks or at least make such tonal changes to the characteristics of the kick that what made the kick good in the first place is lost.When I do use compression, I usually use another free plugin called Blockfish by Digitalfishphones. When the kick occasionally needs compression, that plugin usually does a decent job.
The clap and the snare
I love a good snare but I hardly ever use one in my housier productions. I prefer to use claps, playing a very basic rhythm, typically on the 2 and the 4. It's not rocket science, but there's still a lot more to a good clap than just taking some unedited clap sound and placing it on the grid.
As with my kicks, I usually start with choosing a basic sample I like, then editing the envelope. Most of the time I use a trusty old 707 clap sample. It just seems to work and takes all kinds of processing well, meaning it can be quite versatile when needed. As with kicks, most clap sounds are quite long by default, so I typically edit the envelope to make them a bit shorter and snappier.
Processing-wise, a solid combination of EQ, transient designer and reverb with some compression thrown in seems to do the trick. As I use a basic 707 clap sample a lot, I don't need to rely on EQ that much. Usually I just highpass filter a bit of the unnecessary low end content away and that's it. The real magic happens with the transient designer and the reverb. Typically I remove a bit of the attack with the transient designer, which both makes the sound a bit smoother as well as changes the perceived timing a bit. As mentioned before, I often edit the envelope to shorten the clap, sometimes to the point of it just being a short snap. It sounds a bit strange in it's raw form, but that's only because I haven't put the reverb on it yet. I typically use a bit of plate reverb from a freeware plugin called EpicVerb by Variety of Sound. I use quite short reverbs and almost always mess with the predelay settings as well. After this treatment the clap fits the music better than by just using a long clap sample to begin with. It blends in and is somehow a bit airier and takes less valuable frequency space. Most of the time the clap is done by now, but if it's not, I might add some gentle compression to make it smack a bit more.
While the clap usually sits on the 2 and the 4, I practically always mess with exact timing of it. When it lies exactly on top of the kick, the rhytm often sounds quite stiff. While you can of course just move the clap around with the sequencer, I prefer to use a specific plugin for the job. In Reaper, there's a handy little plugin with which you can make some very accurate timing changes to the whole channel. My go-to setting is moving the whole clap channel about 5 milliseconds to the right. It's not much, but it's often enough to turn a boring kick-clap-kick-clap pattern into something a bit funkier.
The Hi-hats
The most important drums in house, the hi-hats. Also, the most difficult to get right. Kerri is the king of swingy house hi-hats, I wish I knew what's going on with them but since I don't, I just do them the Barfunkel way.
As always with my current workflow, I start by going through my sample collection, trying to find something that fits my mood or the music I've written so far. Most of the time I start with something a bit different, only to change them to basic 909 hi-hats a bit later. I do this with the closed hi-hats especially often, which could partially be caused by my lack of a variety of really nice closed hi-hat samples. 909 hi-hats do sound really housey though and take processing well, so they can be used in different kind of tracks.
As with kicks and claps, I start by editing the envelope. Hi-hats can be quite tricky to edit, as they often convey tons of energy but if the shape of the sound is wrong, it's the wrong kind of energy which can almost ruin a track. The attack phase of the sound is of especial importance, as many hi-hats can have quite loud transients, which can be great for aggressive techno, but if you want to make smooth house, it's usually for the best to soften them a bit, almost to the point of making them sound as if they were played with brushes instead of sticks. I typically want to have quite a subtle hi-hat sound, not a Dance Mania type of in your face sound.
Processing-wise hi-hats are quite simple most of the time. EQ them a bit, maybe add a transient designer and occasionally some kind of an actual effect like a flanger or a bit of delay. There are no rules really with hi-hats, I just do what sounds good to me and fits the context of the track. Not that there are rules in anything else either, I just mean that there's a much wider variety of possible hi-hat sounds that work in a house context than there are kicks for example.
What makes the hi-hats difficult is the sequencing. Anyone can make a basic, offbeat open hi-hat pattern in about 2 seconds, but if you want more than that you probably need to spend some time on your hi-hat pattern. The placement of the notes, their exact timing, the swing settings, the length of the notes (if applicable) all matter, to a degree that a very minor change can make or break the pattern. I wish I could teach it, but unfortunately I'm not very good at it to be honest and it's also something that's very difficult to explain. You just gotta change stuff up until you like what you're hearing, then stop immediately before you ruin it.
The cowbell
While most would just lump the mighty cowbell along with the rest of the random percussion sounds, I'm writing a separate paragraph about it. Why? I love the cowbell, that's why! It's also surprisingly difficult to use subtly but effectively, because it basically screams "look at meeeee, they made an SNL sketch about meeeee". Don't get me wrong, I love that sketch but living in the post more cowbell-era has it's difficulties. Namely, it's difficult to approach the cowbell seriously. I'm not opposing using humour in music, I mean seriousness as doing it properly and with class, even if the intent is comedic.
I don't use the cowbell as a comedic effect though. Ever. I'm dead serious about my cowbells.
Looking at it from the production angle, the cowbell is actually quite problematic. It's difficult to make sit in a mix, it almost always kinda like floats around the mix, without ever landing in it's proper place. Don't ask me how Kerri did it with Bar A Thym, as I don't know. I kinda assume that he put the cowbell there first, then wrote the rest of the music to support it. Doing it the other way around easily leads into tracks that sound almost like two separate pieces of music, the actual track and the cowbell that sits on top of it. The example track I made (scroll to the bottom of the page if you want to hear it now) kinda suffers from this. It's the best cowbell I ever made, but it's far from perfect.
The breaks
What do crusty old breakbeats have to do with house production? In my case quite a bit! Almost every single one of the tracks posted to this blog has had breaks in them. The thing is, I don't just put an unedited Funky Drummer there in it's entirety and call it a day, I try to be a bit more subtle with them. Lots of times you can't even hear them, but you would notice if they weren't there. They're quite quiet, but an extremely important little piece of the rhythm puzzle for me. They create the groove in almost a subliminal way.
While I use Grace for my one shot samples, I use another free plugin for my breaks called Short Circuit 2. The thing with Grace is that it's user interface isn't ideal for breaks, as zooming is very cumbersome with it and chopping a break into little pieces that you spread across the keyboard is impossible.
Strangely, I usually audition breaks outside the DAW, meaning I have the basic drum beat playing on the DAW, then I pick and play different breaks with the Windows Media Player until something tickles my fancy. Only then I load up the sampler plugin and the break sample. Before I start to chop it up, I usually just play the entire break and change the pitch until it loops roughly in time with the house beat. I typically use something like 3 to 6 chops of a single break, spread over the keyboard for easy sequencing. There is no standard to this, as breaks can be very different. Sometimes I use them just as additional single hits, sometimes I use little bits of the original rhythm as well, especially hi-hats and congas/bongos. I sequence them to add a nice little groove to an otherwise sometimes too static house beat and voi la, you have a nice groove going on. This is my secret sauce.
Processing-wise I mostly use some extremely heavy-handed EQ. I often hi-pass filter most of the kicks away, occasionally I just leave a little trace of the hi-hats playing. It's entirely context dependent, but I try to remember that a break is usually the entire drum section of a finished track, which means that without EQ there's very little room left for the rest of the drums. Less is more is usually a good starting point for everything music-related, but when EQ'ing the breaks more is often more. Just cut away to the break of dawn! I'm not a big fan of sidechain compression, but I do occasionally use it with breaks. Just a tiny bit of pumping can make the breaks sound like the belong to a house track a bit more.
Percussion
I just lump everything else under this umbrella. Shakers, tambourines, congas, bongos, toms, finger snaps, random bleeps, bloops and whatnot. They often play an auxiliary role in house, which is a good thing to keep in mind. They aren't always even necessary, tons of classics have been written with just kicks, hi-hats and snares, They can, however, add a little bit of extra funk to your music, just try to not overdo them as they can easily overpower your rhythm section.
The same principles that work with the other drums apply to percussion as well. Start with a quality sample (or synthesize one yourself), then edit the envelope and finally use some plugins to process it to your liking. There's too many variables in place to make any kind of a useful blanket statement.
Bus processing
So, your individual drums are done now, then what? While I didn't do it in my hardware days (mostly due to the lack of gear that can actually do it) I have a drum bus all the time nowadays when I'm ITB. A drum kits carved out of random sounds can sound a bit incoherent, which bus processing can rescue in a nice way.
While the specific vary, the bus usually consists of some variations of EQ, compression and saturation. Nothing too drastic, as the intent is to not completely crush the life out of it, just give it some gentle glue and presence. I don't usually EQ the bus that much, because can always just EQ the individual sounds with more precision, but I occasionally use gentle high frequency boost on the whole bus, to give the drum track some sense of air and excitement, typically with the Baxter EQ by Variety of Sound. Compressing the bus gives it some much needed glue, a sense of togetherness. For this I usually use either TDR Kotelnikov by Tokyo Dawn Labs or SlickHDR by Variety of Sound, both freeware. For saturation (to make the drum kit sound a bit less ITB-like) duties I often use FerricTDS by Variety of Sound, combined with a reel to reel tape simulator plugin called Ferox by Jeroen Breebaart. I would love to own the U-He Satin for this, but it's unobtainable for me at the moment.
I also have a new track to represent. It started as a simple drum workout, but in the end it became a fully fledged house production that I personally am quite fond of. The intention was to make a DJ toolish drum track, but as these things often go, a real track showed up it's little head and I didn't want to restrain my creativity because of some principle.
Friday, June 10, 2016
Wednesday, June 1, 2016
Barfunkel's Disco House Ant-hem
As you probably know already, I've been working like a dog lately. Dead tired all the time, barely time to sleep and rest, very little time for music. No pay either, so it's a lose-lose kind of situation.
Anyways, I did manage a few music hours the last few days and this was the result of those precious hours:
No idea about the quality of it as I had a flu for a week, my ears are half-deaf because of it and like I said, I've been extremely tired lately. Something is better than nothing I suppose?
I still have a month to go to my target, but the chance of success seems very small. The last 3 weeks have been busy, I've had maybe 10 hours to concentrate on my music. At this rate, I don't see a chance to improve enough to write a Kerri-worthy track. I still won't give up, maybe I'll get lucky and hit the right notes accidentally?
The next blog post will be a longer one and the topic is drums. Until then, so long!
Anyways, I did manage a few music hours the last few days and this was the result of those precious hours:
No idea about the quality of it as I had a flu for a week, my ears are half-deaf because of it and like I said, I've been extremely tired lately. Something is better than nothing I suppose?
I still have a month to go to my target, but the chance of success seems very small. The last 3 weeks have been busy, I've had maybe 10 hours to concentrate on my music. At this rate, I don't see a chance to improve enough to write a Kerri-worthy track. I still won't give up, maybe I'll get lucky and hit the right notes accidentally?
The next blog post will be a longer one and the topic is drums. Until then, so long!
Monday, May 23, 2016
Do it your way
Personality. Having your own sound. How do you achieve those in such an old and well-defined genre like house?
Even if I might come through as someone who just wants to be a Kerri copycat, that's not my intention. My plan has many phases. The first phase involves learning the necessary production tricks to be able to make release quality house tracks and as I'm not a genius who can just invent everything on my own I have to study the masters, learn to copy them as well as I can. Kinda like the painters of yore who spent years and years copying paintings before finding their own artistic vision. That's what I'm currently doing. I study Kerri, MAW, Mood II Swing, Chez Damier, Larry Heard, Theo Parrish, Moodymann and so on. That's phase one. Phase two, if I ever reach that far, is to find my own inner voice and vision. I want it to be recognizable as house, but with a little Barfunkel twist. Only time will tell what that twist could be. Maybe something a bit humorous or tongue in cheek, as I'm a big fan of absurd, borderline random humour. But, for the time being, I would be extremely satisfied to reach even the minimum standards, both musically and production-wise, so that I could get my music out there. Even that is a dream far away, as I do realize I'm not much of a musician or a producer.
How does one find his own voice then? Unless you're a singer who writes his own lyrics it isn't going to be easy, particularly if you want to work within the framework of a relatively restricted genre. While production skills are important, it would be extremely difficult (but not entirely impossible) to be so good that your music would be instantly recognizable because of the production. If your music is up to it, good enough production skills are, well, good enough. Many house classics aren't that great technically. There might not be amateurish mistakes in them as such, but they often aren't polished to perfection (in a pop music sense) either. They have what it takes, the magic lies in the music.
While I've made some fairly unique music in the past, I think I'm struggling a bit in this project. Trying to keep it housey while making something that stands out is a daunting task. House has been around a few decades now and many ideas have been used, re-used and recycled several times already. I also don't want to make a novelty song, something that's different just for the sake of it. Sure, I could make a house track with scatting, yodling, bagpipes and panflutes. Then again, there's a good reason no one has ever tried such a combination as far as I know. Genre conventions are there for a reason, they are things that have been tried and tested again and again on the dancefloors over the years. They work, that's why they are used.
To be honest, I'm a bit torn here. As I have only about a month left and time is thus limited (especially now, with the slave labour thing I talked about in the previous post), should I aim for uniqueness at the expense of making something that is more likely to work on the dancefloor? Or should I aim for a banger and forget about finding my own voice in house music? I don't have the time for both.
While I haven't made up my mind quite yet, I did make this track:
Definitely not a very original track. More like a cheesy disco house banger. It's even called the Cheesy Disco House Banger! Yeah I know, naming tracks ain't an easy job. To my defense, I made the whole thing in about 3,5 hours, of which naming it took about 3 seconds.
Oh, and the track I made a remix of a few posts back is finally online in all it's original glory! Comparing the two, you'll probably notice that my remix doesn't bear much resemblance to the original. I didn't want to make a remix where you just change a few drum hits, maybe write a new bassline and that's it. It's a bona fide Barfunkel remix treatment!
And to refresh your memory, here's my remix:
And that's it for now. See you next time!
Even if I might come through as someone who just wants to be a Kerri copycat, that's not my intention. My plan has many phases. The first phase involves learning the necessary production tricks to be able to make release quality house tracks and as I'm not a genius who can just invent everything on my own I have to study the masters, learn to copy them as well as I can. Kinda like the painters of yore who spent years and years copying paintings before finding their own artistic vision. That's what I'm currently doing. I study Kerri, MAW, Mood II Swing, Chez Damier, Larry Heard, Theo Parrish, Moodymann and so on. That's phase one. Phase two, if I ever reach that far, is to find my own inner voice and vision. I want it to be recognizable as house, but with a little Barfunkel twist. Only time will tell what that twist could be. Maybe something a bit humorous or tongue in cheek, as I'm a big fan of absurd, borderline random humour. But, for the time being, I would be extremely satisfied to reach even the minimum standards, both musically and production-wise, so that I could get my music out there. Even that is a dream far away, as I do realize I'm not much of a musician or a producer.
How does one find his own voice then? Unless you're a singer who writes his own lyrics it isn't going to be easy, particularly if you want to work within the framework of a relatively restricted genre. While production skills are important, it would be extremely difficult (but not entirely impossible) to be so good that your music would be instantly recognizable because of the production. If your music is up to it, good enough production skills are, well, good enough. Many house classics aren't that great technically. There might not be amateurish mistakes in them as such, but they often aren't polished to perfection (in a pop music sense) either. They have what it takes, the magic lies in the music.
While I've made some fairly unique music in the past, I think I'm struggling a bit in this project. Trying to keep it housey while making something that stands out is a daunting task. House has been around a few decades now and many ideas have been used, re-used and recycled several times already. I also don't want to make a novelty song, something that's different just for the sake of it. Sure, I could make a house track with scatting, yodling, bagpipes and panflutes. Then again, there's a good reason no one has ever tried such a combination as far as I know. Genre conventions are there for a reason, they are things that have been tried and tested again and again on the dancefloors over the years. They work, that's why they are used.
To be honest, I'm a bit torn here. As I have only about a month left and time is thus limited (especially now, with the slave labour thing I talked about in the previous post), should I aim for uniqueness at the expense of making something that is more likely to work on the dancefloor? Or should I aim for a banger and forget about finding my own voice in house music? I don't have the time for both.
While I haven't made up my mind quite yet, I did make this track:
Definitely not a very original track. More like a cheesy disco house banger. It's even called the Cheesy Disco House Banger! Yeah I know, naming tracks ain't an easy job. To my defense, I made the whole thing in about 3,5 hours, of which naming it took about 3 seconds.
Oh, and the track I made a remix of a few posts back is finally online in all it's original glory! Comparing the two, you'll probably notice that my remix doesn't bear much resemblance to the original. I didn't want to make a remix where you just change a few drum hits, maybe write a new bassline and that's it. It's a bona fide Barfunkel remix treatment!
And to refresh your memory, here's my remix:
And that's it for now. See you next time!
Sunday, May 15, 2016
Work that mutha fucker
Sad news, unfortunately.
Haven't updated the blog in a week because my unemployment ended this week and I've been busy with work. Now, before you congratulate me or think that I'll be able to buy all kinds of funky plugins or gear now I'll have to explain my situation a bit. I've been almost completely unemployed for two years now. The Finnish government doesn't like that, so they've crafted these laws which state that unemployed people must accept any job they're offered. Even jobs that don't pay anything. Which is exactly what happened to me this week. They offered me a non-paying job which I had to take or I'd lose my (very small) unemployment benefits. Yes, it's more or less slave labour or at the very least a law loophole which the companies take advantage of.
Thankfully it's only 3 months and there's a very, very slim chance that they'll offer me a real job after that period. Still, it couldn't had happened at a worse time as it means my former 8 hours a day of music making just shrunk to an hour or two, assuming I'm not dead tired after a full day of slave labour.
What does it mean to the blog and the project then? I'm not calling it quits quite yet but naturally the likelihood of completing my noble quest is now even smaller than before. To have any kind of a chance I must really focus my mind now because I simply don't have the time for sidesteps or just lounging about aimlessly.
I would've liked to include a new track but I've been really tired this week. I have some unfinished tracks but I don't want to put them on the blog. If you're really interested, they can be found on my Soundcloud site, some almost finished, some just rough ideas.
Haven't updated the blog in a week because my unemployment ended this week and I've been busy with work. Now, before you congratulate me or think that I'll be able to buy all kinds of funky plugins or gear now I'll have to explain my situation a bit. I've been almost completely unemployed for two years now. The Finnish government doesn't like that, so they've crafted these laws which state that unemployed people must accept any job they're offered. Even jobs that don't pay anything. Which is exactly what happened to me this week. They offered me a non-paying job which I had to take or I'd lose my (very small) unemployment benefits. Yes, it's more or less slave labour or at the very least a law loophole which the companies take advantage of.
Thankfully it's only 3 months and there's a very, very slim chance that they'll offer me a real job after that period. Still, it couldn't had happened at a worse time as it means my former 8 hours a day of music making just shrunk to an hour or two, assuming I'm not dead tired after a full day of slave labour.
What does it mean to the blog and the project then? I'm not calling it quits quite yet but naturally the likelihood of completing my noble quest is now even smaller than before. To have any kind of a chance I must really focus my mind now because I simply don't have the time for sidesteps or just lounging about aimlessly.
I would've liked to include a new track but I've been really tired this week. I have some unfinished tracks but I don't want to put them on the blog. If you're really interested, they can be found on my Soundcloud site, some almost finished, some just rough ideas.
Saturday, May 7, 2016
Get down saturday night
I know know, it's a house staple, but I don't usually like to make those disco cut up kind of tracks. You know the type, a few disco loops, drums + some filtering, call it your own track, profit. It's been done to death by producers much better than me. Don't take me wrong, I love that stuff. I just don't want to be known as a disco editor, I prefer to write my own harmonies and melodies. I might use little snippets of samples here and there, but almost never as the main body of the track. Partly because of some kind of a principle, partly because I love and respect quality disco almost as much as I do house and I don't want to ruin good disco songs with unnecessary edits that add nothing of value to the original.
However, since it's such a common way to make house I decided to give it a shot anyway. I have a bunch of nice disco samples on my hard drive, sampled from my personal vinyl collection. I occasionally go through them, trying to find inspiration. Usually I don't find it, but this time seemed to be different. One of those disco samples (I won't be naming any names, I'll just say it's a very well known disco group, not something particularly obscure) had a little something that caught my ear. I thought what the heck, let's cut up the sample to shorter loops, apply some filtering, add some drums, call it a track and profit. 2 hours later, I had something nice cooking and not that many hours after that I had this finished track:
I rather like it, even if I'm the first to admit that it's just a disco edit, not an original composition. Maybe I'll try to use disco loops in a subtler way in the future, this one is quite extravagant. This seems to be a common occurrence for me, the first time I try something new the results are quite blatant, only later I learn to use the new producing methods and techniques in subtler ways.
Anyways, cheesy and cheeky or not, I learned some new tricks once again, tricks that will surely be very useful in the future.
However, since it's such a common way to make house I decided to give it a shot anyway. I have a bunch of nice disco samples on my hard drive, sampled from my personal vinyl collection. I occasionally go through them, trying to find inspiration. Usually I don't find it, but this time seemed to be different. One of those disco samples (I won't be naming any names, I'll just say it's a very well known disco group, not something particularly obscure) had a little something that caught my ear. I thought what the heck, let's cut up the sample to shorter loops, apply some filtering, add some drums, call it a track and profit. 2 hours later, I had something nice cooking and not that many hours after that I had this finished track:
I rather like it, even if I'm the first to admit that it's just a disco edit, not an original composition. Maybe I'll try to use disco loops in a subtler way in the future, this one is quite extravagant. This seems to be a common occurrence for me, the first time I try something new the results are quite blatant, only later I learn to use the new producing methods and techniques in subtler ways.
Anyways, cheesy and cheeky or not, I learned some new tricks once again, tricks that will surely be very useful in the future.
Friday, May 6, 2016
It's it's remix time time
I was recently contacted by someone from the Gearslutz forum about a remix. He had this rather chill out vocal house track that he wanted me to remix into something a bit more dancefloor friendly. I decided to grab the offer as I've never made a remix before and it might prove out to be a good learning exprience. I had a pretty good vision from early on of what I wanted to do with the remix. The original had some good bits I could easily use in my remix and since I liked the vocals, it sounded like quite an easy, quick job. Just use those good bits as a basis, then add some bits that sound more like Barfunkel music, mess around with stuff for a while and hopefully something nice will emerge.
Even though I made the core of the remix in like 4-5 hours, it took me 5 days to complete it. As I wanted as good results as I possibly could I had to up my quality control and simply not put out any half-baked ideas. Remixing stuff is in some way easier and in some ways more difficult than writing your own material. When you just make your own stuff you can do whatever you want, with a remix you're working with something someone else made, which can be both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because you don't necessarily have to write the hardest bit, ie. the main hook of the track because it's already there, a curse because your hands are tied to an extent. Now, I do know some remixes are so far removed from the original that you can barely recognize it. Sometimes you can't at all. I didn't want that but at the same time I wanted it to sound like a Barfunkel track and not just like the original with a few different drum sounds or such.
The elements of the original that ended up in my remix were obviously the vocals (well bits of them at least), the pad sound you hear in the beginning of the track and the e-piano, which was just a short snippet of a longer, more evolving piece. The rest of the elements come from my imagination. I also upped the tempo a little bit, to make it a bit less chilled out. All in all, I'm quite satisfied with this remix, especially considering it's the first remix I've ever made.
You can listen to it here:
Due to a delay in the mastering process, the original is not yet online so I can't post it for comparison. I'll add it to this blog post when I can, which will hopefully be very soon.
Even though I made the core of the remix in like 4-5 hours, it took me 5 days to complete it. As I wanted as good results as I possibly could I had to up my quality control and simply not put out any half-baked ideas. Remixing stuff is in some way easier and in some ways more difficult than writing your own material. When you just make your own stuff you can do whatever you want, with a remix you're working with something someone else made, which can be both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because you don't necessarily have to write the hardest bit, ie. the main hook of the track because it's already there, a curse because your hands are tied to an extent. Now, I do know some remixes are so far removed from the original that you can barely recognize it. Sometimes you can't at all. I didn't want that but at the same time I wanted it to sound like a Barfunkel track and not just like the original with a few different drum sounds or such.
The elements of the original that ended up in my remix were obviously the vocals (well bits of them at least), the pad sound you hear in the beginning of the track and the e-piano, which was just a short snippet of a longer, more evolving piece. The rest of the elements come from my imagination. I also upped the tempo a little bit, to make it a bit less chilled out. All in all, I'm quite satisfied with this remix, especially considering it's the first remix I've ever made.
You can listen to it here:
Due to a delay in the mastering process, the original is not yet online so I can't post it for comparison. I'll add it to this blog post when I can, which will hopefully be very soon.
Tuesday, May 3, 2016
Jazz is the teacher
Topic of today is what, if anything, can be learned from other genres, particularly genres that aren't that close to house music. Of especial interest are genres that aren't either direct predecessors such as disco and funk or otherwise very close to house, such as techno. What can be learned from jazz, from rock, from dub or reggae, from metal, from classical, from EDM?
Quick and simple answer: A lot. Even though house is a well-defined genre that has remained pretty close to it's roots for 30 years now that doesn't mean that listening to and drawing influence from other genres is wrong, quite the contrary in fact. While house is my number one love of all the music genres that doesn't mean that I'm some sort of a starry-eyed dreamer who thinks all house is great or that house is in some way a superior genre compared to others. It's just personal taste, house gives me the strongest positive emotions and I enjoy listening to it more often than other genres.
Trying to write a meaningful post about this subject isn't easy. I'm no music theory expert who can just sit down and analyse everything down to the smallest of details. I know very little about music theory and I don't have the sharpest set of ears, so my analysis is often very superficial.
I think the easiest way to approach this subject is simply by listing some genres, listening to some examples, thinking about it and writing down my thoughts. I'm in no way trying to include every single genre out there, it'd take me a month and a bookworth of text to do so.
Jazz: As I love jazz, especially the free kind of jazz, this should be an easy target. However, it's not. It definitely is not. I love jazz but I don't really understand jazz. I just listen to jazz because it sounds nice to my ears. I can listen to house, techno, drum&bass, ambient, all kinds of genres and often hear how they were made, at least on a superficial level. With jazz, all I hear is some cool cats playing great music, but I got no idea how they do it. More specifically, I don't hear what makes jazz jazzy. As if there's some sort of a magic trick or a combination of tricks I simply ain't aware of. Magic jazz scales, magic jazz chords, magic jazz magic? I simply don't know. What can I learn from jazz then, if I can't analyse it musically? Technically, quite a bit actually. If you look at some sort of a greatest jazz albums of all time you'll probably notice how old most of them are. They are from an era when modern studio technology was at it's infancy, many of the studio tricks that are standard practice in 2016 were either nonexistent or very expensive. Still, many of those old jazz albums sound absolutely amazing. Why? It all boils down to arrangement and sound selection. In other words, tricks that aren't just useful but of paramount importance. While I'm a half-decent synthesist and sample mangler, arranging is one of my many Achille's heels. I really have to learn how to make a coherent whole out of decent enough elements.
Rock: What can an aspiring house producer learn from good old rock'n'roll then? A guitar solo perhaps? How to write lyrics with sexual innuendo? How to throw a television set out of a hotel room window? While those are of course very useful skills to possess, the best thing to learn from rock music from a house music perspective is energy. At least before Nirvana killed rock music it was all about the raw, sexual energy of the music. From the openly homosexual lyrics of Tutti Frutti to W.A.S.P.'s Animal, rock music has often been about doin' it. Sometimes quite subtly, sometimes blatantly. It's not that uncommon to hear house music with the same kind of raw, unrefined sexual energy as rock used to have. The infamous Dance Mania records and the artists associated with them are a typical example. Their take of the subject was often quite direct, with lots of swearing and using deragotary terms of females and their body parts. While I've done my fair share of swearing I nowadays favour a more subtle approach. I want to have that energy but get rid of all the sexual references, direct or not. That said, it's only a question of time before in a moment of insanity I grab the mic and make a song where I try to find a word that perfectly rhymes with the word bitch.
Metal: How about the bastard son of rock then? What possibly could a house producer learn from metal? Especially since the only form of metal I know anything about is of the black kind. Sure, I could burn a few churches for inspiration, but that's not exactly #1 on my to-do list. Answering that question properly needs some careful thinking about what metal is about. Like house music, metal is about the expression of emotions. Maybe a different set of emotions than house, but emotions nonetheless. In that regard, listening to metal for inspiration and to learn something from is not as far out an idea as it might sound like. I often do it actually, when I'm stuck in a musical rut. It gives you a different perspective and forces your mind on a different path.
Dub and reggae: This one is actually quite easy to answer, particularly when speaking about dub and not it's poppier cousin reggae. Sense of space, creative use of effects and using a mixer as an instrument on it's own are what make dub. It's often not about what you play but what you don't play, and filling that space with all kinds of strange, yet fitting effects. Echo or delay is of course the effect most commonly associated with dub, but it doesn't end there and neither does the use of an echo unit make you a dub record. I've actually tried to make dub music a few times, but let's just say that it's not exactly my forte. I do, however, occasionally try to imitate the methods of dub, even when the output sounds nothing like it. This was particularly true when I was strictly a hardware user, I always recorded my tracks straight to 2-track, using the mixer and effects creatively while recording. It's a bit harder to imitate with just a laptop, but all the tricks I learned back then are extremely valuable now.
Classical: The hardest of them all, considering my disdain towards classical music. It's way too pompous and opulent for my small mind to handle. I admit, I just don't get it. I do like some of the music created with the same instruments in the 20th century, Steve Reich particularly, but classical or anything resembling it is simply not for me. Still, I have an open mind and there's always a trick or two to be learned from any and every kind of music. However, it's very, very difficult to think about anything worthwhile to be learned from classical music. It's so far detached from modern music, from club music even more so. Steve Reich is easy in comparison, it's basically just techno performed with different instruments. Perhaps looking at it from a different angle might be more fruitful? The thing I dislike about classical the most is the lack of concentration. The central motif is either nonexistent or it's so vague that casual listening doesn't reveal it. I like loops. Either actual, repeated loops or just the same thing played over and over again with real instruments, like in rock music. I see no point in writing a great melody, rhythm or chord progression and then only using it once. It seems like wasting something valuable. I've been listening to classical music for a few hours now nonstop and I really have to stop as I feel a bit nauseous. I didn't find an illumination, it only made me more certain about my own personal taste.
EDM: Why include EDM, isn't it basically just a poppified versio of house? To an extent, that's true. It's dance music, it's four on the floor, it uses the same kind of elements as house does. However, the similarities are quite superficial. They are about as close as Blink 182 and GG Allin are to each other. Since I consider EDM as just a commercial ripoff of house, what possibly could I learn from it? Musically, not much to be honest. It uses all the cheap tricks in the book to create music that might sound interesting to a 15-year old but doesn't offer much of long-term value. Not that far away from the stuff that 2 Unlimited and such did in the 90's. However, what I can learn is marketing. By nature I'm quite shy, quiet, reserved type of character. It's not easy for me to contact an unknown person and tell him that I'm really great and that my music is super awesome. But that's exactly what I have to learn to do. Maybe not in those exact words, but I have to learn to market myself and my music if I want my music to ever leave my bedroom and a handful of Soundcloud listens. This blog has been a great first step, it being public and somewhat popular. It wasn't an easy decision, making it public, possibly facing humiliation and ridicule. That's not enough however. As my tracks (hopefully) get better and better, I need to find some kind of an outlet for them, which means I have to contact unknown people and convince them that my music is worth their attention. I won't be throwing cakes at people's faces, neither do I believe in fireworks (literal or not). First, I have to write a track that I really believe in and then I have to market it properly. Try to be my humble self, yet confident. Not the easiest of combinations to achieve.
As usual, I could go on forever but I decided to stop here. I have a bad habit of babbling about given the chance, but I'll try to control myself and keep these blog posts compact.
As with most of these posts, I made a track to go with it too . Originally, I wanted to make a jazzy house track but I'm not so sure of the outcome. It samples a well-known free jazz record (if a free jazz record can be said to be well-known that is), so most of the musical ideas don't originate from my mind. I don't usually like to sample stuff with melodic or harmonic content, due to my inability to recognize notes and chords by ear. I got basically no idea if this track contains off-scale notes, as I simply don't hear them that easily. I went with a feeling, instead of building something theoretically correct. It is what it is. 20% wonky, 30% jazzy, 50% housey, 110% barfunkely.
Note: As this blog is a real-life document, not a way for me to glorify or put myself on a pedestal, I must admit that I was quite drunk when I wrote all this and I also made the final mix of the accompanying track while drunk. Typos, grammatical erros as well as errors in the track are a result of a few pints of Finnish Karhu beer. It is what it is.
Quick and simple answer: A lot. Even though house is a well-defined genre that has remained pretty close to it's roots for 30 years now that doesn't mean that listening to and drawing influence from other genres is wrong, quite the contrary in fact. While house is my number one love of all the music genres that doesn't mean that I'm some sort of a starry-eyed dreamer who thinks all house is great or that house is in some way a superior genre compared to others. It's just personal taste, house gives me the strongest positive emotions and I enjoy listening to it more often than other genres.
Trying to write a meaningful post about this subject isn't easy. I'm no music theory expert who can just sit down and analyse everything down to the smallest of details. I know very little about music theory and I don't have the sharpest set of ears, so my analysis is often very superficial.
I think the easiest way to approach this subject is simply by listing some genres, listening to some examples, thinking about it and writing down my thoughts. I'm in no way trying to include every single genre out there, it'd take me a month and a bookworth of text to do so.
Jazz: As I love jazz, especially the free kind of jazz, this should be an easy target. However, it's not. It definitely is not. I love jazz but I don't really understand jazz. I just listen to jazz because it sounds nice to my ears. I can listen to house, techno, drum&bass, ambient, all kinds of genres and often hear how they were made, at least on a superficial level. With jazz, all I hear is some cool cats playing great music, but I got no idea how they do it. More specifically, I don't hear what makes jazz jazzy. As if there's some sort of a magic trick or a combination of tricks I simply ain't aware of. Magic jazz scales, magic jazz chords, magic jazz magic? I simply don't know. What can I learn from jazz then, if I can't analyse it musically? Technically, quite a bit actually. If you look at some sort of a greatest jazz albums of all time you'll probably notice how old most of them are. They are from an era when modern studio technology was at it's infancy, many of the studio tricks that are standard practice in 2016 were either nonexistent or very expensive. Still, many of those old jazz albums sound absolutely amazing. Why? It all boils down to arrangement and sound selection. In other words, tricks that aren't just useful but of paramount importance. While I'm a half-decent synthesist and sample mangler, arranging is one of my many Achille's heels. I really have to learn how to make a coherent whole out of decent enough elements.
Rock: What can an aspiring house producer learn from good old rock'n'roll then? A guitar solo perhaps? How to write lyrics with sexual innuendo? How to throw a television set out of a hotel room window? While those are of course very useful skills to possess, the best thing to learn from rock music from a house music perspective is energy. At least before Nirvana killed rock music it was all about the raw, sexual energy of the music. From the openly homosexual lyrics of Tutti Frutti to W.A.S.P.'s Animal, rock music has often been about doin' it. Sometimes quite subtly, sometimes blatantly. It's not that uncommon to hear house music with the same kind of raw, unrefined sexual energy as rock used to have. The infamous Dance Mania records and the artists associated with them are a typical example. Their take of the subject was often quite direct, with lots of swearing and using deragotary terms of females and their body parts. While I've done my fair share of swearing I nowadays favour a more subtle approach. I want to have that energy but get rid of all the sexual references, direct or not. That said, it's only a question of time before in a moment of insanity I grab the mic and make a song where I try to find a word that perfectly rhymes with the word bitch.
Metal: How about the bastard son of rock then? What possibly could a house producer learn from metal? Especially since the only form of metal I know anything about is of the black kind. Sure, I could burn a few churches for inspiration, but that's not exactly #1 on my to-do list. Answering that question properly needs some careful thinking about what metal is about. Like house music, metal is about the expression of emotions. Maybe a different set of emotions than house, but emotions nonetheless. In that regard, listening to metal for inspiration and to learn something from is not as far out an idea as it might sound like. I often do it actually, when I'm stuck in a musical rut. It gives you a different perspective and forces your mind on a different path.
Dub and reggae: This one is actually quite easy to answer, particularly when speaking about dub and not it's poppier cousin reggae. Sense of space, creative use of effects and using a mixer as an instrument on it's own are what make dub. It's often not about what you play but what you don't play, and filling that space with all kinds of strange, yet fitting effects. Echo or delay is of course the effect most commonly associated with dub, but it doesn't end there and neither does the use of an echo unit make you a dub record. I've actually tried to make dub music a few times, but let's just say that it's not exactly my forte. I do, however, occasionally try to imitate the methods of dub, even when the output sounds nothing like it. This was particularly true when I was strictly a hardware user, I always recorded my tracks straight to 2-track, using the mixer and effects creatively while recording. It's a bit harder to imitate with just a laptop, but all the tricks I learned back then are extremely valuable now.
Classical: The hardest of them all, considering my disdain towards classical music. It's way too pompous and opulent for my small mind to handle. I admit, I just don't get it. I do like some of the music created with the same instruments in the 20th century, Steve Reich particularly, but classical or anything resembling it is simply not for me. Still, I have an open mind and there's always a trick or two to be learned from any and every kind of music. However, it's very, very difficult to think about anything worthwhile to be learned from classical music. It's so far detached from modern music, from club music even more so. Steve Reich is easy in comparison, it's basically just techno performed with different instruments. Perhaps looking at it from a different angle might be more fruitful? The thing I dislike about classical the most is the lack of concentration. The central motif is either nonexistent or it's so vague that casual listening doesn't reveal it. I like loops. Either actual, repeated loops or just the same thing played over and over again with real instruments, like in rock music. I see no point in writing a great melody, rhythm or chord progression and then only using it once. It seems like wasting something valuable. I've been listening to classical music for a few hours now nonstop and I really have to stop as I feel a bit nauseous. I didn't find an illumination, it only made me more certain about my own personal taste.
EDM: Why include EDM, isn't it basically just a poppified versio of house? To an extent, that's true. It's dance music, it's four on the floor, it uses the same kind of elements as house does. However, the similarities are quite superficial. They are about as close as Blink 182 and GG Allin are to each other. Since I consider EDM as just a commercial ripoff of house, what possibly could I learn from it? Musically, not much to be honest. It uses all the cheap tricks in the book to create music that might sound interesting to a 15-year old but doesn't offer much of long-term value. Not that far away from the stuff that 2 Unlimited and such did in the 90's. However, what I can learn is marketing. By nature I'm quite shy, quiet, reserved type of character. It's not easy for me to contact an unknown person and tell him that I'm really great and that my music is super awesome. But that's exactly what I have to learn to do. Maybe not in those exact words, but I have to learn to market myself and my music if I want my music to ever leave my bedroom and a handful of Soundcloud listens. This blog has been a great first step, it being public and somewhat popular. It wasn't an easy decision, making it public, possibly facing humiliation and ridicule. That's not enough however. As my tracks (hopefully) get better and better, I need to find some kind of an outlet for them, which means I have to contact unknown people and convince them that my music is worth their attention. I won't be throwing cakes at people's faces, neither do I believe in fireworks (literal or not). First, I have to write a track that I really believe in and then I have to market it properly. Try to be my humble self, yet confident. Not the easiest of combinations to achieve.
As usual, I could go on forever but I decided to stop here. I have a bad habit of babbling about given the chance, but I'll try to control myself and keep these blog posts compact.
As with most of these posts, I made a track to go with it too . Originally, I wanted to make a jazzy house track but I'm not so sure of the outcome. It samples a well-known free jazz record (if a free jazz record can be said to be well-known that is), so most of the musical ideas don't originate from my mind. I don't usually like to sample stuff with melodic or harmonic content, due to my inability to recognize notes and chords by ear. I got basically no idea if this track contains off-scale notes, as I simply don't hear them that easily. I went with a feeling, instead of building something theoretically correct. It is what it is. 20% wonky, 30% jazzy, 50% housey, 110% barfunkely.
Note: As this blog is a real-life document, not a way for me to glorify or put myself on a pedestal, I must admit that I was quite drunk when I wrote all this and I also made the final mix of the accompanying track while drunk. Typos, grammatical erros as well as errors in the track are a result of a few pints of Finnish Karhu beer. It is what it is.
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