Photo by Teslariu Mihai on Unsplash
trying to do a few things differently, this week.
started working with sets of samples instead of just one sample, when building the body or motif of the song. also trying to throw myself a little out of my comfort zone.
the exercise for this one was to work with voices. i mentioned in one of my previous posts i am not comfortable with singing and therefore practicing some voice sample manipulation and effect processing seems the next best thing to try. i've also insisted on bringing an 808, as i have been a little biased against their use, mostly because of all the stuff out there that sounds over and over like the exact same thing (sorry if shots fired).
i've also started spending more time on each project and decided it's best to do this than to try and rush a project per day. i feel it allows for a better reflexion and better decision making process. in the end its an exercise the same, but exercising more exploration feels like a good way to grow and develop.
so... the voices. i can't sing, so the challenge was to find a way to make up for that in a song. even though i did went to the trouble of downloading a couple acapellas from Lauryn Hill and Slum Village, in the end i turned once again to a Cymatics sample pack, which is royalty free to use and download (even though the website says this is only for a limited time).
one of the limitations i have is my ableton license only allows up to eight tracks, so i have to be creative and often condense many samples in one single track when professional producers would likely assign everything to multiple tracks.
i am fine with it. i am actually a believer that limitations are positive, in the sense they force one to work around them. i did set 3 different tracks for the voices anyways, and then within each track i started composing, and cutting and reversing back and forth to achieve something i was pleased with.
i turned one of the tracks into the lead voice, and the other two i panned one left and one right and gave them a lower and higher pitch each. then i threw in a vocoder and a bunch of effects. i spent a lot of times on this, and feel i learned a lot from it.
in the end i did not mess with the 808 as much as i wanted, because when i tried something more than what you can hear in the song, it didn't feel right. i have a lot to learn when it comes to 808's. i feel that's one of the next challenges.
because i used 3 tracks for the voices i was left with only 5 for the instrumental part. i used what now appears to be one of my trademarks, a rhodes piano for the main sample, which i chopped into the drum rack and played like you can see in the video i put out the other day. the beat is also sampled from a bap jazz song. the only instruments i've actually played on this one are the flute and the 808. here's how the final arrangement looks like.
i wanted to throw a little more ear candy, but when i tried it frequently sounded like too much, in the end. i wanted the voices to be the main theme, and i am not even sure i've accomplished that, in all honesty.
you tell me?
like always, hope you dig :)
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