Music Production

Cross-posting this from my blog. You can hear an audio demo of the technique there.

I've been thinking a lot about the importance of silence in music, and I dreamed up this technique, using a sequencer to more-or-less randomly mute a signal. The idea was to program a beat but then have the sequence be periodically interrupted by silence. I was partly inspired by this tai hirose track.

Now you could just as well make cuts by hand, in post, with the mouse. But where's the fun in that? As the title suggests, I wanted something more generative.

In Reaper, we can use Gerraint Luff's MIDI Gate plugin to trigger mutes or gates. Insert it on a track, feed it some MIDI, and depending on the mode, it will mute the channel whenever it receives MIDI information (or whenever it doesn't, if it's in gate mode).

To set this up, I followed Reaper Blog's MIDI Gate tutorial. In short, I programmed a kick drum part, then sent the audio only (not MIDI, which is important) to a receive track, and muted the former track's master output. On the receive track, I inserted a sequencer plugin and the MIDI Gate, one after the other. I made a simple MIDI sequence to trigger the gate. Since my original kick drum pattern was in 4/4, and since I wanted a semi-random sound, my gate trigger sequence was a 3/4 loop, which resulted in polymetric mutes. (Next time I experiment with this, I plan to use a truly random sequencer from Cardinal or something.)

The result is a groovy kick drum part that doesn't finish its sentence sometimes. I did the same on the tops percussion part, experimenting with MIDI Gate in mute mode or gate mode to see which I liked better. For added polish, because I noticed that sometimes MIDI Gate would let just the tiny blip of the first transient through, I inserted a plain old gate plugin next in the chain to cut out any tiny blips below a certain volume threshold. I then added a hi hat loop and played some nylon guitar over it so the track would feel a little more tethered to 4/4.

The neat thing about this semi-generative approach is the element of chance. Sometimes the kick plays where I programmed it to, sometimes not. The trouble with making music in the DAW is having too much control. But the joy is when you can find ways to forfeit that control in ways that are unique to the DAW workflow. Electronic musician Jlin says in an interview, "Not having control and not knowing what I'm going to create is the beauty of how the track is made. Not only the beauty of it, but the, also is the necessity of how, and why it gets made, because I don't have control."

Another cross-post from my blog.

There is much ado about fancy mics among musicians and engineers, just as there is much ado about fancy guitars among guitarists. And don’t get me wrong, these instruments can certainly sound inspiring. However, any guitarist worth trusting will tell you that so long as the instrument isn’t unplayable, you can make great music with it (and some have written and even recorded with beater guitars).

It’s not so much about the mic as it is the engineer. Having been through a handful of mics so far, I have not been rid of my “touch” with a microphone. It always sounds like me, whether I like it or not. I’m choosing to let myself like it.

I once heard Tina Weymouth share at a Q&A, “If you have ears, you can make anything sound good, if you’re enjoying it.”

Another inside look video with many inspiring insights

I imagine its making some signals quiter than some of their neigbours, but I cant really technically get what is ultimatey happening.

Does it creat a wavy vibrato or binaural type effect, its funny cuz Im listening to it but im drawing a blank

Can be physical or electronically synthesized but I imagine the synthesized is more versatile

Both diatonic or chromatic are fine

Very common it seems for songs to change keys into a higher one but I dont think I've really ever heard something doing a descending modulation or key change...

closest I can think of is Strawberry Fields by The Beatles but my understanding is that is Varispeed or something, not really sure what the heck is happening in that song other then its gradually flattening but not sure what that even is

Very inspiring stuff

I found this gem and wanted to share it with you. Reaper being available for Linux is a pretty great thing but generally I didn't find many audio plugins being made available for Linux, especially plugins that try to recreate vintage hardware.

Anyway, here's a project that has a lot of those being written directly for Reaper using its DSP language and I can confirm they work on Linux.

https://github.com/TukanStudios/TUKAN_STUDIOS_PLUGINS

The dev has a YT channel where he shares progress: https://www.youtube.com/@johnmatthews8435

Happy music making!

I have an app and it lets you skip certain words you custom add.

Like

• the/a

Sorta like how Russians always leave out articles to no ill effect. Moose eend sqwuirrel

I'm wondering if the attack of sounds can be generally modulated after the fact to an arbitrary audio file and similarly for a piano-pedal sustain type effect.

Can they be gradually and arbitrarily modulated?

• Does it lower the decibels of ambient above-surface noise, to what extent?

• Is it preferential to filtering out low or mid or high frequencies or do they all move through it as a medium about equally in terms of perceptibillity by the submerged end observer?

Recently I just got the Pulsar Audio 1178. Clean interface with really easy to understand controls and meters, can't believe how readable this is compared to most other plugins. Also has a fun "All ratio" setting and adjustable saturation settings, from clean to clipping and a few in between.

I am like the Toy Story meme of "I don't want to play with you anymore" with all of my other compressor plugins right now.

I don’t think there’s a way to do a proper poll so if you don’t see your DAW mentioned in a top level comment, make the comment to the post. If it’s already listed, maybe just upvote it? That way we can get a representation of what DAWs are more among subscribers here.

I’m curious just because it’s always neat to hear what people use and how, but also to see how possible tuts or techniques can be explained in a way more people will understand. Or provide a variety of examples for various DAWs.

EDIT: Actually, I don’t know the best way to list the ones I use without making a few comments to this post. I’ll just upvote them if I see them listed.

Another great look at the gear and process behind a classic track. I love to hear musicians set the record straight on what techniques they used to achieve iconic sounds.

Edit: the video starts out as a correction/follow-up on a previous video “Nuthin but a G thang” by Dr Dre | Minimoog G funk Lead, but expands beyond that

So not entirely music related, but my don't-use-reddit policy and this looking like the closest not entirely dead community has led me to post sooo...

I have an audio question about recording levels. I'm doing voice-over stuff for some really bad Youtube videos I'd like to make and it never sounds remotely good.

I get that the recording volume should be just the green side of clipping, but how do you take a track, and then add it to other tracks and balance the whole thing to not sound like ass?

It always seems that it's either too loud or too quiet and I'm baffled as to how to tweak the mix correctly so that things sound right.

Any projects or demos you'd like to share or talk about? Exploring any new sound design or composition techniques?

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/14281466

I've never seen computer keys used in place of piano keys before though I am sure being able to customize the feel of the switches is pretty nice. Are there production midi controllers that do the same?

Feedback welcome. Thanks for checking it out!

Thanks for listening!

Thanks for checking it out!