Things for the future of this blog

Well as it's hand in time,

I will tell you my plans for the future of this blog 

and also what I have been reading/watching/listening to

whilst doing this.

As I have mentioned earlier in this blog

I listen to a vast amount of music,

I'll give you a few things now and do a bigger, more involved list later (links,vids,info etc)

Various Steve Reich (different trains, music for 18 musicians) 

currently reading his Writings on Music (1965-2000)

Nobukazu Takemura - Child's View

The Glitch Mob

various Omar Rodriguez-Lopez

BBC Radiophonic Workshop (watching videos, collecting vinyl and listening)

Polar Bear

E.S.T.

Fela Kuti

The New Earth Group

and a hell of a lot more!

The future of this Blog

I am going to keep on PLAYing with this project

I think it has been a good way of learning a variety of things

rather than just falling in to a comfort zone and doing the same thing

I will keep documenting the process

and I will invite more people to PLAY with this idea.

A friend of mine is going to be learning Ableton soon

and is keen to use this as a playful learning tool

so I will also be adding that to this Blog.

I also aim to start making videos in the same way

so I will be posting my results as I start to learn After Effects.

I will also add jams with theplaydoeband to this blog,

although it is not making music to the rules of this project

it's a good example of improvised play

I feel I have learnt a lot from this project

writing what I have done along the way

in a sketchbook has been a useful tool for remembering new techniques

just don't buy a huge book like I did!

29-04-09 (BEN'S PLAY FILE)

So as I had stated, this blog is also somewhere for other people to play as well.

So with the samples I put up from the 18-4-09, Ben has sent me a file that he has PLAYed with.

here's what he sent:

What I did:

I loaded up the file 07.mp3 into Audacity and went through it exporting some rough loops and sounds.  In turn I loaded these into Recycle and pushed the sensitivity slider up until I had enough useful markers.  I then edited some of the markers and set loop points on each of the samples and saved each loop as a REX file.

Having done this I started a new file in Reason. 
First I inserted an M-Class Mastering suite and then a 14:2 mixer. I did it in this order so that the mixer would automatically be chained through the Mastering suite and to outputs 1+2.
Next I created a Redrum Drum machine and started go through the slices of the REX files I had created, choosing hits to use to create some new loops.  Once happy with the hits I had chosen I proceeded to create a few loops out of them. I loaded one sample up four times (beatbass.rx2(10)) and changed the pitch of each individual one so that I could create a rhythm with pitch varyation.
Now I created another Redrum and loaded up the same bass sound several times and again changed the pitch of each one so that I could program a bassline using the drum machine.  I found that by varying the lengths of the samples a natrual groove emerged.
For the awwwshit sample I loaded up an NNXT sampler and simply loaded up the file that I'd previously exported from Audacity.
As if I didn't already have enough Drum machines I finally create a third one and programmed a simple Kick Snare beat also using hits from one of my REX files.  I then created a reverb as a send effect on the mixer, chained the aux outputs from the third Redrum to the aux sends from the mixer and sent both snares to it. Then I enabled the gate on the reverb and tweaked it to create a bit of a gated reverb.
Finally I created a couple of M-Class Mastering suites for the bassline and the kick snare beat to go through and that was that.

Easy John,

Benny

Thanks to Ben for participating in this project.

Here's his files

music file

Ben has also sent the reason file, if anyone wants a look

reason file

Some of the Vinyl I'm using

Here's a list of some of the vinyl I am using for this project, 

most of the records contain music samples, beats etc.

Thanks to all the people that release these records.

Dialogue and Random 1 and 2 - The Groove of Satyre

UPR 1,2,3 and 3+1 - Ricci Rucker

Donkey Work 3 - AWEKID/Dj Muzzell

Bastard Language Tour Show Vinyl - D Styles

Dirty Soap - Ricci Rucker

Clocktaves - SJam and Kypski

SoundCraftsman Vol 1 - NickNack

Glue Pieces - Dj DQ & Maker (Glue)

Other Sounds - Mike Boo

cover for april's play files

Here's a couple of jpegs for a front and back cover 

for April's Play files if anybody wants to make a cd.

video idea storyboard

Here's a brief idea for a video to accompany one of the music files (not sure which one yet), using some footage I chopped up from Pumping Iron (highly recommend watching it, it's comedy gold!), that I would like to chop and make it go in time with the tempo/beat of the track.

25-4-09

Rolled a 3 - Field

I took a couple of field recordings:

1. washing machine
2. people talking/outside/birds

I then put the two recording together.

Next I played the sounds through my RANE mixer, adding Overdrive/Reverb/Delay, playing with each pedal live and recorded the outcome.

I then took the recording into audacity and played with the noise reduction, which gave me a glitchy digital sound, then saved it as a new file.

Next I took the recordings into Logic, chopped the washing machine part off altogether and used only the end part (birds/talking etc).

I had the noise reduction version and the original version and added Compression/Flat EQ/Flanger to it, then played them both at the same time.

Things learnt:

I was just really playing again, but I did find that the noise reduction in audacity could be used to make some interesting sounds in the future.

File Link

25-4-09_2

Got a 2 - Vinyl

I decided I would use the turntable without any samples.

I did a one take recording of me tapping on a record and on to the plastic shell of the turntable.

I had my delay, reverb and overdrive pedals plugged in and experimented until I found a sound I liked.

I then took the recording into Logic and chopped it twice.

On one track I added sub bass and flanger and the other different track I added echo.

Next I faded the start and end of the file.

I may add to this track later as I have plenty of time left.

This was more about just playing with sounds and effects to see what I could achieve.

Time taken: 40mins (so far)

Track Link

23-4-09

Rolled a 3 - Field Recordings.

I spent some time field recording, I got recordings of birds, cars, people talking, washing machines, soap bubbles, oven humming, tapping on glass .......

using a minidisc and a mic with a wind shield (thanks Rob).

I then took the recordings and recorded them into Garageband using my soundcard.

I added a new track for each recording, just so I could export them all as separate files to use in Logic. Instead of soloing a track to hear it, I accidently played every track overlayed and really liked the results.

I then took the file into Audacity to tidy up a few things.

I added a  low pass filter to the overall track and faded the end of the track out.

I then exported the track as a WAV out of Audacity (as I didn't have the mp3 encoder at the time), took it into itunes and exported it back out as an mp3 (for upload purposes)

Time taken: 1hr10mins

Things learnt:

general field recording

low and high pass filters

Finished File

EDIT.

Once I had uploaded this file, I realised the file had been bounced down to only the left side, so I took the file back into audacity to sort it out. In doing this, I decided to Play a bit more and ended up copying the track, changed the speed, then repeated it again, only this time in reverse. So what you end up with is, the original, a sped up version playing forwards and another sped up in reverse, all overlayed.

So this File ended up taking 1hr 30 - 1hr 40mins

22-4-09

Rolled a 4 - MIDI and Vinyl

However, I decided to invite somebody else to come and play,

this time it was another friend and band member, Ben.

We decided to make the file at Ben's, so unfortunately I was unable to carry my turntable, mixer, records etc round to Ben's on my bike!

So we used a microkorg instead.

Ben usually uses Reason to make music, so as we both have Ableton,

we decided in keeping with the project we would learn and Play within Ableton.

We started by dropping drum samples into the Drum Rack (Live Devices - Drum Rack)

Ben then played the kick and snare on his padKontrol, quantized (apple U)  it to 1/16th at 95% to keep a live feel to it.

I then played the HiHats.

We then added a Bassline using the MicroKorg (A51 Preset) and chopped it.

Next we added some stereo delay to the hats.

We then added a synth lead using the MicroKorg again (A53 Preset)

Ben had some free vocal samples on his Mac, so we decided to add some vocals to the track.

We took the accapella into audacity and chopped the parts of the vocals we wanted (You.... Change your Mind).

Next we added the samples to the PadKontrol and put some vocals in.

The next step was to structure the track.

We decided to time stretch part of the vocal to link one half of the track to the other.

We didn't get very far with this track as we were both new to Ableton and to be honest, neither of us would use it again to make a track. I can see that it would be a useful tool for live performances (which to be fair, is what it is for) and may use Ableton again in the future for this purpose.

Time Taken: 2hrs

Things learnt:

The basics of ableton - general use, adding samples, time stretching.

That neither of us will make tracks in Ableton again!

Blame Ben for the name of the track hahaha

18-4-09 PART 2

I followed the tutorial, strip silenced my beat, added the samples to the EXS24

and arranged the samples.

Then I chopped the beat.

I have about 20 minutes left on this file so I may even scratch some vocal samples from Dirty Soap on this file.

Things I learnt:

Strip Silence

How to use the BPM Counter

How to add samples into the EXS 24

Time taken: 1hr 40mins

Samples used

Track without vocals

New version with added vocals

Revised time (due to added vocals): 2hrs

18-4-09

Rolled a 2 - Vinyl

I started by picking a record,

Dirty Soap by Ricci Rucker

At the end of the record, the last track contains samples that were used to make the tracks on the EP, for people to Play with.

I listened through the samples and picked a beat and a synthy part to use.

I then recorded the samples through the sound card into Logic.

I then chopped the beat and made a loop, copy and pasted it a few times, then set the Track regions.

I wanted to find out how to find the BPM of a sample so I looked around the net and came across a guy called SFLogicNinja on Youtube.

The BPM was 143.

The next thing I wanted to learn was how to use the sampler in Logic (EXS 24)

So I searched SFLogicNinja's Youtube channel and found this video:

17-4-09

Rolled a 4 - MIDI + VINYL

I picked a record, UPR1 by Ricci Rucker

listened through and picked a few samples - drum beat and bass.

I then chopped the beat and looped it,

then did the same with the bass.

After that I added Sub Bass and Reverb to the beat

and Flanger and Sub Bass to the bass line.

My next step was to add MIDI (Ultrabeat) drums, kick and snare

to fatten the drums that I sampled from record.

I then played with the arrangement.

Time taken: 50 minutes

Things learnt:

arranging

chopping samples

Samples used

Finished track

Cardiff

So it was my birthday half way through this project, so I took a bit of time off to celebrate and to visit my brother in Cardiff.

Another part of this project is to mirror the idea of making music and building a sound library with image based files.

I aim to learn how to use After Effects and to try and make visuals to accompany the sound files made, Playing to Learn again.

So whilst in Cardiff I took my Camera and took a few photos to add to my library.

Marching on regardless

Rolled a 5 again!

MIDI and FIELD

I started by picking a tempo - 98BPM and turned on the metronome.

Started by making a beat by playing along to the click track.

I repeated this 3 times with different percussion and quantized them all.

I then went through the various drum tracks and muted certain drum notes.

Next, I added a synth part, played live and played about with the double delay, muting bits here and there.

I started to play with the FLAM/ROLL/HOLD on some of the drum parts and added those.

Throughout this project, I have been collecting field recordings, so I thought I would use some of the allotted time to listen through and chop up those files.

I had also just recently purchased a new sound card  so I used some of the time to install that.

I thought it would be a quick job, but half an hour later I finally got it sorted.

The Solution:

AUX2 - TASCAM LINE IN

TASCAM LINE OUT - 7,8 Channel on my mixer

I then added a recording of a conversation my neighbours were having with their young daughter.

I added a few effects to the file, chopped it and placed it in two parts of the file.

Things I learnt:

How to install the soundcard

Time Taken - 2Hours

Marching on Regardless (without field recordings)

Marching on Regardless (Finished)

DUB DEATH

Rolled a 5 - MIDI AND FIELD

I decided to make a dubstep influenced file.

Researched dub step and found the bpm to be 138-140 

so picked 140bpm

Started with a MIDI synth bassline

added stereo delay, played with padkontrol

looped it

added a beat - padkontrol

muted certain hits

thought I would try having drums mostly on one side

added more percussion but tried programming 

rather than playing on the padkontrol

played with the structure, breaks etc

I still have about an hour left on this file, 

so I will add some field recordings when I feel I have the right sound.

I think I may also change the drums panned to one side in some way

Below is the file as it is now

I will add the finished soon

Dub Death no field yet

3-4-09

Rolled a 1 - MIDI AGAIN!!!!

I decided to make a dancey/big beat tune, so I looked up the average BPM of this kind of music and decided on 104BPM.

Rather than playing the beat on the padKontrol I decided to programme the kick drum instead.

I then added a bass line and quantized it to 1/16th note, adding Tape Delay after.

I then played the hihats on the PadKontrol and quantized them after.

Then I added live synth parts, muting various notes afterwards.

I then copied and pasted this and added reverb and double delay to one of the tracks 

and changed the velocity of some of the notes on each file.

I then played with the structure of the track.

Things learnt:

This file was more about playing again, rather than learning.

Although I did find out how to change the velocity of MIDI hits.

3-4-09 File

2-4-09

Rolled a 1 - MIDI

For this one I wanted to just PLAY rather than watch tutorials or do a load of research, so this wased just based on fun.

I started with the Ultrabeat and picked the HipHop sly kit, tapping a beat out on the PadKontrol and added a bit of Sub Bass.

I then added a new Midi track - 04 Mallets

used Library - Wood Marimba

I then started to play with the FLAM/ROLL/HOLD on the PadKontrol as I had never used it before.

Then I added a piano part (no quantizing) to keep a live feel,

muted a few notes and added reverb.

Then I played with the structure, adding/subtracting beats and notes.

I felt the track needed Bass, so I picked a Bass sound and played live again (no quantizing)

Copy and pasted it a few times and muted a few parts where I felt it needed.

Things learnt:

structuring

FLAM/ROLL/HOLD on the PadKontrol

Time Taken - 50Mins

2-4-09 File

1-4-09

So for this one I rolled a 4 - MIDI AND VINYL

I started messing about with various MIDI parts that I had made with the PadKontrol

and decided to completely mess up what I had played using various inserts

• Compression
• Channel EQ 
• Phase Distortion - In signal processing, phase distortion or phase-frequency distortion is distortion that occurs when (a) a filter's phase response is not linear over the frequency range of interest, that is, the phase shift introduced by acircuit or device is not directly proportional to frequency, or (b) the zero-frequency intercept of the phase-frequency characteristic is not 0 or an integral multiple of 2π radians.
• Clip Distortion 

I then copied and pasted what I had done onto other tracks, making a thick distorted sound that sounded like interference.

I then decided I would invite somebody else to Play with me, so I bounced what I had done to a WAV and took it around to my friend and fellow band mate Tim's house, where he had his turntable, mixer etc set up and my turntable etc set up(see pics above).

Due to Tim's laptop being slightly outdated!! we couldn't use a soundcard to record in and as I was running my laptop through the 2nd channel on my mixer to trigger the WAV, we had to do a one take live recording into my IKEY.

So I played the WAV I had made, Tim played a sample and I added background noise (traffic etc), looped the WAV a few times and recorded the whole thing.

We then listened back to the file and talked about restructuring it.

I then took the full recording back into Logic and added it the sounds I originally made to the full piece Tim and I recorded, chopping and restructuring the new WAV, changing the volume of certain tracks.

Things I learnt:

various inserts (see above)

Expansion -  opposite of compression

In it's extereme form makes a noise gate

- which only lets a signal through if it is loud enough eg. gates out unwanted background noise

source

Time Taken: 1hr 50mins

Track

Tim's Sample

It's just a few examples of his sample, not chopped or tidy (cant do all the work for you!)

Dead Man's Beat

So here we go, here's the first track:

So the Flash player picked a 1 - MIDI

Firstly a picked a midi track - Legend Organ,

I then had a general look around Logic to see what my options were

and found the ESP Polyphonic Synth.

I then played some bass notes using a Korg PadKontrol,

added inserts (compressor, Rotary Cabinet).

Then I added a new Midi track and found the Ultrabeat,

picked a drum sound and added some fairly light percussion using the PadKontrol again.

Next I added another Midi track, this time I used the ES2 (Synth2),

played again with the PadKontrol, adding various inserts (Delay, Reverb etc).

They were all fairly simple loops, so then I moved the loops about and structured them to make a song.

I decided to chop parts of the beat, so it was not the same all the way through.

Then I added another midi track, this time Calm winds.

Made a break down

Added another synth (ESE (Ensemble synth)) with inserts (Compression, Limiter).

I felt that the song needed a vocal sample (which although it is not strictly in the rules, I felt I would learn something), and with the song being dark, it reminded me of the Shane Meadow's Film Dead Man's Shoes

Dead Man's Shoes

So I took a sample into GarageBand, chopped it and brought it into Logic.

Things I learnt:

Basic use of Logic

How to use MIDI

Adding inserts and what they do

Compression - dynamic effect reduces difference between loud and quiet sounds (so quiet sounds seem louder)

2 main parts:

• The Ratio - determines how much will be compressed eg. 10.1 = extreme, 2.1 = moderate
• The Make-up gain - which brings the compressed signal back up to a reasonable level

Time Taken - 1hr 52mins

Dead Man's Beat sound file

Source of info:

Apple Discussion Forum

A bit about me

I have been in a band now for about 4 years and I listen to a very broad range of music.

The band I am in, theplaydoeband 

makes improvised music, so although I have been making music for a while, I have never actually made any finished tracks. 

So I thought this PLAY project would be a fun way to learn new tools in order to do this. 

I would also like other people to get involved in this project, so if anybody else partakes in this process I will post up their synopsis and results.

Here are the slides I used to pitch my idea: