Been a while...

Yes it has! I've had kind of a crazy week. 3 days, 6 flights with stops in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Charlotte (twice) and Williamsburg for work. I was asked to write an article for a news paper on mountain biking (thanks Arthur!), which I managed to complete while laying over at one of the airports on my work trip (Arthur saw the blog and asked me to write about a trip up to Blue Mountain!). I ended up walking in my house at 5:30pm and walked out again at 5:45 to play in a soccer game (I had missed the first 3 games and couldn't miss this one) - ended up getting tackled fairly badly and get my knee and ankle twisted. On Saturday my wife Jaime and I headed to a house warming BBQ for Jaime's cousin Jen and her boyfriend Barry. I also managed to get in the studio a bit and take some pretty nice shots at the Grove! So, now I've finally managed to sit down and get to another post! As keeping with my alternating themes, we head back to the world of production.

I said I was going to get into how I produce. I'll touch a bit on that here. House and Techno are pretty much based around the 4/4 beat (4 beats per measure / 4 measures per bar). What that pretty much means is a kick drum on the 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 with the high hats falling in between (replace the ands with high hats!) and the clap falling on the 2 and 4. It's a very basic rhythm but one which makes you move (this is true universally) - I believe this is also what rock is based around. On a funny note, the church has rules about music, one of them being that certain rhythms were 'of the devil' and not to be used. Hence the old school saying that rock & roll was from the devil, because of the rhythm being used! Are we seeing the ultimate reason as to why our western world (and the greater world for that matter) is falling apart (insert heavy sarcasm here!). Just thought that was a funny little tidbit - no joke though, this pattern of music really does get you moving! Even hip hop and break beats have elements of this pattern, the only real difference being the placement of the kick drum (I really need to link to some examples - soon!). So the basic beat if you will is the palette for a lot of different types of music - if you start to listen you'll be able to hear the similarities pretty clearly. Pretty much all my production is based around this (well all of it actually). The trick is getting something that fits the template, has a nice groove (groove is pretty much the feel of the the combination of elements of a given track - including effects, shuffle, etc). Once you get a basic groove down, it's about (for me anyway) seeing what fits in the empty spaces and plays off the other parts of the track. So I try to place certain elements within certain areas of a track to give a particular feel - once you get this down it becomes your artistic style if you will. I've developed a certain approach to making my tracks that includes the effects I use, how I use them, sample manipulation (I like to resample material I have in a track - more on that in a bit), how I mix the song down, my arrangement style(s) and things of this nature. If you were to listen to my tracks I think you would be able to see that there are certain elements which are repeated in my tracks, but applied differently throughout the various tracks so as not to get boring (I'll post some links soon to my material). When it comes to resampling, I like to record various loops of material while working on a song and apply various effects and sample shaping techniques to twist the sampled material into something completely new - and then this gets added on top of what it was recorded on. I believe this is good because you are taking an existing piece of the song, so used correctly, it should fit in very nicely depending on how it is applied and where. I've found this to be a great technique as it allows for great creativity as well as giving you unexpected results which lead to other pathways for a song to take musically. Speaking of that, it's also one of the dangers - the dreaded loop monster!!! I thought I was the only person to experience this until I read a thread on it on the Ableton Live user forums. The dreaded loop monster refers to times where you end up sitting there tweaking 1 or 2 loops for hours, but never really get anything done at the end of the session (you end up listening to practically the same loop for long periods of time, sometimes with just minor tweaks). With so many pathways which open up when working with sample manipulation, it's also very easy to get off track and stay off for long periods of time - have to focus on the task at hand! Although that's also one of the fun aspects of working with Live, the fun you get as no 2 sessions will be the same (even with a little knowledge) - keeps new sounds floating through your speakers every time you sit down!

Ok, another quick post - hope this one was a little bit informative. Or at least give you a small insight as to how I approach making tracks (albeit a very brief version). I'll be getting into more production stuff soon, I want to get a record of the week section going where I will pull out my old records and give you a glimpse of some the old records I used to play (that will be coming very shortly). Looking forward to the next post with some more great pics from the Grove! Until then...