12/14/09

Gear List

In the interest of keeping the blog going, I'm going just post my gear list real quick:

Intel Dual Core PC @ 2Ghz, 2G RAM (need to update this)
Dual flat screen monitors (I find this essential)
Live 8 Suite Edition w/Max for Live
KRK Rokit-8 Speakers (may potentially add my 10", 500W sub to mix)
Roland RBUS VM3100 Pro Mixer
M-Audio RBUS Soundcard
M-Audio Oxygen 8
M-Audio Keystation 88
AKAI APC40
Native Instruments MASCHINE
NI's Komplete 5
NI's Kore2 + controller
Jazzmutant Lemur
Novation Remote Zero SL
Novation Launchpad
Behringer BCF2000/BCR2000
GURU
Camel Audio's Alchemy
D16's Silverline Collection & Classic Boxes Collection
PSP Nitro
IKMultmedia T-Racks Suite

Damn, writing the list down it looks pretty impressive! I've been building/collecting stuff for 10yrs, so not a bad collection at all. Anyways, I'll probably talk about some of the controllers in other posts as that stuff really interests me (although I have a lot to learn here with respect to customization).

That's it for now, I'll leave you with a new track I finished on the weekend that was inspired by a trip to see Jason Hodges play some proper underground house. Hope you enjoy it (and see if you can place the sample - hint, the track title gives it away!):

Doggy Style by Ypsi Kid

12/1/09

The Build pt. 3

So I'm going to try and wrap this up as I think I've been a bit long winded and I also want to move onto some other exciting things to talk about.

I've got my drums, bass and synth line going, I need to orgainze everything for the different parts of the track, sequence the parts out and then do some mixing to get even better levels (this is where concentrating on levels from the beginning comes in very handy - safes you a LOT of time and effort trying to get things right at the end). I have no real formula yet for my tracks, I try and keep things locked onto the 4/8/16/32 bar change ups (either for sections or breaks of the track). I didn't have a lot of different parts for this track so I knew it was going to be a bit tracky (nothing wrong with that if done correctly). Needless to say, I put the sequence together pretty quick and was somewhat happy with it.

After walking away and coming back to the mix, I really did not like how the bass was sounding or sitting in the mix - so I decided to change the sound that I was using for the bass. This can be a problem that I've heard affectionately reffered to as "the dreaded loop monster". This phenomenon happens when you are working on looped based music and start to listen to the same loop(s) for an extended period of time. You tend to convince yourself that it sounds good, only to find out after a break that the loop I've been working on/listening to sucks. So this is always on the back of my mind when making tracks and I'm sure to always come back after a few hours of rest to ensure my material isn't crap!

I was glad to take a break and find that the bass was not what I was looking for. Turned out the patch I picked the second time for the bass fit really nicely into the mix. That pretty much concludes this build post. I'm going to do another one, except a little more more "real time" and less wordy. I'll stick to the juicey facts and make sure to post examples.

That's it for this build, if you've made it through all these build posts, I commend you as they are fairly long and kind of scattered!

Thanks for reading, until next time check out some of my new track on soundcloud.