a year or so ago i had this goal of spending 100 or 200 hours just working with the pad presets i like from Echo Sound Works serum presets

that might be too boring for me. but i can make a few hundred 'drumless' sort of 1-minute tracks like this. just feels like a quick and fun way to get better at layering different instruments on top of each other to see what combinations i gravitate towards... mainly using my favorite pad presets, or my favorite serum presets in general, automating EQ parameters or reverb dry/wet, automating gain

if i can get better at 'drumless' music then i can, hopefully, start making some tracks longer than 2 minutes. id love to try and make a 3 or 4 minute track. or an 8 minute track. easiest way i think for me to get there is getting better at drumless music. i could always add drums in at the end of this type of track and it could work for making it a longer track?

it was gonna be more midtempo but when i got to the drop i heard a simple kicksnare pattern and decided to go with it

the intro was extremely boring so i cut it from 16 bars to 4 bars

the main workflow im using at the moment is generate a random bpm and key (between 90 and 120 bpm, and only these 5 keys: D minor, D# minor, E minor, F minor, F# minor). then i choose a random reese preset from the ~20 reese serum presets i like. then i block out 16 bars for intro, 16 bars for buildup, 16 bars for drop. i also generate a random bassline i like from the ~50 basslines i like (this bassline is 641 in minorkey. the randomizer actually recommended bassline 631, but 631 is trash compared to 641 so i changed it). the next step is i have about ~100 serum2 presets in a tag called "6star" which is basically my favorite sounds. i just press '7' on keyboard to let serum2 choose a random one of these presets, and if i play a few notes and get an idea, i add it into either the intro, buildup, or drop section of the track playing a midi pattern which i click in. at some points i have go-to instruments i wanna add, such as the brass stab in the drop, i just chose a brass stab i really like. or the lead in the drop, which is also a preset i think i used in the last 2 uploads. at some point i wanted to add a lil hihat pattern, an openhat pattern. yea i do some automations of EQ/gain/reverb as things come into the drop. one-and-half-minute track, was fun to make, maybe i learned some things

midtempo seems like a great way to make little arrangements where you dont need a vocal and can work fast, and focus on combining different sounds together (in the arrangement), and focus on doing some automations of EQ/gain/reverb/distortion over time

and without needing a vocal, or needing to worry about complex drumwork

i mainly wanna focus on the above sort of themes in learning electronic music so it sounds all good to me

i am using pretty good presets though

im not used to the snares used in this type of music so i need to search for those a little more than i would for other sounds

midtempo arrangement practice

probably at least 50-100 EQ/gain automations, automating gain and/or frequency of ableton EQ8 nodes... bout 60% of the time working on this was doing EQ automations. automations over 4/8 bars, or sometimes for fills etc it would be smaller segments of time. i dont think theres any automation happening during the drop, except the last 4 beats of the drop, just everything playing over the top of each other. but the EQ automations are everywhere else in the track. been listening on repeat so the melodies are all probably trash. i think its kind of melodically weak but i like the EQ automations

are EQ automation and volume leveling even more important than the sounds you use? probably... a track with shitty presets and decent EQ automation would probably sound better than a track with good presets and no EQ automation, at least for this type of music..? i might rely on EQ automation too much though. but i suck at arranging so if it works i can learn other parts of arrangement doing it

attempted a 2 minute arrangement following haterade (aka 'soundsgoodrecs' on youtube) arrangement advice of blocking out a track in advance and then moving patterns in roughly where you think they should go and listening to it and tweaking it. kind of like working on a 2 minute loop instead of working on a track...

i was listening to the david guetta bebe rexha song 'blue' the other day so i had blocked out that it would start immediately with a 'drop' (weak version of drop) then go straight into a buildup. this ended up not happening, but blocking everything out over 2 minutes (just putting tags where i thought intro/buildup/drops would start) really helped.

and i wanted to make something in phrygian dominant scale. phrygian dominant scale was recommended to me about a year ago by CHAT GPT. it was a scale id tried before. but after id been telling chat gpt the scales i did like, it recommended phrygian dominant. and i had tried it before, but i tried it again and ive really enjoyed it ever since. dont ever ask chat gpt for music theory things though, it is really very weak on anything to do with music theory in general... it mixes up basic musical key notation very easily, a weird blindspot it seems to have about musical theory in general(???) not that i know very much music theory myself, but it will mix up things a 5 year old wouldnt mix up, weird errors.

anyway i really enjoyed attempting to make an arrangement in phrygian dominant, last time i was arranging i had been getting bored of minor scale so maybe ill try work in it for a while. although i can never really predict what ill enjoy working on.

and this was a sort of 'drop' section. the rest of the arrangement basically fell apart at some point but it was pretty good practice

recorded a 10 minute monophonic jam of keyboard presets over a drumbeat.

is it weird to play keyboard monophonically? i think it can be good exercise. i mainly do it to try and sort of just be able to tell the difference between the 200 keyboard presets i have in "keys 1" serum2 tag.

i think about "stacking ammo" like eminem was always writing lines and hed never use them. i like always playing monophonic lines and then maybe i learn how all the presets sound. stacking ammo. eh i dunno. i will probably get sick of it eventually. im still pretty new to playing monophonic keyboard.

i wanted to record some of the new process ive been using to practice electronic music.

mainly focused on mono sounds being played on keyboard over a drumbeat.

i love brass stabs. i have about 40 good serum1 presets i use (echo sound works: coda, grey, roses, sphere). every time the brass stab sample changes, its me hitting spacebar on QWERTY keyboard to generate a new sound for me to play on the midi keyboard.

in my opinion, this 10 minutes of audio sounds nothing like how i would usually play. i found, today, trying to play for the audio recording was a bit too distracting. i usually play more exploratively. i think i changed instrument about 2 or 3 times faster than i usually would have.

i like mono brass stab jamming because you can really hammer repeated notes, for an entire 4 bars even lol. not many sounds you can do that with. but i do this with a lot of different sounds. mallet-like sounds its nice to play 2 notes at once. reeses are boring to jam with. guitars are great for mono-jamming. keyboard sounds you could do mono-jamming or polyphonic jamming. i mainly come from jamming on piano (polyphonic) so monophonic jamming is something new enough to me. my opinion is monophonic jamming is really something especially worthwhile if youre into making electronic music.

the secret to making music is clicking the little bubbles into ableton

nah i like this one. pretty shit but itss always nice to get something made, this streak club website helps me to do it

i think reese bass is probably my new favorite instrument of all time

david guetta says music is a lot about tension and release. im pretty sure i agree with him. id like to work more on the tension part and how to make it longer and longer

im putting a list of my 80 favorite basslines in the comments. i like to have them in a randomizer, then when im starting writing ill often start with bassline. i dont really start with basslines anymore but its still a good randomizer to have when youre bored or need a seed for an idea. i more just start with rootnote of the minorkey at the moment. todays upload the bassline is just the rootnote the whole time

anyway the upload today was alright. i wanna get back to making buildup-drops. caus theres so many layers and theyre fun to make, feel like i could learn a lot. i used to like making short loops more, but now i find making loops fairly dull. i like 1 minute arrangements at the moment. specifically buildup to drop segments are always full of different layers and patterns switching, and you can use different presets for different things.

one thing ive enjoyed lately is taking my favorite pad presets and turning them into 8bar or 16bar pitch risers in serum, then resaving them as a preset tagged with riser in serum 2's new tagging system. eventually ill have some good riser options.

just a lil loop, i wanted to make some brass trap. i listen to an amount of brass trap but every time i go to make it i have no idea what im doing. much more comfortable with these 3 instruments: piano, reese, hardwave lead. so i went to make brass trap and got this loop instead. nothing like brass trap but ok. serum 2 has a few reallllllly nice piano sample-based banks i like. serum 2 is fucking awesome. free download if you bought serum 1

listened to this too many times, added more details than usual. found it challenging making an intro and buildup for the drop, since the drop was just kind of piano and glockenspiel type instruments.

Drop Layers:

bass layers: reese, reverbed brass stab, slaphouse pluckbass (same midi for all 3)

melody layers: piano reverbed a bit, glockenspiel-type preset that already had reverb, some other reverby sustained lead preset (same midi for all 3 layers)

other: cymbal crash at start of each 8 bar section, some other reverbed+phased crash that does a repetitive 1/4note pattern at -32db (can barely hear it but it sort of maybe adds something), kick, no snare for some reason, string melody in second half of drop (returns from the intro), piano chords playing bassnote+octave above+fifth above

i like this one. i never have really tried to make short things in arrangement. it was a lot of fun though. a lot of eq automation, presets that already had a lot of distortion, volume automation and leveling.

Back making electronic music. Haven't made any arrangements in a while. I thought the first thing back might be cool, sometimes happens but nah this is just okay.

I like the presets and the combination of presets - I didn't make the presets though, so idk if its weird to be happy about. Another thing I liked was not all the melody notes are on gridlines, possibly caus ive been noodling on midi keyboard with a lot of mono presets lately.

feel like fm8 is greatest synth of all time... fm synthesis sounds too good cant make ting like this with subtractive. why isnt there fm9... fm8 came out 20 yrs ago now still best synth of all time. probably gonna try make a billion sounds with fm8

become edm broducer