experimenting w string synths and delay
Sunday, Sept 10.
Learning objectives:
- Improve rhythm guitar timing and tuning
- Use synth chords
- Use synth lead countermelody contrasting with guitar
13:00 - 13:20: Noodling and exploration. In 20 minutes, I laid down initial stab chords, a beat, and some bass.
16:50 - 18:55: I resumed this. It's…. really dancey-like. I think I spent a little longer than average on production, but still not that long. Older versions had bad timbre + level matching between the guitar and synth leads so I fixed that up a bit. The song itself is really really simple and predictable, so if I wanted to work on this it would actually need to be on the composition to draw interest. I didn't actually add a whole lot of rhytm guitar to this.
Total time: 2h 25m
Instruments:
- Guitar
- Nord Lead 2x
- Future Retro 777
- My modular synth
- MASCHINE 2 (for drums)
Various software effects
This started with a little drum pattern I was hearing in my head, and which I thought I'd (once again) have in a drum rack of Analog instruments. (I tweaked the kick from last week, and it's sounding a little closer to what I want.) I added another channel of Analog ("Canadian Boards" preset) for a warbly little melody fragment, and put down some Simpler with a Mellotron single-note sample to accompany it. This seemed to suggest a kind of 80s-technology aesthetic, so I also put in a Simpler instrument with a Fairlight sample (the "Swanee" airy pipe), and for extra percussion, a Drum Rack of PAiA drum machine single-hit samples.
Saturday night, I tracked bass (Epi P-J straight into the board, Cabinet plugin and reverb send to give it air, some EQ-8 to roll off sub-100Hz), some guitar (Epi Moderne through Reuss Repeater Fuzz and Vox Wah straight to the board). While I tracked some melodic lines, I ended up relying more on dissonant harmonics and fragments than full lines. For a final x-factor, I tracked some noisy Bastl Kastle.
With the bass, I'd thought to keep up the 80s theme and flange it, and then took that out...but brought it back as an automation that I bring in every so many bars. Sends were just a room-sized Convolution reverb (Auto-filter in front to roll off bass and reduce boominess) and a simple delay.
Title comes from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thirty-Six_Dramatic_Situations
Wrote another chiptune track. This one in a Major key, so it sounds a little more videogame-esque. ;)
Short ambient thing made with ableton live. I'm testing out Adaptiverb with this. While It does sound musical, it mainly sounds like a delayed string pad in the background instead of reverbations.
