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.
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if you make electronic music and u cant script i think ur missing out tbh. scripting never been easier to learn with chat gpt. or youtube videos, whatever it is
and i have a drum beat going so when it randomizes the bpm, the drum beat works in all the bpms the randomizer can select from
ive always found F# minor is the most comfortable key to play in for keyboard
also, i have a macro that randomizes the bass instrument preset, the bpm, and the scale im playing in all at once. i just play in F# minor 100% of the time but it can sound like any other key caus it transposes it between 0 and 11 semitones up. u need to learn autohotkey to interact with ableton to do these honestly relatively simple commands, its a basic autohotkey knowledge would get u sorted. so i just press spacebar on my keyboard and it does all this in one go. takes about 0.5 seconds total to do all of it
a tip id give if you wanna get into playing monophonic basslines on midi keyboard: use both hands. position keyboard so you're right in the middle where you can do about half the notes on left hand and half the notes on right hand. can do some nice basslines
i like jamming in basslines because theyre a nice cross between melodic and percussive... and they hit in some nice low frequencies and sound really good when you distort the shit out of it
something ive found strange about playing more monophonic keyboard presets (vs polyphonic) is i feel like ive got slightly better at basslines AND melodies. which are two things i thought were more separate. but nah maybe theyre not, incredible.
ye i reckon playing monophonic keyboard is worthwhile if youve only played polyphonic keyboard
what happens if you fire the hadron collider into someones asshole
theres some bullshit called quantum. what the fuck is that. is that shit random or will they one day discover it was never random
its not very scientific to believe a random number could ever exist. because science one day will explain everything. science religion lets all live in space and jump around on the moon
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2! THE MOST RANDOM NUMBER OF ALL TIME
introducing World Randomizer Championships round 13. Norwegian champion vs Slovakian champion. which dickhead can say the most endless stream of random digits in a row? any deviance from "random" is a point deduction. HOW THE FUCK DO YOU DEFINE "RANDOM"?
i like the weird rapid kick pattern in the drop. that was kind of different than what i usually do
this is why i wanna make 1000 more buildup-drop segments
but the separate parts dont really work together
eh todays upload sounds shit. it was fun to make so im not complaining
how the hell am i going to think of a 'random bpm' every time i want a new bpm? how else could i do this apart from randomizer? some steampunk machine that takes up the space of an entire room and relies on tiny fluctuations in humidity or air pressure or some shit
and this is why ableton should add random sample selection to its browser panel
i do like having the computer select it randomly though, instead of clicking through. caus if you click through e.g. a bunch of presets, its gonna be in the same order every time. or a folder of drum samples, youd click through it in the same order every time. either top to bottom or bottom to top. with randomizer it can throw anything at you after any other item
so many electronic pieces of music must have been written that i listen to with some part of the process being someone clicking through a bunch of presets or samples
i guess if i didnt have randomizer i would just click through things manually (the OG, manual randomizer, i suppose...)
just pressing the button to navigate to a 'random preset' in serum... i press 7 in serum all the time when im making an arrangement. like: okay, ive done the drop and theres some shitty intro and buildup, i press 7 in serum, can i add this preset to any part of the song, does it spark some melody idea if i try and write a melody with it, does it sound alright but it reminds me of another preset that could sound better here?
i mainly use randomizers to 'seed' ideas, i think. when im not using a randomizer, im looking for something specific. and when i dont know what to add (often), i use randomizer until i get some idea to go with.
and then weighted randomizers can be okay. but then i find it kind of easier to tier things instead. so instead of weighting each individual item, you have "aggressive leads 1" and "aggressive leads 2", and 90% of the time u just use a simple non-weighted randomizer on "aggressive leads 1", and then when youre bored you run a similar or the same non-weighted randomizer on "aggressive leads 2". and this way you dont have to apply a changing weight-value to each individual item youre trying to use in randomizers.
also some item in "aggressive leads 1", might also appear in "reeses 1". tagging-systems are great for randomizers because you can have clouds of options and tier them according to how often you think you possibly want to use them. then move individual items up or down in tier as you use them and come across them.