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Today I started to make decisions on, firstly, what genre my first track should be and secondly, what my inspiration tracks are. I decided on a mix between Jump Up Drum and Bass (Sota, Urbandawn, Simula, Hedex, etc.) and Melodic Drum and Bass (Venjent, Arcando, etc).

I have a backup plan and that is to write a Liquid Drum and Bass track and instead do a Liquid DnB set if creating Jump up is too much for me too soon. This is because Liquid Drum and Bass is a genre I am a little more confident in.

These are current tracks I really enjoy and may want to get inspiration from. These are tracks you may hear in my recorded DJ set. I will most likely change my mind and I will add tracks as I can't come up with everything in one day. I also don't yet have a comprehensive understanding of what a DJ legally can or can't play.

Sientelo - (Sota and Circadian remix)

Bailejungle - (Urbandawn)

Drums - (Sota)

Flappers - (Turno x Sota)

High Roller - (Turno)

Primal Instinct - (A. Way)

Jungle - (Arcando remix)

Ascend - (Arcando)

Let it Roll - (Venjent)

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Focus on networking and collaborating. GET TO KNOW PEOPLE; get involved with as much as you can. See what artists waterbear might know and get into contact. Network with other artists and at least try to collaborate with a singer or other musician by Christmas.

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Work on sound design and lyric writing (I've never written lyrics before). Meet industry standards ASAP. Professional sound design and mastering is the key to making it to where you want to be. I want to at least incorporate vocals and improve my sound design to create basses similar to commonly used sounds in heavy EDM by Christmas.

Also work on work-flow and creativity/inspirations; experiment with different writing structures and where you should start with each track.

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Today I did some buying...

I downloaded some tunes (garage and DnB) to my USB stick after having my first DJ-ing session with MIMI.

I also quickly learned how to make a popular sound used in DnB - The pushed saw; I might use this later but I'm happy to have developed my sound design even just by a tiny amount today.

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I listened to some inspiration shortly before I created an intro. This will get changed and added to as I develop skills, find inspiration and consult other people. I plan on having vocals on this track if I can get a vocalist.

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In my time getting to know a Pioneer DJ controller before coming to Waterbear, I blended a few songs I really enjoy together.

I think I understand the fundamentals of a deck but I still have a lot to learn if I want to keep a 30 minute set going.

(The file size was too large for the free version of Padlet but if you wish to see the video or receive the WAV audio let me know via email)

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Sientelo, Bailejungle, Primal Instict Mix

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Working on Beatmatching on Garage music.

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Working on Beatmatching on Garage music.

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This was quite difficult due to an error with the deck meaning I couldn’t single out the cue from the master in the phones. I just about managed to get the hang of it.

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The art of production and influences on the production of my project.

There are a couple of specific sounds I want to include in my track and these are influences for the sounds/level of sound design I want to achieve.

Track 1

Gothenburg Cluster - Urbandawn.

This more modern track is a perfect example of carefully thought out drop sound design. The bass fits in really well in the mix and the movement is extremely clean when the bass is modulated.

I am also a fan of the use of strings and an orchestral texture used in any EDM music.

Track 2

4 Hero - (Project A-KO) - Afterglow part 1&2

This track from the early 90's is a fantastic sound that many actively recreate nowadays; while I want to focus mainly on incorporating breakbeat into some of my music, playing with similar synths and modulating minor chords as heard in this track would be just as fun.

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Randomly found this and it reminded me of my times in Portugal and Ibiza. Being a DJ like this wasn't what I had initially planned but I would absolutely take the opportunity if it came to me. This contributes to LO3 - listening to all kinds of music. I have downloaded some of my favourite tracks from this to contribute towards my 1 hours worth of music by December.

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playing house music on the beach until people dance

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I'm just testing the link to canvas so I'm not restricted by the Padlet storage limit in the future.

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Made a Bossa Nova drum pattern with short Tom fills.

This is experimenting with new writing structure (drums first) on ableton [LO2]

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My classmate JayDee gave me some of the tracks he has collected over the years which I’m super grateful for. This Contributes to my SMART target of an hour of music by December.

I also worked on moving between tempos using the tracks Mania - Kosu and No Juice - Proux

The first attempt I forgot to set the loop on Mania. The second attempt was okay but I set the loop too short so when I span the Jog wheel it sounded quite strange. At least I know what I’ve done wrong!

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So what I definitely need to work on is how to be more subtle. I need to fade in the second track better and perhaps make sure the two tracks are in keys that compliment each other. As I also said before I should have not looped the first track so tight and I should also have turned the first track down as I span the jog wheel.

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This is progress on the track I started last week. I took on board some cool ideas I got from the lessons; I gated the sub bass to the drums using a noise gate in the pre-drop. This ended up sounding cool and might go well with whatever lead bass/synth I include in the pre-drop. The drums and sub bass are present in the drop but I need to find the right sound for the lead - this means the drum pattern and baseline may change.

I included the Amen Break in the last couple of bars of the build to add liveliness and tension to the build. This is the same technique I used for my previous track "Misty".

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In our creative electronic music we made beats on our chosen DAW. I made breakbeat using logic. Although I would argue this is one of my best glitchy breakbeats, it’s sort of still in my comfort zone. Next time I will try making the next tune in Ableton in our next lesson. I will also try a different style.

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I redesigned the bassline to fit the new melody I included using a serum patch. I accentuated this melody using the familiar music box sound and then included a wide (spread) upper, low cut bass that plays 8ths over the sub bass. this gives the drop a filling texture. I may have to redesign this later depending on what speaker system I will be using because the correlation is quite spread at the moment.

Im super super happy I managed to push through and create a drop because the lead synth and overall sound design was a serious mental challenge.

Edit: listening back this needs a lot of mixing. The first issue is that the bass is too loud and the drop sound design needs work still but the foundation for creativity is there. [Goal for LO2]

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This is what works for me:

Weekly planner, calendar and Diary

I often sit down for long periods at a time and crack on with production, DJ-ing or research.

I find that having a Padlet to fill out weekly gives me motivation to keep at the same projects over a longer time.

The Pomodoro technique includes working for 25 minutes then taking a 5 minute break, doing that 4-5 times then taking a 30 minute break. - This is for bigger projects and will likely be how I conduct my essays.

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I'm not the biggest fan as I believe that many examples of AI such as music-writing and Mastering bots are a genuine threat to an industry that is already difficult to earn in.

However, some things can be useful to us like AI reconstructing sounds from the ground up to allow us to make the creative decisions regarding what sounds good along the reconstruction process. This gives us a lot more opportunities to play with sound design and thus is a creative tool rather than a way to skip quickly through processes in music production

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I used Soulseek to source MP3s for my sets. This makes the music searching part of the process much easier. I will see if they downloaded properly tomorrow. (LO3)

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This time I mixed at faster tempos. I used Gothenburg Cluster - Urbandawn and +Willow Rebound - Kitcaliber(HalleyLabs).

what went well was the successful and almost smooth change in genre as I went from DnB to faster techno. I personally really enjoy the first piano part of +Willow Rebound as it is super groovy straight off the bat meaning that even after the long quiet part of Gothenburg Cluster, the transition to the intro of Willow rebound was energetic. It’s always a good sign when the Camera is bobbing.

However, there was a 1 beat delay in the start of Willow Rebound because I didn’t set the que point in the right place. This tells me I need to prepare my mixes a lot better even when put on the spot. It always helps to be able to make decisions much faster. (LO3)

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How to prepare for a production session.

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How to prepare for a production session.

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Physical

Get all the equipment ready

get the daw (busses and FX chains) ready

Eat

Sleep

Rave

Repeat

Mental

Walk

Run

Eat

Listen to inspiration to get me in the mood

Having the ideal workspace.

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very large open plan space - this will double as a living room

dark walls - wooden theme

big rug marking the outline of my studio space - the space is bordered with analog synths and keyboards. I will be faacing into the room and there will be a standing desk for my laptop with a rack underneath for Compressors.

plants

Having everything already set up; drums in the corner, dj-deck facing the window at the back of the space, Guitar and bass with amps in another corner.

How this helps

This is the ideal place for me to achieve my best work-flow as I see myself always wanting to come back to this space to compose.

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Lo-Fi - This week has thrown a curve-ball

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Lo-Fi - This week has thrown a curve-ball

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On Monday of this week I joined a server that happened to be hosting a showcase for Lo-Fi music. The host was Chillhop Records and this is a label I have been listening to for years. I simply had to join in so wrote a ~2:30 track for the prompt “Autumn Leaves”. The piece uses fallen leaves for foley and a shaker loop as well as some percussion using an instrument I bought from Adaptatrap percussion shop near my accommodation.

I also learned from my Creative Electronic Music lesson and used 9th and 7th chords mapped to a single key using the Logic Quick sampler. This actually helped make my keyboard solo more interesting as it follows different key-centres. This applies to my LO2 (writing styles) and Lo-Fi targets

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published on

Made this in a week, just in time (hopefully) for the Chillhop Autumn Leaves showcase. I used percussion I specially bought from a shop nearby and some leaves to make the shakers. the tops and tambourine were licenced (Splice) loops, sorry :( Bad Mixing good vibes <3

Genre

Lo-Fi Hip Hop

License: all-rights-reserved

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While The Leaves Are Still Green (Autumn Leaves Showcase) by BABBIT

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Made this in a week, just in time (hopefully) for the Chillhop Autumn Leaves showcase. I used percussion I specially bought from a shop nearby and some leaves to make the shakers. the tops and tambourine were licenced (Splice) loops, sorry :( Bad Mixing good vibes <3

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Is it too anecdotal opposed to evaluative?

Are points/posts evidencing and evaluating progress towards previous smart targets?

Is there multimedia evidence of work (safe to say yes in my case - keep doing this)

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Work on coverage and also work on blends. Keep listening to all kinds of music; this is how you get ppl dancing - if they hear something they know. You also need to expand your library for 20 minute+ set by December for the summative assessment, but aim for an hours worth of set-worthy music by that point.

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Your passion projects are important too! Don't be wholly consumed by your heavy EDM endeavours!

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Purple - composition/LO2

Green - DJ-ing/LO3

Blue - Evaluative/Reflctive

Yellow - Learning Tools

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My favourite current example of vocal sampling is Spice Up My Life - Sammy Virji. He uses the singer's vocals to create i reall interesting and jumpy drop.

Another on of my favourite, more goofy sampling tracks is Crush Everyone - The Quick Brown Fox. This uses samples from the original Mega Man bossfight - Grenade Man.

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Spice Up My Life (feat. Paige Eliza) by Sammy Virji

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The end of my set will display my (currently limited) Turntablism as I scratch and cut the second track “Move” on top of the master track “We do it” leading to a smooth transition between the tracks as I play with swapping the words “Like this” - from ‘We Do It’ and the words “Like that” - from ‘Move’. The techniques I used primarily consisted of the Baby+Stab scratch, the Orbit scratch and the Crab scratch as well as one Baby scratch fade.

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Currently

All I do is set my computer on the stand, plug in the interface and keyboard, open logic and just start hitting keys; I find this is the fastest way to start my workflow and get ideas down without burdening myself with setting up virtual instruments.

What I could do

Live in a house with enough space to make noises with a monitor system (preferably Adam Audio monitors with the tape tweeters) without disturbing my immediate neighbours. I would also get my hands on an actual weighted midi keyboard with a sustain pedal, a launchpad, electric drum kit, guitar, bass, a tape recorder and player and various classic keyboards (Moog, Rhodes etc). These instruments would help massively in letting me have more fun when playing instead of feeling like I'm using the same old unweighted, plastic keyboard for everything I do.

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Strengths

I'm at a strong start in terms of production quality, however I'm nowhere near where i want to be in terms of industry standards.

My existing knowledge of drumming allows me to grasp all different types of genre's drum grooves/patterns/breaks.

Weaknesses

work ethic towards written work; I'm not used to the study technique used in university level written work (in terms of Harvard referencing)

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Bear these in ming when doing anything music related.

Ear Protection

Due diligence when setting up a stage

Electrical safety

Trip hazards

pyro/fire

Dealing with people

Burn out/block

Drugs

Sleep

Financial

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For this set I found that I really need to get into the habit of taking my headphones off so I can hear what the audience is hearing. This is because my transitions sounded better in my headphones but that was because the cue was on my headphones and the tracks didn't sound nearly loud enough out the speakers. I also need to be more subtle with many of my transitions; for example playing a bit of one song and fading it in rather than overcomplicating a transition in order to hard cut from one song to another only for it to end up sounding rubbish.

I did actually use the Set opener I proposed at the start of the term but I don't know if I will keep it.

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This set was a little better as the stress of playing at the venue was not there. There are still errors however.

What went well

The song choices were pretty good for what I wanted so sound like.

I incorporated Misty (one of my own tracks) into the set.

I had a couple of good transitions.

I did make use of effects.

I moved to garage at the end which is a huge change in tempo - variety.

What didn't go so well

Misty was in the wrong key so when I mixed it in with Jungle it sounded awful.

a couple of the transitions were janky and failing to beat match is really obvious from an audience point of view.

I need to understand how long I will be playing for so I pick the best songs I can for the time I am allowed - I didn't manage to transition all the way to hip-hop like I wanted to in the ~ 10 minutes we were given.

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In both formative sets I did I included my previous track Misty. I did this to compare my own sound to the sound of the tracks made by current popular EDM musicians. I had to adjust the EQ a bit but the sound was good overall. I think there are too many mids which tells me to make sure to use the multimeter in logic more to visually analyse my sound and get it mastered correctly.

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Off to study music at uni soon. Gonna upload at least one thing before I go.

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Today I took inspiration from my recent Lo-Fi tracks and added a breakdown section after the second pre-drop which features a band-passed stereo out; this lowers tension only to bring it up again with the juxtaposed, high energy return of the drop. After my Tuesday lesson with Joe I have reworked the lead synth to be more 'filling' in the stereo spread and more like the lead for my reference track (Vertigo - Venjent).

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Dark Horses production

Initial notes

Low cut kick at the start then sudden introduction of bass

Acoustic drums

Heavy use of synths

drone guitar

Harmonic drone -  feedback?

Reversed and reverb-ed vocals with backing vocals

Bass, drum and guitar breakdown

Looping used a lot

Distortion pedal on the guitar

Lots of reverb overall

Pads and drones play a huge part in the ambience

Around 130 BPM

Listening back with headphones

Distortion/flanger Effect applied to the cymbal/snare at the start

13/4 or 2 bars of 4 and a bar of 5

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Today I practiced mastering and vocal processing in Logic using a Track recorded by Bob Earland and a guest singer. This track featured four vocal tracks and I used them all.

Two of the tracks I chose to use as Reverb-ed panned backing vocals for stereo spread. Around half way through I froze the reverb on certain harmonics I liked at two different points on the two tracks to lay into the creepy ambient sound of the track

One track was a centralised reverb-ed and low cut backing VOX with a de-esser to avoid reversing the harsh high frequencies.

The Lead Vox had most of the work done as after compressing and exciting the track, I could hear the bleeding of the monitor headphones in the recording which called for a noise gate and the sibilance also became quite unbearable so I applied a high-shelf de-esser.

I also split the backing track into stems and stereo spread the guitar for a much wider sound.

To master the Stereo out:

First thing I had to do EQ and Multipress the master.

Using the Multimeter I aimed for a bass-heavy slope down to the top end and I managed this with the EQ and Multiprocessor.

Then, due to the amount of stereo spread I had applied across the different channels I had to monitor the correlation and use a direction mixer to ensure the track would sound good if played on a mono system.

I then applied an adaptive limiter to bring the LUFs up to a more "commercial" level but without crushing important elements of the song.

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I have never written lyrics before, at least good ones. I have cringed at awful noted i have made in the past. how do I write lyrics?

Research task

Many people write poems before making them into lyrics.

Here's a useful link - https://www.rcm.ac.uk/media/Lyric%20Writing.pdf

when I went home for the weekend I played the guitar for the first time in a while and sung some old songs, I then experimented by building on these chords, using new chords and just singing whatever crap came out of my mouth and it ended up being quite pleasant. I might need a guitar here in brighton.

I'm listening to lots of music inspired by struggle or loss with really well thought out lyrics (at least in my opinion) (Oliver Anthony and Mon Rovîa) which is nice for acoustic music but probably not transferrable to electronic without sounding face-meltingly cringy.

In memory of Quincy Jones I am listening over my favourite song (cover) of his, 'Ai No Corrida' and reading its lyrics. The song itself is a jumpy Disco track and the lyrics seem to be about love, love being seemingly a popular theme in dance music. another example of this would be my most recent track 'Shameless' that uses chopped Splice vocals written by a vocalist and the theme of the original vocal is love.

Ai No Lyric Corrida notes

Metaphors are quite often used; "In a maze can't find my way".

This leads on to my next point - quite often grammar is subtly undermined to aid the flow of the song.

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I used the skills I learned from my mastering lesson and applied it to a track I worked on over the summer of '24. I now need to listen to it with the Waterbear studio monitors for one final reference before releasing it.

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I went to see a DJ set by Badger this evening

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I went to see a DJ set by Badger this evening

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Tonight I watched as badger played a ton of his original pieces in one huge set. Despite him clipping quite clearly, he demonstrated an impressive ability to play a ton of tracks back to back with no break and flawless transitions.

I will be taking notes as I think I should try doing what he does and instead of having a drop followed by a transition to a build of another track, I should go from the drop of one track straight to the drop of another track to maintain the energy.

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Formative DJ set - the final recording CANVAS LINK

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Formative DJ set - the final recording CANVAS LINK

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Current progress on the 2024 sept-dec project - CANVAS LINK

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Current progress on the 2024 sept-dec project - CANVAS LINK

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Due to paper thin walls in my halls apartment and sharing with non-Waterbear students, I can't use monitors, nor can I fix anything to the walls, however I use a pair of Austrian Audio Hi-X60 Closed-back studio headphones for listening, composition, mixing and mastering because I am so used to them at this point.

I use different headphones and my phone and Mac speaker for listening to my tracks after I'm happy with them in the Hi-X60s. I've started to use the waterbear venue speakers too.

Next year I aim to find a space where I can invest time and money into a proper monitoring setup, for now I will use the Waterbear mixing suite as much as I can.

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We had a lesson on Sampling and originally this was a DnB spin of some samples we compiled in the creativity lesson but I have now turned it into Garage to work on genres I'm less used to. It also features vocals although I did not write and record them I mixed them in.

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Example

"X artist is more important to Y than Z artist"

I would first look into who made the statement. If it was an individual or news outlet I would choose to chalk the statement up to 'Hate-fishing' for attention, but if it was a researcher I may look into it more.

It also depends on how much the statement irks me, of course. If it was against an artist I enjoy I would do my research. This goes for accusations and 'cancelling' for me too. if someone I like was 'cancelled' I would definitely take the time to do my research.

Do the research - wide reading. come up with a conclusion.

Task - Deconstructing a music Statement "Jazz is for nerds"

Initially I disagree, however I cannot speak against the statement personally as people might label me a nerd.

Music like John Coltrane's Giant Steps are incredibly popular jazz tunes famed for their complexity and the skill of the player. It is the Loud minority of Tracks like this, "Donna Lee" and a more recent jazz track that has become popular outside the jazz world for its wild nature and 11/8 time signature, "Night in Tunisia - Jesus Molina".

I have just asked my classmate what he thinks of jazz music and he responded "Weird time signatures" this is the first indicator to me that people might just have the wrong idea about Jazz music. I will ask more people about what they thin about jazz music to better inform me of the opinions of the average non-jazz listener.

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I think Shameless is ready for release (YAYY!)

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I think Shameless is ready for release (YAYY!)

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After listening to Shameless (the track I worked on over the summer) the first time with the venue speakers I nearly blew my eardrums with how high the high-mids were in the mix, I also noticed how over-processed the track seemed. I went back to the mixing stage, reduced the high mids in the lead chord channel and a few other synth channels, went back to the mastering stage, removed everything I had done and restarted the mastering process.

This time I just used an eq to subtly lower the high mids, ensuring the audio quality remained for other systems (I will do further checks with all sorts of systems including the HQ mixing suite before release as well). I also used a multipressor with the Multimeter to remove any stand-out frequency ranges that the multimeter could pick up, I then used the Phat FX exclusively for the soft clipper it had, I then used a final limiter to ease up the LUFs without damaging the sound and it sounded pretty good.

I was well pleased to hear it for a second time on the venues speaker, this time without any standout issues.

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Extra Reading - Emulating the 2a03 microprocessor

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Extra Reading - Emulating the 2a03 microprocessor

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A style commonly replicated nowadays is the sound of the 80's video games. I'll use the soundtrack to Super Mario Bro's 3 as an example seeing as some of its tracks are still used and re-written in modern Mario games - namely, Super Mario 3D world ("Overworld 2").

To achieve this sound I had to understand not just how to bit crush sounds, but what Nintendo used to make the sounds, this was a Ricoh 2a03 microprocessor/sound chip.

This contains:

low frequency programmable timer

two nearly-identical rectangle wave function generators

triangle wave function generator

random wavelength function generator

audio sample playback unit (delta modulation channel)

- (Brad Taylor. (April 23rd 2004). 2A03 technical reference. [Online]. nesdev.org. Available at: https://www.nesdev.org/2A03%20technical%20reference.txt [Accessed 13 November 2024].)

To simplify (for myself), the 2a03 uses 2 slightly different 'lead' square wave oscillators (both capable of pitch-bending), a triangle oscillator primarily used for bass, an LFSR powered random noise generator (mainly used for rhythmic 'drums') and a DPCM for importing various samples (at a very low bit depth) giving a total of just 5 channels the composers had to work with.

I limited myself to these parameters in Logic, using an 8bit synthesiser that had just what I needed (Magical 8bit Plug 2) I had a channel with the square wave oscillators, 2 monophonic channels for the triangle wave and noise and an audio channel with a bit crusher and real drum samples to emulate the DPCM. I wasn't fully able to capture the sound of the DPCM as I am unsure on how to lower the bit rate, sample rate and bit depth of logic. I then proceeded to write something in keeping of the style, it was also horrible compared to what Nintendo's composers were able to write.

I'm unsure of exactly what the DPCM does to the waveform of audio but I have found a plugin that might help - (Emma Essex. (2024). Pseudopolygon - Manual. [Online]. Heckscaper.com. Last Updated: April 29th 2024. Available at: https://heckscaper.com/ct/s/ctfc01_manual/ [Accessed 13 November 2024]).

I have also found a site that helps me to understand what PCM and DPCM is in more depth. ₋https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/difference-between-pcm-and-dpcm/.

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For Professional stuff

Nick Parker (stage director and lighting engineer)

Julian Hundy (theatre sound engineer)

Dave Barrows (cover artist)

Damian Fisher (freelance drum tutor)

Racetech (on-site horse racing broadcasters)

Fellow musicians and friends

All of my classmates

Charlie Blades (piano tutor, student at Guildhall)

Oscar Barron (fellow digital synthesiser geek and Ableton user I can call on for help)

Annabel Owen (Logic nerd, programmer and visual artist)

Working to a brief

A band's EP

mics needed

instruments

mixing

track order and mastering to fit the volume of each track (louder and quieter depending on the style of each track

budget

what needs done (demo tracks, guide tracks, just mixing/recording)

A Collaboration

genre

melodies

roles

availability

instruments and mics

A sync track

how many tracks should be written

the length of each track

what each track is representing

instrumentation

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sync track for a cartoon Space racing game

Write an electro-orchestral piece reflecting to the best of your ability the excitement and speed of racing through space, avoiding asteroids and opponents.

the tempo should be anywhere around 140 - 160.

the duration of the track should be roughly 5 minutes (+-3 seconds) but each separate section should be loop-able at the drop or equivalent. This is in case racers should take too long to reach the 2nd or third lap.

The first lap (intro and section A) must fit the energetic orchestral melodic bass style.

the second lap (B section) should have reduced texture. feel free to make use of more reserved drums and pads here (that is only a suggestion).

the third section should return to a Melodic Bass.

The third lap returns to orchestral Melodic Bass.

instrumentation can be varied but include brass (stabs or full melodic or harmonic lined) and strings (or synthesised strings). you can also make use of sound design for basses and leads.

we want to emphasise when a player is hit by or brushed close to an asteroid, we request that you make short melodic 1 shots that can fit over the mix when this happens; they must reflect the intensity of brushing past asteroids or being hit by them. we will program triggers for these sounds so we will need these one shots sent separately.

Send the track as a WAV along with the track segmented into section 1, 2 and 3 as separate WAVs and also include each 1 shot as separate WAVs.

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Taking inspiration from Oppidan's "Gravity" I made these simple airy chords. To make them more interesting at the start I faded them in steeply with tight LFO-ing to form a rhythmic riser. I tightened the sound with an enveloper.

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After writing this for a long time over summer and my renewed interest in it over October and November I am ready to release Shameless. In order to do so I will need artwork and I will be working with my uncle at ToxicByDesign for the cover art as he did amazingly with my last track Misty.

I also plan at this point to have a PRS account set up and paid for to cover potential future releases.

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Yes I have been working on this don't worry!

I have decided to switch my main project from the Drum and Bass I had before to a Garage track. I did this because I feel this track fits the set I had in mind and I believe it is closer to what a live crowd would want to hear over the type of drum and bass I was making. I will not ignore the last track as I am aware of markets it appeals to as my reference track by Venjent has seen success in many parts of Europe where Venjent has been doing a lot of his gigs despite being a UK-based producer. I also do enjoy that style of DnB myself.

This is the current progress on my summative track to be used in the final DJ set. I incorporated vocals from Sammy Virji and Flowdan's track "Shella Verse", giving credits as the song is now under their name but labeled as a bootleg/remix. If I want to release this however, I will need legal clearance and it will most likely not be monetised.

Other than that I have added sound design (you can hear from the previous post) plus other sections. I have also experimented with using PhatFX's soft limiter to raise the LUFs a bit more without sacrificing sound. I have also added significantly to the arrangement of the track; adding sections and breakdowns after the piano chords get monotonous (if you pay attention to Shameless it also shares this structure). I took tips from Joe to extend certain sections that are not explored for long enough as well.

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Sammy Virji x Flowdan Shella Verse (Babbit Bootleg) WIP 20 NOV

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Skrillex and electronic music: pushing sound design further and further.

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Skrillex and electronic music: pushing sound design further and further.

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Skrillex

Skrillex popularised a genre called "Brostep" from the existing underground sounds of Dubstep. This pushed dubstep into the limelight making it a far more popular genre.

The sounds of "Brostep" quickly became what the average person would think of dubstep and, for the most part, that is what dubstep became associated with.

Scary Monsters and Nice Spirites, a track you will associate now with early 2010's CSGO clips from screaming children was, at the time, pushing the boundaries of sound design and sound system culture; noisy basses and screeching top end unheard before.

Pace-Maccarick (2024)

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Track analysis - Shella Verse edit (by me)

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Track analysis - Shella Verse edit (by me)

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The tempo sits at 140 - quite fast for Garage (Speed Garage/Slow Jungle(with the use of break beats))

Keep it 4/4 for dance purposes

The structure is as follows: 8 bar drum only intro, 16 bar A section with vocals, 8 bar B section with vocals, 8 bar A section recapitulation, 32 bar middle section (C) with airy chords and Flowdan Vox, 16 bar A section recapitulation with Flowdan Vox, D section with saw chords, A section.

It opens in B Phrygian (E min but starting on B) but continues to move with a fluid sense of key using the movements of parallel chords.

Im using a lot of dotted rhythms for the piano sample stabs

sampling has been the focus of the track; from sampling vocals and piano chords to chopping drum breaks.

I have made use of LFOs to create interesting rhythms and stutter effects in both the instruments and in the master (reservedly).

I have used live vocal scratching on Flowdan's vocals to drive the 90s feel of the track. The Amen break and James Brown break also help with this of course.

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Something I love about EDM is the crazy rhythms and never-heard-before sounds at fast tempos and the excitement that brings. One of my favourite dubstep producers last year produced a mix of dubstep and jazz, capturing the Mario Kart energy. I fell in love with both the musicianship and sound design of this track and it would be my long term goal to reach this point.

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Teminite & Skybreak - Accelerate by Monstercat

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Teminite & Skybreak - Accelerate is out now on all platforms: https://monster.cat/accelerate 
Get new music weekly - subscribe to Monstercat Uncaged: https://monster.cat/uncaged

Follow Monstercat for new music content, news, merch, and more: https://ffm.bio/monstercat
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▼ Follow Teminite
Instagram: https://instagram.com/teminitemusic
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Apple: https://music.apple.com/us/artist/teminite/639368250
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Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5EEuae5uigQnwgYCl0s8EF
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Teminite

▼ Follow Skybreak
Twitter: https://twitter.com/skybreakedm
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Facebook: https://facebook.com/skybreakmusic
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Monstercat is one of electronic music's most influential independent record labels. With five releases a week across its Uncaged, Instinct, and Silk labels, we've topped radio and streaming charts worldwide, offering a diverse range of genres across bass, dance, pop, house, chill, electronic, and more. Backed by passionate employees, driven artists, and the dedication of fans worldwide, Monstercat proves that independent labels have the ability to reshape and reimagine the music industry landscape.
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✏️ Lyrics
Gentlemen, start your engines

Time to accelerate

Time to accelerate

#melodicbass #monstercat #uncaged #teminite #skybreak

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A start to my own attempt at Jazz influenced Dubstep

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A start to my own attempt at Jazz influenced Dubstep

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Fortunately I have received a lot of positive feedback from this draft of the intro to a jazz/funk-dubstep track affirming the "Straight up Mario Kart" vibe I was shooting for. The next challenge is sound design and exciting top lines. I will of course be attempting to implement my own style (powerful chordal drops and rhythmically exciting drums) so as not to just create a cheap copy of Teminite's work.

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I worked on sound design today to develop my skills in making stinky basses that ravers will enjoy. The sounds are based off of DJ Jackum's hit UKG tracks, Noise Inside and Ninja. We worked on garage and I made the sounds while my friend organised the sounds to a garage backing beat. I feel a little better about my sound design and how to make and modulate different sounds. My friend uses Ableton so I got a chance to flex my Ableton brain muscles to navigate his screen and give him ideas for arrangement and what plugins to use where. This is progress on my SMART target of collaboration. It also Contributes to my SMART target of improving and practicing sound design.

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Musical instrument proficiency

Drums - 4/5

keys - 2/5

Music theory knowledge

Music notation - 4/5

chord progressions and harmony - 5/5

Scales and modes - 4/5

Songwriting skills

lyric writing - 2/5

melody creation - 3/5

song structure and arrangement - 4/5

Production and recording

DAW proficiency - 5/5

recording techniques - 4/5

mixing and mastering - 3/5

Collaboration and communication

working with other musicians - 3/5

communicating musical ideas effectively - 4/5

giving and receiving feedback - 4/5

Performance skills

live performance - 3.5/5

stage presence and audience engagement (no idea yet)

Improvisation - 4/5

Music Business and Promotion

Copyright and licensing - 3/5

Marketing and self promotion - 1/5

networking and building industry connections - 2/5

Self reflection and goal setting

Clearly I need to get performing more often.

I probably need to collaborate with a singer-songwriter

keep flexing my fingers on the keys, get better with soloing over modulating chord changes.

keep doing rudiments.

make a specialised music account on social media. And actually find an artist name.

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This is an example of someone emulating a 2a03 much like I did but with an actual tracker (Open MPT). You can actually see the 5 channels I explained were integrated in the 2a03: the 2 square oscillators, one triangle oscillator, a noise generator and DPCM channel.

Open MPT in conjunction with Acid Pro

Open MPT is a modern Tracker software DAW. Electronic music in the 90s was commonly made using a tracker. It works like an Excel spreadsheet that quickly scrolls downward. This makes the software ideal for drum programming even to the super fast limits that other daws such as Logic and Ableton cannot reach due to system overload. On top of this the software is free and obtainable on Github. It is available to Microsoft and linux users but not to Mac users. Considering the price of Macs, open MPT is a good tracker for people interested in programming drums this way.

Open MPT is better than old trackers is that it allows VSTs for post processing on samples.

As a DAW on its own, however, Open MPT is extremely hard to use. Although people had to use trackers for creating simple pieces of music like old Garage tracks or, in earlier cases, like the music you would hear on old video game systems like the NES.

Some People, like Apex Twin and other, more underground artists are able to create music on trackers, however, for more developed pieces of music, these artists use it in conjunction with other DAWs. An artist named Halley Labs uses Acid pro as well as Open MPT. Acid pro functions in a similar manner to Ableton at a much cheaper price, alternatively, you can use Audacity for completely free while using Open MPT for creating the loops to arrange in Audacity.

Renoise

Renoise is an interesting hybrid of Modern Daw and Tracker. Renoise functions as a normal DAW such as Ableton or Acid Pro, but instead of a drum and piano roll, it uses a tracker. https://www.renoise.com/products/renoise

Open MPT, Audacity, Acid Pro and Renoise

Ease of Use - not easy at all; you have to go out of your way to program note values and velocity for each grid point (8ths, 16ths, 32nd notes). Acid pro works in a similar way to Ableton but is more loop - focused, whereas Audacity is entirely loop and sample focussed, making Open MPT a useful tool for working with Audacity.

Workflow - incredibly slow; you have to literally type in the notes exactly where you want them. if you want a sample with delay, you have to program the delay of the sound in each box of the channel on the tracker. (as seen in the video). You can see what all the inputs are on each channel: Note Value (Black), Sustain (Blue), Velocity (Green) and Pitch bend (purple)

creativity - quite interesting; the limitations and convoluted nature can often lead to positive mistakes and old-skool sounds that are associated with old Techno, garage, jungle or even videogames.

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UFO 50: mooncat first area theme (2a03 cover)

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Essex. (2024). Pseudopolygon - Manual. [Online]. Heckscaper.com. Last Updated: April 29th 2024. Available at: https://heckscaper.com/ct/s/ctfc01_manual/ [Accessed 13 November 2024]).

Brad Taylor. (April 23rd 2004). 2A03 technical reference. [Online]. nesdev.org. Available at: https://www.nesdev.org/2A03%20technical%20reference.txt [Accessed 13 November 2024].)

Unknown. (2024). Difference between PCM and DPCM. [Online]. geeksforgeeks.org. Last Updated: 11th September 2024. Available at: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/difference-between-pcm-and-dpcm/ [Accessed 6 December 2024].

Solomon Pace-Maccarick. (2024). What is brostep? A history of the infamous genre in 5 key tracks. [Online]. dazeddigital.com. Last Updated: August 26th 2024. Available at: https://www.dazeddigital.com/music/article/64343/1/what-is-brostep-five-key-tracks-skrillex-fred-again-dubstep [Accessed 6 December 2024].

https://www.renoise.com/products/renoise

https://soundcloud.com/oppidanmusic/gravity

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I'm super happy to have a finished product. This is the fastest I've completed a full length track. I have included this track in my final performance as the opener, followed by Oppidan's Gravity.

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Hella Cursed (Shella Verse - Babbit bootleg)

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I've hit the brick wall that is a drop that I've so familiarly been stopped by before. Can I make it through?

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Screenshot of my arrangement for reference

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Screenshot of my arrangement for reference