An amateur experimental composer
Didn’t expect to actually be happy with my first pass as playing a lead over last night’s backing track but I think I pulled it off. Pretty satisfied with how it turned out – my playing is actually improving somewhat. Only minimal corrections to a couple of slightly early/late notes 🙂
Now if I could only get part one to work! Job for another day or six.
Been working a lot on the new take on the old demo album from forever ago I talked about in the previous post. Haven’t been doing any 90 minute challenges since I’ve been spending way too much time on trying to make this happen. This is a bit from part way through that I’ve been working on for the last couple of days. It needs a lead part which I have some ideas for but this is likely the close-to-final backing track for it!
A few of Spitfire Audio instruments and a bit from Reason Objekt. Not sure what the lead sound will be yet but the experiment starts tomorrow night 🙂
About 15 years ago I made a full-length demo CD of instrumental music using a Roland XP-10 keyboard and SoundForge software on what is now an ancient Windows computer. I had practically zero experience playing or recording at the time, it was just something I really wanted to do. The result was not the easiest thing to listen to.
Unfortunately (or fortunately) I no longer have the original audio files/tracks for those demos. All I have is a CD copy I burned off that I’ve been able to rip back into AIFF files.
My original idea a year or so ago was to remake those tracks, but since I got rid of the XP-10 a long time ago and finding the sounds via a VST looks like it could be a pretty costly search, that idea fell by the wayside. The new idea is instead of making sound-for-sound remakes, I’m going to lift my old ideas and recreate them how I would do them today while staying somewhat close to the originals.
Today I started working on recreating one of the weirder synth sounds with a bit of a darker tone (which admittedly I probably would have used in the original if it existed at the time). I took a sample of the original sound as best I could and used it as an exciter for a “Classic Synth” preset in Objekt. A few tweaks and here’s what I’ve got for an improved version!
Took a shot at a couple quick slightly distorted keys lead parts on the Linnstrument for the two breaks this morning. Turned out ok I think. Might take a stab at starting another new bit later on today.
Didn’t start out to make a happier bit, I swear. Playing around trying to learn more about Objekt and the weird chime instrument just happened out of nowhere so I figured I’d try to do something with it. Couple breaks in there to add a lead at some point but I’m pretty happy with it as-is. Definitely including it somewhere.
I need to break out of this similar structure. This one is not too bad but too repetitive. Needs a revisit soon.
A recent bout with insomnia that dragged on for weeks made me think about an anti-lullaby that would keep you awake instead of helping you get to sleep. Took a nice bell chime sound and distorted it to make it slightly discordant. Bit waivers back and forth between maybe relaxing and more aggro. Definitely like the way it’s going!
Decided to take a break from all the experimental stuff and do something more straightforward. A bit of composing and playing this kinda simple thing. I don’t typically use a lot of drums but this kinda worked out nicely. Will likely go back to it tomorrow or the next day and play with adding some kind of lead to it.
Sidetracked again! Against all my own rules, I recently subscribed to Reason+ because I just couldn’t resist trying out the Objekt synth (used in a couple of my previous posts). One of the things that really hooked me into the idea of using it was the ability to route in my microphone or premade sample as an external source to “excite” the physical model and influence the sound in real-time creating truly one-of-a-kind sounds. So I decided to play around with that this morning.
Took a while for me to get used to using Reason in Logic but after a little reading it’s actually pretty simple to route cables around the back of the rack to connect up whatever modules you’re using. This is a really simplistic setup for this bit using a Combinator rack element to house Objekt, the Grain Sample Manipulator running into Objekt’s external input, and the Dual Arpeggiator set up with a fast moving high arp and a slower moving low register arp. The Grain Sample Manipulator is playing a sample of me saying random words and looping it in a forward->backward sequence. This is the result!
I guess I’m going to change the rules a bit. The “90 minute minimum challenge” since I seem to hang around longer when I have time.
Today’s track is more messing around with Objekt trying to learn more about it. This time I am still using the same patch for 3 tracks but each is tweaked a bit to sound slightly different. No composing this time, though, all me and the Linnstrument + Expressive E (which explains why the timing sounds off even though it shouldn’t).
Probably take another pass at this one down the road.
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