Assignment: Reason

I'll preface this post with a discovery I made when doing my project: the longer I spent making my song, the longer I felt I needed to work on it to make it good. In tinkering with Reason, using various effects and synths, pads and samples, it became clear that you could spend either one hour or a hundred making a song. Mine fell somewhere in between. Though I'm sure I overlooked some cool Reason features, by the end I felt as though I was able to work into the song most of the effects/sounds I was aiming for. I hope you like it.





Creation: where to begin?

I don't know if this is backwards, but I started with a sample and built a piece around it. Over break, I spent a lot of time thinking of what sample I wanted to use. Then I was watching Family Guy (which is worse than South Park, but better than the recent Simpsons), and came across the episode involving the Kool-Aid man. Ohhh Yeahhhhhh. And there it was.

It took me a while to find this sample in high quality, I guess it hasn't been used in any of their more recent advertising campaigns, but it was used by comedian Dane Cook in a track entitled "Not So Kool-Aid." The track was only moderately funny, but the sample was perfect.

To make it more manageable in Recycle, I copied the .mp3 into Logic Pro first, and isolated the several second clip (which I aptly titled "Oh Yeah.aiff"). I bounced it, and brought it into Recycle. By cutting it down in Logic first, it made my job in Recycle much easier.

Having made the sample, I brought it into Reason. I didn't especially like Dr. Rex, so I messed about until I was able to set up my sample in the NN-XT Advanced Sampler. I set it up for the keyboard, and after assigning the sample to all keys, I got a pretty cool effect - by moving up and down the keyboard, the sample was lowered in pitch/slowed down or elevated in pitch/sped up. Moving up or down by simple octaves kept the sample durations in usable durations, and let me imcorporate the sample into different stages of the song easily. A pretty sweet feature.

Then I set about creating the bassline. I'm not sure how real DJ's/composers do this, but it seemed the most logical place to start. First, I identified the elements of House that I wanted to bring into the bassline - basically four-to-the-floor plus a hi-hat effect - and so I primarily used these sounds. Then, I identified the effect I wanted the bassline to have - I wanted the song to gradually ramp-up, until about 45 seconds, where it would then prominently feature the "oh-Yeah" sample that had been more subtly deployed earlier in the piece. So I made five or six different patterns in 2 instances of ReDrum, and went to work.

Then I got really stuck. How did I make it actually sound good? It took me a while to decide what sound I wanted (I chose c-minor as the key, because it's easy to play, minor, and I had already centered my sample around middle C). So I set up several instances of Thor (one specifically to use a pad to bring additional depth to the piece), and also a subtractor and arpegiator. The arpegiator became the focus of the first several bars of the piece, as the other instruments/sounds came in around it, adding layers and depth of sound. This augmented the building of the bassline, and I liked the effect.

After adding and recording all my tracks, I needed to go back over them to add some effects/automation etc. This was useful, especially for smoothing the introduction of new instruments, and getting new sounds from existing ones.

Blog #4

Blog #4:

I know this blog is primarily the review of a fellow student's project, but I found this recently and wanted to take this opportunity to share it. It's a great documentary (there are many parts, I'm merely posting the first one) on remix culture - very new/relevant, and featuring popular DJ Girl Talk who will be performing at Spring Fling this year. This clip is only 2:30 long, and it's definitely worth a watch.

What's really cool about the project is that the producers of the documentary have asked others to literally "remix" their film and turn it into something new - much as its subjects remix music.

Check it out, and find the rest of it here:



In any event, on to Jeff's tour-de-force: the House Training Montage

After listening to this song I had a number of reactions:
1st. I had some difficulty hearing the best of the three samples (Joe Esposito - You're the Best Around) in Jeff's piece. I had the sense that maybe it had been sped up to fit with the tempo and to sound a little more tech-y. The effect was good, even if I'm partial to this original sequence:



If that doesn't make you want to kick some ass and get huge, I don't know what will.

2nd. It was a high energy piece - a little to hype for me, but it comes with the genre (Jeff choose House). The tempo was quicker than the 120 I used in mine, but I can appreciate how it adds to Jeff's mission for the track - to pump. it. up.

3rd. The first 20 seconds have a different feel than the rest of the piece. I cant exactly figure out what's going on or why it seems so different, but it definitely feels a bit disjoint. The bass line seems to be reworked, and the change in texture threw me off a bit. I liked the building effect right before the "real" song begins, as the beat quickens and he adds layers to the sound, but otherwise I'm left a bit confused.

4th. I really like the use of the samples in an almost percussive way - maybe I'm hearing it wrong, but they seem to add emphasis to the underlying bass line/beat. Also, whereas I tried to keep the sample as pure as possible, I like how Jeff works to make something almost completely new out of his samples, with effects and changes of the amplitude envelope.

5th. It was my impression, in listening to the piece, that Jeff could have definitely benifitted from more time - not more time in creating the piece (it is very complex, and clearly required a lot of effort to get the effects etc), but more time over which to stretch the piece. One minute is not a long time to really develop a song, and I felt as though the song would have turned out even better had it been given a chance to progress more slowly. When crunched together, it sounded a bit choppy, but if each section were given a chance to really build/transition, I think it would have been great.

Taking the piece as a whole, I'm not sure that I'd choose it over any of the individual samples for a real workout piece, but it's certainly more club-worthy. An noble effort.

With regards to my final project, I would really like to develop a trance song. I've been listening to a lot of Armen van Buuren lately, and especially after the readings on Trance I feel like this would be a cool genre in which to create a piece. I especially enjoy the building melodies of pads, and in trying to create my last proejct, I realized this was where I wanted to go with my final piece. Away from the four-on-the-floor emphasis of house and into the building, shifting harmonies of trance. This would be the primary focus of the final project. Also, Brendan and I had been talking (he's my roomate), and wanted to develop a rap song. This would certainly be secondary, but we thought it might be fun. (Disclaimer: we were inspired by our watching of the movie Hustle & Flow - a true classic).

Also, before I go, this is really cool. I had been fooling around on some online drum kits, and this one is pretty sick. Remake Daft Punk however you like...
http://www.najle.com/idaft/

I found this before Jeff...

Do not listen to anything Jeff might say, I found this song, and take full credit for its finding.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bx3S5mqvvig

PURE genius.