Thursday, March 22, 2012

Limitless Sample Remix

For the past week I've been working on DJ effects and mapping them to my APC40 controller. My friend, Thomas Clough aka theping781, took me over to meet a couple real DJ's, Dj Aleve and Marcobiotics. Aleve showed me some stuttering effects called loop rolls. I learned how to do that and some other stuff. Here is a sample remix of what I used a couple of DJ effects on:


I'd post the whole song, but I didn't really do a whole lot to it. Instead, I posted the most interesting snippet with the the most effects used. Perhaps if I do more later, I'll repost the whole song. Here is what the module looks like:


To the left is the 8 custom mapped knobs, and to the right are all the effects "grouped" into the effects panel that make it work. Pretty snazzy stuff!

Also went up to Kansas City with Tom and his DJ friends and saw Dieselboy. The concert was epic, and loud!

I've been trying to learn how to put effects on what is called "dummy tracks." This allows you to map out effects onto keys and process a song through "dummy tracks" that feed into the master output. It's one way to create clean effects that are mapped to keys instead of knobs. Unfortunately, the tutorials I've seen lately are super vague on how to do this. For DJ effects, I've been laying out the same track side-by-side, and using the crossfader to quickly switch to the track that doesn't have effects on it. I've not seen anyone do this in any tutorials, so that can't be the right way to do it...

After I'm done playing around with the effects and learning more live performance tricks, I'll go back to making another song. I like to figure out how all this stuff works, that way when I go to a new track, I can apply everything I've learned. The next song will be heavy on loop rolls!

Monday, March 12, 2012

Legacy (Full Demo)

I've finally turned Legacy into a full track! I'll probably go back sometime and re-master it, but for now, here is the full song:


I made this song, then I went back and used a tool called "Redux." It's what is giving the sound various harsh tones:


Also, this is what the automation looks like for two of my synth lines:



Pretty crazy stuff! I still want to add voice sampling in this clip. I'm going to have a robotic voice repeating "Legacy" then using the vocoder tool to make it sound cool. We'll see how that goes.

I'll probably work on another track, maybe starting Saturday/Sunday. I want to have six (good) songs by January 2013. I'm still having to learn a lot just to make them sound mediocre, so we'll see how that deadline goes.

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Legacy Demo used in MW3 Clip

So, while working on my latest track, I decided to take a break and play some MW3 online. Then I decided to render a clip of me playing some oldschool MW2 style gameplay from during my game time. THEN I decided "Hey, this clip is about the same length as my latest sample."

TickleMeMatt Plays Oldschool (MW2 Style)

Sounds pretty legit! Also, that is an updated sample from my previous blog. I added some detail to the synth line and cleared up some of that bass.

Monday, March 5, 2012

Legacy Demo Sample

Behold! The first song created on my new Macbook Pro:


This is the first sample I've created on the new laptop. So far, the only frustration is that the screen is pretty small to be working in Ableton. All the other programs I use, like Photoshop, are perfect on the smaller screen. Oh well, something I'll have to get used to.

Legacy is the name of the EP and the name of the first song on it! So far I'm pretty happy with the progress. Now I need to make it quicker to the "punch," and finish the song up.

Sunday, March 4, 2012

Working in 3D

Haven't playing with the music in a week. I will be changing that tomorrow night! I need to reload all my drum samples onto my new macbook pro. I feel a little disappointed I haven't created a new sample in a week.

Here's just a quick screenshot as to what I've been working on:


I already made a 3D logo before, but I've found simpler ways of designing 3D stuff. This is more of a demonstration of my current design progress than anything else. I still want to make it better than my previous design, but we'll see soon enough. Thanks to Nick Bishop for showing me some stuff about photoshop and the macbook pro!