New song: Aflecht - RoboPimp

The song and the lessons I learned

I wrote a new song. It's kind of electro-pop. Check the below youtube video to hear the song.

During the production I was surprised at how bad a singer I am. As you can hear, I don't seem to stay in tune even with heavy autotune processing :-( There are some nasty pitch glitches in the vocals. I would have used a proper singer but they are really hard to come by. I've tried hunting for singers for the past 4 years or so without notable results.

I also learned something useful during the production of this song:

If you arrange the lead melody/vocals with bass so that the bass gets the front stage once in awhile, it brings lots of personality into the song. Listen to the chorus part at 0:46 to hear this idea in action. The lead synth+vocals play through most of the chorus and immediately when they stop playing, the bass gets more aggressive, eating up more of the higher frequencies which were previously occupied by the synth+vocals playing the lead melody. Some people call this technique "play and respond" or "call and respond" like the instruments are having a conversation, taking turns. I have to experiment with this technique some more.

Gear Used

Eurorack modular

Moog Voyager RME

Sylenth1

Battery 3

Logic Pro 9

Glue

Elephant

EchoBoy

Distressor EL8-X

Shure SM7B

Millennia HV-3C

Lyrics

this ain't your day
fix up your face

fix up lips shoes
pushups hips boobs
handbag earrings
dried up nose bleed

makeup bruises
change your clothes and
get back there you
need to suck

don't you worry babe
they asked you by name hey
bring their money in yeah
flow their juices in ya

and smile when you meet them
they'll want you much more then
white stuff helps you get there
this will ease your pain yeah

bruised eyes and lips
didn't want you this
this ain't your day
fix up your face

My approach to writing music

I've come to realise that over time I've created strict rules and philosophy which I follow when working on a new song. I consider these rules to be mandatory for my work and decided to share them with other people. Maybe some readers get some nuggets of information which they can integrate into their own working methods.

So here we go...

COMPOSING & ARRANGEMENT

• A bad song with great production is still a bad song.
• The song is good when only the melody and bass are needed to extract an emotion from the listener.
• Every song needs a hook. It doesn't matter if the music is techno or rock.
• Start with the hook and expand from there since it's the hardest thing to get right.
• Song has to have more than one part in it and they have to have dynamics/contrast between them.
• A good song structure usually makes mediocre song parts sound great together.
• Keep it minimal: use as few instruments, sounds, song parts and notes as possible.
• Every instrument and sound effect has to have a clear purpose in your arrangement.
• Finish your song before you start the next one. Otherwise you'll run out of time and creativity and get nothing done.
• When you bring in another instrument in the song, always bring in or drop out at least a second one also: otherwise the overall change is too small and boring.

MIXING & MASTERING

• The most important part of mixing is the arrangement. If the mix sounds overcrowded: adjust the arrangement.
• To fill a space in the frequency spectrum, first see if you can tweak an existing instrument to do the job instead of adding a new one.
• Shit in, shit out. There is no "fixing it in the mix". Get it right at the source.
• Keep it minimal: the less processing your sounds have, the better they usually sound.
• Use as little reverb as possible: substitute it with delay to keep the mix clean.
• If every sound is in the background, nothing is in the background.
• To create the feeling of space, keep most of the instruments dry and add delay/reverb on only one or two instruments.
• Produce and mix your song on different days.

Blog audio links are now party up and running

Most links are now up and running, thanks to Reaktio.net who kindly offered me a new place to host my data.

Some audio examples are still down, but I intend to recreate them at some point.

Music links are down for awhile due to file hosting server crash

Filehosting server blew up, so all the music links are down for awhile. Hopefully this will be fixed soon.

New song: Aflecht - Again

A new song is ready once again. The melodies should be a female vocalist, but none were available for this song. If you know a good one which might fit this song, point her to my direction.

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Download original MP3.

New song: Aflecht - Junkies

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Download the MP3 version.

New song: Aflecht - Drive

This month's track is ready.

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MP3 download.

New song: Kraku - Two Hours of Sleep

I forgot to post my last month's song here. So here it is.

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MP3 download.

New song: Kraku - Disco Mama

Here's my latest track. It should have been an authentic 70s disco track with a black fat lady singing with a raspy and powerful voice, but I  ran out of those. So here's an instrumental version for you. It's still a very short version. Maybe one day I'll make a proper arrangement of it.

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Technique: How to make that dubstep formant bass

There are several ways and variations on how to create formant sounds (ie. human vowel sounds) with synthesizers. Today I'll concentrate on one of them: filtering + sample rate reduction.

The theory goes that when the audio frequencies hit the Nyquist Frequency (samplerate/2) the higher frequencies start bouncing/mirroring back to the lower frequencies. This causes the harmonics to modulate each other as some of them are moving up and some are moving down at the same time. You can use this phenomenon to create formant sounds. First make sure your samplerate is really low, like maybe 6kHz or so (try different settings in sample reduction plugin/hardware). Then sweep your audio source from low to high frequencies and see what happens. You should hear something resembling formants going like "ayyayyyayyy!" as made famous by Skrillex and others in the dubstep community.

It's best to use simple sounds which you run through sample rate reduction. This usually gives the best results. Try a simple oscillator + lowpass/bandpass filter with resonance cranked high. When you move the filter cutoff, you should hear clear formants coming out of your speakers. You can also try changing the sample rate while you're changing the filter cutoff. This gives you even more wide range of interesting and usable sounds.

If the sample rate is stable, you'll hear metallic hissing kind of artifacts in your sound. If you don't want this in your sound, you can reduce the effect by modulating the sample rate with noise ever so slightly.

So to recap what's been told so far, here's the signal flow:

Oscillator --> Filter(lowpass/bandpass with resonance) --> SampleRateReduction --> Speakers

You should note that reducing sample rate has a destructive effect on the lower frequencies also. Because of this it might be a good idea to highpass filter the formant sound and layer it with sub bass. This will give you best of the both worlds: crispy formant action + clear and powerful low end.

The above is exactly what I've done in my latest song. Here's a short clip of the bass synth soloed:

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As you can hear, the formant bass is frequently switched between a non formant bass sound. The main difference between the sounds is that the non-formant bass hasn't been ran through the sample rate reduction. Just to give you an idea how the non-formant bass sounds on its own, here's a clip of it:

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If you're interested in hearing what the above bass sounds in the context of the finished track, you should listen to this:

Just received my very first 5U modular - MOTM

MOTM setup, consisting of Oakley modules. (thanks Paul!)
It'll be interesting to see what kind of noise this baby here can do:

One more filter is still on it's way to fill up that last empty slot.
I'll be using my eurorack's ES-3 to control this setup.
I will post some audio examples of this setup early next week or so.

New song: Aflecht - With My Voice

I've been thinking of writing a dubstep track for over a year now, but never got myself to actually start the project. But here it finally is. My very first dubstep track ever:

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Gear used:
Eurorack modular synthesizer
Moog Voyager RME
Distressor EL8-X
API 2500
Battery 3
Silent Way
M-Tron Pro
Sylenth1
EchoBoy
Glue

Updated studio setup

It's been quite awhile since I've updated my studio setup / gear list. So here it is.

------------------

Monitoring / Signal path:
Genelec 8250A (x2)
Avantone Active Mixcube (x2)
SM Pro Audio M-Patch

DAW:
Mac Pro, 8 core, 2.26 GHz, 6GB
RME Audio Fireface 400
Logic Pro 9

Hardware synths / Controllers:
Eurorack modular analogue synthesizer (12U)
MOTM modular analogue synthesizer (one 19" row)
Moog Voyager RME
Novation ReMOTE 37SL

Guitars / Bass:
ESP EC-400
Ibanez SR900
Larrivee B-03RE

Hardware processing / Preamps:
API 2500
2 x Empirical Labs EL8-X Distressor
Millennia HV-3C

Microphones:
AKG C414XLS
DPA 4091
Shure SM7B

Software instruments:

GForce M-Tron Pro

LennarDigital Sylenth1

Native Instruments Battery 3

Software effects:
Cytomic Glue
IK Multimedia CSR
SoundToys EchoBoy
Voxengo Elephant

New song: Kraku - Friends

New song is ready. It's a shame I didn't find a singer for this track. The vocal part was replaced with a synth melody.

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Download the original MP3 file from here.

Empirical Labs Distressor EL8-X on electronic drums

A while ago I bought an Empirical Labs Distressor EL8-X. It's a wonderfully diverse compressor capable of delivering really usable results on almost any sound source you feed into it. The transients Distressor is able to create on electronic drums fit perfectly into dance floor tracks.

Here's a quick and simple demonstration of Distressor's characteristic slappy/snappy transients on a kick drum. 16 beats first without and then with Distressor:

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Those transient can really cut through the mix and make your drums sound powerful and aggressive.

The only problem with a Distressor is that you want two of them :-P

New song: Aflecht - Feed You To Sue

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MP3 download.

New song: Aflecht ft. Delia St. Claire I - Gotham by Night (compo version)

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Aflecht ft. Delia St. Claire I - Gotham by Night

Voted fourth in the dance music competition at Stream Party 8 in Tampere.

New song: Kraku - Good Morning

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Here's the download link to the song:

Kraku - Good Morning

Gear used:

Eurorack modular synthesizer

LennarDigital Sylenth1

Native Instruments Battery 3

Ohmforce M-Tron Pro

Logic Pro 9

SoundToys EchoBoy

Voxengo Elephant

API 2500 compressing electronic drums

I just bought my first hardware compressor - API 2500 - and I gotta say it sounds pretty damn sweet. It doesn't break the transients the same way as software compressors do. It always seems to keep the sound clean, natural, snappy and punchy, regardless of the parameters you dial into it.

Here's the API 2500 in action, compressing a dull sounding kick drum with different setting. After 8 beats new settings kick in, which are listed below.

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Here's the uncompressed WAV file for those who want the tiny bit of extra fidelity in the signal.

Be sure to listen to this in loud volume, since a lot of the action is with the bass dynamics.

Also try to compare each of the settings with the original and you'll realize how drastic effect the unit has on the sound without "breaking it to pieces".

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Threshold has been slammed all the way down to -20 (maximum).
Attack = 10ms
Release = 0.5 sec
Ratio = 4:1

Only "Tone" settings of the compressor have been tweaked in these examples.

1 = dry mix
2 = Type = Old, Thurst = Loud, Knee = Hard
3 = Type = Old, Thurst = Norm, Knee = Hard
4 = Type = New, Thurst = Norm, Knee = Hard
5 = Type = New, Thurst = Norm, Knee = Soft
6 = Type = New, Thurst = Norm, Knee = Hard

...here comes a pause...

Threshold is still all the way down to -20 (maximum).
Attack = 1ms
Release = 0.5 sec
Ratio = 4:1

7 = Type = Old, Thurst = Loud, Knee = Hard
8 = Type = Old, Thurst = Norm, Knee = Hard
9 = Type = New, Thurst = Norm, Knee = Hard

New song: Aflecht - Irresponsible part 1

A new track is ready once again. It's the first half of a two part song. The second part will be a song in it's own right with actual vocals, which I hope to finish soon.

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Here's the download link of this song:
Aflecht - Irresponsible part 1

Gear used:

Logic Pro 9
Native Instruments Battery 3
LennarDigital Sylenth1
GForce M-Tron Pro
Eurorack modular synthesizer
Future Retro XS

Cytomic Glue
IK Multimedia CSR
SoundToys EchoBoy