Here’s what it looks like so far..

Not really a big project, but I’ve bounced down several tracks.  I do wish by the way, that Steinberg could colour the tracks as well as the parts, both in the Project Windows and the MixConsole.  Perhaps in Cubase 7.0.3?

My keyboard is a Yamaha KX8, which I find perfect for my use.  I don’t use the on-board controls much, except perhaps the transport controls.  The action is lovely and just makes me want to play.

This song doesn’t yet have a fixed title.  Style wise, it’s a cross between Stevie Wonder (Innervisions) and Steely Dan (Aja).  I use the Arturia Moog VST on this, which has a lovely flowing quality about it

I’ve used Track Presets on the tracks here.  I find them a useful starting point, but some of them (drums), just don’t seem to do the job very well out of the box.  Cymbals seem to me to lose life.  Perhaps it’s my fault – I can’t claim to be the world’s greatest when it comes to mixing.

I really enjoy this version of Cubase.  Looking at the forums, a lot of users don’t like the colour scheme, but I do.  I really like the MixConsole, but like some others, I’m not yet comfortable with the rotary controls on the channel strip when using a mouse.  I’ll get there.  I really like the track viewing choices.  I have a dual screen system, and usually use one screen for the MixConsole.  That’s a big improvement over Cubase 6.5.

Updates to follow when I’ve worked on this piece a little more.

Hello,

This is the first post of an (hopefully) interesting journey using Steinberg’s Cubase 7 to realise ideas that have been floating about my creative head for a while now.

First of all though, just a few words about me.  I’m a retired music teacher who was lucky enough to be teaching when music technology really made a breakthrough with the advent of MIDI in 1983.  Since then, I’ve followed developments with both a keen interest and as a practising musician in my home studio, writing for video and fun.

I’ve used Steinberg products since the Pro24 sequencer for the Atari (God bless the Atari).  I was also lucky enough with Denise my Wife, to meet David Nicholson from Steinberg in 1989.  He gave us a disk of the then unreleased Cubase 1 for the Atari, which changed the ball game in terms of what a sequencer could do and look like.  Armed also with a Midex on the Atari, the studio came to life.

I had a few years off from music in the mid 90s and thereby didn’t keep up with developments in the music technology world.  I came back with Cubase SX3 and the changes were enormous.  A steep leaning curve had to be climbed, including the work that could be done with audio.

Now it’s the turn of Cubase 7.  The adventure begins.  Feel free to come with me – I hope you enjoy it.

this guy makes some of the best VST’s I’ve come across – both paid-for, and free. Beautiful UIs, interesting plug-in concepts, and some really nice analogue style colouration of sound.

A continuación veremos el Piano Roll (en este caso es el de Cubase) que es la forma de edición más extendida. Consiste en un teclado virtual adjunto a una cuadrícula donde se representan los compases, al mismo tiempo están subdivididos en una cantidad preestablecida (blancas, negras, corcheas, semicorcheas, etc). La forma de componer es dibujando literalmente las notas, variando la altura y la duración sobre la cuadrícula.

I think it will suck to only add something like this to a certain portion of the track, and then go back to adding it to another portion the next day.. So I think I´m going to have to cheat, and add stuff to longer sections if that´s what feels right.

But what I got done yesterday was mostly just adding some fx and perc to the intro (and further through the track). I also did some simple automation to the (very repetitive) vocal snippet, where I switched into reverse towards the end of the track..

Hoping I´ll be more structured during todays session..

When I mix other peoples music I spend however much time I have to to make sure everything looks , and feels, nice and tidy.

I move tracks to the correct place in the timeline, color code everything, name everything, remove unused files, set up correctly named buses, add memory locations/markers – just doing everything I can to make navigating the track and keeping an overview of it as easy as possible. But when I´m working on my own tracks I often “forget” this. I think it´s mostly because I get used to the track being the way it is, but when other people bring in messy sessions it´s obviously because they´re lazy.. Right?

Starting to arrange a track that is messy messes up everything for me. Even more so when I get to the point where everything is spread out on the timeline, and I have 1.7 million vsts, audio- and midi- tracks with 7 sorts of automation on each of them.

Get that shit right at the start you lazy fuck!

Spend those 15 minutes making sure you will never be overwhelmed by a session.

Actually I think I´ve gotten off to a pretty good start..

I´ve made one track which is around 90% done, which I´ve thrashed because it sucked,

I´ve made another track which is somewhere between 50 and 75% done – which I´m going to use for my new Timed Bursts experience. This track doesn´t suck. At least not yet..

I´ve also made about 15 sketches, of which I can say that maybe 5 are worthy of being arranged – so one can judge their levels of suck more accurately than one can from just listening to a loop.

This all means that I´ve started almost 20 tracks in 20 days. Yes, I am insane..

But I´m very happy to say that I´ve been able to keep at least some focus, and forced myself to spend more time arranging than writing. I might not have gotten anything fully finished yet, but I feel like I´m inching toward an understanding of what it is that keeps me from finishing stuff. (And I´m going to write a little piece on that  later.)

Right now, my stress levels are pretty low. I can´t see, nor even start to imagine, the finish line yet – but I´ve still got so much time left it doesn´t really feel real yet. With 345 days left, that leaves me over a month for each track – and I know/think/hope/pray I can finish a track in a week if I have to..

The “getting stuff signed” part on the other hand hasn´t even crossed my mind yet. I don´t see any need to worry about that before I have some stuff done. And, cocky as it may sound – I think/hope/pray that that will mostly be about finding the right labels, more than de-sucking my tracks.. As I intend to thoroughly delete any tracks that I don´t like before they ever leave my computer.

So far, so good..

I´m going to make a fresh start with this idea. But this time around I´m going to try to divide my track into chunks of time,  instead of separate elements. The track I´m going to be working on is called “We dub out” – and I´ve gotten to the point where I´ve got all the basic elements of the track down, placed almost correctly along the timeline – and what I need to do is variations, fills, turnarounds, fx and mixing. I´m saving the mixing for later, as I´m going to do it through a kind of workshop a friend of mine is planning to set up.

My plan is to have this done, excluding mix, by next Saturday. The track is 7+ minutes long, so I´m going to break it down into 1 minute chunks, which I´ll be working on for 30 to 60 minutes each day this week. If you know math as well as I do, you can probably begin to suspect some sort of discrepancy between the available days between today, which is Sunday – and next Saturday, which is.. wait for it.. Saturday. But I´m thinking I´ll probably get away with not spending as much time on the intro and outro parts of the track – as it is a pretty dancefloory techno track – which no one in their right mind would play straight from a to b without mixing..

If I can agree with myself I guess this will be this weeks schedule:

Sun: Intro. from 0.00 to 1.30.

Mon: Second part of the intro, first bass drop. from 1.30 to 2.30

Tue: Starts to roll, first proper breakdown – and into the main drop. from 2.30 to 3.30

Wed: Roll out from main drop. from 3.30 to 4.30

Thu: From last part of main drop, to second breakdown. from 4.30 to 5.30

Fri: From second drop, roll out to outro. Nothing too exiting..? from 5.30 to 7.30 (oooh…. ambitious..)

Sat: Listening through and checking for rifts in the space-time-continuum..

MUSIC: just posted a new version of “blue guitar.” I like this song a lot. It has an acoustic and electric feel. The mood is calm and dreary! It was a good choice to become re-aquatinted with the software and new gear.

STUDIO: I’m in the process of building a grand studio I hope to record in and record others in! I’m at an in between stage. I’ve sold all my old gear and have a temporary studio until I finish the big one. I’ve switched to iMac instead of windows. I’ve moved to a Steinberg interface that I feel is capturing great sound. Cubase continues to be my choice of software!

DEMO: I hope to release a new demo and send to companies. Lots of work here in order to get another round of music out there.

NOTES: between completing the new studio and a new demo, I plan to continue writing new songs and focusing on learning more and more about cubase!

Thank you for listening and your support! It’s GREAT to be recording again!

I´ve been thinking about trying to do some live performance for a loooooooong while, which has given me much audiovisual pleasure as a geargoogler. So what I´m thinking is that if I actually sign 10 tracks before time is up – I´m going to start putting together a rig for live performance.. I´m lusting to the point of actual salivation for some of the gear already.. Specially the Elektron gear.. Analog4… Machinedrum… Monomachine… And some Eventide stompboxes.. Paired with a computer running Maschine.. Oh my!

I am a freak when it comes to gear, but that isn´t the only thing that intrigues me with this thought. I´ve never played live electronic music, but I think it might be a really cool experience. I want to play an outdoor gig in Hessdalen.. That would be really awesome..

So maybe that might be a good positive motivational factor?

Or maybe the constantly ticking clock will do the trick all on it´s own..

I tried to finish a track by doing 30 minutes of work on it, all pre-planned as to what I would work on each day. I got 2 days in to the 5 I had planned, and then life decided it wasn´t going to happen. I can pinpoint 3 reasons this experiment failed;

I. I didn´t check the rest of my family´s schedule before I decided to get started. It´s impossible to get things like this done when you have a million other commitments that week.

II. I couldn´t get back on the same horse after having a 2 day break. This is a common problem for me. If you end up not working on a project for a while it´s really hard to get back in to the vibe of the track.

III. The track I picked as the test subject sucked.

I´m going to do this experiment over in the future. I have to if I´m going to avoid losing my studio. But when I do, I need to pay special attention to points I and III. I need a week of uninterrupted work, and I need a track that has some serious potential.

But here are my thoughts on this specific way of working though;

* It´s awesome because it forces you to move forward even when you don´t know where you´re going. This fact also rips you out of creative slumps, because if you start building – things seem to start falling into place towards the end of a session no matter how unlikely that seemed at the start of it.

* It´s really cool to have a preplanned part to work on each session. Knowing that you´re going to be focusing solely on the drums for an entire session takes away any opportunity for second guessing the track as a whole. You just keep plodding on even if you´re unsure of the direction.

* It´s not a good feeling to stop working after a set period of time if you´re on a roll.

* It can be a bit frustrating to see that you´re lagging behind on a certain part of the project and know that you´re going to have to start working on a different part in tomorrows session.

* When working on a track that is 6 – 8 minutes long, listening through it to check the coherence of everything is not an option when you have only 30 minutes to work on it.

I think the next time I do this I might switch it up a bit, and divide the track in to 1 minute chunks instead of the different elements. This way one can listen through the part one is working on, making it easier to be sure that everything fits together naturally. Yup. I think that´ll be my next experiment..

But to be honest, I feel it wasn´t a great loss – because the track I was working on did well and truly blow..

What I have been doing is working on a few new tracks, which I can probably claim are 632% better than the original track I started out with.

My ambition, before this project is over at least, is to get to a point where I finish all of my tracks. Which means I´ll have to do the culling at an earlier date.
Pairing this fact with my plan to learn how to produce techno, which is a genre I don´t really know shit about, definitely  means I´ll have to do a few false starts – where I bin a track when it doesn´t end up going where I want it to go.

But back to the tracks I´ve been working on.

This might be a dumb thing to say publicly – but I feel like at least three of them are at least somewhat in the vicinity of the neighborhood where releaseworthyness resides. I´ve got all three tracks semi-arranged, meaning I´ve written the main parts, placed them out for the entire length of the track and started making some approximate decisions on how the intro, breaks and “drops” are going to be. All I need to do is do variations, fills, spice and mix. Which is a hell of a lot of work of course. But I feel like I´m already getting somewhere.

I owe all this to a really good party I went to on Friday, where my good friends (and good producers) Of Norway and Terje Saether played. Since I am an old fart, I don´t really get out as much as I used to, and when I do it´s often to just hang out and have a couple of beers. This Friday it felt like we actually partied.. And when I woke up on Saturday I wasn´t even hungover, I was just buzzing with inspiration from hearing several hours of really great house and techno. I hit the studio, and within 3 hours had a skeletal layout of what I think might turn in to the best track I´ve done in years.

So the moral of the story might be to get ones ass out of the couch and go see good artists playing good music in good venues.. Which reminds me that I need to start dj´ing or playing live – because it´s even more inspiring to play oneself. It´s the best way to actually see what works, or doesn´t, on a crowd – and you can often bring that feeling with you back to the studio – and use it as a reference point when making new music. You know you´ve got something good going when you can say;

“This tune makes me feel how I want the crowd to feel when I play at a club.”

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The problem with this kind of schedule is the fact that I tend to lose focus, not to mention that I´m also blessed with a natural scattermindedness.. If I start what could/should be a great track on a Tuesday night, when I sit down on Wednesday I´ve usually forgotten where Tuesdays track was headed when I put it away. So what I´m trying to do here is devise a strategy for time usage which lets me work over several short sessions, without giving me the option to bin the track just because I don´t really feel a natural connection to it any longer. My favorite thing in the world is when I´m making a track where I finish the basic elements, start arranging it – and everything falls into place so naturally that I´m basically doing the arrangement on the fly while listening through the track the first time.

What I´m thinking is writing down a set schedule for what I´m going to do each night of the week, printing it out and then adhering to it no matter what I feel like doing. Like this, for example;

Mon: Duplicate loop until the desired length is reached. Start removing elements from different parts of the build. Start going over the drums and add fills/variations – at least every 8 bars. 30 minutes.

Tues: Continue adding fills/variations to the drums. Start going over over the bass line, add fills/variations, possibly look at automation and polish the variations with that. 30 minutes.

Wed: Start looking at melody/atmospheric variations. 30 minutes.

Thu: Add some FX and automation to melody/atmospheric parts. 30 minutes.

Fri: Add FX, and additional perc/fills in tandem with that. End up with a fairly finished track that only needs testing, polishing and mixing. Put in digital drawer to rest for a week or so.

Sat: Jam out new ideas whilst enjoying cold beer.

Sun: Jam out new ideas, but also do a listening session to decide on next weeks candidate for completion. When decided, duplicate

I´m going to start doing this next Monday, so it´s still a free for all jam fest until then.. =)

I do this whenever I mix, but I haven´t really tried it when it comes to writing and arrangement. I´m thinking that no matter if one recreates a lot from the other song, whatever gets made is going to sound very different. Most likely I´ll be trying to recreate some part of the other, and then just hear something that catches my ear and leads me off into something new that I probably wouldn´t have thought of without this approach.

I already have a concept that I´m working on here. I´ll update you guys as soon as I either finish one of the tracks, or get so sick of it that I abandon the concept – don´t want to jinx it yet..

I´m going to try making a track without any focus on sound design (before the writing part is done..) whatsoever. The rules are:

I´m only allowed to use one instance of Maschine, for drums only and with a maximum of 6 separate samples – and one instance of Virus TI, with multiple tracks of course, for everything else. The fun part is that all non-drum parts have to be programmed using only the default init patch on the Virus. Yes, the horrid plastic sounding sawtooth. I am not allowed to start touching the sound altering parameters on the Virus, or adding any effects or doing any mixing other than roughly setting the levels on the individual elements of the track before I have a rough arrangement of the track.

I think this´ll be really fun, because it will make me focus 100% on pure melodic/rhythmic writing and arranging. It will be hell to listen to though..

If I go really crazy I might even make it a rule that I´m not allowed to load any patches or presets on the Virus – and have to program all the different sounds from scratch. That might get interesting!

Two days in to the project, I honestly haven´t done shit. Nothing. Zip. Zilch. Nada!  Well.. Maybe not quite true, I have started two new tracks on my laptop during lunch at work, which might possibly turn out to be good enough for me to transfer to the studio Mac and start arranging. But to be honest, I sketch out an idea or two most days, the problem is picking them up whenever I actually have time to work. I know myself well enough to know that once the weekend arrives, and I have a few hours to spend doing music – I´ll most probably be wanting to jam around with new ideas instead of finishing these weird sketches of questionable quality. Bah. Sometimes I actually scare myself with my lack of focus.

But I guess that is the point of this project, to face ones inability to face the fact that one isn´t doing anything before what one is doing is done.

But meandering sentences aside, I know I could finish these tracks if I put my mind to it. And now, sooner or later (knowing me, probably later – a lot later most likely), I have to buckle down and do just that – or my studio acquires new ownership.

But enough whining.

Let´s discuss what I´ve been thinking, because even if I haven´t done much – I´ve doing a lot of thinking. And what I´ve been thinking about is approaches to music production. I´ve been doing things more or less the exact same way ever since I started messing around in Fasttracker back when mammoths roamed the earth.

This is my creation process;

1. Make a beat. When working in breaks-oriented genres, this means looking for a sample, finding one, chopping it up and then resequencing it the way I want. Then I add some separate drum samples to boost the kick and snare most likely. In less organic genres I usually just find a kick, lay it down for 4 bars – then add one element at a time, nowadays jamming it in from my Maschine controller, until I have something that grooves pretty well.

2. Add a bass line or a rhythmic element like a synth stab or something. I might add several elements that play together or off each other here.

3. Add a pad/melodic/atmospheric element. This step might also contain more than one element.

Then the skeleton of my loop is done. Those few times I manage to make a project like this into an actual track – I duplicate the loop to the desired length, then make a quick arrangement by subtracting elements from the different parts of the arrangement. When that works fairly well together I´ll go over the track doing minor fills and adding fx.

But as I´ve mentioned quite a few times in earlier posts, most of the time I get a functioning loop going, then fall out of love with the basic feel of it – and abandon it. Sometimes I tell myself that I´ll finish it later, sometimes I don´t bother and just admit that it´s never going to be revived.

The element that is most likely the one that makes me abandon a project is the bass/synth stab one. For some reason I kind of stink at writing bass lines and stabs, rhythmic instrumental parts in other words. I suspect I can get much better at it if I approach it in a more cerebral way than just looping a beat and then punching my keyboard until something mildly intelligible forms in my daw. I will look into it as we progress..

But anyways, this approach has worked for me in the past, but it always seems to work better when I´m working with other people. When it´s just me I tend to get hung up on the bass line, and sooner or later end up ditching the project – thinking that the next time I do the exact same thing it´ll be different..

So what I´ve been looking at is finding different ways to start a track.

I´m not just talking about changing the sequence in which I do things, even if it might be a cool thing to do to start with the bass line or pads – and then add the beat. I´m talking about the thought process behind it.

I don´t really think about anything when I work, I just attempt to create a groove that makes me squirm rhythmically in my studio chair – if any other ambition is present it is an ambition to make other people squirm, even more rhythmically, maybe even on an actual dancefloor.

So I´m trying to find some other fun approaches to writing, where I either have some kind of plan or some set rules to make composition easier/harder. I already have a couple of fairly vague ideas I´m going to try out.

I´ll post those later as separate posts.

But first some “why”, as in “why” I´m bothering to write about this instead of just buckling down and getting 10 tracks out the door asap..

I want/need to keep a written journal of my quest for 10 releases plainly because I´m the worlds worst at finishing projects, except maybe those guys that are in the same predicament as I am – but don´t even start a blog about it..?

* Keeping a public written journal about the project is a great way to put some pressure on myself. I´ve already told one of my friends about my idea, and I think he thought I was joking – as he said he would take a screenshot of our conversation so that he could hold me to my words..

Well, Mr.W! I ain´t fucking kidding..!! =)

* Writing about the track writing process will both force me to take a step back, observe myself from the outside and become aware of any subliminal habits that block me from finishing stuff, and also motivate me to experiment and work mindfully on those days that I truly suck at writing music. Instead of fuming with thoughts of keyboard-based screen smashing I can say “Fuck it! I´m spending this studio session researching stuff for my journal.”

So, moving on to the “whats” of the blog.

* What I´m going to be writing about is primarily my work on getting out of my 20 year rut. I will write about what I encounter that keeps me from doing what I want. I´ll try to make these topics a little more universally viable than just self-absorbed muttering – so as to make this at least partially readable for those of you who don´t have your head up my specific ass. In other words – I´ll be writing about finishing stuff, keeping motivation up and general “songwriting” stuff – if you can call techno and D&B production “songwriting”..

* I´ll probably be writing some stuff directly related to the specific elements of my studio – because streamlining my workflow in a technical sense is possibly a good thing  to do (duh..) if I want to get stuff done fast enough to reach my deadline.. So expect to be seeing a few bits and pieces about the main staples of my studio – Cubase 7, NI Maschine and Virus TI.

* I also retain my right to spout bullshit about any, and every, thing I want to write about. But I´ll try to keep at least some semblance of blog-about-music-ishness.

Thank you, and good night.

Dedicated to all my friends…

I knocked the snare velocity down just before the solo…this is the final mix for the demo. Enjoy.

Rest Your Head

Won’t you take my hand, I will guide you in
We were meant to be an eternity
Can you hear the sound, trumpets blowing down
Life’s a dream you see, won’t you help me to sing?

Won’t you walk with me, we will soon be free
Come and drink my wine, sing outloud tonight
Can you feel this love, coming down from above
Peace will reign supreme, awaken from your dream

Hold your head up high, come and walk in the light
I love you my friend, nothing can separate
No more time for play, together we must pray
Take another breath, rest your weary head

It’s only one week before test week, so we’re studying hard. However, in those few spare moments we have, we try and enjoy them as much as possible! With that in mind, Anthony just recently purchased a beginner recording studio package. It’s definitely not the nicest or the highest quality, but for the price, it should serve his purposes. Here’s a picture of the package:

We’re not too sure how much recording we’ll get done this upcoming week, but it seems like it might be a fun way to de-stress post-test!

-Janthony