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i ponder: making computer music more human
StoreTags: computer music, human, samplers, sequencers
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might be a bit of a long post.
I’ve been writing and creating electronic music for a few years now. I’m still quite a young lad but have been passionate in listening and creating as much music as I possibly can for a while.
I’m mad for sampling and sample based electronic music, whether that be deep house, tech, drum and bass, hip hop, trip hop and downtempo. I’ve grown up apart of a generation that’s listened to and loved the art of dance music.
While I’m no superstar producer or no superstar DJ, I still thoroughly enjoy this hobby and try to have as much fun doing it as possible.
I’m trying to do a little bit of research so I can change the workflow and tools that I use to make music with because lately I have not been enjoying it as much as I thought I would and I’m concerned that my workflow is holding me back from the sounds and beats I really want to be making and hearing.
As I mentioned before, when I first heard electronic music, I was hearing a lot of classic deep house cuts, drum and bass, trip hop and hip hop from my older sibling’s collections and this ignited my passion. I loved the music, it was something different and I was enthralled in the mysteries of how these sounds were created, mainly with samplers and keyboards. Later on, I became quite interested in other types of electronic music, stuff that is quite popular today like the sounds from the techno, minimal, progressive house and trance scenes, music which is heavily built on purely synthesized sounds, lots of keyboards, lots of synthetic drum machines and extremely tight and fat sequencing and compression. A lot of this music nowadays is created on the computer.
But after a while, I quickly became tired of listening to a lot of that purely synthesized sound. Why was I not enjoying the music I was listening to?
When I couldn’t find anything I wanted to hear, I went back to my old record collection and started searching again through the old house, drum n bass and downtempo cuts that I had. It was exactly what I needed. The sounds that I was hearing again were exactly what I was missing. Cut samples from records and live instrumentation with the samplers sequenced and played by hand, all blended and masterfully crafted together to create funky grooves and very organ and natural sounding dance music. It’s something simple, but to my ears sounds so much more exciting.
When I first started making my own music, it was all through the computer, which is what I’m still using today. I’m not a wealthy person and have never really been in the position to spend money on music gear and hardware like hardware samplers and sequencers, mixing boards, EQs and compressors. But what I’ve always had through my job is a pretty decent computer and a very nice audio interface so because it’s the only tool I have really had, this is what I’ve used to make my music.
However, lately I’ve come to a bit of a dead end, or some sort of wall that has gotten in my way. Suddenly, I’ve become tired and somewhat bored with making music the way I have been. I’ve used many different pieces of software over the years, Logic, Reason, Buzz tracker, Renoise, FL Studio, Pro Tools, many many different things but there is something inside me that yearns for something with more human control and something that really feels playable. I like human interaction with music and in particular any human interaction with dance music. Many of my all time favourite house and drum and bass records have been made with samplers, MPCs and sequencers, with sounds being played out by hand on the keyboard in real time into the sequencer and with sounds cut from records or recorded with microphones.
Obviously, I’m sure it would be real fun to have all these tools at my disposal, but as I mentioned, these are things I cannot afford, and the computer is the only way I’ll be making music for a long time I’m sure.
So my question is, how should I be trying to achieve this flexibility and playability that I’d like, if my only tools are a computer and one or two midi keyboards/controllers?
I first started making music with trackers, like Buzz and loved it for a while and made some fun stuff with it but found that it became too rigid and mathematical for my liking after some time. To me, I felt like it was too easy to fall into making music that felt and sounded like a cascade of tetris blocks or something.
Then I tried a software package like Reason. I thought this could be something promising. It’s modules are all based around classic pieces of hardware kit, like samplers and drum machines, that can be controlled and sequenced and played by hand on the fly into the reason sequencer. This was something interesting and fun, then after a while I thought I might try something different and might come back to it later.
Next I moved onto pieces of kit like Logic and Pro Tools and Ableton, which I did a lot of playing and writing with in a friend’s studio which I spent as much time as I possibly could.
A lot of producers these days I’ve noticed use a package like Logic. But besides plugins like the EXS24 sampler, I’m not sure whether dragging blocks of audio and midi around a timeline to make your music with is very musical or not, and whether after time can lead to certain habits and boredom. As I said, I long for something musical and playable. I don’t want to be dragging around and clicking my mouse all day. Despite this though, I was inspired to read at one point that one of my favourite recent albums by “Burial”, was completely done in “Sound Forge” which is merely just a wave editor, and his latest records have all been done without a sequencer and just in Forge.
This is something very very interesting, but something that sounds completely out of my league :P
Ok, this kind of sounds crappy and whiney now.
But has anybody got any ideas? This is just a question I’ve been thinking about starting throwing up some new ideas.
Cheers. | |
Comments
08/24/08
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bla
have you not got good enough results from recording unquantized midi from a keyboard?
08/24/08
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yghartsyrt
i think, what's the problem with most electronic music nowadays is not that it doesn't sound human enough. i think it's the opposite. it feels like a lot of people get into that human feel thing again and i think that's one thing electronic music has come to a halt, because it feels like we are working in a cycle. (though cycles aren't that bad – at least in a nietzsche kind of way)
i want music to sound like something i could not imagine, to be something that's so far away from things i'm used to.
bodyless music emitting machines – that's what i look for.
08/24/08
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yghartsyrt
sorry if it feels like a little rant. don't want sound rude.
08/24/08
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astroid
you can always move backwards, don't use midi, do everything by hand to a click track, only use the DAW like a glorified multitrack. pro tools sounds a lot more like tape if you don't use the sequencing.
08/24/08
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astroid
i use pro tools for everything, but, unless it's supposed to be gleaming shitshined pop or ironic or an effect, i never use beat detective or autotune. also, when looping sections, you become aware of how different your 'feel' is from a grid. it's not just me, but great professional musicians i've worked with, also. they are never dead on with a grid, rather pushing or pulling the groove a little. just get ok with making 50 passes of the same simple little melody you're trying to play by hand, and you'll be doing things by feel.
you can sequence by feel also, just turn the grid off and loop your sample, and then 'fix' it by ear, without relying on the grid. don't even purposefully try to do it sloppy, just make it sound right. it'll probably not even be close, but a little lopsided in some way that makes it better.
08/24/08
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nicknotis
"i want music to sound like something i could not imagine, to be something that's so far away from things i'm used to."
Agreed
08/24/08
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ocp
check this interview, it might shed light: link
08/24/08
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deltasleep
yghartsyrt,
I think that bodyless music emitting machines has become the norm in the field, and that's why a lot of us are cycling back the opposite way. We still want a new sound, but there's something about programming a drum machine that gets a little less rewarding every day.
08/24/08
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monkvolcano
alright i was thinking about your question here.. and i thought of a couple of things that may help.
first of all, i think that "hard work" is a big part of electronic music. to reach an organic sound is usually quite a process. especially if you are using a computer. I went through a very similar phase thinking about things the way you are "if i only had a lot of vintage gear my shit would have an organic quality." well shit i'm not going to be able to afford a nice vintage setup so i have to work with what i got. And i think that a large part of getting to where you have an organic specialized evolved kind of sound is not really what you have, but how much you are in touch with it. Soo when you have a ton of different software environments to work with, it's easy to become a jack of all trades master of none. For me, i think that it's important to stick to a specific DAW and just get into it. really get to know it. each DAW (and whatever plugins you choose to use) has it's own bag of tricks. There's a lot of subtle things that you wouldn't pick up just working on one for a few weeks. Once you really get your workflow down, and really start to get fast on 1 or 2 DAWs, that's when I think you are most likely to produce organic results. Instead of surfing along on the wave that is the novelty of a new DAW, when you get past that and are really just focusing on using what you've learned to achieve different sounds, that's when you really get down to business.
don't underestimate how adaptive the human brain is. If you give it time in one environment, it will most likely find away to produce what it needs to produce.
08/24/08
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monkvolcano
ah yes and another thing. It seems like you might be in a bit of a rush. slow down. don't worry if the pieces you finish don't sound how you want. if you've got a sound in your head you are after, you will get to it. it's just going to take time.
08/24/08
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pushkin
thank you for the comments everybody. really great to get some ideas flowing for me 
astroid - i like what you've said about the gridless/snapless way of working with the audio sequencer. could definitely be a way to produce some results i might be looking for.
monkvolcano - i think you might be right saying it seems like i'm in a rush. it definitely feels like that, and i'm probably getting more and more impatient from my growing frustration. feels like i'm going around in circles.
i should definitely look to one tool and just wear it like a fucking glove every day. know it inside out. i will always use sound forge as a wave editor, now i just need to try and decide which sequencer is best for the stuff i'd like to do.
i'm sure i'll probably end up using something like REAPER or Pro Tools but something seems really unfun about the prospect of moving around audio blocks all day rather than playing something hands on.
maybe i'll just have to get past that if i want to make music on the computer.
cheers!
08/24/08
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monkvolcano
pushkin.. you should try a sequencer that has good midi handling in the piano roll. the reason i say this is, you could play stuff in, and then edit in the piano roll. logic or cubase would be really good for this. they're pretty flexible in that reguard. you can record some midi, and then quantize bits, move bits around with the keypad (this can be suprisingly kewl), mute notes and stuff like that. i think that might yield the type results you're looking for.
but yea more than anything just keep working, and you'll figure more and more tricks out.
08/24/08
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jogn
part of the problem, when i listen to some new material, is that everyone seems have - 1. rock solid bpm. They don't waver or anything. 2. lack of swing. It's just straight out tippity tap on the sequencer, and everything is locked into place. 3. There's no dynamics. Even on soft passages it's loud 4. It's always clean. No organic noise at all.
08/25/08
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yghartsyrt
deltasleep said: "yghartsyrt,
I think that bodyless music emitting machines has become the norm in the field, and that's why a lot of us are cycling back the opposite way. We still want a new sound, but there's something about programming a drum machine that gets a little less rewarding every day."
i can see where you are comng from. it's not that i don't think it could lead to new directions and everything. i'm just wondering if the envelope has pushed hard enough.
on the other hand. it's just music. and it's about enjoying making it, not comparing who has the longest and hardest.
and maybe programming a drummachine isn't really rewarding, i can see that, but maybe the next step could be finding machine, that function different from regular drummachine, instead of going „back“.
maybe it s something that anywhen somebody brings up the more human discussion, it feels like the john wood "drum machines have no soul“ campaign
08/25/08
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deltasleep
Well, I would not plant myself in the drum machines have no soul camp, for sure.
I think that electronic music is a lot like metal. Metalheads always tell you that whatever you like is not hard enough, and only the Norwegian Death Mythology Metal that they like is hard enough. Electronic music has a lot of these same tendencies to "push the envelope" of complication. There's no room for any subtlety in either of these cases, because there is no restraint. And that's why most people don't like either genre. We come off like abrasive autistics.
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