Start to Finish: Ill Factor - Episode 2 - Jumpstarting The Creative Process
49min
(14)
It's time for ill Factor to lay down some ideas for a brand new song with Jared Evan.
In this episode, ill Factor gives his tips and tricks for jumpstarting the creative process with a blank canvas.
Then watch as he lays down the foundation for a song that will go from a blank session to co-writing with Jared Evan and mixing with Jimmy Douglass before mastering and being cut to vinyl with Dave Kutch.
Watch as ill Factor:
- Discusses the importance of taking time to create a personal collection of samples and patches to call upon later when it's time to write
- Creates the beginning of his track with Jared Evan
- Explains how to resample ideas into clips in Live for further effects
- Chooses drum samples with XLN Audio's XO plugin
- Shows his approach to quantizing MIDI to preserve groove and performance
- Adds drum loops to his performed drums
- Crafts his bass and 808 sounds using stock instruments in Live in real-time
- Creates the initial chord progression and idea for Jared Evan to start writing with
Watch ill Factor, produce "Light Shine Through" from Jared Evan. Only on pureMix.net
Once logged in, you will be able to click on those chapter titles and jump around in the video.
- 00:00 - Start
- 00:24 - Jumpstarting The Creative Process
- 03:56 - Starting The Production
- 07:28 - Adding Strings
- 10:31 - Resampling The Strings
- 12:52 - Building Out The Drums
- 16:39 - Quantizing
- 27:42 - Bass
- 32:28 - 808
- 41:37 - Melody Creation Workflow
- 43:51 - Piano
00:00:23
One of the scariest things sometimes as...
00:00:26
you know, creating music,
can be just a blank canvas.
00:00:30
That moment when you're
staring into an empty DAW,
no matter which one it is,
and you're just figuring out
where do I go, what do I do?
I often find myself in those moments
and so I wanna share with you
a couple things that can be helpful
to kind of just jump start
some creative inspiration.
00:00:50
Now, typically,
when it comes to being inspired
and starting a song from scratch
it can really come from anywhere.
00:00:57
And I think that's key,
you have to understand
that you don't wanna pin yourself
into a narrow
one solution or one way must
be the way to create music.
00:01:07
That's the beauty of music
that we have so many different
ways to express ourselves.
00:01:11
So, for me personally,
if I find myself with writer's block
or just have no idea where to start from
I tend to just listen to music.
00:01:19
I know that it sounds obvious,
but believe it or not
what I'm not saying is just,
you know, step away, listen to music
but being intentional about
listening to the music and saying:
'What's inspiring me about this
piece of music that I'm hearing?"
And often times, when I listen to music
I'll be: 'How can I recreate this?"
And usually in that process
of recreating something
that might spark momentum,
that's what we're after here,
momentum, I think that's the key element.
00:01:45
Because often times you're like:
'Alright, that sounds cool.'
but it can also lead you astray
and you will lose momentum
and at the end of the day you're like:
'You know, I'll forget this
and give my dog a bath'.
00:01:57
Or squirrel, whatever it is that you have.
00:01:59
But the reality is,
yeah, there's not one way
or one right way
to be inspired to create music.
00:02:05
So, you can listen to some music,
try to reference something
that you'd want to replicate,
that's always helpful,
and it always builds up your
skill set as well when you do that.
00:02:14
Or,
just browse through some new patches,
new sounds,
and that's often times
what happens in my process
when I'm not either listening to music,
trying to reference something,
I might come across some patches
and those are just different
presets that you might find
in synths or plug-ins
as well as maybe browse
through some loops
whether it be from a
website that offers loops
or services like that
or just something that's located
on the hard-drive,
I just spend some time
going through it.
00:02:44
Now, here's a tip, something
I'd actually encourage you to do:
If you find yourself running
into just a writer's block,
so to speak, and more often than not,
what I would encourage you to do
is take one day out of the week,
and I know sometimes for us
time is very limited
when we get
to spend on making music,
so, spend one day of the week
where all you're doing is
coming through samples,
going through your hard-drive,
finding one-shots,
whether it's kick, snares, rim knocks,
your neighbor yelling at you,
whatever it is,
put that together in a specific folder,
in this case in Ableton Live
we can make a collection of those things,
set that aside
and dedicating some time one day
of the week or something like that,
just where you can
allocate a time
where all I'm doing is just
building my archive,
filling my reservoir, my well,
with some new water, so to speak.
00:03:35
That's what we're doing
you wanna set aside
some of these sounds and stuff
that can be really inspiring for you,
so that when you do try to start your
session you can go back to that
and be like: 'OK, I'm not gonna
spend time browsing through samples
I've got a whole bucket
that I can choose from.'
And hopefully inspiration
will come along sooner.
00:03:52
So that's something that I'd
encourage a lot of people to do.
00:03:56
Alright, so, here we go,
back to the blank canvas
and what I wanna do is
just let's browse through some presets.
00:04:03
Lately I've been using
this plug-in here by Roland,
Roland Cloud has issued
a plug-in called Zenology.
00:04:09
So I'm gonna click and drag that
into my session view.
00:04:11
If you're not familiar with the
view that we're looking at
definitely check out
the previous episode where I give you
a quick run-through of Ableton Live
and the layout and what everything is,
that way you can follow along
much more seamlessly.
00:04:24
So here we've got Zenology
and Zenology is a really cool platform,
what they decided to do in Roland
is recreate everything,
the way that the vintage synths
such as the Juno 106 or
a Jupiter 8, all these classic
Roland Synths,
they took the modeling from those synths
and recreated it in a virtual plug-in.
00:04:43
And so, it sounds great
and often time I'll just browse
through a couple sounds,
so let's go in and click
the preset here.
00:04:50
And here's the browser window,
let's go through a couple things here.
00:04:56
I'm not in an 80s vibe right now.
00:05:02
Kind of cool.
00:05:03
Remember when I mentioned earlier,
taking the time to find stuff you like?
Well, I can mark my favorites here,
I think this was a sound that
came across that I really liked.
00:05:13
I like this, so I'm gonna start here.
00:05:16
Often times,
I might also browse through samples
but what I wanna do here specifically
is start the session
with creating a sample.
00:05:24
And what that means is,
adding the texture
and kind of resampling
myself to see where I go.
00:05:31
I might just end up
chasing going down a rabbit hole
and ending up in a really cool place
but I won't know
till I get there on the other side.
00:05:39
Let's just experiment with this
and we'll hit the ground running.
00:05:45
So I'm just gonna change this,
I'm gonna go to 'Edit'.
00:05:48
I wanna remove some of that white noise
because this is just
a little bit too harsh.
00:05:55
That's cooler there.
00:06:09
I'm gonna hit this mode here,
which Ableton Live,
without hitting the record button
this is just me experimenting on the fly,
it captures that
and...
Let's move this right over here.
00:06:19
And just quantize everything.
00:06:22
And nudge this one note over.
00:06:32
Move this note right up here.
00:06:37
That sounds cool
and let's just loop this.
00:06:42
And this is really neat
because this is part of
the process in Ableton Live
that allows me to hit the ground running,
not having to worry about,
you know, what tempo I'm at.
00:06:50
I was just kind of fiddling around
with the MIDI keyboard,
came across this little riff.
00:06:55
Let's experiment.
00:06:56
Why don't we change
this and create a sample
so I can kind of sample myself
and venture off somewhere here?
How many bars is this?
I'm gonna set my bar one beat one here
and
extend this so that I have
a two-bar count.
00:07:17
And it also detected the tempo for me
so I've got that locked in at 83 bpm.
00:07:25
That's cool there.
00:07:28
You know, let's add strings,
I'm gonna use Kontakt for this.
00:07:32
We go here and let's use
String Ensemble.
00:07:37
Cool, I'll just go ahead,
we've got the riff there
and I'll play alongside.
00:07:53
So I'm gonna select all these notes
and I want them to continue
to go on for the duration of the bars
so I'm gonna hit 'Legato'.
00:08:00
And make sure that these are also playing.
00:08:03
Set the length of the bar too,
they got cut off too so we'll
move them right there.
00:08:15
Now what I'm gonna do is,
I wanna swell the strings in,
I don't want them coming
in right at the beginning.
00:08:20
And the reason why I don't
want them coming in,
well, I want the bells to
focused on the beginning.
00:08:26
What I'm going after
here is I'm trying to create
a sample, like, make this maybe a riff
I can possibly even send
out to somebody else
that might inspire them
to get started on an idea.
00:08:37
So that's my reasoning behind
what I'm doing here.
00:08:39
So I'm gonna right-click on this
show automation, that's the volume fader.
00:08:43
And let's say at bar 2 we reach zero dB
and at bar 1 let's bring
it to absolute infinity.
00:08:55
And let's lower the
volume of the strings overall
so we'll put the output at -3.
00:09:03
Alright, that's cool.
00:09:04
Grouping these together is
gonna give me the ability
to affect both of them
at the same time with any
plug-ins that I might add on them.
00:09:11
So, let's use
something that can really add
some nice texture, this is gonna
be RC 20 Retro Color by XLN Audio.
00:09:20
Really cool plug-in to add
some texture
and width
and even some dimension as well.
00:09:26
So we have some noise that we can add on.
00:09:33
I don't want the sample
to live in a blizzard
so I'm gonna turn this down.
00:09:37
Maybe change it from
vinyl to something else,
maybe a VHS machine.
00:09:41
Hitting the stereo mode
I love using the stereo option
on this 'Wobble',
it really widens up
the sound really nicely
and gives some grit with the distortion.
00:09:49
And lower this down.
00:10:02
A huge difference,
so let's listen to it
without the plug-in.
00:10:14
Alright,
I'll bring the tone down a little bit.
00:10:17
Now, what I'm gonna do
is actually resample this.
00:10:19
'But ill,
why are you going through all this?'
To show you the
process of being able to
create something
and then also treat it
as if it wasn't created by you.
00:10:29
What do I mean by that?
Well, let me show you.
00:10:31
I have an audio track already
existing here in the session view
and I'm gonna choose the
input here to 'resampling'.
00:10:38
And this option allows
you to record anything
that you're listening to
in your project,
and it can be recorded internally.
00:10:44
So, your technically resampling.
00:10:47
So just by record enabling this track,
choosing any clip slot,
I'm gonna go ahead and hit my
enter key to record onto this slot here.
00:11:09
So I've just resampled myself.
00:11:11
I'm gonna mute track 2,
which has the bells and the
strings that we just created
and I'm gonna go ahead
just double click this to audition this.
00:11:20
That's the audio.
00:11:21
And now what's cool is I can treat this,
maybe pitch this...
00:11:26
Pitch it up.
00:11:28
So, there's something unique
about the texture
when you transpose it,
detune it, stretch it,
tweak an audio
that I really don't get when just using
maybe a typical MIDI instrument at first.
00:11:41
So,
I'll transpose this to 6 semitones down.
00:11:46
That sounds kind of cool.
00:11:48
How about reversing it?
That's interesting.
00:11:58
We're gonna do two bars of that.
00:12:00
And I'm gonna reverse this.
00:12:09
Cool, so, I really like
the texture,
the sound of the sample being in reverse,
transposed down 6 semitones.
00:12:16
And you notice I have
sends A, B and C here,
they correspond to the 3 sends
I have the return tracks over here.
00:12:23
And I have a reverb on,
it's just a stock Ableton
Live reverb on return track B.
00:12:28
That means if I want to send
a little bit of this big room reverb
to this sound I can do so
just by turning up this knob.
00:12:37
Add a little bit of delay as
well which is on return track A.
00:12:40
This is the echo plug-in
from Ableton Live.
00:12:50
Alright,
so that sample is really cool.
00:12:52
I'm usually gonna start
moving on to some drums,
giving myself just some
kind of back-beat to work with.
00:12:57
And for this I'm gonna be using
XLN Audio's XO.
00:13:01
Now,
this plug-in in particular is really cool.
00:13:04
And going back to what
we were talking about earlier
about stepping out of your comfort zone
and finding inspiration
this plug-in lately has
been doing that for me.
00:13:13
What makes this unique as you can see,
it looks like we are in some weird crazy
painting here, a minimalist
painting or whatever.
00:13:21
But what's going on is,
this is a plug-in that allows me
to select files on my hard-drive,
which may contain
different types of sounds,
snares,
kicks, hi-hats, your neighbor's goat,
whatever it is,
it will analyze all those sounds
and then categorize them
and split them into this map.
00:13:39
So what we're really seeing
here is a map of sounds
of specific folders that I've
allocated in the settings here.
00:13:47
So here are all the kicks.
00:13:52
Some snares.
00:13:57
And this is really unique
because I normally wouldn't
stumble across sounds this way,
usually I would have saved presets
or saved drum-kits,
or like I mentioned earlier,
files that I have in my places here,
my browser, where can I immediately go to
but after a while I tend to find myself
going to the same sounds
over and over again.
00:14:17
And hey, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
00:14:19
If you're
making a million bucks with
the same drum-kit go for it.
00:14:23
But I found this tool to be really helpful
just browsing through and
coming across really interesting sounds.
00:14:29
So, if I even zoom in it
can get more detailed.
00:14:36
I like that, that's dope.
00:14:39
So I'm gonna assign that to kick 2.
00:14:42
And I can trigger this
with my MIDI controller.
00:14:48
I gotta go chromatic here,
so let's take this off this.
00:14:56
Cool, so now I'm able to trigger
the sounds that I've
allocated to the slots.
00:14:59
And what's great about this
is you have all the parameters here,
I can change the decay.
That's the amp envelope for this,
the attack, the pitch,
tone, all that can be assigned here.
00:15:08
And they have the FX sends
within the program as well.
00:15:11
So, if I go to the snare...
00:15:19
That's really cool.
It also comes with a built-in sequencer.
00:15:22
So you can actually do step
sequencing withing the plug-in.
00:15:25
But for right now,
I'm actually gonna be using
the sequencer in Ableton Live.
Let's just play the sample back,
put the metronome on...
00:15:34
I might actually wanna hear this
in a faster sub-division,
so, instead of
every quarter note,
let's put it at every 8th note.
00:16:00
And that's usually how I go about this,
I'll just keep
running and throwing ideas
down until I find a nice little groove
and I can go in, pinpoint exactly
what part of the loop I wanna use.
00:16:21
So I'm gonna start
from bar 3 here.
When I hit the 'Fold' button,
what's this is gonna do is focus
in on the notes that I've inputted.
00:16:31
So, I can focus in on the
kick and snare that I've added.
00:16:39
I wanna talk about
quantizing really quick.
00:16:41
I'm gonna hit Cmd + Shift + U
to open up my quantizing window.
00:16:45
I have it set to 46%,
I do that on purpose.
00:16:49
Usually,
if you set your quantizing to 100%,
well, it's the same thing as
clicking and drawing in the note,
it's gonna snap exactly to the grid.
00:16:58
And the grid is the subdivision
in which every note
falls into the beat.
00:17:03
If I have it on 100%, if I hit OK,
you see how now the notes
shift to nearest 16th note
but it snaps fully to
the nearest 16th note.
00:17:13
Not slightly but fully.
00:17:17
Even if it's just the kick and snare,
it's way too stiff for me personally.
00:17:21
So I'm gonna undo that.
00:17:22
And you can see it just
nudges the note back a little bit.
00:17:24
So I usually like to
have my quantizing down
to forty something percent,
give or take.
00:17:29
And 'Adjust Note - Start'
means that the start of the note
is what's going to be adjusted.
00:17:35
So that's how I like to have it.
00:17:37
I don't like doing a
lot of strong quantizing
because what I think it does is
it eliminates the humanistic
element of what I just did by hand
and then it makes it just too robotic.
00:17:48
Now, if you're drawing in notes
like what we'll do now,
so let's go ahead
and zoom in and maybe add
a hi-hat pattern to this.
00:17:54
So for this I'm gonna use 'B,'
for my pencil tool.
00:17:57
And make sure I have my
headphone on to audition the sound.
00:18:01
This would be cool.
00:18:02
And Cmd + 2 it will just open up the grid.
00:18:10
There you go.
00:18:13
So, I'm gonna keep this going all the way.
00:18:22
I'm changing the subdivision
by holding Cmd + 1 and 2.
00:18:25
That's gonna either
expand the grid or narrow it.
00:18:28
So that I can choose a
different timing for the hi-hats.
00:18:34
And you notice that the hi-hats
are just really stiff.
00:18:36
Why? Because I drew them in.
00:18:38
So if I drew the snare drum...
00:18:40
It's right on the grid,
and if you can notice here,
what I played is slightly off the grid.
00:18:45
So that's fine and what
I like to do sometimes is,
even if I copy or layer sounds,
in this case,
the snare drum, let's layer it.
00:18:54
Meaning, I'm gonna have two
sounds playing at the same time.
00:18:57
I'm gonna hold Opt,
drag this up.
00:18:59
And I wanna nudge this one
just slightly back.
00:19:02
By holding the Cmd I can bypass the grid.
00:19:05
Why am I doing this?
It's because A, this makes it sound
a lot more loose,
it gives it more of
that humanistic feeling,
and I get more of a flam instead of
just the precise hit on that snare drum.
00:19:17
That might be a little too much
so I'll just narrow it a little bit.
00:19:25
And so, yeah, the hi-hats
are a bit too stiff for me
so for right now I'm
gonna deactivate them.
00:19:30
I might use like a drum loop
that has some more loose feel to it
and play that on top
of the kick and snare.
00:19:39
Actually, I'm gonna go back to XO,
that's the one I'm using.
00:19:44
I like this sound
So, let's go ahead back into the MIDI,
that snare that I layered...
00:19:50
That one. Let's move that up to that.
00:19:57
Here's why I thought about moving it up.
00:20:00
That sounds OK
but, I don't know, when I layered
it with the snappier snare drum
it just felt like it was
still lingering there.
00:20:08
And this sound here,
more of that rim knock,
adds more of the spike to the front
of that snare, it's just really short
and that's what I want, I'm digging
more of the snappier type of vibe
rather than maybe a snare clap
where there's a bit more decay there.
00:20:25
You can hear that, right?
That's much more punchier,
that's my vibe, let's keep moving.
00:20:34
Let me go to one of my Categories.
00:20:41
That's cool,
let's add this on top of that.
00:20:53
Now, I'm dragging and dropping loops
into the Session View
and you might notice,
the loop is already set in time.
00:20:59
But not all loops will be
set in time when you incorporate
them into your workflow.
00:21:04
So, there's gonna be some adjusting made.
As you can see here,
this is not directly on the grid,
I can double-click
and that creates a warp marker
and I can nudge that warp marker
and basically quantize my audio.
00:21:16
But I don't wanna do that,
as I mentioned before,
I kind of like the vibe,
the way it's not so stiff on there,
that works out for me.
00:21:23
Let's go throw another loop on here.
00:21:26
Here's a drum break
folder that I really like.
00:21:34
Well, I'm gonna play my beat and audition.
00:21:36
What I like about Ableton Live is,
in the browser,
when you're playing a session,
it will automatically
time stretch the samples that
you're browsing in the tempo.
00:21:46
So, you can hear what it sounds
like while you're auditioning them.
00:21:49
Really helpful.
00:22:01
I love that,
let's just drag and drop that right here.
00:22:09
You can hear how this drum is
sloppy a little bit, right?
You've got like the snare off here.
00:22:15
The kick is a little off.
00:22:16
So let me show you something really cool,
I wanna actually take
the timing of this drum loop.
00:22:21
Basically,
the way I like to think of this is,
I wanna hire the same drummer
who played this drums to play my drums.
00:22:26
Because
I'm not as dope as this guy
or girl who played this drums.
00:22:31
So, I can extract the groove,
and I'll go over here to
the 'Extract Groove(s)'
and Ableton is going to take out
the actual timing,
both the quantizing,
even everything down
to the detail of how...
00:22:42
the dynamics of the drum loop.
00:22:44
It creates it in its groove pool here
and then I can actually go
into my MIDI,
or any other audio or source
and apply the same timing
and groove to my drums.
00:22:55
So, remember when we had our hi-hats
that were too stiff?
I'm gonna put them back in,
I'm gonna go over here
in this groove pool and I'm gonna say:
'I want you to match
the velocity by 100 %'.
00:23:06
Meaning: 'Match the dynamics
of how loud the hi-hats and snares are
from the original drum break,
match that to my drums!'
The same thing with the timing.
00:23:18
Now, how do we implement
that groove onto my MIDI drums?
Right here in this
window we have 'groove'.
00:23:23
Choose the 'MB212 break'
which is the name of the file.
00:23:27
Click that and then let's go ahead
and hit this arrow to assign it.
00:23:32
Now you notice that
the hi-hats have changed in color
and they moved in timing. Look at that!
They're off the grid.
00:23:38
Why? Because they're now matching
the same timing as the drum break.
00:23:46
It also mapped out the same velocity.
00:23:48
So, if I play this side by side
with the drum break...
00:23:56
That's dope, because now my hi-hat time
is right in-line with the loose
drummer's timing, and that's cool.
00:24:01
I don't mind that at all.
00:24:03
Let me go ahead and do
a couple things here,
I wanna gritty up that drum break,
I'm gonna go to my Audio FX folder,
go to 'Drive',
go to 'Overdrive'
and throw that on there.
00:24:14
That's one of my favorite plug-ins to use.
00:24:35
Those sticks are really cool
but I want to something cool to them.
00:24:39
Let's go from 'Beats',
where I have the 'Beat' mode here,
and 'Transient Preserve'
it's gonna preserve all these transients,
I'm not trying to sound crazy here.
00:24:47
I want it to have
less decay.
00:24:49
So, I want them to be more staccato.
More...
00:24:52
That's what I sound like
when I sleepwalk, I guess,
I sound like a crazy robot.
00:24:57
With that set to
forward in 'Transient mode',
let's lower that.
00:25:06
There's a lot of room in that stick sample
so I can eliminate the room
by just shortening up
the transients.
00:25:20
And I'm also gonna apply the same
groove of our drum break
onto these sticks.
00:25:25
And so it also does it to audio,
now we've got a warp marker for each hit
it's nudging it,
let's roll.
00:25:41
So I'm gonna group these
3 drum channels together.
00:25:44
Unlike Ableton Live 10,
11 has all these plug-ins put into
folders and categories so
it makes easier
to kind of go to the specific
category to find the
plug-in you're looking for.
00:25:55
So, under 'Drive',
'Drum Buss', I'm just gonna slap that on
my drum bus, technically.
00:26:02
Because that's how I'm treating groups
in Ableton Live,
I'm treating them as actual drum bus.
00:26:06
And normally in Pro Tools
you would assign
multiple tracks and you'd route
the output to one stereo track.
00:26:13
I'm kind of doing that
here but using groups.
00:26:15
The upside of that is that
you can use this to now
hide tracks out of view if you're limited
with some screen real-state
and it works well in this
workflow too.
00:26:24
So, let's put the drum bus
and the dry/wet and
work our way out.
00:26:43
So, what do we got going on here?
'Drum Buss' is simply saturation,
some mid frequency crunch,
a transient designer and an EQ
to dampen and to
warm it up a little bit.
00:26:52
Often times, when you warm up
your drum sounds
it sounds a little further back
but I personally like
warmer, punchier drums
and it's got this little boom knob
which is basically adding
some sub harmonics,
giving you a nice beef in the low-end.
00:27:05
You can extend the decay
and drown out the low-end there.
00:27:15
I'll just kind of leave that in place
because it creates a cool vibe for me
while I'm actually producing,
so I'll put drums,
I'll leave that there like that.
00:27:23
I can get rid of this group,
which is what we started the sample with.
00:27:27
Now I've got my drums,
I've got this cool sample.
00:27:30
We'll call that 'ill Sample'
and let's just keep going.
00:27:38
I'm gonna put some more
harmonic elements in this
so I wanna start moving towards the bass.
00:27:42
So, for the bass,
immediately in my mind
I'm thinking like this low end,
you know, dirty, re-space,
and if you're not familiar with that,
well, let me create it.
00:27:51
So we'll go to instruments here.
00:27:52
I'm gonna use Wavetable.
00:27:54
And you could follow along using
any two or more oscillators synth
that you may have in our DAW.
00:28:00
What we're gonna do is
held over to oscillator one
and we're going to be choosing
a saw-tooth.
00:28:05
These are basic oscillator shapes.
00:28:08
Square wave, saw-tooth,
triangle and sine wave.
00:28:11
And because this
particular type of bass has
a very buzzy type of sound
we're gonna stick with our saw-tooth.
00:28:19
It's a hit, all it needs is a Verse,
Chorus and that's it.
00:28:22
I'm gonna turn on oscillator two.
00:28:24
Also choose a saw-tooth
but the trick is detune
your second oscillator.
00:28:33
You get that Hoover bass
that type of sound
a lot of electronic music,
specially Drum and Bass
in general is really know for.
00:28:40
So, let's take oscillator one
and lower that
a whole octave lower.
00:28:47
So, semitones, -12.
00:28:51
And then filter that
higher frequency part out
using your cut off frequency.
00:28:57
So I'm gonna go an
octave lower in my keys,
add maybe some filter drive on there.
00:29:10
Now, what's really important is,
when you're doing bass,
this particular case,
we need to make sure that
we're setting it to monophonic.
00:29:17
So, instead of polyphony set to 8,
meaning that I can play
8 notes at the same time,
in the minute I play note 9
one of them leaves,
we're gonna set this to mono.
00:29:26
That means that the notes won't overlap
as I'm playing them.
00:29:34
Imagine playing this bass sound
and you're having chords,
it can get really muddy.
00:29:38
So, set it to mono,
bring the release down a little bit
and I'm gonna turn this unison on,
which is gonna detune it globally
and just a little bit of that.
00:29:48
Nice and wide there.
00:29:55
That's a cool tone there,
let me go ahead
and just vibe with the sample
and the drums.
00:30:27
I'm gonna put some ideas down.
00:30:29
And just pick and choose, remember,
throwing colors to the canvas.
00:31:12
So you notice that,
in-between of me recording these basses
I hit my down key on my computer
keyboard and hit 'enter'
cause I was like:
'I wanna start a new idea.'
And without having to stop and start,
I was able to actually just
choose another clip slot here
and record another idea.
00:31:27
And this is usually my workflow,
I'll just empty out my brain of ideas,
come out with different riffs
and chord progressions
that might work alongside with the sample
or whatever it is that I'm working with,
and then go back and A/B.
00:31:38
And that's why I love
working in the Session View.
00:31:41
Because rather than
doing a linear approach
where I would set
maybe an 8 bar loop and do that,
I wanted to eliminate the idea
I would have to click it,
drag it, playlist it, move it over.
00:31:51
I don't wanna think linear yet,
I wanna think vibe.
00:31:54
That's so important,
what's really going to speak to me.
00:31:57
And if I have an artist in mind
I'm like: 'OK, I just need to
get to a point that inspires me.'
Because honestly,
if I can't convey excitement over and idea
there's way an artist
will be excited about what I'm doing,
or songwriter.
00:32:12
Usually I'm working with songwriters
or artists themselves
and if I'm not feeling it
chances are they won't either.
00:32:18
So the goal is, for me to find something
that really like:
"OK, this is totally cool."
And then just keep moving from there.
That's what I'm doing.
00:32:25
I'm adding all these little
building blocks to get to that point.
00:32:28
We just put this bass line down
but I wanna experiment
with other type of bass tones,
maybe an 808, like a nice hefty 808.
00:32:36
Here in my collections,
an 808 instrument that I created.
00:32:40
I'll kind of walk you through that
and just play this for you.
This is an instrument rack,
so this is a sample.
00:32:48
So, I'll turn all these off,
what we have is an 808 kick.
00:32:52
And I'll play that.
00:32:56
And if you're listening on laptops,
definitely wanna put on some headphones
or listen to on some studio monitors.
00:33:03
This is an 808 kick
but in order to really transform it
into a nice,
like, gritty 808
that is just gonna knock and
you could feel it in your chest
where gonna need some harmonic saturation.
00:33:15
And for that I'm gonna be using
the Amp plug-in here in Ableton Live.
00:33:18
And this is just an amplifier simulator,
you can use this one or
any other amp simulator
or any type of distortion
that adds some harmonic saturation.
00:33:27
So, click this
and let's go ahead and see what we've got.
00:33:33
That's a nasty gritty 808.
00:33:35
I'm running it through
the Marshall amp simulator.
00:33:39
Which is the Rock.
00:33:41
Blues is a little...
00:33:43
You don't really hear that
aggressive growl come through.
00:33:48
So I like a setting
where's at with the Rock.
00:33:51
And then I'm gonna use
the Drum Buss plug-in
somewhat to how we
use in the actual Drum Bus
just to actually add some more drive.
I'm lowering the transients here.
00:34:02
It just does something to that...
When we go back here.
00:34:07
By lowering the transients,
the initial hit of the 808
it just ducks a little bit and
more of the body comes through.
00:34:14
And I'm gonna use an EQ to shave off
all the high-end of the 808.
00:34:21
That's our 808, that sounds much better.
00:34:24
Focusing our attention
back to the Simpler.
00:34:27
Which in Ableton Live is
what you'd use to trigger your samples.
00:34:31
Right here you also want to make sure
that you set the voices to
one voice polyphony, similar to
what we did with the other bass line.
00:34:38
I don't wanna have 808 chords,
I just wanna have one note
and not overlap to the other note.
00:34:43
What's important too,
since we're using a sample,
other than creating and 808
with the sine wave...
And as a matter of fact,
I wanna show you really quick
how you would do that.
00:34:53
Go back to 'Instruments',
Wavetable, I'm gonna put
it in the same instrument rack.
00:34:57
I'm gonna mute this 808 kick sample
and we have the Wavetable here.
00:35:02
We're gonna be using a sine-wave
because essentially
that's what the 808 is.
00:35:08
So let's go ahead and set that to
one voice polyphony, mono.
00:35:12
Take away all the high-end there
and lower the octave
of that sine wave about -12 semitones.
00:35:25
Now we can shape the 808
so we have a nice long release.
00:35:31
And bring the resonance up a little bit.
00:35:34
Why am I doing that?
Just so that the resonance,
or sometimes called peak,
can focus its attention or energy
at this moment right here, so, 130 Hz.
00:35:44
OK, let's copy
the same amount of processing that we did,
the Amp,
the Drum Buss and the EQ.
00:35:50
So I'm gonna do that,
hit Cmd + C to copy
and then paste it here.
00:35:57
I need to go an octave lower,
I can either do that in my MIDI device
or just go an octave lower here.
00:36:07
And I'll just bring
the tail-end a little bit.
00:36:10
I might need to get aggressive
with the saturation
because the 808 kick sample
was probably already saturated,
went through a whole bunch of stuff
so I'm trying to replicate that.
00:36:20
So, let's mess with the dry and wet.
00:36:28
Then I wanna add a little bit more
of resonance there.
00:36:33
And here I wanna go ahead
and boost up the transients.
00:36:40
That's how I would use a regular sine wave
to kind of create the same type of 808.
00:36:46
And I'm gonna go back to the sample.
00:36:51
So that has like a kick inside the sample,
which gives that knock.
00:36:55
So I'm gonna stay with that instead,
take away the Wavetable.
00:36:58
And here's our 808.
00:37:00
So let's go and pick a bassline
or a rhythm that's gonna work with the
sample and drums.
00:37:07
I'll mute my first bass
and just vibe out.
00:37:38
So we've got this
bassline here with the 808,
one thing I like to do with my 808s,
I wanna make sure that it's helping
the kick, that's complementing the kick
so I'm not holding out.
00:37:48
The difference between like
maybe using an 808
and the other bassline that we created
is that the other allows me to
just extend and
hold out the notes when
the 808 is really there for the impact.
00:37:58
So I'm doing these shorter notes.
00:38:01
I wanna drag this out
maybe just a little bit.
00:38:11
I might wanna just
dial back the EQ, the high-pass
so I'm only hearing more of the lows.
00:38:27
That's a vibe that works
but let me go ahead
and A/B that with the other one.
00:38:38
To me personally I think that this bass
sound is a bit more musical.
00:38:43
And that's kind of where
I'm headed to there,
I wanna go a little bit
more emotional with that.
00:38:48
The 808 is good too,
it just has that impact,
maybe it works without the sample.
00:38:56
But then that bassline won't work as well.
00:38:58
So these decisions,
they're small little decisions
but they go a long way
when it comes to
putting the whole picture together.
00:39:05
Me personally,
right now I'm vibing with the Wavetable
with the first bassline that we created.
00:39:13
I might actually wanna
dirty it up some more
so I'm gonna head back to my
audio FX folder,
go over to the 'Drive'
and looking for the 'Pedal',
which is just like a pedal plug-in
that has overdrive, distortion
and fuzz on there.
00:39:27
And add some more grit onto it.
00:39:36
That's cool too, but I do like
the bassline that we did with the 808,
so, I'm gonna incorporate both of those.
00:39:42
I'm gonna go ahead and vibe
using the same bassline
that we used with the 808
but now with this bass sound.
00:40:17
I like where that's at
and kind of just wanna talk
a little bit about
bassline. Why those notes as
opposed to any other notes?
Well, right now,
the sample that we started with...
00:40:33
Specifically with those little bells
at the end,
they've got this like haunting,
because it's in reverse,
there's like this
haunting tonal effect to it.
00:40:42
I think having an EQ...
00:40:50
A little bit more reverb
there with the send.
00:40:53
There's that tone, and then...
00:40:56
That's the A that we hear.
00:40:59
So let me mute the bass part.
00:41:07
That's that tonal A there
and in my mind it's just
gravitating to going to...
00:41:14
To the D.
00:41:21
I don't know what key
I'm gonna be working yet,
because it's all gonna depend
on the progression,
not necessarily anchored with that sample.
00:41:28
But I like
the dissonance that's happening,
I like the relationship between that A
and then me playing the bassline at the D.
00:41:37
Something I like to do a lot
on my productions is I'll have
one melody,
one harmonic element on a spindle
just kind of like,
doing this repetitious hypnotic vibe.
00:41:48
And then I like to introduce to
kind of introduce something else
that's counter melodic to that
but fits in the same picture.
00:41:56
So it feels like,
even though this is looping
and this is just a continuous vibe,
having a bassline
step away from the same
notes that we're hearing there
just opens it up and makes
it much more brighter.
00:42:07
So if I play the notes of
the drone that we have...
00:42:17
That works too technically,
but look at the emotion that happens
when I go with the
bassline that we recorded.
00:42:35
There's a lot more emotion present there.
00:42:37
So that's kind of the reason why
I just kind of gravitate
towards those notes,
so I'll bring back the drums.
00:42:45
And at this moment, even with the drum
and a bassline and a sample,
whatever it is,
I'm already thinking melodically.
00:42:51
Where can I go with my voice?
Where would an artist
go melodically with this?
And if I start humming something
and something comes to my mind,
I'm on a good path,
that's usually a good sign for me.
00:43:02
If nothing really comes to my mind
than I start just kind of
dropping things out, tweaking them
until I build momentum,
that's the key here,
what's going to add
towards your creative momentum.
00:43:14
So, when you're working on things
and your finding yourself
just running into a wall,
just start moving things
till you start picking up
that momentum again.
00:43:22
So, in this case, I'm really happy with
the notes I'm choosing for the bassline.
00:43:26
Let me double click that
and I'll hit 'Fold' here
and those are just gonna highlight
the notes that we created.
00:43:31
I'm gonna select all by hitting Cmd + A
and quantizing,
Cmd + Shift + U,
so you can see the menu.
00:43:39
And then just hit OK.
00:43:41
You can just immediately quantize
by hitting Cmd + U.
00:43:51
I wanna add something else too.
00:43:53
I wanna add a piano because like,
I'm actually hearing this Kanye record
in the back of my mind,
I think it's one from like,
Dark Fantasy's,
where he like walks up to the MPC
starts playing a single piano note.
00:44:04
I don't why that's in my mind
but it's there.
00:44:07
And so I'm gonna use Addictive Keys here.
00:44:10
Lots of XLN Audio stuff.
00:44:13
I like their style.
00:44:14
I like using this 'Time Flies' preset
for the upright piano.
00:44:56
That was cool, I'm always
capturing these ideas here.
00:45:00
I don't wanna like
not be able to capture something.
00:45:03
So I try to always use record.
00:45:31
Actually I just like that one note.
00:45:35
Two clicks and it's perfect.
00:45:37
But here we go,
I'm gonna have, let's see...
00:45:41
I'm gonna keep that because
that was my rough idea,
I'm gonna create this and
purposely record the one note.
00:45:47
I'm hitting the C, here.
00:46:12
Let's dirty this up using
the Redux in Ableton Live.
00:46:26
A little bit of chorus too.
00:46:29
Let's go to our
'Pitch & Modulation'
and then 'Chorus Ensemble'.
00:46:42
And let's put a reverb to give
some dimension and space,
just the stock reverb.
00:46:50
Once the reverb got on there,
the piano got
further back in the mix,
that's cool,
because it's adding that dimension,
that depth.
00:47:07
Now, I'm gonna just take a little
more of that low-end of that sample.
00:47:13
The strings that we have here...
00:47:16
What's really cool is this
section here at the end.
00:47:23
That's cool.
00:47:24
We might even be able to just loop that,
over and over again.
00:47:31
See what that sounds like.
00:47:46
It's a weird bar,
it's no exactly two bars
and I can see what we've got over here,
one bar.
00:47:54
So I'm kind of limited with space there,
so what I'm gonna do is
go back to where it was.
00:48:02
And let's go back over here.
00:48:06
But I don't want that initial string
to be present.
00:48:09
So, I'm gonna go
right over here to the envelope,
choose clip, go to the gain
and let's just strip
out the gain a little bit.
00:48:19
There we go.
00:48:32
Now, the tonal focal point
is going to be the piano
and that sample is cool coming in
every now and then.
00:48:40
I really like this vibe
and believe it or not, I'm already
starting to think like some melodies,
and it would be really cool to see what...
00:48:47
Jared comes up with, which is the artist
I've invited to jump on the session with.
00:48:52
I love having just my mic
on stand-by and start coming up
with some ideas and
putting some melodies down.
00:48:57
Because at this point
that's what really is
the most important thing for me
because a great song is a great song,
whether it's a song on a ukulele,
a tin whistle,
or a 55 track in a DAW session.
00:49:12
And so, if the melody
isn't really winning you over
and it's not telling the story
or creating the vibe that
you're trying to create with
then I tend to try to overcompensate
with adding a whole bunch
of more production and
more things on there.
00:49:27
Before getting too crazy,
adding a whole
plethora of sounds
and loops and things like that,
I wanna kind of stay here,
I wanna see what the initial reaction
is gonna be with the artist.
00:49:39
And I'll start working off of that.
00:49:41
It could a total flap
or it could work
but I kind of like this vibe,
I think it's cool.
00:49:46
And then I always kind
of just take it from there.
Once logged in, you will be able to read all the transcripts jump around in the video.
Hardware
- Ableton Live Push 2
- Dangerous Music D-BOX+
- Focusrite Clarett 8pre
- Novation Bass Station
- Novation Impulse 49
- Novation Launch Control XL
- Warm Audio WA 73 EQ
- Warm Audio WA 76 Compressor
Ableton Live Stock Plug-ins
- Amp
- Analog
- Auto Filter
- Chorus-Ensemble
- Delay
- Drum Buss
- Echo
- EQ 8
- Hybrid Reverb
- Overdrive
- Pedal
- Redux
- Reverb
3rd Party Plugins
- FabFilter Pro Q
- Modo Bass
- Native Instruments Kontakt
- Roland Zenology
- XLN Audio Additive Keys
- RC-20 Retro Color
- XLN Audio XO
Assassins Creed Syndicate
Gwen Stefani
Kelly Rowland
Jessie J
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