On Tue, 04 Feb 2014 09:16:39 +0100 Atte <atte@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On 12/31/2013 03:59 PM, Dave Phillips wrote: > > > Even though I'm not a Renoise user - not even a heretical one - I would > > love to read how you create your music with the software. Please > > consider posting a description here or elsewhere, the more detailed the > > better. > > Ok, as promised a few (?) words about "how I use renoise" and "my work > flow". > > First a little bit about how the tracks started: > After playing with paulstretch I was struck by the beauty of the sounds > produced by it. Actually it's kind of surprising how just about > everything sounds beautiful at 1/10 or 1/20 speed. So I started working > on an album (entitled båndsløjfe (tape loop)) where the textures would > be comprised of stretched material, and with faster stuff like glitches, > percussion and drums on top. I stretched all kinds of audio material, > chopped it up (using the very handy "slice" feature in renoise) to have > smaller building blocks (typically of one or two bars length), and > arrange them into a different structure. Most of the time material from > different stretched audio were layered to allow me to control the > texture individually. Sometimes they were filtered, sometimes with a lfo > controlled filter, sometimes ran through a mda vocoder/talkbox as > carrier and some rhythmic thing like a percussion loop as modulator. > I've been working on/off on this album for about two years, but never > finished all the tracks (there were 19). On "2013" the following 5 > tracks comes from that concept album: "engang", "maria bebudelse", > "forfra", "boston undervej" and "13" (the later contains no stretched > material, but was meant as a contrast from the rest of the songs). > > A few years ago I was on vacation on Gran Canaria. While on the plane, > hanging around the pool and in general relaxing, the other members of > the family were reading books or solving cross word puzzles, but I > started 19 small sketches, mostly one or two bar loops. The idea was not > to finish anything, just play around, some took only 15 minutes or less. > I had plans for later finishing the best sketches for an album entitled > "Las Palmas" (named after the airport on Gran Canaria). In general I > went for instrumental tracks with a dance floor feel without the actual > beat. Each sketch were named after something the happened just before or > after the sketch was made. "de venter", "du kender titanium", "20", igen > igen", "på vej hjem" og "meyer" were selection from that concept album. > > The three meditations were done on commission as meditation tracks. > > About the workflow: > I almost always start out by going for a mood that I like. Every sound > contributes to the mood, but to me the bass drum is especially > important. So I spend some time finding a bass drum that fits with the > mood. I also like to truncate sounds like hihats or claps to make them > more percussive. In general I think every sound or part of a song should > be strong, so instead of just throwing random stuff in, I try to find > thing that are not "just a sound", something with character. Sometimes > (heavy) processing can make a dull sound interesting, but sometimes I > just throw it away again if it's too blah. When I have a loop that I > like with basis drums and some harmony I often start to think about the > structure of the whole track, since I found it very difficult to break > out of a loop later, if I work too much on it. In renoise this means > that I would copy my pattern so the song takes about 4 minutes, and then > start working on an alternate, contrasting part. I also found it > important always to remember to leave space when adding parts. It's so > easy to overdo each part, which leaves no room for later parts, so I try > to imagine how a certain sound would fit with both what is there already > and things that could be added later, sometimes I have a pretty clear > idea of what those later things could be sometimes I don't. It's also > nice to have things, be it sounds, effects, musical ideas that only show > up once or maybe twice in the track, this is easier to work with when > the structure is more or less in place. > > In renoise you can really "program" the music, by typing in the music on > the computer keyboard. This is usually the fastest and most precise way > to work, but the music tends to sound very sterile (to my ears) if done > this way. I have a small LPK25 that's always hooked up and sits on my > desktop, and I try to use it as much as possible (I also have a 88keys > weighted yamaha that I hook up if I have the time). I mostly quantize > things to have a tight groove, but some parts are non-quantized to add > some organic sound the the music. > > Regarding the production: I mix things as I go, since to me that's part > of the compositional process. Some things needs effects to work in the > mood or in the sound. I rarely use reverb, mostly because the tend to > give a washed out and often cheap sound to the track, but admittedly > because I don't have that many great sounding reverbs. The ones I use > the most are the TAL reverbs, I think their tails sounds the least > metallic. Instead I use a lot of delay (especially renoise buildin > Multitap Delay with filter on the delays) that in renoise are easy to > sync to the tempo. I also use alot of lopass and hipass filters to shape > the sound of things. For instance I like to do extreme hipass on hihats > of things that should work like hihats, to really lift them above the > rest of the track, leaving room in the midrange and lo hiend for other > sounds. Prominent melodic sounds (electric pianos, piano, synth sounds, > pads, lead sounds) often needs alot of EQ to bring out the body of the > sound and make them blend with the mood. > > I like to spread out the work of a track over a long time. Work a little > on it, then leave it alone for a while and come back to it. For this > purpose I made a renoise hackish tool that renders a track to wav from > the commandline. I then have a script "generate_mp3" that renders > modified (make style) tracks to an mp3 folder directly on my server, > this folder is synced to my android phone with the app "folder sync" so > that I always have the latest versions of the tracks with me. So I spend > alot of time listening to things away from the computer, for instance > while running of driving the car. That works really well for me, if I > listen to a track in renoise I tend to jump right in and change > something I don't like, but just listening without the ability to change > anything gives a much better overview, especially when working on a > collection of tracks at the same time. > > Some final words regarding renoise: Brendan Jones commented "you made > this with a tracker?"... Well to me renoise is just a tool. I worked > with a lot of different programs, my first album was made with floss > tools (ardour, muse, specemin, zynaddsubfx, phasex, ams, pd and more). I > really believe that for the most part you could make your music in any > tool. So why renoise? The most important thing for me is it's extreme > stability, it just never crashes. There's nothing that sucks the > motivation more out of me than being in flow with a song and having the > program crash on me. I might loose work, but even if I do it really > breaks the flow, and I really, really hate that. It's also really nice > to just load a project and everything is exactly where you left it. I > tried the session managers, but I never got into it. Also when using > alot of tools, a bug in one program might break the whole chain. So you > have to upgrade that piece of software, and now your project might not > load. And renoise is very "rounded" compared to the floss tools IMHO. > Everything is really well thought of and well tested. So many small > things that mean working is simply faster, consistent keyboard > shortcuts, fast switching of views, infinite undo on everything > including fader moves, support for mouse scroll almost everywhere. And > it doesn't hurt that renoise is really light on the CPU. There are > things that are more challenging in a tracker, mostly working over the > seemingly hard boundaries of patterns and accepting the messy look of > realtime midi recordings in the pattern editor. > > I hope that gives an idea about the workflow. Although that was a lot of > words, please feel free to ask if there's something specific you'd like > to know about :-) Wow! Thanks for that. It's fascinating to read how other musicians develop their ideas. -- Will J Godfrey http://www.musically.me.uk Say you have a poem and I have a tune. Exchange them and we can both have a poem, a tune, and a song. _______________________________________________ Linux-audio-user mailing list Linux-audio-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user
