*originally written on March 2nd 2009*
(It will be on the new Acid All Stars release being rolled out exclusively on Beat Port on March 26th; coinciding with the Acid All Stars WMC event)
I didn't have time to execute my preferred writing process for A23P in full, so I decided to take some of the concepts I'd looked at exploring in a previous track called "Banish" and continue exploring them more indepth.
There were also some concepts I had had recently concerning "What if a 303 had osc catered more towards granular synthesis work", and this concept also was implemented and explored in light.
Finally, there was another idea I'd end up injecting which was to get some thoughts from persons outside myself well before the track had began entering post production with the specific intent of writing the piece (potentially) based on some of those thoughts (as opposed to simply using the thoughts as general critiques first and foremost).
Having "Banish" as a starting reference point sped up the writing process dramatically as it allowed me a few liberties:
A. To immediately have a general song structure in mind
B. To know how the "different" elements of that structure could fit together.
In essence, there was no need for me to develop a formula, as the formula was already in place.
I'd been working on a remix of a song by Decibel Flekx; and a significant part of the implemented concepts for that piece were as follows:
A. Taking a significant part of the concepts and production techniques used for Ragga jungle and looking to apply them within a non-ragga/jungle way. (I've always been partial to the "apparent" complexity that the ragga dnb style displayed, and it was in fact the first and foremost thing that attracted me to dnb in the first place back during the mid-nineties)
B. Exploring the 4/4 entrapment that electronic dance music as a whole tends to ONLY accept and figuring out a means of working within that construct but making it feel like a different time signature. (oddly enough, a lot of rock acts were examined for this. It wasn't only various rock bands that I looked at dissecting for techniques here though, and ultimately what all I took in comprises a long and boring list)
The remix wasn't yet completed before I had to break off to concentrate on this new release due to time constraints.
The only reason I bring the remix up is that it played a large roll in the development of "Winter None".
Again, due to time constraints, I had to expedite the process when and wherever possible.
Obviously, the two concepts that had been formulated for the remix had strong ties to rhythm theory.
Further, perhaps obviously, one of the ways to begin creating an illusion that 4/4 time is not 4/4 time is through syncopation; which in turn, forms arguably THE foundation for breakbeats. (and we can then trace this back to jungle/dnb's breakbeat usage, rocks break beat usage, and which in turn brings us back to things that I had noted studying for ideas on how to implement concepts for the remix.)
Where ragga jungle/dnb is concerned, a lot of the feel of complexity came from not just using drum phrase samples, nor even just re-arranging the order those original samples played back in, but also having completely different drum phrases interact with each other and/or taking the same original samples and simply applying quick/brief changes to them...pitching it up/down a few semi-tones, filtering them, etc. But doing all of this frequently, quickly, and briefly before the brain had a chance to register to totally register everything.
I didn't stick to the ideas I gleamed from these styles strictly, in fact, I more so just kept in mind various elements, why those elements worked, which in turn allowed me a bit of play space for tweaking.
Whatever the case, some rhythmic structures for this remix had been laid out already, and the initial rhythms put to outline for "Winter None" were in a way direct imports.
I had various rhythm samples I had already chopped up, key mapped, applied various individual/independent filterings to, and other what nots via a process much akin to Properllerhead's "Recycling". Similarly there were rhythms for the remix I had written using some of these bits. I left the actually notational writing for the remix in place, swapped out the sample pieces used while leaving all other settings in place (which in effect was like swapping out one drum kit for another), and the initial foundation for a beat structure was now in place (ultimately this was how the bulk of the percussion in the second half of the song was made).
(*I'll note here that unlike with the old dnb techniques, these were hardly full on phrase samples in use, they were significantly smaller bits. But the organization of those small bits and how they worked was very much built upon the concepts of old dnb techniques....that said, as I noted, the best way I know to describe what swapping out the samples did while leaving the notational writing in place was it was something more akin to swapping out drum kits. Something somewhat like bringing up different drum maps in a workstation or what have you, but a bit more complex then that*)
I'll give a quick note on the conceptual structure of "Banish" before I move on.
There were two parts to "Banish"; the first of which I'll confess I really wasn't all that interested in.
The second of which I was highly interested in.
People tend to be pretty conservative in their tastes (even though most will deny it). They like what they know and shy away from what is foreign.
Given this fact, there's a lot of danger in looking to jump into new territories with an expectation that people will be willing to allow you to take them there.
So, the first half of the track was very much written with a partial intention of:
A. Gaining the trust of the listener
Which in turn pretty much meant dealing with much more typical dance formulas and hopefully showing "I understand what you like and I have an understanding of the formulas involved....you can trust me."
B. Outright lying to the listener
Oddly enough, this is very much in tune with the first statement. As people tend to assume that because you understand something or are (artistically) doing something that it must naturally mean that you like that thing you're doing. And this bounces back to the gaining of trust thing....it's basically a lie to the listener (to gain their trust) that is tantamount to "I really really dig this stuff just as much as you do." (even though that may be anything but the case)
The second half was where the gold was at (IMO). It's the chunk where, hopefully trust had been earned, and I could basically go "O.K......things are about to get a little crazy....but please just continue to trust me."
There's still a number of limitations at this point, as the fact of the matter is that you can only get so crazy before you've effectively ruined that trust and taken the listener somewhere too foreign. So that becomes the balancing act......
Exactly how much of your insanity is safe for you to reveal?
There's really no way to know the answer to that question until the listeners start actually weighing in on what they thought of the end result.
Whatever the case, so back to "Winter None"...
I've long been a fan of things running in reverse, and when it came to "Winter None" I thought it'd be interesting to have a bass that almost sounded like it was running in reverse (but truly wasn't). It was a pretty basic/simple idea, and I ended up cooking up a bass line to fit this on my SynthII (granted any number of synths at my disposal would have been able to amply accomplish this job, it just so happened that I picked the SynthII).
Before continuing on, I'd like to reference Bob Moog, whom had once noted something to the effect of synths changing the way music could be written because now rather than an instrument simply having to play different notes to bring about movement, the entire timbral character of the instrument could undergo dramatic change (and this could replace notational changes at times).
I've always found that little note of his interesting as he might as well have been explaining why people would find the Acid sound interesting (and else).....yet he made the statement years prior to the invention of Acid House.
The first half of "Winter None" (the safe/trust building half) was really somewhat minimal in instrumentation and notational structure.
In fact, notationally, it's monotonous as all hell.
I took from Moog's old ideas, from the ideas of what made the "acid" sound work in large part, and basically just looked to having the timbral character of the instruments involved evolve in various ways over time. My desired end result being for the mind to feel it's hearing something dynamic despite the fact that there's very little notational variation going on.
Again, as with "Banish", the concepts I was more truly interested in we're things to be explored in the second half of the tune.
I wanted to be able to get even crazier; to be able to expose a much wider portion of what I really find interesting then I was with "Banish". So in this light, I felt that a possible solution was to subtly work in not so much direct elements, but more so techniques I planned on implementing in the second half early on.
So this was a major addition to the conceptual idea behind "Banish", to early on begin injecting the more uncommon production techniques in a subtle way so that the listener, without knowing it, had already become accustomed to them by the second half (and thus more prepared and open to things being pushed).
I suppose once "Banish" is out, if one took the time to put "Banish" and "Winter None" side by side, I think they'd be able to easily see exactly how much earlier on "Winter None" begins injecting subtle techniques of the second half.
Finally, the second half comes into effect, and I took things in a much more liberated direction then I had felt I could allow myself with "Banish".
Much to my surprise, of the persons that got to hear the track in it's pre-post production state, all but two of them (there were about 10 in total) noted finding the second half much more interesting....which surprised me, as by far in both it's structural style and production techniques used, it was a lot more foreign; I have to confess, I was happy to hear that the end result I wanted seemed to largely be achieved, which was to at the least, have the listener be willing to put up with the second half, and at most, actually agree with me on that it was much more interesting territory).
I'm going to break off here and simply give some brief and extremely short statements in regard to what the difference is between the initial production process and the "post production" process.
Basically, the pre-"post production" processes are all those things that take place before and during the assembling of some kind of initial recording.
So, for example, a band writes a piece of music, they learn to play, they head into the studio, all the musicians are recorded. All thing that would have occurred before post production.
There's also a number of things that often take place after all that recording is done. For example, those recordings may be edited, mastered, etc. And these are all a part of the "post production" processes.
In the modern day world, most notably with electronic musicians, the difference between when the initial production process and the "post production" process take place has often become negligible. Both processes are very often taking place at the same time. Part of the advent of DAWs, plugins, etc. and something I'd say was arguably largely triggered by when Steinberg first began rolling out their VST effects technology (and similarly systems like Pro Tools, Logic, and even Cakewalk taking on Dxi plugins).
I'm sort of a dinosaur in how I go about doing things nowadays, so that difference between the two processes is still very much in effect. For me, post production is still post production and it can only begin taking place at the conclusion of the initial production process.
That all said, there are considerable amounts of more modern production techniques that are traditionally part of post production processes that I've been able to incorporate as part of my general non-post production process. I won't go into what they are here, but if someone is bored, they can feel free to ask me about them and I'd be willing to go into more detail, how it all works, etc.
Whatever the case, so the formal production process on the track took about 2 or 3 days I think (post production took a couple weeks; granted only two days of concentrated studio time took place in those few weeks).
There were a lot of tricks pulled in how the track was written.
There's a philosophy I adhere to that is based on the principal that "The Control Method Determines The Result"....that philosophy was in major play (actually, I always have it in mind for that matter).
What it means is that, for example, where a lot of folks might look to some sort of effects unit or post production process to achieve some sort of dramatic interesting result, a lot of the time what I did was simply make a dramatic shift in the way I played an instrument. This in turn often results in a dramatic shift in the overall perception in the sound of that instrument.
I don't think people grasp just how much the sound of the guitar is rooted in the lay out of how the instrument itself works/is played. The same goes with piano and any number of other instruments. When you begin turning control methods on their head, dramatic shifts in sound often occur.
It's like people trying to use a workstation synth to play the sound of a harp and then wondering why they have such a hard time being able to write stuff that sounds like a harp player despite having access to a harp sound in their workstation.
To really exemplify this, I think an interesting experiment for some would be to get a MIDI wind controller and then begin playing their favorite synth/sampler/drum machine from the wind controller rather then triggering it via a keyboard controller, programming it from their DAW, or whatever their favored method is.
In any regard, so that was another additional build from the original "Banish" writing concept...
There were a good number of sections of "Winter None" where I would dramatically shift how I was/could play various instruments and then I'd bounce back to yet some other method.
The pre-post production recording of the track was taken during the near end of this period. And really, to put it simply, that recording is little more then the result of instruments hitting mixer and the master outs of the mixer dumping out to a recording device. It departed from being a live recording in that the majority of the writing had been transcribed to a MIDI sequencer and so for the most part, outside of one synth (777), I really didn't have to personally tend to the instruments at all. (oddly enough, there are people that go out to gigs and pretty much "play" this way and try to then tell people they are "playing live".....I'm telling you now, that is a complete lie, and the amount of artists out there selling people on this lie is beyond astounding....the reality is, is the vast majority of what is being heard and happening when "playing" this way is done simply by them hitting the "play" button on the sequencer)
This recording was then dished out to a few people for thoughts of what they thought of the direction of the track, what they'd like to see done, etc. Believe it or not, I have a note pad chock full of notes of what they had to say.
I'll note, it's not like all of the view points were full of musical theory ideas and such, a large chunk of them were really quite modest.
"So and so said they felt this section was boring."
stuff like that.
So with all those notes in place, I reviewed the writing of the track as it stood, figured out what areas of perceived noted weaknesses I thought were relevant and which ones I did not, and then took to figuring out what could be done with the piece to address the areas of weakness I did consider note worthy.
After that, all the instruments began undergoing formal recording and such....preparation for the post production process.
The post production processes for this piece were an absolute nightmare of tediousness (I already noted how long it took).
It's funny, because my general out look is that post production can't save you. The piece has to be a solid piece prior to all of that.
And that said, what goes on during post production I think should generally be rather small. Keeping to that thought, despite how long the post production process took and/or the sound of the track, I have a feeling many would be surprised at how little of what they may think occurred during post production truly did take place during that time.
Whatever the case, as I just found it fitting to the writing process, after numerous things had been prepped for post production, I then continued on with the non-post processes in order to address some of those areas of weakness.
I'm not going to go over all the weaknesses or ideas on how things could be made better that were offered, but here are a few:
I. Theres a breakdown in the track and someone noted they felt that area lost their attention.
II. There was another area were someone felt a concept of dueling bass lines would work quite well.
III. Numerous felt the fist section wasn't nearly as exciting as the second.
IV. Someone felt that the two different sections of the track seemed like two totally different songs that had simply been mixed/djd together rather then being an obvious single song.
So just using those four areas for some brief example, here were some things that were done as I headed back into pre-post production affairs.
I made up a new bass timbre (the Supernova II was my tool of choice for this one, and not for some SUPER unique ability it had as much as it was just a convienient tool to program this particular bass sound on). That new bass was then written into the song, to not go as far as creating a "dueling bass" type scenario, but to compliment the first one that had been written and to slightly edge a bit closer to the dueling bass type scenario. Another aspect of it being written was geared towards brightening up the first half.
Yet again, where before things had been rather ambiental, this bass line was reintroduced earlier on during the break down section to help combat the boredom a person might feel during that section.
Finally, it's used in the second half of the song (all be it more in the background) to help make the tie to the first half more obvious. (of note, it's not like all the elements of the first half disappeared in the second half, as actually, the original bass line of the first half is once again still in use, and there's some other elements that were introduced lightly in the first half and then used more promientely in the second half, amongst other things)
After the writing of the additional bass line, this was recorded, and the formal post production process in large part began to take place.
Perhaps not so oddly, being into sound design, and despite owning a good number of hardware synths and what not, there are still times that I run into sound design concepts that the synths and samplers I have on hand either don't have architectures capable of addressing, or don't have architectures capable of addressing in an expedient manner. (this same thing could be said for soft synths, or any other tool for that matter)
In particular with this track, there was a large number of granular concepts I had in mind that the instruments themselves could not address.
So for example, the acid line in the track comes from the FutureRetro 777, which was adequate as far as there were some tricks I wanted to be able to pull that the 303 simply could not but I still wanted to be able to pull off a sound that closely resembled the 303. So I took use of many commonalities the 777 has with the 303, but also used it to address the areas of concern I had in regard to the limits of the 303s arch. There were then still granular synthesis concepts I had in mind for the acid line, and the 777 itself could not address these, which meant this had to be part of the post production process.
Apparently I used some odd side chain compression techniques as well.
(I had noted them to a mate of mine during candid conversation, and he noted it as an odd technique....other then his mention, I never would have thought anything odd about it)
First off, I'm not a big fan of side chain compression. My true feeling is that 90% of the time, if a synth and/or sampler has a decently endowed arch, between it and simple mixer eq work, things should be able to be made to sit fairly well in a mix. At times when dealing with things where volume dynamic change is a bit harder to control, compression/sustainers/limiters may be useful.
Simply put, at least in this particular area, I'm a big believer in simplicity works best.
In any regard, I didn't want the original bass line to be clouded up with the most powerful bass drum kick; but at the same time, I didn't want this sucking effect heard that is now all to often in electronic dance music (for no apparent reason IMO).
A bit of side chain compression work with the bass kick triggering the compression on that bass line worked out just fine.
The end effect was pretty subtle and just helped things sit just a wee bit better in the mix. (I'll be getting up the initial pre-post production recording soon enough, and once the actual track is released, what I'm noting here I think will be easy to see when/if the two are compared)
Next, though used more sparingly, I wanted the second bass line that had been written to come through more crisply then the original bass line. But like the original bass line, it was lower on the hierarchy then the main bass drum kick.
To resolve the issues, a simple side chain compression hierarchy was setup.
The bass kick triggered compression of both bass lines.
The newly written bass line triggered compression of the original bass line.
The syncopated based nature of the much of the writing worked in line with this hierarchy to ensure nothing was more dominant then it needed to be (within it's hierarchal place).
As fore mentioned, a number of granular synthesis actions were also dealt with during post production, but there was also a lot of panning work done to the numerous parts, a bit of volume level work, and else.
All in all, there really were no dramatics pulled during post production though; the writing process and the instruments themselves handled the dramatics. But unfortunately, there was just a lot of small things I wanted done that were rather simplistic, but just tedious as all hell to implement.
It wasn't until the majority of post production work had been done that I actually prepared to record the vocal track and place it into the piece.
Originally my idea was to simply implement some granular synthesis applications on my own voice as an osc in order to make it sound more feminine and then record the end result. My thinking on this shifted, as really, if you want the real thing, nothing ever quite does it like the real thing.
So I tried to ring up Oedlla (Linda; the Acid All Stars label founder) to see if she could record a quick phrase for me and then toss it my way. She didn't answer......
So I then called up my mate Shaie, as she had told me she'd bought a mic recently and we had discussed doing some work (with her on vocals) in the past. I did reach her, but she wasn't in a situation to be able to record vocals.
The solution I came to was a fairly odd one.
I asked Shaie to call me, I'd neglect to answer the phone, and she could then leave me a voice mail giving the phrase I needed.
She dropped the voice mail, left the phrase, I inspected it...
The second portion of the phrase I thought was perfect, but I asked her to give one more call and drop a couple variations of the first part of the phrase. She called back, left like 4 variations, and that was that.
To be honest, I was pretty nervous about how the quality of vocal was going to come out. Luckily enough, it came out a lot better then I thought it would. Now that I think about it, I'm able to retrieve the raw wav files from my voice mails, which probably helped in boosting the receptive quality.
None the less, there was still a bit of clean up work I had to do.
Part of my initial idea with the vocal was to create multiples of the persons with slightly different inflections.
I've long been fascinated with the Hartmann Neuron synth, and though I don't have one, I decided to play around with a key area of it's arch; which was resynthesis.
Well......
what can I say.....
(Pitch) Resynthesis just doesn't quite do the job nearly as effectively as Roland's Variphrase (which essentially is the same basis the later to come Auto-Tune and Melodyne came to follow).
Maybe it was just flaws in the system I was dealing with, but whatever the case, the results were less then astounding.
I didn't feel like preparing the vocal for import into my V-Synth in order to access a Variphrase domain, so instead I decided I'd opt for some vocoding work. Go with something more airy and somewhat pad like rather than a grouping of Shaies.
So I did some vocoding work to complement the vocal in some areas (but not totally mask it). I'll note that, the fact that the vocal was placed in the midst of other musics, had a delay effect applied to it at times, and a vocoder applied to it at times, further masked weakeness held by the fact that it was a voicemail recording in origin.
So her vocal was worked in, and then some further granular synthesis work and panning was done on her parts.
Going back to the areas of concern that I'd noted from others, I'll give here that though not in the initial pre-"post production" recording, a vocal was always planned for the track.
This said, the vocal addressed two areas that I had noted regardless of the fact that I knew the vocal was going to assist in them.
A. It helped liven up the 1st half
B. It was a major component in making the 1st and 2nd half parts of the track adhesive.
Once the vocal was done, cymbal crashes were added to the track. These were light, and again, there was some light granular work and panning work done on them. In all honesty however, the granular work I think was more so just being nit-picky, as they were things of such a nature that I doubt most will notice anything striking about the sound of the crashes.
So that's it.........
the making of an A23P track....
and granted the time constraints I had for when the piece had to be done didn't allow for me to go through my total preferred process, it was pretty darn close to my ideal production environment conditions for a dance track; particularly in the area of the amount of freedom I want to have. If anything, my most major issues on "Winter None" (and "Banish" for that matter) came from the nature of the dance community itself....where rather than being able to do something other than try to make 4/4 timing give the illusion of not being 4/4, I'd be able to do something like full on get away from 4/4 timing. But alas....djs hate the stuff because it's not as readily mixable with the other 4/4 following legions of the dance world amongst other things...
actually, I think non 4/4 music, particularly non 4/4 OR 3/4 would end up having a tendency to make party kids trip over themselves....
damn that'd be a funny scene.
EDM producers and djs in mass should learn to deal with non 4/4 timing just so they can force that scene into reality. *LoL*
Yeah.....
so I think there's something like 4 or 5 more A23P releases in total that I'm left to do before A23P production stuff is ended so that I can refocus on 23 and Piss Ant (my main musical affairs). The project will still be able to play out live, but production wise, it's going on an indefinite hiatus.
For those of you really into the more traditional dance formulas; though acid is still involved, a couple of those releases to come take to that.
So yeah, that means there's some pounding acid techno, even some trance around the bend.
But for the most part, you can expect the majority of what's left to continue to try to explore where Acid hasn't been yet, areas I don't see edm being willing to explore in mass, and looking to at least challenge the listener a little bit rather then just give them what they are already comfortable with. Hopefully get them to be a bit more willing to traverse some new territory rather than just settle for rehashes of the same old genres and/or formulas.
yeah....
so until the track is realeased...
I guess thats it for now.
