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WeeklyBeats.com / Music / laguna's music / Mind over MIDI

Mind over MIDI

By laguna on January 31, 2016 11:48 pm

This one is a personal achievement:




Just hardware, MIDI sequenced. Only one Akai s3000xl. No effects. No additional post-processing.
Recorded on Ableton Live and normalized. Total size of the Ableton MIDI project is 78 kb.

Early sketches of the track and the main PO12 drum loop were sequenced on Seq42 for Linux, compiled manually and exported to Live once the project became too complex.

- The electronic beat is built using a Teenage Engineering PO12 kit sampling individual hits from Youtube's TEng sneak peak presentation (it seems like a fun toy but I rather prefer to sample those limited fixed sounds and twist them).
- Chord is from less than a second of Youtube's GStorm synth channel Roland JX3P demo. Wave was looped and the movement is given using filter, pan and amplitude envelopes.
- the bass is the pure default Akai sine wave.
- Speech belongs to the now public domain Amiga Format coverdisk tapes, teaching how to "Get The Most Of (Commodore Amiga's) Music X", a MIDI sequencing software from the late eighties.

I hope you like it. It means a lot to me to be able to build a complete track without using any further tricks. I was often tempted to dump those early sketches and use "modern" tools, but struggled for almost four days with it. Finished less that two hours before the deadline.

I wish to post a small video of my sampler "performing", but it's really late and I MUST go to sleep and get some rest, because tomorrow duty calls. If you don't see the video yet, please check this again in a day or so.

Wish you all the best!!!

Audio works licensed by author under:
CC Attribution Share Alike (BY-SA)

awesome! would love to read more detail on how this was made big_smile

danieldavis wrote:

awesome! would love to read more detail on how this was made big_smile

Thank you very much for listening, Daniel. as a matter of fact, I was expanding the description. Hope you could watch a little video of it very soon.

Everything plays together so nicely!

Edmund Snyder wrote:

Everything plays together so nicely!

Thanks Edmund smile It was somehow easy and really hard to achieve that composing everything in such a limited machine (for today' standards)... I was surprised myself that the sampler "glued" everything together

Dang 78kb! yikes I like the breaks in this, always a classic sound smile Nice work!

Great combination of sources, amazing how it all blends together in a seamless way. Yet another killer wb.

Tone Matrix wrote:

Dang 78kb! yikes I like the breaks in this, always a classic sound smile Nice work!

Well, the actual Akai project (samples+programs+multi) uses two floppies, so that's still about 3 megabytes smile

I'd love to fit a whole track into one single disk, like some of my Youtube jungle idols do smile

Lyons wrote:

Great combination of sources, amazing how it all blends together in a seamless way. Yet another killer wb.

Thanks Lyons. Really appreciated your comment smile

Anyway, for me what you do with your bare hands with an actual acoustic instrument is indeed amazing.

Great stuff, would love to watch the video you mentioned

Fucking solid. Can't wait to see how this was made.

Lovely all hardware effort - must say I am getting so much more satisfaction with zero softsynth / VST involvement.

nice, restrained late-90s/2000-era idm/break vibes. would fit right in with beats from the n*soul catalog; e.g. audity, cloud2ground, etc.

Where the hell did you find a 3.5" floppy disk?

There's undoubtedly a whole generation of people who have no idea what that thing is!

Great track, too.

This is a really cool tune and big props for achieving your production goals. As a fan of arcane/older gear, hats off to you. I've been working on making a complete track with an old, cheap sampler I have, and this is pretty inspiring.

Phresh!

Nothing like workflow constraints to get the creative juice flowing.
Too often ppl just wank inside their comfort zone

Recommended MIDI chain - zero signal delay assured

youtube pirate strikes again! wink

this is a jam! wtg

love this one.

danieldavis wrote:

awesome! would love to read more detail on how this was made big_smile

For those of you interested in the process, this is my humble contribution. It's just the arrangement and the sequencer playing, really. 1 multi, 5 programs, 5 MIDI channels used, nothing more.

Tone Matrix wrote:

Dang 78kb! yikes

tim koch wrote:

Recommended MIDI chain - zero signal delay assured

Would it be great to make some printer/scanner servo motor music someday like that crazy rig smile

Lyons wrote:

Great combination of sources, amazing how it all blends together in a seamless way. Yet another killer wb.

Hope you dig a simple sneak at the process... well, it's just a dull beige box with some blinking lights smile

leafo wrote:

Great stuff, would love to watch the video you mentioned

mechlo wrote:

Fucking solid. Can't wait to see how this was made.

Thanks guys. Clip is now online, so you could check it out. Not very stunning, though. MIDI data straight to the sampler, audio goes back to the soundcard smile

tim koch wrote:

Lovely all hardware effort - must say I am getting so much more satisfaction with zero softsynth / VST involvement.

I'm now combining both... I started resampling soft synths back into my hardware samplers. It's always nice to overdrive the output of my soundcard, or maybe add some guitar pedal reverb to it.

That's how I'm finally recycling a lot of failed sketches that went nowhere

Thanks for listening, man!

ioflow wrote:

nice, restrained late-90s/2000-era idm/break vibes. would fit right in with beats from the n*soul catalog; e.g. audity, cloud2ground, etc.

Will be checking those artists soon, thanks for the tip... And glad you liked the neo-90's vibe. The adjective "restrained" catched my eye: I could swear I sometimes missed all my software commodities so much during the making of this one smile

vinpous wrote:

Where the hell did you find a 3.5" floppy disk?

There's undoubtedly a whole generation of people who have no idea what that thing is!

Great track, too.

Been collecting tons of them over the year... Call me a romantic smile

Thanks for listening, Vimpous

roboctopus wrote:

This is a really cool tune and big props for achieving your production goals. As a fan of arcane/older gear, hats off to you. I've been working on making a complete track with an old, cheap sampler I have, and this is pretty inspiring.

I dig your tracks a lot, Roboctopus, so it's great to hear you're also into "oldschool" sampling. What gear do you use?

Really looking forward to hear your take on this "one machine one tune" philosophy

iLKke wrote:

Phresh!

Nothing like workflow constraints to get the creative juice flowing.
Too often ppl just wank inside their comfort zone

Thanks, iLKke! Believe me sometimes I was about to dump everything into hard disk and continue with the DAW, but I started to get a grip on it. I guess it's the same with trackers.

Hope to fight againts real SIDs very soon smile

XC3N wrote:

youtube pirate strikes again! wink

Ahhhrrrr, you bet! Nobody's safe... BTW, "youtube bucaneers" would be a dope title for a track, don't you think?

Hope you liked the song smile

thricefoldedcloak wrote:

this is a jam! wtg

Tri Angles wrote:

love this one.

Thank you guys!!! Now I've got to catch up with everybody's tunes this week smile

wow laguna, and all on an early intel macbook - so cool!!!

Sick beats!

Nice beats. Man I like hardware but oh man I am way too lazy to figure it all out (which is a bit of a shame). I have a monosynth that I rarely use these days.

XC3N wrote:

youtube pirate strikes again! wink

Ahhhrrrr, you bet! Nobody's safe... BTW, "youtube bucaneers" would be a dope title for a track, don't you think?

Hope you liked the song smile

I did! Downloaded for the radio show wink And do a youtube buccaneer track!

This is fantastic. I'm getting a PO-12 in soon, so I'll have some inspiration after hearing this

Great track made even better by your method! I'd love to read more about the way you make your music each week, this stuff is inspirational!

laguna wrote:

I dig your tracks a lot, Roboctopus, so it's great to hear you're also into "oldschool" sampling. What gear do you use?

Really looking forward to hear your take on this "one machine one tune" philosophy

I have an old Zoom Sampletrak (budget standalone sampler from ~1999) that is a lot of fun to chop samples on. It's got a crunchy lo-fi sound and some cool features. I keep meaning to attempt a track using only that. Maybe this year!

roboctopus wrote:
laguna wrote:

I dig your tracks a lot, Roboctopus, so it's great to hear you're also into "oldschool" sampling. What gear do you use?

Really looking forward to hear your take on this "one machine one tune" philosophy

I have an old Zoom Sampletrak (budget standalone sampler from ~1999) that is a lot of fun to chop samples on. It's got a crunchy lo-fi sound and some cool features. I keep meaning to attempt a track using only that. Maybe this year!

I've been wishing for a st-224 myself for a long time, but i've only found expensive offers without the smart media card. Bad thing about old or obsolete stuff is sometimes "the hype". For me it makes sense if the price is cheap.

My advice is: start slowly by bringing it back to your production enviroment. One whole track at once was very difficult for me. I need to get my head around a lot of things in my Akai first

It's easy to tell that you put a lot of time into using some old techniques, the music just feels different. I'm gonna watch that video tonight, great job!

Niiiiice.   Yeah - I've got an Emu e6400 that I've been trying to get my head around for the past month or so.  It's chock-a-block full of 32MB RAM... but the guy I got it off had lost both the Zip drive and SCSI hard disk for it... so going to be limited to floppies too!!

Mad respect for doing all of this on hardware synths. I can't bear to do anything that I don't have 100% control over in my DAW!

Respect. Great to see you do this. I think we can only get better if we push the boundaries. You're doing that.

Sodabelly wrote:

It's easy to tell that you put a lot of time into using some old techniques, the music just feels different. I'm gonna watch that video tonight, great job!

It's rally a compliment for me to hear that you feel some "difference" in the music. I respect you heavily as a composer, so it must mean I'm somewhere in the right track. Thanks, Sodabelly

cTrix wrote:

Niiiiice.   Yeah - I've got an Emu e6400 that I've been trying to get my head around for the past month or so.  It's chock-a-block full of 32MB RAM... but the guy I got it off had lost both the Zip drive and SCSI hard disk for it... so going to be limited to floppies too!!

I've just got a E-MU 6400 for 80 euros, a couple of days ago! Some people here in WB are cleaning the dust of their old gear. COuld we listen to some of your magic applied to '90s equipment. I'm sure you'll do wonders smile

mint pixel wrote:

Mad respect for doing all of this on hardware synths. I can't bear to do anything that I don't have 100% control over in my DAW!

Thanks Mint Pixel. Actually I was pretty obsessed with my parameters and having all under the DAW but, after a while and since I keep backup of every hardware project in my server, I could theoretically bring this back to life with another unit. I think it's a nice balance and bring some fresh perspective from time to time. Not that I don't love my DAW, on the contrary smile

danieldavis wrote:

wow laguna, and all on an early intel macbook - so cool!!![/quote

Well, and I thought the 2009 Macbook was the "State of the Art" part smile Thanks, David

scottux wrote:

This is fantastic. I'm getting a PO-12 in soon, so I'll have some inspiration after hearing this

Looking forward to hear your take on the PO12. I'm sure you'll deliver, as always

colorful grey wrote:

Respect. Great to see you do this. I think we can only get better if we push the boundaries. You're doing that.

Thanks Christian. You know I have your opinion in high reward, so I'm flattered. Indeed it's good to change workflows and make it a little bit harder, so we could overcome our own limitations and stereotypes.

Focused on the basics, a great track!

You rock laguna!

Oh damn!  I totally missed this one. First off, it's an absolute monster groove, and how you did it is utterly badass.  Incredible, next-level stuff, Laguna!
Outstanding.

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