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By onezero on January 24, 2016 10:51 pm

This week's piece evolved kind of organically, starting from a rhythmic pattern I was thinking of. I started with 606 samples in Impulse, and added two channels of percussion (cowbells, clave, triangle, agogo).  A channel of straight-up Analog and another of Operator didn't quite do what I wanted, and a couple tracks of Electric piano moved things in a bit of a funky direction, along with a track in Simpler with a single-note Clavinet sample.  I added a pad in Operator's Organ3 Stereo to give some extra atmosphere.

I tracked electric bass (the usual 80s Epiphone on the P pickup, direct, drop-D), and those parts suggested more funk.  Guitar (clean, Vox wah, Reuss RF-01 fuzz + Vox wah) followed the next night, and some clean chords on the guitar went into a channel of reversed guitar.

Feedback that I got from this past week's local producer meetup encouraged me to pull back on the hi-hats and to apply different auto-filters to different instruments (606, guitars) to keep things from building up in the low mids/bass. I did three bands of effects racks on that 606 with the thought of sending the mid-band to a convolution reverb, but a convo reverb in just that channel along with two others for returns...ate up too many processor cycles, so instead I did two return channels of convolution reverbs: one starting from the Bigger Spaces/BM7 Europa impulse, but damping the highs, and one of the Made For Drums/Overhead Mics impulse, but putting an Auto-Filter before it to roll off the highs, as well as damping the highs a bit.  Extra bonus: I put Max For Live's Humanizer MIDI effect in front of the impulse channels and one of the Electric channels as well, and did an auto-pan for volume/phase changes to try to keep it from being too mechanical.  (Everything got a bit of L-R auto-pan, as well, set to different non-tempo rates.)

Everything got the Full Chain Master, though I set the parametric to nearly flat--just a 0.5dB boost on the bass.

Title comes from the fact that ASCII character 3 is the end-of-text character.  Perhaps the piece edges into Mello Jamz™ territory a bit, but I think it works.

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I feel like I need to Google every word in that second paragraph. Maybe every word of the description except Mello Jamz, which is both a fair and an unfair description for this tune. Chill and funky, yeah... not quite mello.

I would not have noticed that the hi-hats were quieter if you hadn't mentioned it... which is a testament to how well it works.

Should this be called "Lab Funk" honouring all that send channel magic happening there?

Have you tried Native Instruments Reflektor in the send interacting with M4L's diffuse? I bet you'd love it

loving the bass groove in this

Very "lobby of a military building" feel. Chill but serious... very pleasing to the ears smile

Very cool, again feels funky and cinematic. How did you find the Humaniser I've been thinking about trying that as well. The parts all sit really well together and a good sense of space.

CrazyBob wrote:

I feel like I need to Google every word in that second paragraph. Maybe every word of the description except Mello Jamz, which is both a fair and an unfair description for this tune. Chill and funky, yeah... not quite mello.

I would not have noticed that the hi-hats were quieter if you hadn't mentioned it... which is a testament to how well it works.

Thanks, Bob!  The parallel processing with effects racks is very powerful--just put an EQ (in this case, auto-filter) at the beginning of each parallel effects chain to break the signal into frequency bands.  In this case, I liked how it sounded on the usual setup--beefier than the usual 606--though in the car it sounded a bit boxy on the snare. 

Also, that triangle part is way too loud when I listen in the car.  Sheesh--someone tell the triangle player that he left his lights on or something.

Mello Jamz™ is kind of an inside joke I keep threatening to do: create an album-length collection with that title, starting with lite-funk library hold music, but descending into industrial noise and screaming as the composer character goes insane.

laguna wrote:

Should this be called "Lab Funk" honouring all that send channel magic happening there?

Have you tried Native Instruments Reflektor in the send interacting with M4L's diffuse? I bet you'd love it

I haven't!  I'll have to look into that!

NickC wrote:

loving the bass groove in this

Thank you!

Brackleforth wrote:

Very "lobby of a military building" feel. Chill but serious... very pleasing to the ears smile

Thanks!  I totally wasn't thinking of that...but I'm going to have to listen again with this in mind.

Robroy wrote:

Very cool, again feels funky and cinematic. How did you find the Humaniser I've been thinking about trying that as well. The parts all sit really well together and a good sense of space.

Thanks!  I liked that I can set millisecond range of delay--that's pretty much the only control, so it's simple.  Some of the other MIDI delay plugins...were too ragged.  I used 30ms for this...but I might want to go a bit higher.  It's kind of subtle, the way I ended up using it.

Sure is a lot going on beneath the surface.

Einde van rollpad

Great mix. Especially the bassline is groovy and solid.
Love the wah effects as a funkguitar should sound like.

Jim Wood wrote:

Sure is a lot going on beneath the surface.

Einde van rollpad

Q-Rosh wrote:

Great mix. Especially the bassline is groovy and solid.
Love the wah effects as a funkguitar should sound like.

Thank you both!  I do love that wah pedal--I bought it this past summer, and it's an essential part of the guitar signal chain now for funk expression, distortion tone shaping, and reverse-wiring for the trumpet sound (week 1).  Everyone should have one.   

If I knew what exactly you did, I would probably know a whole lot more about the universe than I do now.

Would go really well to some slow motion footage of Samuel L. Jackson just being a full bad ass, cruising the streets, rollin in his six fo' (whatever that is)... Very cool man, love the atmosphere big_smile tongue

Very funky, especially the bass line, nice use of the different instruments, keep these dope tracks coming!

i become a Funky-Junkie, Love this Song!

this is great!

i always do stuff in mono because i find pan pots scary, so hats off to you, really digging the lush stereo field here (Y)

i thought i was booting up a mystery point-n-click when the track started, cool song onezero!

Interesting reading about the process of making this as I listen as the end product sounds so mellow and effortless. Nice work smile

I'm loving that phat bass line.  Nice track.

Fuck yeah! Thoose guitars - kinda trashy in a good way. Man, love those almost orchestral swells in the back. Super chill.

How did I ever miss this beauty? FAVd!

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