Farewell Fair-Weather Friend
By Tone Matrix on June 2, 2024 12:27 am
› Inspiration_Station
‹ Inspiration_Station
This week had a bit of inspiration from a variety of genres. It was the 23rd anniversary of Plaid’s electronic album “Double Figure”.
One of my favorite electronic albums of all time. This was my first introduction to their music. The cover caught my eye. I took it over to a cd listening station (oh how i miss those stores) and previewed most of the album in store. Their track “Sincetta” is one of my favorite songs ever.
https://youtu.be/x0yXo29u6yo?si=OiBzeo0la0JJiE1e
It almost sounds like it could be a track from AIR but it also has such a cool sort of classical music in the 70s progression to it. But of course with cool downtempo beats and thick bass synths and frosty synth leads. I def am babbling much more than I expected about this but it truly is one of those albums I can always put on to reset my thinking and turn into it a positive for creativity. UPDATE: with the free time I had after uploading, I learned the chords to it and was jamoodling along for an hour. It has a descending progression that is so fun to play along with! 
yay!
Then this week a YouTube musician (David Hillowitz) inspired me to open up Ableton much earlier in the week than I expected. He finds these broken/rare instruments and either repairs them or samples whatever sound he can get out of them to create his own sample libraries. They’re entertaining 10-15mins vids that tend to ignite the creative energies I sometimes run low on.
https://youtu.be/3TT5nAW8gi4?si=sYcW8wSakCOvKDY7
https://youtu.be/7cCv3pFyDNI?si=x9wx7U2shRqmGloa
› Track_Rambles
‹ Track_Rambles
So I decided to actually turn on the Ableton Push (v.1) for a change and tried to take a different approach plunking on the rubbery pads. Unfortunately I still haven’t really implemented the Push into my setup as well as I should be. Instead I’m all hunched over, blue lighting my face, sitting in front of my p00ter. I still use my mouse and keyboard to do most of the editing. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing it's just sometimes I know I need to get out of that familiar process. So rather than take a drum loop and pitch it down or splash fx on it, I created the beat using the Push, Ableton stock drumkit and some delays. Nothing too fancy but it at least it gave me a groove to get the Piano started. I might have over compressed the piano a tad since I wanted the bass notes to sound a bit louder without me having to harass the keyboard out of it’s clunky keybed state. It also gave me a better feeling of control compared to last week where I just felt like I had silly putty fingers. Me and the Roland, Mr. RD700GX had a heart to heart and decided to try some of the other onboard sounds. The second melody uses a piano patch called “Antique Upright”. So with some delay it went in a slightly different direction and felt like a honky tonk blues musician drunkenly smacking the piano. (Nooo I’ve never!)
You can sorta hear how I changed moods and wanted to escape the beat in between the track. Starting all energized and extroverted riding a bike down the street to realizing I wanted to run back inside, lock the doors, turn out the lights and noodletro myself into bed.
The mix might need some work. I added some sub bass that hopefully isn’t too loud or too soft. I almost shelved this when I was stuck in a loop zone early on with the intro piano. I thought I might have to do a random noodle at the last min but the second section gave me some more ideas. The result was yay! It felt like a fun experiment even if it’s not my comfort zone. I also forgot how much I dislike mixing multiple parts hah! Not sure if next week will have a beat but either way I’m hoping to hold onto this creativity_spark for a bit longer. Thank you for reading my rambly rumbles and listening. Go WB! *freezeframe cartwheel high fives*
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