My Lab

Just yesterday I was having a chat with another musician/producer over Gmail. We were talking about related topics regarding music production. Part of the discussion was about his loose timing of the hi-hat in hip hop to give that “bounce”, another was about using Battery 3 vs Battery 4 as a drum plugin in your DAW of choice, we switched to using Reason 7 vs Live 9 for production, yet another topic was about knowing when not to succumb to gear lust (he has a modular synth being delivered next week) and to make music with the tools (gear) you have. Yet another topic was the bass guitar track I recorded on a recent song and his enjoyment of how it sounded in the mix. The gist of all those topics made me think of a related blogpost I wrote about a year and a half ago on the subject of music composition today.

Ironically, this evening, I visited the blog of David Frank, of The System. He and Mic just released “System Overload”, all brand new tracks and a new edit of their hit “Don’t Disturb This Groove”. I, like many die hard fans of The System, was excited to see and hear them come back together to record brand new music, music which was defintely worth the wait.

Back to David’s blog. He posted (yet another) very interesting article that shares his insight on how some of the ways he composes music for The System. David is classically trained, as well as technically sharp in electronic music composition/production. If you’ve ever (especially) heard live interviews, with David, he continually talks about how his musical training and use of gear, over the years, play their distinct roles in his composition. It’s insight like this that I don’t ever recall seeing in any other similar interviews I’ve read.

I’ve had many discussions with artists/songwriters/musicians who use digital audio workstations and sample libraries to compose their music, with regards to how urban contemporary and pop music is often arranged and composed today.

This can be debated, most certainly. The use of DAWs today, undoubtedly, make popular music composition easier (for lack of a better phrase) because of the features built in. I personally find David’s approach not just insightful, but very interesting (but of course this is due to my own journey and level of musical training as a musician). What say you?

::: oceans of rhythm :::

Fresh.

Greetings. It’s been quite some time since I’ve posted from my blog. With all the social networking sites in full bloom, it seems that blogging is passe now (at least the behemoths like Facebook around). In any event, I’d like to take that realization and start to blog again, especially about the musically creative journeys I take. I’m going to attempt to regularly status what I’m doing along those journeys as way of keeping the motivation going, as well as maintaining some accountability by those who occasionally ask “When is such and such going to be released?”, “What’s going on with that track you were working on?, etc (plus I miss blogging – it’s that self publication thing I guess).

This series will be entitled Chronicles of a Mix. Tonight, or I should say this morning, I’ve listening back to a track that my partner, Dan, and I recorded for an upcoming CD project we’ve been working on. Though the track is not mixed, I’m thoroughly happy with the arrangement, but not with the overall sound of the track, so I’ve decided to deconstruct it, starting with each element of the drum track, to make sure the drums submix is on point. There’s a certain type of signature sound I’ve always wanted for my drums, but first that comes by learning how to process your drums (EQ, compression techniques are two major aspects of that). Listening to mixes of songs you like is another common way of achieving that. I’ve been listening to a specific song on Mint Condition’s latest CD, Music At The Speed Of Life that has drum track sounding like how I’d like mine to sound overall. Onward with the learning/listening.

It’s late….or…very early…I’m out.

::: oceans of rhythm :::

F!