Tenth Day of Techno

Oh Sheeeeit.
It's the tenth day of techno. Give someone a gift. Kiss your girlfriend. Spin a dradel, or don't eat for a day.
Today was a whole bunch of fun.
I decided not to get too strung up on kicking out something supremely kick ass as I've been finding that the more I think about this being a big project, there's been a bit more pressure, and it's made things a little harder. I figured I had some pretty awesome tracks in the bag, so I'd just mess around.

I wanted to do something a bit more chill, and laid back.
Once I sorted out the drums, the rest came pretty fast. I wrote the main chord progression on the fm8. If you'd have told me 8 years ago that I'd be using, and loving FM Synthesizers, I'd have laughed. But I started to figure it out a few years ago. They're going to make a massive revival. And we're all going to laugh about how you couldn't give them away in 2005.
I've been really emphasizing having nice chord progressions on this project. I think it's coming from the film scoring work I've been doing. I'm a sucker for nice chords in the right order.

Once I had the chords down, a did the plucky Moog riff. I wanted to go for an oldschool 70s sequencer sound. Sharp, simple and repeatative. I layered the Oberheim with a slow attack on top. This gave it a cool pluck/fade in kind of combo. Then as I tracked them, I played with the filters, and envelopes so they sort of build and drop together.
I doubled the turnaround on a piano, something I've been doing a lot on this project.

The intro was kind of neat. I've always loved it when a song comes in, and you're bobbing your head along to it, only to find when the rest of the track drops, you were bobbing on the wrong beat. So the riff is on the off beats, but when it comes in you assume its on the downbeat. It might get lost after the little break/drop, but whatever. I think it's cool. I also did a thing where I changed the delay time on the intro so it sounds sort of messy, then locks right before it drops.
Tenth Day of Techno by Spell 'n Math

The OTHER awesome part of today, was I dropped by my friend Rage's new studio in progress, where he allowed me to record a bunch of his Roland TB-303. (That's him in the photo above) 303s are perhaps one of the most retardedly overpriced in-demand pieces of vintage equipment in the world. They're dinky little plastic "bass synthesizers" that are insanely difficult to program, and make one sound. But, they make that sound better than anything else. It's the sound of total 90's acid.If you've managed to come to own one, you're extremely lucky and after programming it, likely a little mental.
Rage's new studio is looking awesome. It was obviously professionally designed. And the dude has the most nauseating synth collection ever. An oberheim 4 voice. An Arp 2600. I hate that dude. It'll be a sweet studio once it opens.

So we set it up going direct, as well as through an amp. Most of the time was spent with me learning how to program it. After about 20 minutes of me trying to get it to play what I heard in my head, it became clear, that you're better off programming 8 semi random patterns, and picking the best ones. So that's what I did.

Here's how it sounds.
Teeebeeee by Spell 'n Math

So now I just have a lot of arranging to do. I'm pretty psyched with all the ideas I've come up with over the last 10 days. I'm going to spend the next few weeks dissecting the arrangements of some of my favorite tracks, and see if I can pick apart what works, and what doesn't. I know that want this record to be accessible. I don't want 8 minute tracks of the same boring loop. I want it to be listenable off the dance floor as well as on it. I'm hoping in a few weeks I'll have it done. When I do, I'll post it here. Probably for free.

-P

Ninth Day of Techno

I'm sick as balls, and I've slacked a little.
I took Friday off to speak to an awesome class of grade fives about music which was completely awesome. I showed them some clips of shows and games I've worked on, and then got then to help me make a hip-hop beat on my MPC. I was then treated to a private performance by 2 clarinetists, and a french horn player. They played the rhythm section of Rockin' Robin. We had to hum the melody. It was pretty awesome.

Anyway, today's track. I went full 90s, and full on Talkbox.
I started by sampling some bass rifs. I mixed them down, and ran them through an AKAI S900 to give it a nice crappy 12 bit sound. Then I chopped it up, and dropped it into Battery. I then replayed it, and screwed with the pitch, and loop points. Pretty much just mangled them. It sounds pretty much full on Chemical Brothers. Then I messed about with the drums, and came up with some pretty cool percussion.
I'm sick as hell, so I took a break and bought some Drugs, and pounded a bunch of coffee, played some Fallout 3, then busted out the Talk box.

Talk Boxes are cool as hell, but a super pain in the ass to use. It involves playing something, then sending it through an amplifier, out of the amplifier, into a box, which blasts the sound up a tube and into your mouth. Then you mic up your mouth. It's really hard to use without getting the sound of your tongue slobbering all over the tube.

I started with the opening arpeggiated bit at the start. That's an FM8 being arpeggiated off my Akai, then blasted into my mouth. Then for the "yea yea"s I multi-tracked my Oberheim, and the fm8.

It's still very much a sketch. We'll see where it finally goes.

Tenth Day of Techno by Spell 'n Math

Eighth day of Techno

Day eight....
dayeightdayeightdayeight....

I think I'm getting pretty deep into cheese territory. I don't know. I can't really tell. Sometimes, I get in that zone where I'm overly critical of my own ideas, and keep second guessing everything I'm doing. I was fully doing this all morning, and couldn't come up with anything I liked. The weird thing is as I was working on this, the things I hated the most at the start, became the qualities I loved the most by the end.

I was thinking it would be cool to use some super abstract percussion on this track, so I pulled out some of the first samples I ever made in Logic. Some pings off a Coke can. I dropped a bunch of these into Battery, as well as some Kicks and Snares, and a couple of other percussion. I didn't end up using all the Coke pings, but I definetly got a few of them in there.

After that a spent a few hours looking for something inspiring, and couldn't get anything, so I busted out the turntable, and started looking for some interesting needle drop samples. Just some quick little noises hoping that that would give me something to get excited about. I found some nice sounds, but they weren't getting me anywhere.

So I went back to the synths, and pulled up a really nice Jupiter 8 sample in Omnisphere, and came up with something that clicked. I tracked it, and immediately doubled it on a Piano. So, yea... it's a bit cheesy, but it was something. And it has something to it. Maybe a bit melodramatic, but I'm kind of into it. I was also really trying to stop editing myself at this point. I also want to make sure all the tracks don't sound the same. It would be easy for me to just write a bunch of loud ass tracks. That's sort of what I'm inclined to do.

Then I went back to those needle drops I'd sampled, and they were in key, and TOTALLY fit.! The track immediately started coming to life. I then did a cool portamento rif (See video) on the oberheim, and it started sounding pretty awesome. I just figured out this video thing. Kinda neat! The sync went all out when I uploaded it to Youtube. Boo.


For the last year, I've been really studying a lot of this stuff on a super micro level, paying attention to sounds, and production techniques, but I haven't spent as much time studying the bigger picture of arranging. I come from a song/band background with verses and choruses, and it's awesome how this stuff doesn't follow that at all. So, I started working more towards builds and drops.
I spent a lot of time working out the piano parts in the beginning and the break in the middle. Again, it would be easy to have every track just run into each other back to back, but I feel like that would fry the listener after too long.

I'm pretty stoked that this project has really streamlined my workflow with my synths. They used to be such a pain to use, with the Midi, the CV, Logic's Latency, and their own little quirks, but I'm getting really fast incorporating them into my workflow.
Eigth Day of Techno by Spell 'n Math

Seventh Day of Techno

On this track, I really wanted to use some drums from a drum sampling session I did a couple of summers ago, where I just had a bunch of friends of mine come in and play drums. I then categorized them by style and BPM.

I took a break played by a friend Paul Sheppard. Logic's flex tools are great for these as it lets me stretch the beats to whatever bpm I'm using.

I mixed the break trying to get it as close to good slamming dance drums as I could. Then I chopped them up, and loaded them into battery. I layered the snares with an 808 clap, and layered the kick with a classic 909 kick. So by now, it hardly sounds like live drums at all. I guess it isn't really.

It seems in my futsing around with my oberheim, I accidentally uncalibrated one of the voices, so one in eight notes plays way too loud, so I went to a soft synth to play the main progression.

The lead synth is the Octave Cat. The Cat has tuning issues, and wont really play in tune for more than an octave. It's usually reserved for freaky synth freakouts.

I've been listening a lot to Marklion courtesy of my friend Maria. And there are a couple of tracks where he goes to town with a 303. I love the sound of the 303, but I'm always really nervous of using it as it can sound insanely 90s. But then the thing is, I love the 90s. So screw it.

I don't own a 303. And the 303 emulator I have seems to be crashing Logic every time I load it (It was just a demo anyway), so I disabled all the voices on my Oberheim except for one, and went for a total 303 vibe on it. It still sounds a little fat for a 303, but I just spoke to a friend of mine who's gonna hook me up with an authentic 303! Sweeeeeet!

Then out came the Mini for the cool delayed part that goes over the track.

It came out sounding sort of MSTRKRFTish, which is cool. We'll see where it ends up once I flesh it out.
Seventh Day of Techno by Spell 'n Math

Sixth Day Of Techno

Today started off crappy.
I'd gotten a pretty rad drum pattern going, but the melody I was tweaking wasn't working. I'd chopped it up, loaded into Battery, and still couldn't get something I liked.
Then my Oberheim broke!

I used to work in a music store (This One) for six or seven years, these particular synths have a habit of losing voices due to loose chips. This had happened a few times before, but usually smacking it on the side would fix it. (I promise the tech at Paul's Boutique is more professional than me, I was just a sales guy. He'd probably punch me if he found out I was beating on my synths as a repair method) So I spent the next hour opening it up, and re-seating all the chips. It was actually sort of fun!

At this point, I ditched most of the content I'd come up with, and went all out videogame styles on it. It was really fun. Bit crushing and bit reducing everything into oblivion. Then further side chaining everything to hell.

It's worth mentioning that I've sort of come full circle on my opinion of plugins. I used to assume that bigger better plugins, meant better sounding mixes. Then as I got all the bigger better plugs (UAD, iZotope etc) I was finding my mixes didn't really sound much better. So I spent a few years really studying mixing technique. And now the irony is, as I've gained a better grasp on eq, and compression, I'm just as happy to use the stock logic EQs and Compressors, as I am the fancy UAD and iZotope. I'm actually a pretty big fan of the "optical" setting on the Logic compressor for side chaining. And it's sort of a shame that you can't side chain UAD plugs in Logic.

After lunch, I worked out the whole intro. It was sort of fun. It actually sort of made me a bit nostalgic. I played way to many video games as a kid.
I sampled my Casio SK-1, and re-chopped the drums into a different pattern. I wanted it to be sounds that we'd all heard growing up in the 80s. And I wanted to have a track that has a similar energy to the stuff I really like, but has a sonic stamp.

I'm starting to run a little dry on ideas. I hope I can keep this all up.
The Sixth Day of Techno by Spell 'n Math

Fifth Day of Techno.

Today was a bit nuts, as I had a short mixing session at noon, then a meeting at 3, so I only had a few hours to put in, but I think I got something pretty rad.

I've been stewing a lot, and keeping track of sounds and ideas that I wanted to try. There were a handful that came to me in the last day.

I have this cool deck called "Oblique Strategies" that were developed by Brian Eno, and some other dude I've never heard of intended to give you creative advice in times of "creative blockages". I was told to "do something boring". The irony of which I'm sure will not be lost on most people.

I started with the classic house drum pattern. Up till now I've been gravitating towards really slamming clicky kicks, but wanted to go for a more classic analogue thump on this one. I also have been finding my choices of snares are leaning on the aggressive side, so I tried to go with something less snappy. Then I took an electronic open hat, and side chained the hell out of it, to give it a really awesome pumping sound. I chilled out on the rhythm in general. I wanted what was there to speak for itself.

The minimoog has this really cool sound where if you modulate the filter with the 3rd Oscillator jacked up really high, you can get these really rad vowel sounding things a la Daft Punk. It sounds like a robot trying to speak. That became the main focus. Then I made a really cool vowely sound on the FM8, that played off of it.
The chirpy bits are an auto-tuned snipped of a vocal on a record I'm mixing right now (Used with permission)

I'm totally stoked with where this is went. I'm looking forward to fleshing this one out.

The Fifth Day of Techno by Spell 'n Math

Fourth Day of Techno

Today I think I kicked some ass.
I didn't get a lot done in terms of length, but what I did get done is pretty bad ass.
I put a little bit of swing in the drums to keep them from being strictly 16th notes, and went for some heavy hitting samples. I layered some heavy kicks and did a neat clicky thing with some snaps so that they sort of work like shakers, but have an oldschool hip-hop kind of thing.

Then I wrote a bunch of orchestral stabs and pads using my sample librarys, and mixed them down, chopped them up, and loaded them into Battery where I sonically destroyed them. I've been into setting really short loop points, and modulating them with wheels, or envelopes, so you can get this really screwed up distorted deconstructed mechanical sound. Super rad. So I came up with a pretty awesome sequence using this, and augmented it with some Massive bass, and Oberheim vibrato stabs.

I wasn't sure where to go with it, so I decided to put in a massively pretentious piano break that sounds like something off a Faith no More record. Fuck it, it's kind of hilarious and awesome. I didn't have any vocals on the record yet, so I dug into a session I did for a Maylee Todd, and stole some accapellas. These got chopped and pitched and dropped again into Battery. The lyrics are abstract, but it still sounds cool. I hope she doesn't get mad ; )

I then took these accapellas, and did the screwed up manipulated loop points, and stretched them out into the intro. As they play I slowly lowered the threshold on the Side Chained compressors so they start to pump with the rhythm before the drums actually drop. On a side note. Why isn't accapella in my spell check? I still have no idea if I'm spelling it right. Google has it both ways.

Ok. I'm going WAY overboard with this side chaining compression business. I'm side chaining EVERYTHING. Revebs, delays. Pretty much nothing gets away from getting massively compressed off the kick. It's just so FUN!

Here it is.
The Fourth Day of Techno by Spell 'n Math

Third day of Techno

On the third day of techno I got a text from my room mate who'd left for work. It read

"Odessa is coming over today to do a photo shoot for her magazine in our apartment. She'll have a photo and model with her. She has a key, so it's just a heads up"

That's cool. It wouldn't bother me.
I should however start by telling you that I needed a haircut, and that my deodorant has been making my armpits itchy, so I stopped wearing it as I'm just working all day at home. So I stink, and look like shit. After a few hours I took a break and walked out of my studio into a sea of hot models and fashionable french photographers. How cool do I feel right now. The house is full of awesome looking people that speak in rad accents. I stink, my sweater is too big, and this model next to me is making me feel fat. Anyway, my girlfriend is way cuter than all of them, and makes really good omelets.

You can check out the Magazine they were photographing for here.

ANYWAY,
This track was super fun. I wrote this weird melody in 11/8 or something. I don't even know. But when you lay it over a 4/4 it drifts around and sounds really cool. Then by changing the key of the bass, the whole thing keeps changing chords without the notes changing. I'm sure there's some fancy word for this in musicspeak. The bass was a a layered Moog, and Oberheim. As the track creeps on, more harmonies slowly fade in off the Moog, and it builds nicely. I used Reaktor's Juno 6 plugin towards the end. I have such a hard time with Reaktor. I want to like it, but I just seems like too many steps to use it. And way too much to learn. I dunno, I'll come around to it. I can never find the files I want.
The last touch was I worked out a cool rhythm where I vocoded the melody with some freaky white noise, and came out with a really cool rhythm I can filter in and out.

A taste. The Third Day of Techno by Spell 'n Math

Second Day of Techno

Today started out again with the Drums in Battery.
Kick, Snare, Shakers, a Tambourine on the upbeats. Some massively side-chained rides. For melody, I lucked out. When programming the drums I'd accidentally switched to a synth in logic, and played a couple of notes that sounded kinda awesome. Sort of Life Aquatic meets Day n Night. It gave it a cool simple melody that was rad.

The middle part was the hard bit. I wanted to go into a triplet freakout, but getting out of a straight 4/4 into tripplets can be tricky.
I went to town with the synths. I spent a really long time trying to get CV into my Oberheim so I could control the filter, but I think the Pitch/Modwheel portions of my Paia Midi to CV converter are busted. So I wasted an hour screwing about.

So I piled on more and more triplets with filters and sync'd oscillators building and climbing. Then half way stereo Oberheims through a big muff. I'd just created a NIN track. Oooops!

I wanted to have a synth with an LFO switching between 4/4, Tripplets, and 6/4. Again, I spent an hour setting something up in Logic's environment that would allow me to do this on the fly, but the automation was super sloppy! I'd play it perfectly then it would come back all out of sync. So I was forced to use 3 different instances of Massive all with different LFO settings. Logic needs to get punched in the nuts. Then it all falls apart and drops back into the the intro part, with a jazzy drum break I programmed with Abby Road drums buried in the back. It sounds super absurd after the synth freakout in the middle; enough so that my room mate and I busted up laughing when it came back in.

Anyway, here's the sample, again unfinished. The transition is still pretty rough.
The Second Day of Techno by Peter Project

First day of Techno.

Alright.
So today I started work on the first track. Everything's getting done in logic, and most of the sampling is taken care of using battery. First thing to go down were the drums. Half the fun of programming the drums is making a boring 4/4 beat interesting. After assembling my drums in Battery I did a a neat 6/8 hat thing with a hat I got off an old univox drum machine. Then took a crappy sounding tom and ran that through a cool pitch shifting delay. That gave me my main drum section.

Then I screwed around trying to find some nice chords or melodies. Jumping back and forth between pianos and an old Oberheim, I settled on a progression on Piano. My roommate said it sounded gay. C'est la vie.

The bass line got assigned to the Mini. The noise freakouts were the Octave cat, and the Piano chord progression got doubled on the Oberheim.

I circuit bent a bunch of toy keyboards last winter. I sampled a bunch of sounds and mangled them in Battery. I used those as accents and pads in some cases.

This was the first time I really dug into the arpeggiator on my Akai keyboard controller. In theory it will take midi clock from your sequencer, and spit out arpeggios. However he notes are never in sync, and I almost always had to adjust them. There's still something really satisfying about tweaking a filter on a synth that's being wildly arpeggiated.

This side chaining business is a bit addictive.

At the end of the day, this is what I had. Unmixed
Still needs a lot of work, but I think it'll turn out pretty good.
I can't figure out how to upload music, so you'll have to cut and past this into your browser.

The First Day of Techno by Peter Project

Ten Days of Techno

Sweet.
So, I finished scoring a movie 2 weeks ago, and wasn't totally sure what to do with my time. So, I figured I needed a solid project under my belt to keep myself from going mental.

I've slowly been sinking into the abyss of techno obsession. A year ago I'd gotten bored with all my music and wanted to get into something new. I was bored with my old garage rock band, and Hip-hop wasn't as exciting to produce as it was, and I slowly dipped into Dance music. A record has been brewing in my head for a while, and I kept talking about doing it. So I figured, If I can sit in my studio and score a film for 10 hours a day, everyday for a month, why not do the same working on a record.

So I established "Ten Days of Techno". Where I'm forcing myself to write techno all day every day for 10 days. Whatever is done at the end of the day (Which is usually the bulk of a track) I leave and move on the next day. At the end I'll have 12 (I already had 2 done) tracks to cherry pick and refine into something bad ass. Then I should have a record! Hopefully it wont suck. Admittedly, I'm already 3 days in, so I'm sort of cheating on this blog.

I don't really know what I'm doing.