#StoriesAboutSongs

This one was fun to make. The first drum machine that I owned was a Roland 505. It’s a decent drum machine, but the sounds aren’t great. That was in 1987, and a few years later, I got my Roland TR-808, and that was a game changer. It was with that drum machine that my group (Wildstyle) and I produced an album’s worth of demos, that we performed and were also known locally around town (to select people) in Lake County for a short while in the late 80s and early 90s. It’s a very special and impactful part of my life.

Because of that, I wanted to mess around with classic drum machine sounds for this project, and of course, the 808 is the classic of all classics in that realm. This whole beat leans heavy on the rolling 808-ish bass hit from the Ironman kit.

For that synth-y sound, it’s me using a glitch that I’ll explain with track #6, where my Pioneer DDJ-200 DJ Controller will control parts of the midi sounds when I touch the platter, so I was just lightly raising my hand off and on the platter for this sound to happen.

I’ve found myself going to the Feat Pete drum kit on Ableton a lot this week when choosing sounds, it seems to be a favorite. For this beat, I finally decided to use some high hats from that kit. I just “played them any old way”, with two fingers. I also accidentally hit a snare and a tom tom in the process, cause I’m clumsy, but the velocity pads, plus the sloppy delay effect, gave it an interesting sound, so I kept it.

There’s an extra bass hit, that I played an off beat pattern paired with a timbale. I didn’t think of this until after I came up with the name, but that timbale sounds like a bell, which the idea of high noon and bells, has this connection to Westerns, so that must’ve influenced my title choice.

I originally was just going to make this a short 2 minute piece with only the above sounds, but I decided to try the switch up towards the end of the process, and I liked how it shifts the feel of the beat in this somewhat jarring way. I suppose coming from that ominous sounding, long intro, the surprise is almost to be expected, at least in hindsight.

I envision this playing in a sci-fi movie scene with a character walking down a spaceship’s corridors, searching, and when that beat switch happens, that’s when they’ve discovered what they were hoping NOT to find.

Side Note: I also pictured Amirah Sackett doing a Popping routine to this, with the long intro being this dope slow build, then just gets busy when the drums drop. Honestly, that was my first thought when listening to this once I finished it. I already have witnessed this performance in my. mind, and I can tell you all, it was great…as expected.

This is the first beat I made trying to teach myself how to use MIDI for the first time. And, here is (edited and enhanced version of) what I initially wrote about said experience:

SO, I’ve never used MIDI before. And, even though I have been using Ableton for over 10 years, I only very recently really learned about the drum and instrument kits included, and how to use them (kind of). I simply never bothered to look past the things I was doing in Ableton, which was mainly edits and recording vocals for radio, podcast, and now also recording raps.

But, since most of the new equipment I have is MIDI-based or compatible, and I also want to maximize Ableton and this Launchkey Mini I just got, I decided to try to learn how to use it, so I sat down on the evening of Christmas 2021 to try.

This is what I came up with using all sounds from the Ableton Drum and Instrument Racks. It’s an 8 bar loop with 4 different things I captured from messing around with the pads on the Launchkey. Well, actually the “4th sound” is something I don’t really know what is happening, but my DDJ-200 DJ Controller isn’t set up for MIDI yet, or at least not intentionally, but for some reason when I touch the platters, it manipulates the MIDI sounds, so that 4th sound which is some sort of piano, is just me slapping my fingers on the platter of the controller somewhat randomly and those sounds just happened.

I’m assuming there’s a way to do an arrangement of a MIDI loop in Ableton, but I haven’t figured that out yet (except for just copying and posting and adding an arrangement that way, which is what I did here, turning a 4 bar loop into a 8 bar loop). So, I set up Izotope to record Ableton, and I did a live arrangement, clicking buttons on/of or soloing things.

This was fun. And, now that I know how to do it decently enough, I can put some time into doing better. This is the first stepping stone…

As for the title, I actually can’t remember if I do this in other instances, but for these instrumentals, I found myself picturing where I would like to hear them being played, and used that image to get the inspiration for the titles. This was a little different, and I just thought the sounds sounded like hospital machinery. And, I was picturing 80s cartoon style graphics, a la Hanna Barbera, but the subject matter was serious. Basically, a Hanna Barbera animated hospital TV drama, and this plays as we watch a nurse do their rounds, checking on patients, and looking in on various surgeries happening throughout the hospital. Yes, I have a vivid imagination…

SIDE NOTE: While messing around trying to see if there was a way I could rhyme to this, the only things that worked were pretty much all my verse from circa 1986-1988. I spent a few hours spitting like 50 (not an exaggeration) different verses from that time period to this beat.

This one takes us back to how this whole idea started. I’m working on a 12-song album titled “Affair Use”, that I will release as soon as I can in 2022. It’s been written (and all the main samples picked out) since the Fall, and I recorded a full demo version of it a few months ago.

All I need to do now is do a final version of the beats, by adding some additional drums and (maybe) other small elements, as the idea is for it to be raw and stripped down.

This short instrumental piece started with me working on trying to add drums to one of those songs from that upcoming album. After I programmed the simple pattern as a test, I was cycling through all the drum kits, and also swapping sounds in the kits, to see what I wanted to use. In that process, I accidentally swapped a snare for a “brass” sound. At first it sounded mangled, and I reached to quickly change it to what I was trying to hit, but right before I made the switch, it lined up and sounded…interesting. I decided to export that short 2-bar piece and revisit it later.

Later came. I was thinking I’d just make this a straight loop, maybe adding one small element, or just effects, and keep it about 30-45 seconds long. However, as I was finalizing that, the idea of the second part just hit me, so I tried it, and I dug the results.

The whole pattern has this stutter-step feel. It reminds me of warped vinyl. I have these flashbacks of searching for samples in the 80s/90s, and that horror when you find a great sample but the record is warped, or scratched! It usually meant moving on, and hoping maybe you find a better copy of the record one day in life.

However, at some point in the 90s, I learned to just experiment with those defective records. If it skips, sample the skipped part, see what happens. Are there a lot of clicks and noise because it’s so beat up? Fine, put the needle in the run-out groove and grab that noise, and see if you can do anything with it. I was just experimenting, letting no record go to waste. It usually didn’t yield results, but when it did, it was satisfying. And more importantly, all the attempts to make it sound decent, helped me learn new things with my equipment.

I suppose this is the digital version of that. Stumbling on odd sound pairings, or finding some charm in your less than perfect drumming timing, or forgetting to adjust the quantize properly before recording, etc… Of all of that can be found on this EP.

As for the song title, trust me, I don’t know anything about art history. But, when I finished this, I was thinking about what spaces that I would want to hear it played in, and for some reason, a museum is what I thought of. I actually would love a DJ residency at a museum or similar space…at least in theory. Anyway, at museums I often gravitate to paintings, so I was picturing myself looking at vintage paintings with this beat playing over the speakers. And, all the beats on this EP have a darker or edgier feel to them, so I simply googled “haunting images from famous painters”…and then quickly read through the first handful of results to find one that seemed to fit this beat. And, Caravaggio was quite the character, if my approximate 10-minute exploration into their life is to be believed as an accurate account.

Produced in Ableton using a Launchkey Mini by 7X3=21

So, I’ve never used MIDI before. And, even though I have been using Ableton for over 10 years, I only JUST very recently really learned about the drum and instrument kits in there, and how to use them (kind of). I just never bothered to look past the things I was doing in Ableton, which was mainly edits and recording vocals for radio, podcast, and now also raps.

But, since most of the new equipment I have is MIDI-based or compatible, and I also want to maximize Ableton and this Launchkey Mini I just got, I decided to try to learn how to use it, so I sat down last night to try.

Here’s a fun lil beat I came up with using all sounds from the Ableton Drum and Instrument Racks. It’s just an 8 bar loop with 4 different things I captured just messing around with the pads on the Launchkey. Well, actually the 4th sound is something I don’t really know what is happening, but my DDJ-200 DJ Controller isn’t set up for MIDI yet, or I didn’t think so, but for some reason when I touch the platters, it manipulates the MIDI sounds, so that 4th sound, which is some sort of piano, is just me slapping my fingers on the platter of the controller and those sounds just happened.

I’m assuming there’s a way to do an arrangement of a MIDI loop in Ableton, but I haven’t figured that out yet (except for just copying and pasting and adding an arrangement that way, which is what I did here, turning a 4 bar loop into a 8 bar loop). So, to get this arrangement, I set up Izotope to record Ableton, and I just did a live arrangement, clicking buttons on/of or soloing things.

This was fun. Now that I know how to do it decently enough, I can put some time into doing it better. This is the first stepping stone…

Trusting Instincts (An Untouchable Force) (Acapella) by RedefineHipHop

Transparency (Acapella) by RedefineHipHop

How I Killed My Own Ambition (Acapella) by RedefineHipHop

Hat Trick (4 tha Super Listeners) (Acapella) by RedefineHipHop

Fight Or Flight (State of Society) (Acapella) by RedefineHipHop

Die Exhausted (Acapella) by RedefineHipHop