For my solo performance, I decided to perform 3 songs live by using Ableton Live 9, a Novation Launchpad, and a MIDI keyboard to lay out a live set for each song, and use it to queue up different parts and use effects and volume faders to mix them live. I decided to keep my general genre as electronic dance music, or EDM, but have 3 different varying styles of EDM. They styles I chose were;
- Bassline/Bass-House
- Bassline is a very popular style of dance music with the younger generation today in the UK, with Bass-House becoming more popular aswell. Bassline and Bass-House are very similar apart from the fact that Bass-House is usually slower and has much more emphasis on sound design than tempo and mood like Bassline. However, both styles are heavily dependant on sound design as they have a very particular, aggressive sounding main synth, usually achieved using Serum or Massive. Usually, they have a similar LFO style in most songs where a low pass filter is brought up and back down again to give a ‘wobbly’ feel. They both have very similar drum beats, using a standard house beat, with a kick on every beat and a clap and/or snare on every second and fourth beat and an open hi-hat between each kick, and then elaborating with closed and open hi-hats and rides that are slightly out of time on purpose to give the beat a ‘skippy feel’, these timings are called grooves in Ableton.
- Tech-House
- Tech-House is a much less aggressive style of music that incorporates much more focus on intricate hi-hats and use of effects than heavy synths like Bassline. Tech-House also has a much lighter feel to it than Bassline and usually feels much spacier in design and slower in tempo.
- DnB/Jump Up
- This genre is a mix between both the previous genres, with a higher tempo and more intricate drum patterns than both as well. When it comes to sound design for DnB there is no real similarities between most songs, unlike Jump up which is much more aggressive like Bassline is. Here is an example of a DnB drum pattern:
I have since decided that I wont have enough time to do 3 songs as I am completely producing them myself from scratch, and so I’m going to do styles 1 and 2.
Song 1 – Bass-House:
For this song, I started in the session view and I used a sampler and effects to make the main synth sounds. I took 2 different one shot samples from one of my sample packs, one with no high end, and one with a metallic high end sound. I put an LFO with a high cut filter which raised in frequency over half a beat and then back down for a beat, and I set the release on the sampler to half a beat. I then layered the sounds over each other in my chosen melody. I added effects like EQ’s, compression, chorus, saturation, etcetera, to gain the sounds i wanted, I then cut both sounds off so they didn’t interfere at any frequencies.
I then found a simple house drum loop and used Abletons warp feature to get the beat to the right tempo (130BPM), I then layered closed hi-hats over the top of it and delayed it slightly to give the beat a ‘skippy’ feel. To fatten up the kick and snare I added more one shot samples over the top which had different frequencies in which they focused so that they would punch through the mix a bit more.
I then used Serum to create my opening melody with a high end, bell type sound. I created my intro then by layering this and the first drum loop together, side chaining them and automating a high cut filter over both and adding reverb to give the track a spacious feeling to start with.
I then found a riser sample and warped it to the right tempo and lined it up in time with the rest of the track. After this i added more side chaining to make sure the drums punch through the melody and riser a bit and added a slight bit of reverb on everything, putting more on the riser to give it a residual decrease after the drop.
Where drop is I removed the high cut filter and had the melody pull out completely, and the drums for a bar whilst the bass part of the main riff played alone. After another 7 Bars with drums theres another drop where I use the same riser to build up, and I just added the higher part for the main riff and pulled the drums out for a bar again and when the come back in, I added the extra hi-hats in.
This then goes on for the same length of time as the last drop, and builds up again using the riser again until it drops into the opening melody again, with out the high cut filter. The drums hold out for a bar again before coming back in and once again the same riser is used until the next drop.
The next drop entails the same use of drums and melody, except the high end part of the main riff is changed to harmonise with the lower end part differently, to give a much grungier sound. I also changed the rhythm up during the second half of the final drop and automated the reverb to increase until the end of the song.
I then went back and used the lower end bass sample and created a washed out sound to help build up and create tension on the drops. I also reversed it with extra reverb to create a rising feel to it, and overall making the build ups feel more spacious and dark.
I then added some EQ’s and compression to the master track to make the track louder and clearer.
Finally, I added some effects racks that would allow me to mix and change the sound of my track as I perform it live.
Song 2 – Dark Tech-House:
For this song, I used Abletons own instrument presets, and changed them to fit what I was wanting. However I synthed all the drums myself using Drumatic 3 and 4.
To begin with, I set the drums up using the live view. I created a simple house beat on 2 different tracks, creating a punchy kick and and a high end clap. I then added the syncopated open hi-hats on another track, and the closed hi-hats playing every 16th note. I then edited the velocity so that the kick pulled out a little on the second and fourth beat so the clap would come through mix more, and on the closed hi-hats, I pulled every other hi-hat down a bit.
I then went and found the ‘Boffner’ bass instrument in Ableton and changed it to sound the way I wanted, increasing the attack and release a bit and adding more bass with the EQ and saturator. I also made another track with the same instrument for when the track dropped, which has more high end and some distortion to make it slightly heavier than the building bass part. I then made a simple bassline with a repeating part that stayed on the same note through out most of the part to help build tension. The bass part after the drop used the same rhythm, but a different melody to change up the song a little, but not too much, as Tech-House is usually a style of music that has no heavy drop, but stays very similar in dynamics most of the time.
I then looked to find something to fill out the high end of the track with a melody, I found the Ableton instrument called Autosinfonie, which adds a slight rhythmical part by modulating and changing the white noise that is a part of the instrument. This was also good as it added a pad to the track and helped to fill out the space in the song. After adding this instrument, which has its own incredibly simple two note melody every bar, I added some reverb and delay to make it even more spacious.
The final part I added was a riser that I found online, I then used automation over a high cut filter to vary this riser more. I then added reverb and a chorus effect to make the riser take up more space so that, as it gains in volume and frequency, it takes up more space in the mix and builds the tension even more.
Finally, I added effects to the master track that would make the song sound louder and clearer, and I used the Utility feature to increase the stereo space that some of the tracks have to make the track even more spacious.
I also added similar effects racks to what I added to the first song for mixing and changing the sound of the track live.
After my mock performance I took that I needed to work on my mixing a lot more as I already had my queuing down, and if I’d have had a working keyboard to use the effects, then I would’ve attempted mixing the song as well, but my experiences with mixing at home had involved me struggling with getting the timing and confidence with using the effects live right. So after this performance I will focus a lot more on working on my mixing and creating a plan for how I want to mix the effects. I also need to plan my finish much better using effects, etcetera. Also, I haven’t really thought about my stage presence up until this point so I will try and work on involving myself more with the audience to make my performance more enjoyable for the audience.
After my final performance, I felt that I had done my best to work on my use of live effects, and I had followed my plan for using effects very well. The only time I believe this was not true was when I went to change to ‘smear’ effect, which has no effect at the value of 64, or having the knob at the middle. However, when you first change the effect knob, it pulls the value to 1, or all the way to the left, which is where the ‘short smear’ is effecting to track the most, and so when I went to use it, it suddenly threw the track into what sounded like a a blur of white noise and it took me a while to get the track back to usual because I panicked a little. Other than this though, I believe that my use of effects was much better, and I was much more confident about using effects the way I wanted to than I was during the mock performance. However, even though I did try to better my stage presence, I feel as though I hadn’t improved as much as I had wanted to. I did try to get involved with the audience, but watching back I feel as though I looked slightly awkward before and between each song, and I didn’t really move much more, or try to get the audience involved as I think I should’ve done.
Finally, I believe that in the run up to the solo performance, I have improved on my attitude towards work and college, and I am trying much harder to be on time, and follow the college schedule, as well as my own. This project as a whole has helped me develop in the way I had wanted to in the beginning, and I hope it allows me to do much better in the following projects to get the most out of my college experience.