Hardware Heroes: The Start of Something Loopy!

In the first part of our Sampling time line discovery we looked into the first pioneer Russolo and his 'Noise Orchestra'... It didn't go down to well in 1913, causing a few riots! In this next installment of Hardware Heroes we look into how the art of sampling developed into something a bit more loopy!



France, 1942. Pierre Schaeffer, an engineer at French broadcaster RTF was promoted to oversee research in the science of acoustics. During this research Schaeffer ran a studio full of what was then cutting-edge equipment at his disposal. He soon discovered the groove-locking technique through which one sound can be played constantly through a circular groove cut into a record, rather than the track spiralling to its impending end at the centre of the disc.

Inspired by the work of Luigi Russolo and attracted to the idea of recording and manipulating everyday sounds Schaeffer began to experiment with the notion that classical – or as he would call it, ‘serious’ – music begins with an abstract sound that is then arranged and composed into a structured sound inside the constraints of the typical musical form. Schaeffer set out to subvert this process using his own recordings of everyday sound as the basis for a musical form without constraints. This he would name ‘Musique concrète’.

Through his experimentations in Musique concrete Schaeffer would construct perhaps the earliest known version of the sampler. As heard in his 1948 composition Étude aux chemins de fer, Schaeffer used his groove-locking technique to manipulate the recorded sounds of trains to play on a constant loop. Playing different loops simultaneously, a series of record players were hooked up to a keyboard, allowing the operator to trigger any of the sounds at any time. This freedom of improvisation and exploration of variation were elements intrinsic to the nature of ‘Musique concrète’.

Now a pioneer in musical manipulation, Schaeffer finally accepted musical instruments into his arsenal of altered sound. However, the sampled instruments were doctored to correspond with the abstract nature of ‘Musique concrète’ and techniques such as tape splicing and looping were also explored.

Schaeffer’s embrace of electronic experimentation laid the basic groundwork for sampling as we know it today. Watch out for more articles in this series exploring the progression of the sampler and the people who brought these innovations to life.

Hardware Heroes: Men And Machines That Changed Music!

When do you think the sampler first sparked to life? The sonic art of sampling has been an evident aspect of popular music for longer than you may think. From The Beatles to Bowie, the early forms of sampling have been explored by artists on records dating back as far as the 60s but who were the pioneers that made this possible?

In this first part of a series of articles we look at where it all began!

Luigi Russolo - Turns On The Noise!

In 1913 Italian painter and composer Luigi Russolo established his manifesto in ‘The Art of Noises’ through which he expressed his view that traditional Western music was too confined, and that the industrial revolution had opened doors to ‘future music’ allowing composers to experiment with a wider range of sounds than those created by classical instrumentation.

In a bid to move away from the use of classical instrumentation Russolo created the Intonarumori; a set of acoustic ‘noise-sound’ generators designed to be used in orchestration with one another. The sound is initially generated by the operator spinning a crank or triggering an electric circuit. Each generator begins to produce its own unique drone that can then be altered by moving a lever across a scale of octaves, tones and semitones, allowing a wide array of manipulation possibilities.

Russolo composed a number of futurist pieces and took to the stage with his orchestra of ‘noise-sound’ devices. However, the futurist sound was too ahead of its time for audience members and a number of performances erupted in violence and ended with riots!

Russolo’s Intonarumori machines were sadly destroyed during a WWII air raid on Paris and he died shortly afterwards. However, the machines were reproduced in 2009 in preparation for a performance of his work by musicians taking part in the Performa Festival – this time without a reception of violence!

Check out a video of Mike Patton Playing the Intonarumori here!

Break The Rules!

There are a few things in music production that we all know - because we've been told, on forums and in magazines, by professionals and amateurs alike - that you just shouldn't do. It's all about getting the best possible mixdown, right? But sometimes, abusing the production tools at your disposal can yield some very interesting and worthwhile results. So let's consider a few tips that might show you how to break the rules and get away with it.

A little received wisdom can be a dangerous thing. I was teaching a student recently who had put a compressor on every channel as a matter of course. When I asked why, he said he just thought it was what you were supposed to do. He didn't really have a clear idea of what he wanted those compressors to do, and in fact many of them were not helping the mixdown at all. It was a good reminder that while "what you're supposed to do" can sometimes be helpful, you should use your ears above all!

Read a forum and you'd think that digital clipping was the sin of all sins - harsh, cold, pointless and all the rest of it. It sometimes is - but not always. This author has used it extensively over the years, and if you load up a decent wave editor (Audition is very good for this) you can clip samples in a very controllable manner. Lopping the top 2 or 3 dB off a wave or sample can be a great way of adding a bit more punch to a sound, and the brutal levelling that a digital editor produces means that your transients will still be relatively intact; you'll often get a more transparent result than using a compressor. Plugins like GClip offer a similar functionality from within your DAW too. This isn't something that's advisable on a master output, but can sound great on drums and percussion.

Low-fidelity sounds are another contentious issue. Many people insist on using 24-bit audio at every possible juncture, but this is not always necessary, or even desirable. So for a start, get a bit-reduction plugin and try it on some of your sounds. The classic dance records of the early-mid 90's were all made with 12-bit samplers like the Akai S950, and no-one's going to criticise them for a lack of audio fidelity when they sound so fat, gritty and full of vibes. Obviously choice of sound here is important - an 8-bit sine sub will be distractingly noisy and full of harmonics (you can filter those out though); while a background pad may gain an interesting hiss and flutter; especially if you then put other effects like phasers on there.

Similarly, unorthodox choice of sample source and quality can lead your music to some unexpected places. Sampling film DVDs is a well-rehearsed trick, but if you've still got a VHS player, dig out some old tapes and get some hissy analogue goodness from there. (Cassettes recorded from the radio back in the day work well here too). Or even take samples off youtube - they'll be low-grade, digital mp3 rubbish no doubt, but if the rest of your track is well produced then a couple of low quality samples won't cancel out all your hard work; they'll just add some extra textures into the mix.

Don't forget to misuse your plugins too - there's a world of fun to be had when you shove a standard effect to the very edge of what it's supposed to do. Noise gates are a good example. Turn the threshold up to the point where the sound is just about triggering the gate, and turn down the hold and release, (maybe distort the sound beforehand to cut out some of the dynamic range) and you'll be left with a clicky, glitchy mess which you can bounce down, filter and make cool rhythms with. Or if you've got a reverb plugin that will accept impulse response files, why not try loading a vocal or percussion loop into it instead, to see what happens?

In general, "the rules" are there for a good reason, although you may find that through the medium of forums and blogs they get somewhat twisted through a 'Chinese Whispers' kind of process - however they are frequently a good guide to getting a tidy mixdown. But if we all followed the same rules, we'd all be making the same-sounding music! So next time you're about to load up that plugin in the same way that you always do, try doing the opposite instead. You might just be surprised at the results....

Conquer Any Arrangement!

One of the most common questions that comes up for novice producers, is how to get started on arranging a tune. It's all very well getting an 8 bar loop together, but what do you do with that once you've got the basic groove? Many people come unstuck at this point, so this week we're going to look at a few simple tips to get you started...

Remember that these are general guidelines, and although they'll show you some fairly generic arrangement ideas, there's no harm in following them. A "forum" argument you'll see frequently is that people don't want to use the same track structure as everybody else, they want to be more original than that. Which is a valid point, but frankly if you're struggling to get an arrangement down in the first place, it's basically irrelevant - like so many of the arts, you need to get the basics mastered first. Then when you can knock out a good, effective arrangement easily, you can start to vary it and make it more original...

Dubstep

What with Korn's recent (and much-mocked) announcement that they've been doing dubstep since before it even existed, it seems that this unruly upstart of a genre has finally taken over the mainstream. But it still has its common characteristics like everything else, and a quick glance at the hugely popular Youtube channel UKF will show numerous comments pointing out that all the tunes seem to drop 55 seconds into the track. This is no coincidence; 55 seconds is equal to 32 bars at 140BPM. A dubstep intro, therefore, is usually 32 bars, and frequently these days takes a form closer to a build up; introducing a simple hihat or percussion pattern for beatmatching purposes, plenty of big reverb sounds for atmosphere, and most of the melodic content of the track being established here. The second set of 16 bars can build dramatically with big white-noise whooshes, kick rolls, and other tricks to make the drop sound emphatic.

Once you're into the drop, and your bassline is rolling, you need to manage your switch-ups. Deeper dubstep can sit in a groove for a long time, with perhaps a subtle change in bass patterns or sounds every 8 or 16 bars. More hyped, "filth" sounds change constantly; fills every 4 (or even 2) bars, changing the bass patches every few bars, bringing in new percussion every 8 bars and also perhaps using your main melodic theme (from the intro) for the last 2 bars of an 8 bar phrase.

After a 64 bar drop, an 8 or 16 bar breakdown will give your track time to breathe before the 2nd drop. This can be a reprise of the intro - bring the melodies back in, and perhaps use a buildup again, depending on how "hype" your tune needs to be. In the 2nd drop you should employ a different bass pattern or sound to keep the interest up. A 32 bar section here will suffice, before you move on to an outro of 16 bars or so - most dubstep DJs don't even let a track get this far before mixing out.

Hip-hop

Hip-hop, with its emphasis on vocal tracks, employs a much more song-based verse/chorus/bridge approach. This makes things easier for the producer; there is less importance placed on interesting structures, and indeed much hip-hop doesn't change, rhythmically, between the verse and the chorus. You only know it's the chorus because the MC goes into their hookline, and perhaps there's an extra backing vocal. Verses are typically 8 or 16 bars, and choruses are generally 8 bars. You really need to keep to these structures to help your MC; they'll be practised at working to 8 bar phrases and trying to be too clever is frequently counter-productive here. If you don't want to change the beat much for the chorus, it can still help to add in some percussion like a cowbell or some bongos to give a subtle lift. Equally, within your verses it's often interesting to have certain elements come in and out on 2 or 4 bar sections to give the vocalist something to bounce off.

Intros can be kept short; 8 bars will usually suffice, and outros can be equally short, even using a fadeout. One thing to consider is using the vocal hook or chorus from the outset; if it's a strong chorus people will want to hear it, and there are plenty of tracks out there that start with the chorus. The only really tricky part is the bridge; generally a simple way of treating this is to use a key-change. Then when you change key back to the original, it gives a great sense of momentum as you swing back into the track.

House

House music is a different beast again, and possibly the most open-ended of the genres covered here. There are only a few essentials; you need to start and finish with some fairly simple percussive action for DJing purposes. You should also try to leave too much melodic content out of the early stages of the track; if someone is blending it in the mix, it may just end up clashing with the track already playing. Beyond that, it's just a case of whatever you can do to keep it interesting; house tends to be more progressive in nature so you need to be able to introduce new elements regularly to keep the flow moving. It doesn't need to "drop" so a subtle progression is often preferable. This can be done by adding in percussion elements, adding harmonies to your riffs, or gradually opening a filter on your bass or lead line.

Breakdowns and buildups are not always necessary beyond having a breather from the main groove; if you're going for a classic US house sound, then simply dropping out the kick and some of the bass may work well. If, however, you're working on an electro house sound, then a big 16 or even 32 bar breakdown, complete with woosh noises, kick rolls and soaring riffs will be essential. See our recent article on buildups for more tips on that front. After the breakdown you can return to the original groove - gentle switchups are useful to keep the interest levels up, but introducing a whole new vibe isn't always necessary. A long, beat-driven outro of 16 or 32 bars will help DJs mix out of the tune.

So, if you're really stuck for arrangement ideas, just follow one of these simple guides. Once you've got a basic structure down you can tweak it away from the norm - but remember that no house or dubstep track ever got a bad review on the basis of it's unadventurous 32-bar intro! Keep things simple, and you'll be able to focus on the stuff that's really important - a good groove, strong melodies and a solid bassline. So no excuses - load up that idea that's been sitting in your DAW for weeks and get started....

Make Your Beats More Vocal!

Vocals in dance music often polarise people - it's easy to see them as being only for the funky house cheese brigade, or the underground grime crews, which could mean waiting 4 hours for a late MC to turn up with his dodgy mates and make your studio smell of weed. But there's actually a lot of variety between the territory of full vocals and hardcore instrumentals. So lets take a look at how you can spice up your tracks with a slightly more refined use of the human voice...

Using vocal samples has a very clear advantage over recording a full vocal; you don't need to find a good singer, you don't need a microphone or a decent recording booth, and you don't need years of practise producing vocals either. You also have access to a whole world of ready-recorded material. Sites like 'acappellas4u' offer a wide selection of acappellas culled from released music, usually mp3, with varying bitrates and varying sound quality. It should be noted that it's not really legal for them to do this, and it's not actually legal for you to use them either (whether you'd actually get sued is another matter, but the likes of Soundcloud and Youtube are getting increasingly vigilant in identifying and taking down tracks that use uncleared vocal samples). So if you want to find good quality, legal vocal samples, it's often better to turn to one of the increasing number of sample packs out there that offer vocal samples. They're usually tailored to specific genres and feature gigabytes of well-recorded vocal snippets and phrases to use in your tunes. Alternatively, speak to local bands or MC's and see if you can do a remix - this will give you an original and exclusive full vocal to play to with.

In general, the stage of your tune will dictate what you want to be doing with vocal samples. If you're still working on a one-bar drum loop, then it's often fun to drop tiny, half-syllable vocal sounds quietly into the loop. Maybe an 'Ah' on one of the snares, a pitched-down hit on a kick drum somewhere, or a breath noise very quietly in the mix. If done well it can really catch the ear and make the beat more interesting (an obvious example would be the 'Think' break from the Lyn Collins track of the same name), and if you mix it quietly it will hardly even sound like a vocal sample.

The next level up is using a simple hit to add interest to the overall groove. This could be as simple as a 'yeah' sound or an 'uh' sound from a hip-hop track (hip-hop intros are usually full of these sounds) and these can add a surprising amount of energy to the groove if used well. Just once every 8 or 16 bars can really give things a lift. On a similar tack, the intros and outros to RnB tracks (especially by female singers) often tend to be full of adlibs, featuring simple or extravagant 'ooh's and 'aah's. Load these into a sampler so that you can re-pitch them to suit the key of your track, and you suddenly have loads of little melodic motifs that can be used for hooks or to harmonise with your existing melodies.

A very 'current' way of using vocal samples is to chop them up into loads of little short sounds, map them across the keyboard, and then 'play' them to create a new melody (which of course doesn't really make any sense lyrically). First demonstrated back in the 1990's by the likes of Todd Edwards, then completely recontextualised in style by Burial, and since copied by every Future Garage producer from here to Croydon, this technique may soon be rather passé, but there are still original options; avoiding burying everything in reverb will certainly help.

Vocoders offer a whole wealth of fun opportunities. They're the effects units that create the 'robotic' effect and are usually pretty simple to set up; put one on your vocal track and then assign an input signal, rather like selecting a sidechain input on a compressor. The vocal will then be modulated by the input signal; so if you put a chord sound in, you'll get the classic 70's synthy vocal effect. Great for funk and soul or disco influenced tracks. Alternatively, combine with the 'chopped' technique mentioned above for some seriously other-worldy vibes. Then if you bang some heavy effects such as reverb or ring modulation on the results, you can create spacey atmospheric effects that scarcely resemble the human voice at all, but give an instant sci-fi feel to your beats.

We shouldn't let this article pass without mentioning spoken word samples. In general, these have been somewhat played out - from portentous, deep-sounding vocals over the breakdowns in progressive house, to the kind of snappy shout beloved of dubstep heads before their track drops into the filthy bass, to the motivational stuff about Jack's house you still sometimes hear in house music, this is a territory that has been well explored already. However, they're popular because they do work - so don't be put off digging deep in the archives for radio interviews, live footage and the like, as you can still unearth some gems. Just don't touch Martin Luther King!

So, it should be clear that using vocal samples doesn't just mean mashups and remixes - you can use them in any number of ways to find inspiration, add energy to your tracks and give things a new flavour without having to turn to yet another softsynth. So give your beats a new lease of life by grabbing some packs and acappellas and getting busy with the sampler!

Ready to make your tunes more vocal? Check out our vocal packs here!

Master The Perfect Intro!

A lot of people struggle with the structure of their tunes, and the intro often gives them the biggest headache of all. It's a delicate balancing act - how to stay interesting, whilst still mixable and useful to DJs in their sets? Let's go in a little deeper and see how you can write the intro that your track needs!

The first thing to consider; The fact that dance music is a very functional beast. It's not just for listening to on your mp3 player, but it has to work in a club or on the dancefloor. That means it needs to be mixable by a club DJ - ideally, it should even be fun to mix.

So let's start at the functional, DJ end of things. You need a clear signifier at the start of the track, with a good transient that's going to be audible on headphones in a loud club. This could be a kick, a crash cymbal or just a hi-hat, but it's essential that a DJ can use it to beatmatch the track. An intro also needs to have a fairly predictable structure; with elements coming in and departing on 8 and 16 bar markers, so that it doesn't throw off a mix, and so that it will blend well with any track layered on top of it.

Your intro should also be a sensible length; again, this is to tailor it for DJ-ing purposes. Dubstep tracks frequently use 32 bar introductions, although sometimes as short as 16 bars is useful for those DJ's who like to mix quickly and double drop. House and trance, on the other hand, use a longer intro and can easily be 48 bars in length (or more) to allow a DJ to gradually blend two tracks and layer them up in the mix.

Your choice of genre will also dictate how your intro should bring about the main section of the tune. In dubstep and jungle, this is all about the drop. As a distinct moment when the bass kicks in; it needs to have impact, and sound big in the mix. Progressive music, on the other hand, doesn't always need a 'moment' like that; it's not mixed in the same way, and so the end of an intro can be signified simply by bringing in a sub-bass or the main riff.

If you want to create a 'moment' at the drop, then, there are a few things you can do. Firstly, consider contrast - you want the drop to sound big, so don't show all your cards straight off - leave a certain amount of percussion and melodic elements (as well as the bass) out of the intro so they have more impact when they arrive. You can enhance this by clever use of effects; consider bandpass-filtering your drums in the intro, so that when they finally kick in properly they suddenly sound bigger and fuller. You can also use effects such as reverb and delay on your drums to make them sound a bit more distant, and remove this at the moment of the drop - bringing everything into sharp focus with a bang.

When actually writing the intro, it's usually best to work with elements from the main track, to help them lead into the larger section. You can then cut them down so that listeners only hear hints of what is to come, building up anticipation and stopping them getting bored when the full parts drop in. For instance, take a riff and filter it down, and perhaps only take the first two or three notes from a two-bar loop. If something is later to be repeating every bar, maybe have it only once every four bars in the intro. Any sound effects from later in the tune may be liberally sprinkled all over the introduction too. As you're working with a smaller sound pallette, it's often good to have things coming in every 4 or 8 bars to keep the interest up, and this is where sound effects can really help, without having to resort to using your big lead melody straight out of the blocks.

Having said that, of course, if you have a strong and recognisable sample in your track, it's good to make use of it in the intro; this way, when a DJ is mixing the track, the sample will be heard over the top of the blend and people will be able to spot your tune long before it drops, making people's ears prick up on the dancefloor.

As usual, there are the exceptions to the rule here, and some great tracks don't follow the intro rules at all. Consider Skream's remix of 'In For The Kill' by La Roux - a track so enormous that it went to number 1 and still smacked it on the dancefloors, but was almost unmixable. This tactic is one for the confident; you can get away with an unmixable intro but only if the track is so strong that people have to play it anyway. Otherwise, they may just pass over it for something else that works better in their sets.

We covered radio edits in detail a few months back on this blog, but it goes without saying that if you're aiming for a 3-minute version of your track, then a 90-second intro is simply unrealistic. In which case, go for 4 or 8 bars at most, get the melodies in early, don't worry about gradually developing the drums (in fact, consider leaving them out of the intro altogether) and get to the meat of the track (the main chorus or riff) as quickly as possible. It's not about DJ play this time, it's about grabbing an inattentive listener's attention within the first 10 seconds!

So, the intro is a complicated area which can make many novice producers struggle. But by following some of these hints, you'll soon have a quality, interesting intro that DJ's want to mix with and iPod warriors want to listen to all the way through!

How To Score Soundtrack Success!

Over the last five years, basic home studio setups have come on so far that it's now possible to write full arrangements and sync them up to a video just on a standard laptop. This opens up a whole new world of possibilities for writing music to film, TV and adverts, and so also gives producers a much-needed new revenue stream too. But how to get involved and start making your mark on this crowded scene? Join us as we run down a quick overview of what equipment, skills and contacts you'll need....

One of the trickiest parts of the process is getting the work in the first place, and finding people who need music for their productions. One obvious place to start would be with local students on film or TV production courses who may need to create programmes or shorts for their assessments. It would be unpaid of course, but it's still good practise, and - as we should all know in this industry by now - networking and making contacts is never a bad idea. That kid at university now might land a plum job at Universal in two years time, and if you've worked together before, it could lead to better things in the future.

If you're a published musician, then simply ask your publisher - they'll no doubt be in contact with music sync agencies to try and get your tracks onto TV programmes, and TV people are always looking for new music. Alternatively, ask someone you know who is published - they may already be turning down work if they're busy, and you might get a chance to submit a couple of demo efforts.

The crucial skill you'll need is the ability to turn things around extremely quickly. Sometimes you need to submit a demo the same day, sometimes you get twenty four hours, but either way there's very little time to get bogged down in details, fills and mixdowns. You need to sketch the general idea out quickly to communicate the idea to the director, and if they like it there'll be (some) time later to work on the small stuff. Bear in mind that these projects can sometimes need a lot of music; your author last week had to submit a two-minute track in the style of early 90's soul, and the initial deadline was within four hours. You have to work quickly and efficiently.

This leads on to what tools you'll need to do this. Firstly, and most obviously, you'll need a certain range of hardware and software to work with. Any modern DAW can handle video and audio these days, and any laptop from the last 5 years will be perfectly up to the task. Synths and samples are extremely important; whether you're trying write a 70's funk lead or a classic piano house piece, a good keyboard should have you covered. Sample packs are highly useful for this as well - with one purchase you can get a quick overview of a whole genre, with some ideas for production, riffs, and arrangements too. Get a dozen or so and you'll find that whatever you need to write, you'll be able to turn to one of your packs and find some inspiration for a starting point (they'll come in handy for your own productions too).

The other angle is a decent grasp of theory and musicianship, as well as a good musical knowledge. You might be asked to write in a style that you've never written before, but if you're familiar with genres and scenes, you might be aware of the typical sounds of that style. If you don't, then you'll need to quickly work out what it's doing so you can get into the right vibe – is it minor or major? Key changes? What are the rhythms doing? Your producer's hat is important here too; you can take a drum kit or piano from the 70's to the 80's just with your choice of EQ and reverb, so a good knowledge of production techniques is invaluable.

Any instrument skills come in very useful here too; even if you can only play a few chords on guitar or gave up violin at grade 3 - real instruments are difficult to synthesise effectively, and being able to record yourself playing even a simple line will add an extra dimension to what you can offer.

One other key requirement is the patience of a saint. Hearing an overpaid media executive making ridiculous comments to try and justify their obscene salary is amusing when it happens to someone else; but once you've heard someone ask you to make a folk track "a bit more "heavy rock"(true story)you'll start to appreciate the need to be polite, play the game and make changes to your track even when they're plainly not going to work. These are the people who decide whether you'll be featuring on the show or advert, so it's best to play along and try to accommodate them where possible.

Patience and persistence are also essential to deal with the inevitable knock-backs that you'll receive along the way. Just like trying to get your tunes signed involves plenty of polite refusals, it will be a long time before you can get into the swing of writing quickly to order. So don't get disheartened - keep hustling and as you get more practised at this tricky art, you'll soon find you start to get more interest from producers and publishers.

You could write a book on producing music for TV - many people have - but we hope these tips have given an insight into how to get started.

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