Wednesday, 9 February 2011

I've Gone Acid

Been promoting a lot this month, it never seems to end lol. Time to get back to what I enjoy, and crack on with some music :) Was doodling about with some tracks and decided to try something a little different so fired up Reason and made some groove that had more of a swing feel to them. Yes. it Acid time lol. Spent a good fortnight working on one track in particular, White Fluff, that seemed to have the best feel going. After I has some semblance of a structure I rewired it all into Ableton Live and began to resample all the bits I liked best. Got a basic song going, then began stripping it all back to the basic of what I liked about the track in the first place. This is a pretty conventional way of doing this stuff, you always end up with tracks just filling space and doing little else, that’s the time to get out the scissors and hit delete lol. Everything was going well until I started to mix it, it just sounded plodding, so hit my itunes library and listened to all the tracks that sounded nearest to what I was going for. After a few hours getting lost in some Luke Vibert/Wagon Christ stuff, I had an idea of what I was going for, not a digital sound, more of @I have just transferred all my m,asters from cassettes’ type of feel. Then began a search for some samples of vinyl cracks, skips, scratches, and adding bits of tape delay and spring reverb. Finally I had a hallelujah moment when I ran the Rhodes track through guitar rig and it completely changed the vibe into a more mellow place. Mixed and mastered, I burned the track and played it everywhere I could, sounded great to me, played it to some friends, noticed they were giving me the nodding signs, so all was good. Played it to some online friends, got a good response, think I have a decent minimal acid house, lounge house track :)
Also cracked on with a second track, Cornish Pastie, again it’s taking time to get it right, but it has a great groove again so should end up OK.
All this acid stuff brings to attention the great hardware/software debate. I’m a poor starving musician without the means to buy the ‘real thing’ a 303, so am forced to use software. There are actually some very good 303 clones out there, ABL2, Phoscyon, some great Reaktor ensembles, Reason Silverbird etc, and basically I’ve ended up using all of them lol, they all seemed to have plus and minus points. I’m finding using a combination of everything (then processing with distortions, delays, spring reverbs, yields the best results. I’m also having to fortify the bass end quite a bit with subtle sub tracks to make it sound more real (this is the hardest part, none of the plugins seem to have real bass weight. So until a rich benefactor sends me a real 303, will have to plod on.
Am thinking I could get a few tracks out this Acid stuff, possibly and album, so will crack on, hope that inspiration continues for a while lol, and hope there is still a fan base for groovy minimal acid stuff.

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