Back to the groove and how things can morph like you don't expect
Last time I wrote, I was about to explode the drums tracks on this song, so I could more easily work with the sections I want. In most software sequencers, there is a function where you can split a single track into several tracks, based on the notes. Good for drums, right, where the note values are more limited. Using Sonar 2.2, there is a Cakewalk Application Language (CAL) file that does this. This is one of the little odditites about Sonar, that there is this little computer language that you can write routines in that will work within Sonar. Not that I could write any of them, but some people can. On the one hand, its cool that its open, on the other its not like Sonar is doing anything to update the CAL stuff, which is cheesy since some of the functions, IMHO,should be built right into the program anyway, like in other software sequencers.
So I want to run this simple routine to spilt the drums into seperate tracks, and the CAL file should do this for me in a few seconds. Only problem is: which CAL file, since I have a ton of them, to make it work right.
Turns out there are several that have names that sound sorta close. I try them all, and they all crash and die for different reasons. This means I have to go to the web and find the right routine. One thing that is great about Sonar is their searchable user group, and I find - after some difficulty, the answer there.
Net loss of time maybe 20 mintues, but it doesn't exactly get the juices flowing, ya know? However, I was able later to use another couple of CAl routines, for random panning and random velocity, with no problem and they work well. So the learning time was well spent.
Now I have all the tracks seperated. One bad thing about splitting the tracks is that the midi continuous control information stays on one track. A drag, and I may have to deal with it later. Anway, the first thing is to combine the hi hats. You are no doubt aware that the ER1 only has two hat samples, one open and one closed, but you can at least effect them with the ur, effects. I like the way they sound.
The other drums, the bass drum and the gong like sounds, I mute for the moment. This makes the whole song sound really peaceful and mellow, a good place to start. Then I start to bring in the other percussion, the weird gong sounds will all the analog strangeness they have - what Barbara my wife calls that science fiction stuff.
I listen over and over to this, muting/umuting the other drum parts. I become dissatisfied with some of the sounds and start to tinker with the ER1. One part of how I do things: I am pretty fearless when it comes to overwriting sounds in the synths, even if I don't really have to. I just like the flow of the work, and if I lose a tiny something? Well, I get a bit PO'ed but thats OK. I also don't tend to save lots of versions of things, like whole songs. I suppose it would be good, but I prefer to go forward not back.
The sounds are now mutating, but I go back and listen and really what I like aobut this piece is the bassline, the synthline, my horn and the cymbals. What I do is fire up another track, and copy the hats to this new track that is connected to my XL7. I start playing around with the sounds, and after a lot of experimentation, I hit on using a preset with some nice hats, including some reversed hits. In combination with the ER1 hats, this gives a sort of looser groove. I know it may sound strange to think of four hats playing at once, but it works for me.
I also try other bass sounds from the XL, and tweak the sound on the EA1 bass a bit. Nothing that inspiring....
At this point I ask Barbara to come down and give it a listen. At the risk of repeating myself, my wife (who played violin in her youth) has a great set of ears, and is very honest with what she likes and doesn't like. She listens to the tracks, and likes everything but the percussion sounds from the ER1. She says, this is a jazzy piece, what do you need that in there for, its fighting the feel of the music?
And damn if she doesn't hit it again. She also catches some out of tune notes - where the heck are my ears anyway?!?!?!?,then she splits and I get back to work.
I fix the blue notes - I must say, I listen to so much non-western music that things sometimes sound OK to me that to most people would clash, that or I am getting tone-deaf! - and do some more listening. I decide that yeah, I can live easily without the other ER1 percussion.
Now I do some more fooling with other percussion, and then it hits me that I could take one of the themes and with a bit of modification, I can make a nice little transitional flow. I know this piece needs at least one other section, and this is a rather tuneful, not radical way to do it. I then modify the bassline to fit and sort cheat - my chord progression, a down/up crawl that is half the length of the normal synth part, does not want to resolve cleanly. What I do is get is close to a nice resolution, but because the synth has lots of echo, I can let it fade. The pause, about 4 beats, is enough to let the listener have a nice not jarring transtiton between the parts. At least that is the idea.
At the end of this session, I have a now quite mutated song, in the sense that I am not using all the weird percussion stuff I recoded, that got me started on this song in the first place. I could be frustrated by this, but actually, the more that a new piece goes in a direction I could not predict, the better as far as I am concerned. As much as for any other reason, I play music to exercise and expand my mind. and the more it goes where I don't conciously direct it, the better. I still am going to use as much of the original horn part as possible, so I don't lose that live feel; I am sure I will have to record some more horn for the new sections tho.
So much for staying true to the original impulse, but who wants to know, really, where they are gonna end up when they start a new piece?