"Composite Blue" Production Notes
2003-01-27 by erik_magrini@Baxter.com
BASIC PATTERN The first step for me with this song was similar to the way I've always worked with stand-alone 'grooveboxes', and that's to get the basic 8 bar pattern written. I started out with a simple bass drum and snare breaks drum pattern on Tracks 1 & 2 respectively, then added the closed and open hi hats on Tracks 3 & 4. At this point I was just using a Preset drum kit, just so I could get the basic rhythmic ideas out. Once I had a drum pattern I was happy with, I began to tweak the preset into something that was little bit beefier. Mainly by using a second layer in the Preset to double the kick and snare with additional tones, and then using the layer 2 Transpose amount to select that second tone. This is a very quick way to give your drums more power, without having to write or copy additional midi information. The BD and Snare were saved as separate Presets, while the CHH and OHH tracks shared a single Preset so that the OHH would cut off the CHH when it was sounding. I also added some Swing quantize at this point to give it more 'feel'. After that was done I went after the bassline next. This one was a 2 layer bass patch I made, and used the touchstrip to add some nice smooth, slides for more movement. The hardest part of creating this Preset, is fine tuning the filter settings so that it's low and punchy, but not too deep. Yea for Emu filters in this regards! This was recorded to Track 9. After that I added the pads (Track 12), which were a 4 layer custom Preset, and then a few more 'sound effect' tracks too (Tracks 13, 14, and 15). Just things to add some variety to the song as it progressed. At this point I wanted to add some more rhythmic elements to the Pattern, so I copied the CHH track to Track 5, assigned the same preset, and then used a different filter type to give it a different sound, while retaining the same feel. Saved the Preset, and then started working on Track 6. Track 6 sounds like a weird drum loop, and in effect that's what it really is. One of my favorite things about the XX-7's, is that you can take any percussion Preset, and assign an arppegiator to it. By playing notes up and down the keyboard, you can create drastically different sounding loops, which are even more fun to play when you start using some of the weirder filters. Basically I'm just triggering the loop every measure with a single note, then every half measure in the 8th for some variety. Track 7 was another ride cymbal pattern that floats subtlety in the back ground. Track 8 was a crash cymbal to add emphasis here and there as the Song progressed. Both of these used hi-pass filters to remove any unwanted low end information before it muddied up the mix at a later stage. Track 11 was the lead riff, which was made up of a 4 layer preset, using a heavy amount of delay. Not much else to say about this one. The same Preset was used as the build up out of the drop, I just held the notes for 16 measures and used the touchstrip again to make the pitch slide around slowly in that eerie way. Track 10 was the one I'm sure people are going ask about (the weird noises in the drop, it's just one long help note BTW), and to be honest it was a complete accident. I'll be happy to post this one to the list though, so people can play around with it. It's just a random arp set to 16th notes if I remember correctly, and using some weird tones in the Preset. Sorry I can't be more informative, I was just playing around and ran into this one! Track 16 is the really deep synthy wah sound that happens every so often. After that, I Extended the Sequence to 32 measures, and saved. Whew, and this is just the basic pattern so far! THE SONG I decided that the most flexible way for me to organize the song, would be to copy the base pattern to create 6 patterns that were 32 measures long, at 134 BPM's. From then on though, I pretty much tried to treat all 6 patterns as just places within the song, and not as separate aspects. I drew up a chart that showed me what pattern would be at what measure within a 'normal' song, and used that to know where to go as I was writing the track. I was just switching between the Patterns manually at this point, I didn't do anything with Song mode until the very end. On this same sheet of paper, I also created a chart that showed me what the tick values were based on note divisions for easy reference. For instance, a 1/16th note = 24 ticks. This came in VERY handy later on as I was programming all my drum fills and stutters! The next step was to start laying out the arrangement for the song. Since I had all of the song parts going on in all of the patterns, it was a matter of initially just deleting tracks here and there among patterns to give the song the overall structure I wanted (subtractive sequencing?). I should mention at this point, that I would save my Patterns very often using E-Loader, many times a day, in fact. I set up my save folder on the computer so that it was organized by date, and the take number for that day, ie "Composite Blue 11-28-02 Take 1". That way if I made a mistake it was relatively easy to go back to an earlier version from that day without losing too much work. I also added a 7th Pattern where I could place the final hits with different delay settings (very long releases). After the song was roughly laid out as I wanted, it was time to start programming all of my fills and transitions, and this is where my social life as I knew it came to an end. By far, I spent more time in Note List Edit entering and repeating notes, than on any other aspect of this song. To program all of the quick drum rolls, I would set the position to the location of the first note, change the duration to match my note length, then press Repeat, change the location to the next one, Repeat, etc. After that, I would have to go back and manually change the velocities one by one if I was doing a build or something, and let me tell you this is TIME CONSUMING! :) Oh well, I think it was worth it in the end though. Once all the fill, sequencing, Presets, and effects were more or less finalized, it was time to start mixing the tune. Interesting to do with just the XL-7, as I had to rely on synthesis to alter my tracks, since there was no EQ or dynamics processing on each track! I spent a lot of time fine tuning and trying out various filters, so that each part took up it's own space sonically. I think it turned out OK in that regards, though if there would have been a second simple hipass, lowpass filter or EQ available, it would have been MUCH easier. Next it was time to balance the volumes with the knobs in Volume Mode. Hehe, I almost lost my mind on this two week ordeal! It wasn't until very late in the process that I realize a bug in the XX-7's OS keeps volume settings from being stored with the pattern correctly while stopped if the previous pattern has the same values. I would set up the volumes perfectly, save the pattern, and then the next day it would sound totally different! I thought my hearing was going or something! Anyway, once I realized that as long as the Pattern was playing it would save correctly, I was much better off and able to finish the tune. Took me a couple of days to get the levels finalized (and I changed them again after the voting had begun!), then I recorded the SPDIF output into Wavelab as a 16 bit/44.1kHz file, normalized it to ?0.1 dB and used WinLame to create the MP3 version, that was it! Obviously I had to breeze through this some or this could span a book, but feel free to ask me if you have any specific questions as to how I did something. I don't mind answering at all. BTW, a remixed and mastered version of this song is now up on my website if anyone's curious: http://rEalm.iuma.com Peace and beats, rEalm [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]