Electropolis: Monthly Wrap-up – Arps, Dynamics & Phrasing, and Rough Mixin'…
posted in: Features
Wow, it’s been an entire month since the first Electropolis post and now it’s time for January’s recap! As musicians ourselves, we’ve read and discovered many flaws associated with explaining complex digital music topics within a variety of publications. One of these flaws consist of fifteen to thirty second audio demonstrations that merely skim over the applicate of the topic throughout an entire song. If you’ve ever taken guitar lessons from one of those dudes at the music store, you can see how these very short demonstrations are quite similar to learning a snippet of Van Halen’s “Eruption”. You may learn the technique very well, but can you incorporate it into your own music? Therefore, we’ve discovered that the best way to inspire your musical evolution is by providing an original tune produced with all, and only, the topics discussed. Although seemingly complex, it’s possible to make a very original piece of music by combining a bunch of random ideas. Let’s hear the tune, then revisit and do a little review on what we’ve discussed.
To start, the structure of this tune is broken into four major parts as seen below:
1. Introduction
2. A (First Verse)
3. Bridge
4. B (Chorus)
After the first Chorus, the song simply repeats. The only alterations made during this repeat was subtracting four bars from the Introduction and adding four bars to the second Chorus then fading out.
The most notable attribute of this song is its heavy use of arpeggiators. Our first post, How to Create a Customizable Arpeggiator, discussed the use of arpeggiators and the monotony of their repetitive sequences. The product suggestion for this article was U&I Software’s XX5, a program meant to help users compose a custom arpeggiation sequence that can slightly alter and extend a pattern, for the most part, throughout the length of a song based on your preferences. However, if you can’t afford or want this software, you can manually re-arrange an arpeggiator’s (Arp) patten throughout the tune yourself. This is what I did and the pattern came out original and altered. On the downside, it was kinda time consuming.
So, how was this done? For starts, I simply combined and used both my MIDI Controller’s Arp, as well as my DAW’s. Then, I moved the sequences around and tested them in the bass, lead and poly synths. The end-product was a seemingly ‘complicated’ arrangement of melodic patterns. However, for efficiency let’s just analyze the tune from start to finish.
The Introduction starts off with a comical, or at least it was supposed to be funny, bass solo that continues for sixteen bars. On the ninth bar of the introduction, the drums kick in. Do you hear that “glitchy” sound the bass is making on sixteenth bar of the Intro? This is merely one whole note. However, to get this effect, I simply automated the wave shape of my subtractive analog bass synth’s oscillator by clicking through all of its options with my mouse. During the playback, this visually looks like the wave shapes are changing, starting with a sawtooth shape up thru the last option, on every sixteenth note of the measure. Throughout the Intro, this effect happens four times, but is most noticeable on the sixteenth bar. After, the song drops into the A section as a breakdown.
In the first verse, there’s no arpeggiator on the bass until the fifth bar. However, a synth with the melodic flute patch plays a fourth bar, manually re-arranged, arpeggiation sequence through the eighth bar. Initially, I recorded this arpeggiation using the MIDI Controller’s Arp with a sixteenth note sync. Then I edited the preferences of the DAW’s Arp to arpeggiate at a sixteenth note sync as well, but for only two octaves. Following, I recorded the DAW’s arpeggiation over the Controller’s sequence, deleted notes that were creating muddiness and repetition, than copied and pasted these four bars once to loop for the entire the first verse. From the fifth through the eighth bar of the A part, I threw this customized arpeggiation into the bass track. However, the pattern was raised to a fifth within a bass register, I believe this register was C0 , using the DAW’s sequencer. (FYI, the first verse consists of eight bars with an additional ninth bar that’s merely used as a “fill” to transition into the bridge.)
This transition was made using an external envelope filter similar to the method below that is reposted from our second installment, Improvisational Songwriting.
- “To create a powerful build up using a bass warp, plug-in an external envelope filter into a bass or a reasonably low-pitched mono or poly synth. Map your MIDI controller to the filter’s frequency parameter and control the warping effect after you’ve adjusted the filter’s envelope amount, velocity and/or resolution to noticeably hear the effect.”
Now, the only difference is that I used the filter on both the bass and melody synths during the eighth bar of the A part. In addition, the highest frequency point of the filter was held, along with the last note of the melodic arpeggiation, for a whole note throughout the ninth “fill” bar. Also, I added an ambient textural patch to fill up the musical space during the “fill””breaking it down into the Bridge of the song.
The bridge is eight bars in total. The most noticeable part of it is the introduction of the slightly distorted lead synth. However, I didn’t spend much time re-sequencing its arpeggiation, so it’s pretty much the stock pattern from our MIDI Controller’s Arp. The bass is just holding the root notes of the chords for a whole note value on each bar. Also, there’s a continuous “Plingy” arpeggiated synth that actually starts from the beginning of the A part and extends throughout the chorus w/ various random pauses in-between. (FYI: Plingy is my stupid way of describing the sound of the synth, not anything specific.) Again, there was no special sequencing for this arpeggiation either, however it’s a “rhythmic” patch. From the fifth through the eighth bar of the bridge, I changed up the lead’s notes and threw them into two different poly synths and tracks. Thus, creating a build-up similar to the example below which is also from our second post.
- “If you like symphonic stuff and are using chords that are held for at least a whole or half note value, try copying the chords played in the last bar into the track of a new synth. Then use a string orchestral patch or something similar to fill up a lot of musical space for a very smooth build up.”
(The only difference is that I didn’t use a symphonic patch, but instead two different lead poly synths to transition into a powerful chorus.)
Finally, we’re in the chorus! This chorus merely contains everything discussed above except the bass is walking with a simple 1/8 note syncopation. Also, the lead synths are playing a catchy melody I came up with. The point of using the leads in the bridge was to adjust your ears to the pitch and tone of them before going all out in the chorus. Otherwise, they may have sounded awkward or more corny than they already are. For the most part though, these are the only differences within the chorus as everything discuss prior is utilized in it as well. Essentially, this chorus consists of the original eight bar loop I initially wrote. The different musical ideas for introduction, A part and bridge were all inspired by experimenting with muting and soloing different instruments via the mixer. Also, I played with dynamic alternations and effects consisting mostly of the external envelope filter. Once the composition and sound design stages were complete, it was time to mix and EQ it up.
Our most recent post, Mixing & EQ Bootcamp for E-Music Noobs, provided directions for a simple mixing and EQ process. Although it’s rough, this entire song was mixed and equalized merely using the info provided in this article. As you may hear, there’s a lot of high end. This was purposely added to demonstrate the Parametric EQ process we used to clean up muddiness. Although not that great example of mixing and compositional choice, our explained method of using Parametric EQ does allow each instrument to be heard very clearly. The screen shots within Mixing... were taken during the mixing process and are the actually photos of my mixing board. In my opinion, this is a fairly clean mix for the short amount of time I had to produce it.
Overall, this song was composed, recorded, and mixed in about twenty-four hours. Therefore, if you’re a trying to produce content for a deadline, some of the info in this Mixing post may be helpful. Now take what you just learned and make it your own!
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