So lost, so utterly lost...

I've undertaken a huge orchestral project for a friend's band and it's got me under the mental weather...  I just stripped out my entire rough draft material I put together for their first song to move up to a full divisi orchestration.  I'm learning as I go, and spent the entire day creating custom patches, templates, and project layouts, as well as organizing how I'm going to mix it all.  There's a tall demand from the band to have a complete symphonic sound that's as realistic as possible.  While I've got an idea of what they want, I still have to write and program a lot of material in based on the chord progressions and simple movements they've brought to me for the symphonic stuff.

That brings me to this little side-note.  In the midst of all this, Monday I spent most of my day with distractions, albeit pleasant ones.  Myke's been over quite a bit because of his new job.  Also got a call out of the blue from a producer friend who invited me over to talk about an upcoming project and meet the director and founders of the production company.  Went and saw Fast Five with them, freaking loved it I must admit!  Then came back to the studio to work more on the projects and instead started this little foray into Ableton Live.  It's not a bad little DAW, but I'm already finding my Sonar workflow wanting to creep into the way I do things and learning how Ableton works differently has been quite simple...  

Now, take a listen...  I'm having fun with this track; but I seriously cannot figure out what the hell to label it as...


Downtempo symphonic electronica?  Epic electronic soundtrack music?  Scott Pilgrim, eat your heart out..?  I dunno, I give up.  Not on the song, just on trying to figure out what this song is about...

Anyway, let me share how I got where I did with this little track so far:

I always start with a drum pattern, whether it's a loop or a kit.  After I got a good drum pattern going I started searching through synths to play around in.  Nexus 2 is an awesome versatile and big sounding synth, so I pulled one up:

Dialing in a sound that sounded interesting took some time, playing with presets is only so fun, I like to dig into my synths.  I love, love, love arppeggiation and came up with a cool little 2 note riff; between the arp settings playing between octaves and some envelope on the velocity   I liked the patch but it was a bit boomy, I wanted more of a lof-fi mid-range sound so I added an EQ to the chain:

I'm a big fan of the philosophy Less is more.  I liked the idea I had going and just needed to build it.  I opened up another instance of Nexus and loaded the patch I made to tweak it into something new with more low-end control:

I changed up the arp pattern and brought in the low-end i wanted.  I liked the exposition I was establishing and kept the drums at the front of the mix to create a sense of room to build on.  There's a good vibe going on now with the 2-note rhythmic arpeggios going on, and the drum pattern.

I brought in Addictive drums to fatten up the drums and start adding more spice to the hihats, and add in crash and ride.  A nice effected kit added the thumpy lowend and an anvil/tunnel sound to the snare track got the vibe going.

Now that I have a good sound, it's time for it to go somewhere.  I brought in an instance of QuadraSID and played around until i got an interesting 8-bit throwback to chiptunes arp.  The arp is so fast moving through the triad that I played it with stacattos (stabs).

 

It made for a good breakdown, and I kept it in the next build up section, bringing back the drums and first synth, but no bass.  The track was moving now, headed straight for a chorus.  With the build up I wanted a new sound that wasn't about to completely change what I had just established, so I opened up another instance of Nexus 2 and loaded my original bass patch:

I dialed in a totally new sound with it, much more buzzy and reminiscent of 8-bit but still more up-to-date and full.  I kept the main 2-line pattern that's pretty much established the mood, and opting for a minimal change to keep it simple (the less is more factor) I added a low note at the end of every 4th bar and alternated between an 8th note and quarter note for movement.

As the chorus evolved I added in an eq in the chain to the bass to play with the amount of low, and the amount of buzz.  Notice the pinkish line that dips down half way through the track, we'll come back to that in a sec:

Playing with some automation on this track right at the 8-bit flutter breakdown just before the strings come in allows me some wiggle room in the mix.

I automated the Filter to cut-off the buzz and bring out the low-end during the rest half-way through the chorus.  The other line in the picture just 2 above is automating the volume level because of the amplitude change between the filter cutoff and original level.

I had this crazy idea for some spiccatto strings playing around in the chorus.  I don't know why.  I dropped in an instance of EW Symphonic Orchestra Strings:

I played around with it for a bit and settled into a nice run that syncopates with an 8th-note triplet moving through the minor triad and ending up in B with the bassline.  Even with 18 violins marching through the chorus it sounded a bit sparse.  To thicken up the string section I brought in another instance:

The complimentary sound of 10 Violas stacattoing below the Violins within the same octave helped fill out the string section nicely.  While the Violins stuck to a much simpler run, the Violas were hard at work on a steady 8th note rhythm bouncing through fifths into the minor 3rds and also resolving into the B note with the bass-line.

So, in about 2 hours (more time spent on tweaking synths and sound exploring than anything else) I've arrived at roughly 2 and a quarter minutes worth of track, and intend on delving further.  Let me know what you think.  and Yes, that synth at the end will take it somewhere else. :)