I remember that my search was fraught with frustration because that kind of information is hard to find, particularly if you’re a self-taught player like myself. If you’ve got a teacher who will pass that knowledge to you in exchange for a few bucks, you’re in a lucky position. It took me more time than I care to admit to find out where to begin, and as with most others, that beginning was the pentatonic scale.

This tutorial will be relevant to players of all instruments; the principles of improvisation are universal. You’ll still need to put an effort into figuring out how to best improvise on each instrument you play, though — I am dismal at keyboard improvisation, and not because I don’t know how it works, but because I’ve never put much of an effort in outside the guitar.

While this advice will help any instrumentalist wanting to learn to improvise, it’s for those who’ve never done any improv before. It won’t help you improve — it’ll help you get started. So if you’re looking to improve the skills you already have, you might want to skip this tutorial.

Understanding Intervals

I’m going to assume a certain amount of knowledge in this tutorial: you know how to play your instrument, in terms of basic technique and the ability to try the instructions in this tutorial out, and that you have a basic understanding of intervals.

You can introduce yourself to intervals by making a detour to the AudioJungle blog:

• The Ingredients of Melody: Intervals by Adrian Try introduces you to the concept, and provides you with everything you need to know to grok what follows.
• Boot Camp for Your Ear: Detecting Intervals with Song Associations by yours truly is about training your ear so that you’re able to tell which intervals are being played when you hear them. This isn’t necessary to learn to improvise, but it will come in handy when you want to go on to more advanced improv such as call and response, and since it takes a long time to learn you should begin now.

Scales are often expressed in numbers from 1 to 7, and some of those will have a b in front of them to signify a minor or flattened interval. 2 is a major second, but b2 is a minor second. This provides musicians with a way of expressing a scale — a pattern of notes — irrespective of key, and is thus a handy tool for you to learn now and continue using after you’ve finished this tutorial.

Minor & Major Pentatonic Scales

A pentatonic scale is, as the name suggests, a five note scale. There are several varieties but here we’re just looking at the two most common: the major and minor pentatonic scales. Let’s check out which intervals make up these scales, and what that equates to in C.

Major Pentatonic Scale

• Scale: 1 2 3 5 6
• In C: C D E G A

Minor Pentatonic Scale

• Scale: 1 b3 4 5 b7
• In C: C Eb F G Bb

That’s straightforward enough for most of you to begin playing the scale now, although if you play guitar or bass guitar you should check out these tabs, since figuring out the right shapes for these scales on your own could take you a while:

• A Major Pentatonic Scale Tab
• A Minor Pentatonic Scale Tab

Learn the scales on your instrument until you can play them forwards and backwards easily.

It helps to hear them played sometimes, so here is each scale played on guitar. As scales are defined by the context they are in, the scale is played alone once, and then again with the root chord playing in the background.

Download audio file (MajorPentatonic.mp3)
Download audio file (MinorPentatonic.mp3)

Get GuitarToolkit

While I realize just because the iPhone is popular doesn’t mean everyone has one, I like to share when I find something really useful. I no longer have to carry around a tuner or a chord book because of a great little app called GuitarToolkit, and as you may have guessed, it provides you with a scale dictionary too. Great for helping you visualize and memorize the pentatonics (and many others).

It also has a metronome, which is great for you as you learn to improvise since a good guitarist has great rhythm, and good improvisation depends on the instrumentalist’s ability to capitalize on rhythmic opportunities.

This won’t help the non-guitarists among you, but scale shapes and tuning are problems you keyboard players won’t need to worry about.

For Guitarists: Extended Pentatonic Scales

The shapes provided earlier are quite limited, given that the notes in each scale appear repeatedly throughout the guitar. Take the time to break out of the basic shapes and figure out how to play the scale up and down the neck.

The shapes are awesome for helping you get started, and for helping you dive into a key you don’t normally improvise in, but if you find yourself wanted to quickly crawl up to the 17th fret and back down to the 5th by playing every note in the scale between those points you may find yourself out of luck if you only spend time on the basic patterns.

GuitarToolkit makes this easier as it will show you each scale on the entirety of the fretboard.

Enough Scales, Let’s Rock

Keep at the extended scales, but certainly don’t try and memorize them before you continue learning how to improvise.

At this stage you know the scales, and it’s time to start making music out of them. Most improvised lead segments are not totally improvised; whether the musician realizes it or not, the lead is often made up of many riffs they’re familiar with tied together with the notes in between, at least at the start. As the musician practices improvisation, they either begin to truly improvise on the spot, particularly with jazz-style improvisation that forces the musician to do so, or they rehash the same solo in different ways by overusing the same riffs.

Exploring a Riff

At this stage it’s important to be mindful of that potential plateau, and also accept that putting riffs together and then experiment with them is how you learn to improvise. Using one of the scales, come up with a few short phrases. I started with the minor pentatonic, so here’s a riff in A minor pentatonic you could try (excuse my attempt at ASCII tab):

E —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  — 
B —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  — 

G —  —  —  —  —  —  — 5 —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  — -
D —  — 5 — 7 —  —  —  —  —  — 7 —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  — 
A —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  — 5 —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  — -
E —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  — 

It’s very basic, but it gives you enough to play with. First, learn the riff until you don’t have to look at the tab to play it. Then begin to experiment.

Do the following:

• At first, don’t change the notes themselves. Play with different rhythms. Make each one different as you repeat the riff, so it sounds like you’re improvising when the only thing that’s changing is the rhythm, not the notes themselves.
• Add fills. For instance, instead of starting the riff going straight from 5 to 7 (or C to D), hammer-on from 5 to 6 and then to 7 quickly (C – C# – D). Don’t emphasize the C# – you’re not adding a new note to the riff, you’re just using it to get from C to D.
• See how hammer-ons and pull-offs change the sound.
• See how bends change the sound.
• Finally, add or omit notes, or change existing notes to something else in the scale.

Creating New Riffs

Now that you’ve fully explored one riff, it’s your turn to come up with another short phrase and repeat the process. Fully explore these phrases until you feel you can do anything with them.

The next step is to connect them. Learn to move from one to the other while sounding musical. Add riffs in between or just use a single note, or just go from one to another directly. Master the transition.

At this point you need to continue coming up with riffs. At this stage, the riffs are smaller subsets of the scale that are helping you explore it bit by bit. Connect them, explore them on their own, and eventually you’ll become totally familiar with the scale as a whole and can start to move beyond reliance on the riffs.

Remember not to use the same pattern too much, and try to deliberately shake things up. If you find yourself only including adjacent strings in your riff, start skipping, and if you notice you’ve barely used certain notes in the shape, add them into your existing riffs or your next one.

Your First Solo

… will suck. Doesn’t matter how long you sit down and play with the scale without backing music first. It will take time, time and more time to learn to make up music on the spot that goes with certain rhythms and certain chord progressions.

But don’t let that discourage you. It’s more discouraging, I think, to expect that your first attempt with this newfound knowledge would sound any good.

What you need is to fire up your DAW or even a sequencer and create a drum track and a chord progression. It can be a guitar chord progression, a keyboard progression, or a choir singing chords if you really want. But those two elements are essential as they form the foundation of your solo, and they provide you with training tools — how to solo with the rhythm, and how to solo with the main melody of a song.

At this point, the next step is to practice a lot using the same kind of explore-and-connect technique you used to become really familiar with the scale. Your first attempts, once you’ve gotten a basic handle on the process, might sound something like this:

Download audio file (MinPentatonicBasicImprov.mp3)

If you can do that within a few days, you’re on the right track. Tune back in next time for more on basic improvisation.

Here are some examples of the kinds of situations where a well set up iTunes library can save the day:

• Scenario 1: You get a call from a friend who is working on a romantic comedy that needs a composer. He’s about to meet with the director and wants you to upload some samples of your music so he can try to get you the gig. He says the director loves the soundtrack from Juno. Oh, and his meeting is in 15 minutes.
• Scenario 2: A new music library calls you up and says they’d like to start representing your catalog on a non-exclusive basis. They’d like you to send them a DVD with all of your available tracks ASAP.
• Scenario 3: You’re scoring two features and a short film at the same time and need to keep track of the latest versions of every cue. Of course with this workload, you don’t have a waking moment left to fiddle around with organization.
• Scenario 4: A music library calls you and says they need some epic orchestral tracks with choir.
• Scenario 5: Your in a meeting with a director at his office and know the perfect track to play him to describe your ideas. The problem is you only have your laptop and your iTunes library is on the computer at home.

First we’ll take a look at the tools available to us and then we’ll see how we can apply them to each of these scenarios.

Playlist Folders – Keep it Organized

Playlist folders are not immediately apparent if you don’t go looking for them. They’re pretty self explanatory: folders with playlists inside. But the simple device makes it so much easier to keep track of everything than just a massive list of playlists (like I used to have before I discovered the folders).

You can also keep folders inside of folders, but be careful about going too crazy with organization. Your organizational structure should be there to make your life easier, not more complex. Keep this in mind when creating folders and try to only have categories for things that you really believe need to be separate.

Generally I have two master folders: My Music, and Other Music.

My Music is divided into Reels, Music Libraries, and Specific Projects. The whole point is so I can find exactly what I need, when I need it. Much more complicated than this and it would become harder to find something!

Other Music is generally divided into specific styles or genres I rely on often and things I want to listen to. Specific Styles could mean perhaps I’ll have a playlist of all of the Sci-Fi scores I have that I think are cool and could be useful for reference on a future project. Since there isn’t a “Sci-Fi” genre in iTunes, it would be difficult to find all of these scores at once with a simple search.

To Listen is more like an inbox of music that I intend to check out when I have the time, be it something new I recently purchased from iTunes or just an old score I was reminded about and thought was worth looking into.

I really don’t see a point in creating a playlist for every artist or album you own unless there’s a specific reason a search can’t do the job (like a group of songs that go together in a way a search wouldn’t catch). For your general library that you don’t need organized in a specific way, gratuitous playlists and folder hierarchy are just going to complicate things.

Smart Playlists – Make it Automatic

Smart Playlists are your best friend. I’m surprised at how many people don’t take advantage of them. With just a few simple criteria you can develop a sophisticated system for keeping on top of your work. You can filter out songs by any combination of artist, album, genre, date added, comments, etc.

This is where tagging your tracks becomes immensely useful. If you wanted to know every song you’d ever written that would work well for a comedy, just go through your music and add “comedy” to the comments field. Then create a smart playlist with “Artist is You” and “Comment contains comedy”.

You can tag your music by genre, instrument, players or singers involved, and whatever else you think might be useful. The same guidelines apply for overdoing it to the point where it becomes meaningless. But as long as a group of songs that fit a specific criteria would be good for you to have instant access to, simply create a Smart playlist and there is it.

Share Your iTunes Library – Access it Anywhere

There are a variety of tools popping up lately that let you share your iTunes library. Even iTunes 9 now let’s you use “Home Sharing”, but that only works if you’re using the same network.

My tool of choice for sharing my iTunes library is Simplify Media. It’s free and easy to use, and works for Windows, Mac or Ubuntu. A great feature is that you can listen to a song remotely even if someone is listening to a different song on the computer you’re accessing without interrupting them. Check out http://www.simplifymedia.com/ to download and set it up.

Putting it to Practical Use

OK so we’ve seen the basic tools and they’re pretty easy to use. Now let’s see how we can apply them to each of the scenarios we created earlier.

Scenario 1 – Demo Reel

So to recap, your friend is going to pitch your music to a director. It’s a romantic comedy and the director likes Juno. If you’re diligent about keeping your music organized this should be a cinch. First check your “Reels” folder for a Smart Playlist called Romantic Comedy. It should contain every cue you’ve ever written that has “romantic comedy” in the comments field.

After that you do an overall search for your name and any keywords that might match Juno. Perhaps you try “quirky”, “indie”, and “guitar” to come up with your most appropriate material. This is a thousand times faster than staring at your entire catalog and going “Um, ok.. didn’t I write some indie guitar thing once… what did I call that?”.

Come up with a Smart Playlist for every broad category that you think you might be asked to demo for. Obvious examples could be Horror, Action, Comedy, Thriller, etc. Also tag your music with mood and style descriptions, such as “ominous” or “uplifting”. Anything that would make it easy for you to find the track when you need it. You can even list other scores or artists you think your track is similar to. If you wrote an American Beauty knock-off, don’t be ashamed to add “American Beauty” and “Thomas Newman” to the comments section. The next time a director says they love Thomas Newman you’ll be glad you tagged that track you may have otherwise forgotten about.

Scenario 2 – Keep Track of Your Catalog

A lot of composers who work with music libraries tend to work with more than just one. Some libraries operate on an exclusive basis (they’re the only ones allowed to represent a certain track), while others are non-exclusive and represent tracks that other libraries might also have.

In this common situation, you’ve started working with a new library and you need to get them everything from your catalog that’s available for licensing. With a few tags and a Smart Playlist this should be as simple as burning a disc.

One way you can handle this is to add the tag “library” to every track in your catalog that is available to music libraries. Then you add “exclusive” to the ones that only one library has access to. Create a Smart Playlist that includes anything with “library” and does not include anything with “exclusive” and there you have it. Your presented with every track that the new library can use. Hit burn disc and send it out!

Scenario 3 – Stay Organized

Of course this whole tutorial is about staying organized, and here is yet another example. If you’re using Logic Pro, when you bounce a track you have the option to directly add the track to iTunes with ID3 tags. Take advantage of this feature!

The moment you bounce a track is exactly the right time to add all of your appropriate tags while they’re fresh in your mind. Any relevant information about style, version, special instruments used, etc. That way, if you have the appropriate Smart Playlists already set up, your track is automatically organized for you and you can move on the the next cue without blinking.

If I’m working on “Cool Film” I’ll set up a Smart Playlist that lists me as the artist and Cool Film as the album. I’ll also set it to match only checked items. Then when I bounce a cue from Logic I make sure to add myself as the artist and Cool Film as the album. At the end of the day everything I’ve written for the film is organized for me. If I made any revisions or new versions I can just uncheck the old ones and they’ll disappear from the list. What’s great about that is they’re still in iTunes in case I need to refer to them later, but my playlist only displays the most current and relevant version of the score.

Scenario 4 – Get Inspired

This scenario applies to that “Other Music” category. If you get asked to write in a specific style it can always be helpful to listen to some examples for inspiration. If you take some time and tag your favorite scores this can become a pretty easy process.

Usually you have to rack your brain and try to remember every score you own that fits the requirements. If instead you added a few useful keywords, you just have to search for those terms and half of the job will be taken care of for you. In this case we just plug in “epic choir” and see what we get.

Would I go through and tag every single song in my iTunes library? Absolutely not. But if you’re listening to it anyway and it catches your ear, why not take the 5 seconds and make a few comments so you can find it again later?

Scenario 5 – Showcase a Song from Anywhere

In this scenario you’re in a meeting with a director. You have your laptop, but the bulk of your music library is back in the studio. If you’ve set up an iTunes sharing tool like Simplify Media, the next time you’re in a meeting away from your iTunes library you can still let your music speak for itself.

When the director says they want a mysterious acoustic guitar piece instead of saying “Oh yea, I wrote something like that once” you can now say “Listen to this mysterious acoustic guitar piece I wrote”. Finally you can have a conversation about music while actually listening to music!

The same thing applies to other people’s music as well. If the director says they really like a certain score and you remember that you have that one in your library, you can instantly pull it up and start to discuss why they like it.

Conclusion

There are plenty of other ways you can put iTunes to use besides the scenarios described above. Let’s say you want to know how much music you’ve written this year. Just create a smart playlist with “Artist is your name” and “Year is 2009″. Voila, an instant accounting of where all of your time has disappeared to!

Sure, this is going to take a small investment of time at the beginning to tag everything and set up the playlists, but hopefully you can see that the benefits are worth it.

What other uses have you come up with for making life as a music creator just a little bit easier with iTunes? Share your ideas in the comments.

This tutorial assumes that you have some background in music theory – at the very least an understanding of a time signature, and basic rhythmic notation. However, if those concepts are foreign to you, you can still benefit from this tutorial. In the end, rhythm is as much about ‘feel’ as it is strict notation and classification.

What Is a Polyrhythm?

In its simplest terms, a polyrhythm is simply two more independent rhythms playing at the same time. Polyrhythms can be heard throughout African, Indian, and Afro-Cuban music, among many other musical cultures. As noted in the Wikipedia article on Polyrhythm, a simple example would be, “Three evenly-spaced notes against two, with the 3-beat pattern being faster than the 2-beat pattern, so that they both take the same amount of time.”

Flickr photo by Pushcart Design.

To better understand the concept of polyrhythms, let’s look first at a simple rhythm in common time. Below is an example of a simple rhythm in common time, or 4/4 time. The time signature indicates that there are 4 beats to a measure, and each quarter note gets one beat. In the first measure, we have two parts playing four quarter notes, and in the second measure we have one part playing quarter notes and one playing eighth notes. Note that both parts are still effectively playing the same rhythm and meter.

Two parts playing common time.

Audio example of common time:

Download audio file (common_time.mp3)

In the next example, we have a simple 3/2 polyrhyhtm – where we play two notes against three over the same length of time. The result is two distinct rhythms that, when played together, create something more interesting and complex as a result. I’ve hard panned the two rhythms to better allow you to distinguish the individual rhythms.

Two parts playing a 3/2 polyrhythm.

Audio example of 3/2 polyrhythm:

Download audio file (3_2_polyrhythm.mp3)

Variations And Counting

While the above example may not seem overly complex, polyrhythms can grow increasingly complex as you add more beats. Adding one beat to each of the above, we get a 4/3 polyrhythm.

Audio example of 4/3 polyrhythm:

Download audio file (4_3_polyrhythm.mp3)

When counting a polyrhythm, we use what is called the ‘lowest common multiple’. In our first example, the lowest common multiple of 3/2 is six – and thus it takes us 6 beats for the two rhythms to ’synchronize’ their start points. In our second example, the lowest common multiple is 12 (4×3). Thus, this cycle requires twice as many beats to re-synchronize.

If you’re confused, or find using the musical notation difficult, there’s an easier way to visualize polyrhythms without using your DAW or notation: graph paper!

Visualizing Polyrhythms

In order to better understand the mathematical interplay between rhythms within a polyrhythm, it is often helpful to use graph paper. If you don’t have ready access to graph paper, there are two other helpful options: a computer spreadsheet program, or your DAW’s ‘Piano Roll’ editor.

In the first example, we see our 3/2 polyrhythm laid out. 6 beats per cycle, and two independent lines – one rhythm of three over one rhythm of two.

3/2 Polyrhythm graph.

In our next example, we have our 4/3 polyrhythm laid out. Twelve beats per cycle, and two independent lines – one rhythm of four over one rhythm of three.

4/3 Polyrhythm graph.

When we’re working our DAW, the process is very similar. We set the grid resolution to be equal to (or a multiple of) the length of one complete cycle. In the case of the 3/2 polyrhythm, I used a grid resolution of twelve, then used the Pencil tool to draw in the rhythm like so:

3/2 polyrhythm in the Piano Roll Editor of Logic.

And here’s the 4/3 polyrhythm:

4/3 polyrhythm in the Piano Roll Editor of Logic.

Using Polyrhythms In Your Music

Now that we have a basic understanding of what a polyrhythm is, how to map out the rhythm, and how to create it using our Piano Roll editor, let’s explore how we might use polyrhythms in our music.

It is easy to envision using polyrhythms for the rhythmic components of our compositions: percussion, drumkits, etc. However, I really enjoy working with polyrhythm where rhythm meets melody and harmony. Let’s take a brief look at two examples.

Ostinato

Composer Ryan Leach previously gave us a great tutorial on using ostinato phrases in our compositions. Conveniently, using a 3/2 polyrhythm is a great way to create an ostinato phrase with an interesting rhythm. Below is an example of a 3/2 polyrhythm, used in the lead ostinato line, supported by a downsampled rhythm and simple droning bassline.

Audio example of 3/2 ostinato polyrhythm:

Download audio file (3_2_ostinato.mp3)

Basslines

Another simple use of polyrhythm is in adding interest and complexity to your basslines. In the example below, I’ve added a pizzicato bassline to the previous example, layering a 4/3 polyrhythm over the existing 3/2 polyrhythm. The result is an even more rhythmically interesting presentation.

Audio example of 3/2 ostinato polyrhythm:

Download audio file (3_2_ostinato_4_3_bassline.mp3)

Conclusion

I hope you’ve enjoyed learning a bit about polyrhythms and that you’ll take the opportunity to begin exploring them in your own music. In this tutorial we barely scratched the surface of polyrhythms, so I encourage you to learn more about them – reading and listening, performing and recording. There are a host of great learning resources online including theory, music and video examples. To listen to some more examples of polyrhythms, check out this excellent site for “Bounce Metronome”.

In conclusion, I’ll leave with a YouTube example of polyrhythm from a Japanese Pop group called Perfume. Their tune ‘Polyrhythm’ has an amazing polyrhythmic bridge (starting at 1:37) that might spark further interest and discussion.

In our first tutorial, we talked about establishing the foundation for your score, finding your current target, beginning steps, and a few tools that can help with the drafting or sketch process such as multiple-takes. In our second tutorial, we looked at the early phases of composition – finding arcs, choosing moments, and using markers to assist in composition. In the third tutorial we used the techniques of addition, contrast, and pacing to establish our first draft score for a scene. In this, our final tutorial in the series, we’ll take another look at the use of pacing, as well as the art of subtraction in the creation of our final mix.

Our First Draft

For the benefit of new readers, the clips below contain my first draft of the score for this scene – an MP3 and a Quicktime Movie. I am using a clip from Valkaama,which is an open-source movie project. Valkaama is licensed under the Creative Commons by-sa terms. This means that any use of this film or any of its constituent parts must follow the Creative Commons terms listed above, and the resulting work must also be made available under the same licensing terms.

Download audio file (valkaama_draft1.mp3)

Valkaama Score, Draft 1

Step 1: Get Perspective

Flickr photo by Paulo Brandao

Most composers, musicians and engineers are familiar with the concept of ear fatigue. In the context of composing or scoring for visual media, it is very beneficial to get some distance between you and the scene you’re working on. This can be especially challenging when working against tight deadlines, but even an hour away from a particular piece can give you a fresh look at your work.

It has been nearly a week since I completed the first draft of the score for this scene and in watching it, I took down some notes pertaining to the score. The following are some things that I notice right away:

• soften guitar attack at intro
• pan the delayed EP part
• remove intro bell or replace?
• try flute or low whistle in place of duduk
• remove bass drone from intro
• not sure about chimes
• not sure about strings @ “let’s go”

The practice of getting perspective, for me, is akin to the shaking of my mental ‘Etch-A-Sketch’. When I come back to the piece with a clear mind and fresh ears, I inevitably begin to craft to a list of things I’d like to change – and this list leads to the next step in the process.

Step 2: The Art of Subtraction

Flickr photo by Jason Abbott

There are a wide range of philosophies around the art of composing, performing or engineering. More = better. Less = better. Somewhere in between? My philosophy is that I must strike a balance, but I can’t begin subtracting until I’ve added everything that I can possibly add. I cannot know if a particular instrument or phrase belongs if I don’t record it in the first place. In this way, the dance of addition and subtraction becomes an art — even a playful game.

As evidenced by my notes, my first draft contains a number of items that, with distance, I no longer feel belong. In Part 3 I ‘maximized’ the composition, now the art of subtraction is invoked, and I begin to intentionally ‘poke holes’ into the piece – to remove, brick by brick, elements from the composition that aren’t vital to its purpose.

With this in mind, I’ve acted on each of the notes mentioned above. In the process of subtraction, you may find that an element you thought was expendable actually is integral. So changing a line, an instrument, or removing a part may only be temporary — you may end up putting it back the way it was originally. Trust your instincts!

Step 3: Check Your Pulse

Flickr image by gak

As you’re listening back to your cue, you may find that you want a bit more subtle control over pacing and tempo in a particular moment. You’re in luck! Most DAW’s allow you to set tempo changes throughout a given piece. For this step, I’m going to use Logic Pro’s ‘Tempo’ track functionality.

• Expand the ‘Global’ tracks using the arrow to the right of the arrange window.
• Select the ‘Tempo’ track.
• Draw in tempo changes as needed using the Pencil Tool.

Logic also allows you to smooth the curve between tempo changes by click-dragging on the tempo node. I’ve made several changes to tempo throughout the cue, resulting in a piece that keeps slightly better pace with the visuals.

Logic’s Tempo Track allows smooth tempo changes.

Step 4: Abandonment

The time has come to call this cue ‘complete’. I could easily spend another week tuning, rewriting, rearranging, and remixing. But the fact is that the score does what I intended it to do here, and my (virtual) deadline has arrived. It is time to move on, to begin the process anew.

I’ve made some subtle changes to EQ and the overall mix, applied some simple mastering in the form of compression and limiting, and bounced the final cut. Here’s my final:

Download audio file (valkaama_final.mp3)

Final Cut

The Beginning

I hope you’ve enjoyed this series as much as I have enjoyed writing it. I find that each new tutorial is a learning process for me, as well as an opportunity to share ideas and techniques. Please let us know in the comments if you’ve enjoyed the series, and what you’d like to see in the future. Until next time — keep listening!

In our first tutorial, we talked about establishing the foundation for your score, finding your current target, beginning steps, and a few tools that can help with the drafting or sketch process such as multiple-takes. In our second tutorial, we looked at the early phases of composition – finding arcs, choosing moments, and using markers to assist in composition. In this tutorial, we’ll use the techniques of addition, contrast, and pacing to establish our first draft score for a scene.

A Look Inside The Process

For the purposes of this tutorial, I have used a clip from the open-source movie project, Valkaama.Valkaama is licensed under the Creative Commons by-sa terms. Please be aware that any further use of this film or any of its constituent parts must follow the Creative Commons terms listed above, and the resulting work must also be made available under the same licensing terms.

For this tutorial, I’m going to give you a glimpse inside the process I used to score the last scene of the film.

Step 1: Bring The Clip Into Your DAW

This may seem an obvious step, but I’m trying to give you functional tools as well as some theory and suggestion. Almost all major DAWs now allow you to import a movie file and view it alongside your editing and arranging windows. In Logic, this process is fairly simple:

• Go to the Options > Movie menu and select ‘Open Movie’

From here you have several options — you can view the movie in a small window in the upper left corner in the Inspector Pane, or by double-clicking that same window the movie will expand to its own floating window.

Movie Window in the Inspector Pane

You can also add a Video Track to your Global Tracks section in the Arrange Window by right-clicking on the Global Tracks section and selecting ‘Configure Global Tracks…’.

Global Tracks Configuration

Step 2: Pre-Production

In this step, I’ve essentially worked through parts 1 and 2 of this tutorial using this movie clip as the basis. My working concepts are listed below:

Foundation: I’ve chosen Piano and Duduk for my primary instruments. The remainder of the sound palette is made up of various pads, accent percussion, and some electric guitar textures.

Arcs: Since this particular scene is relatively short, and lacking in context (i.e. the rest of the film), the Arcs I’ve identified in this scene are broken out in the marker list below. They are fairly self-explanatory.

Marker List Denoting Arcs

Moments: I’ve chosen three moments that I feel carry the emotion of the scene. I need the underscore to enhance and embellish those moments. These three moments are highlighted in the marker list above with three stars (***).

This scene clearly contains a range of emotion and expression – sorrow, solemnity, hope, change. These are all powerful images and feelings you can use to change the energy and intention of your score.

Flickr photo by James C. Mattison

Step 3 – The Process of Addition

With our foundation laid, our ideas and concepts steeped in the world of the scene, and our arcs identified, it is finally time to begin the process of Addition. It seems a simple task – to flesh out the theme(s) you’ve identified and laid down for the scene, to arrange your orchestration or instrumentation, and to begin adding form to the bare structure you’ve crafted thus far. The process of addition can be an easy one, provided your preparation and pre-production has all gone according to plan.

During this phase, your work should focus on supporting and embellishing the foundation you’ve laid – supporting your thematic ideas through your choice of instrumentation and arrangement, interweaving your themes with the audio already existing in the film (if any), and ensuring that the work you’re doing continues to support and enhance the scene and film as a whole.

Step 4 – Explore Contrast, Play With Pacing

During the process of addition, allow yourself the creative freedom to explore contrast and play with pacing. While some arcs or moments may call for a very specific emotion, you may find that a musical contrast actually enhances the power of the moment. The ascending chords I’ve used in this particular scene give a sense of hope in what could be a very dark and somber scene.

Likewise, allow yourself to play with pacing. Again – the scene may dictate certain music moments and rhythms, however, you may find that increasing tempo, holding notes, or drawing out periods of silence help to accentuate the underscore. We’ll explore this concept a bit more in Part 4.

Flickr photo by neilio

Step 6 – Be Patient With Yourself

As with any work of art, even the best laid plans can never account for the twists and turns of the creative process. Every composer is faced with challenges during every stage of the composition process, and rarely does The Muse respond well to force! Instead, be patient with yourself (within the boundaries of your deadlines, of course!). Trust your instincts and don’t be afraid to step away from the studio for a few moments to get some perspective, rest your ears, and refresh your creative energies in whatever way works for you – a cool beverage, a walk around the block, or a few minutes of meditation. Do whatever it takes to stay alert, focused and relaxed!

This advice becomes increasingly important as you move into the addition phase. Chances are, you’re now facing deadlines, and working long hours to get things sounding ‘just right’. The important thing to remember when working with creative troubles, deadlines, and unforeseen challenges is to keep at it! Relaxed persistence is the surest way to break through your personal barriers.

Step 7 – Add Until There Are No More Answers

Renowned visual artist Alex Ross, best known for his Rockwellian superhero artwork, was asked how he knows when a piece of art is done. His reply:

“I never know…At some point you reach a fatigue level – and I by that I don’t mean physically, I mean aesthetically – when I don’t see the answers anymore, when I don’t know what else to do to it.

So, too, DaVinci said, “Art is never finished, only abandoned.”

In a similar fashion, the composer’s job is to know when the piece is finished to the point where it succeeds at underscoring the scene. During this process of addition, you will eventually reach a point where nothing else can be added without becoming a glaring distraction, no apparent holes or musical responses remain to the visual cues, and no acoustic space is unintentionally ignored. At this point you are ready to move into the final phase of composition…

The First Draft

The clips below contain my first draft of the score for this scene – an MP3 and a Quicktime Movie. There are, most definitely, some things I will be changing — but we will save revisions for next time. For our fourth and final installment, we will conclude with some ideas and techniques to polish the final draft!

Download audio file (valkaama_draft1.mp3)

Valkaama Score, Draft 1

To be continued…

Wikipedia defines the Rule of Three as “a principle in English writing that suggests that things that come in threes are inherently funnier, more satisfying, or more effective than other numbers of things.” If as composers we approach it in a linear sense, the idea is that three is the smallest number of elements you can have to both establish and break a pattern.

A very common application of this rule is for telling jokes. The first element sets up the topic, the second element establishes a pattern and the third element breaks the pattern, disrupting our expectations and hopefully causing us to laugh. eg. “A Las Vegas wedding package contains everything you will need; music, flowers, and a divorce document.”

Other examples of the Rule of Three include the three act structure used in the standard Hollywood screenplay, the three basic elements of a story (beginning, middle and end), and even many classic fairytales. Just think of The Three Little Pigs (the third house, made of brick, can’t be blown down by the wolf) or Goldilocks and the Three Bears (the first bowl of porridge is too hot, the second is too cold, but that third bowl is juuuust right).

What does this have to do with music?

OK, so you understand why the rule of three can makes jokes funny and help us tell a story. But what does any of that have to do with music?

Without getting too philosophical, we want our music to engage our listeners. We want them to be captivated, to experience a particular feeling that we’re trying to convey, or sometimes we simply want them to be entertained. But in order for composers and songwriters to communicate with our listeners, our music needs to keep them interested and express our ideas clearly. This is where the Rule of Three steps in as a way to gauge our music’s effectiveness.

Maintaining Interest

Keeping your music interesting is a much more difficult task than most people realize. There is a very delicate balance between a piece of music so boring that people start to doze off, and something so complex that the listener can’t keep up with it any longer and gives up. The trick is to find a balance between repetition, so that the listener has something familiar they can grab onto and follow, and variation, so the listener feels challenged to keep up and surprised by the direction the music is taking.

Similar to telling a joke, using the Rule of Three gives us the smallest number of elements to establish a pattern and then keep the listener engaged by breaking it. Consider the effectiveness of the Lennon/McCartney lyrics “Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m sixty-four?”. These are not groundbreaking lyrics that are changing the face of literature, but they are catchy and memorable. We have a topic “Will you still need me?”, the establishment of a pattern “Will you still feed me?” and then a break in the pattern to move the song forward “When I’m Sixty-Four”. Or consider the catchiness of this simple line (my apologies for getting this stuck in your head): “Gimme a break, gimme a break, break me off a piece of that Kit-Kat bar.” In this case the pattern is even more obvious, as the second line is a complete repeat of the first line.

Here are two popular classical examples: (for the sake of avoiding copyright infringement I’m using material that could be considered a bit… old. Look past the style and consider how effectively the concept works!)

Vivaldi

Download audio file (AT_Vivaldi.mp3)

Vivaldi’s Spring starts with a simple one bar motif (1), then repeats it verbatim (2). This has established a pattern in our minds, and unconsciously sets up our expectations that we’ll hear the pattern a third time. He defies our expectations, however, and takes the melody in a new direction (3). If you keep listening to the piece you can hear on an even grander scale that he repeats these same four bars again only at a quieter dynamic level. By the end of those 8 bars we’ve heard the same thing twice. Hearing it a third time would start to get annoying, so Vivaldi waits just long enough to take us in a new direction.

Mozart

Download audio file (AT_Mozart.mp3)

The next example comes from Mozart’s Symphony #40 in G minor in which he uses the Rule of Three on two levels. He begins with a three note idea (1) which repeats (2), but the third time surprises us by leaping up to the Bb (3). He then uses that whole motif to set up the same structure. Bars 5-8 (B) are a repetition of bars 1-4 (A) but with changes in pitch. Even though the repetition is not exactly the same, notice that you still feel a sense of a pattern being established. Playing the motif twice is just enough times before we’re pulled forward in a new direction (C). Mozart uses this technique constantly; once you start listening for it you’ll hear it in almost everything he writes.

How You Can Use This

None of this information will do us much good on a conceptual level, so how can we use this idea to improve our own writing? Some simple suggestions:

1. As a way to identify moments in your music that are either too boring or run on too long. Listen to your songs for those spots that seem the least exciting to you and you’ll often be able to catch a fault in some idea having become too repetitive. Can you shorten the song by taking out the unnecessary repetitions that are dragging your whole thing down? If you’re not repeating something to establish a pattern which is about to be broken, make sure you understand why you’re repeating it or you may just be boring your listener.

2. As a creativity springboard. Applying the formula of “idea, repetition, variation” can actually be a very liberating feeling when you’re stuck staring at a blank page or empty session. Just write a few notes, even a three note idea. Now repeat it. Write a third bar that takes it in a new direction and all of a sudden you’ve got the opening bars to a new piece of music. Repeat those 4 bars, and then take it in a new direction. Rinse and repeat, and before you know it you have a substantial composition on your hands that you can really start to work with. OK sure that sounds easier said than done, but before you laugh it off consider that it’s the simplest devices that are almost always the most effective.

The above examples demonstrate how to keep horizontal interest (the linear passing of time). In the next tutorial we’ll examine how the Rule of Three can be used to create both vertical interest and clarity.

In our first tutorial, we talked about establishing the foundation for your score, finding your current target, beginning steps, and a few tools that can help with the drafting or sketch process such as multiple-takes. In this tutorial, we’ll take a closer look at the early phases of composition, and see how a particular cue begins to take form.

Flickr photo by Pete Baer

Step 1 – Steeping Ideas

…with poems one accomplishes so little when one writes them early. One should hold off and gather sense and sweetness a whole life long, a long life if possible, and then, right at the end, one could perhaps write ten lines that are good.” – Rainer Maria Rilke

As you continue to work on sketching out melodic, harmonic and thematic ideas, it is important to continue to allow your ideas to steep in the source material of the scene. There are a number of ways to go about this, but here are a few particularly useful ideas:

• Surround yourself with images. If the film you’re working on has a very strong and striking visual component, one useful technique is to surround yourself with concept art, photographs and other visual aids that help keep you ‘inside’ the world of the film. You could dedicate one wall of your studio to a ‘visual reminder’ space, where you can pin up print outs of the images. You could simply use a large corkboard or even create a cut+paste collage of images on posterboard.
• Get into the world. If you’re fortunate enough to live near the area where the scene takes place, or an area that is geographically and culturally similar, take some field trips. Getting physically in touch with the world of the film or scene can be a powerful means of conjuring ideas.
• Find the natural rhythms. If you have a portable field recorder, take field recordings of the area for reference. You can listen back to these recordings to try to find the musicality that exists within the natural sounds of an area.

As you gather these images and experiences, you may want to begin building ‘banks’ of thematic ideas that might represent each one. You can then begin experimenting with combinations of these ideas for your scene, merging and morphing the themes into one another, and re-arranging them to generate even more ideas.

Flickr photo by daytrpr

Step 2: Finding Arcs

As you continue to work on generating ideas, it is important to begin to identify the emotional and intuitive arcs within a given scene. The most basic form of this might be conveyed as “Character X and Character Y begin to get into an argument. The argument increases, and finally Character X walks out and slams the door.” The obvious arc here is the climax of the emotion of anger, as Character X walks out the door. But within this same scene there may be smaller arcs occurring. A great way of beginning to discover the arcs in a scene is by using a simple question and answer process:

• What is the overarching emotion for each character within the scene?
• What is the goal or motivation of each character within a scene?
• How is the emotion of a character influenced by the events within a scene?
• How is the characters and the events within a scene being influenced by prior scenes?

As you begin to explore these questions, you will begin to weave an interesting tapestry of ideas and emotions that interconnect. Where once there may have been a simple ‘point-a-to-point-b’ melodic progression, now exists a complex web of thematic possibilities where motifs from various characters and events can begin to inform and influence the present theme.

The persistence of these arcs is important to the Arranging process. As you continue to add more instrumentation and ornamentation to your primary themes, you may find that certain instruments or harmonic elements support or detract from a particular arc. You may also find that certain arcs require more direct thematic support than others. Take note of these ideas, as we’ll be exploring them in more depth in Part 3.

Flickr photo by Patrick Smith Photography

Step 3: Choose Your Moments

There is a delicate balance between the events of a scene and the underlying musical score, and the interplay between the two often allows for shifting emotional focus. There are times where the presence or absence of a strong musical statement can make or break the scene. In this way it is important to “choose your moments” wisely.

This process is often one of iteration, and you’ll find that it is a collaborative process that often involves negotiation with the director. The moments where you believe there should be a strong musical statement might not necessarily match their own creative vision. Sometimes revision is clear and easy, and sometimes this process ends up being one where you simply do what you’re asked. As I mentioned in Part 1, what sets a good composer apart from a great composer is the ability to express your musical vision within the confines of external influence and structure.

In the end, what is important is that you arrive at a place where the strongest musical statements fully support the emotion, events, characters and arc of the scene in a way that invites and engages the viewer more deeply into the scene. There is a very simple tool available in nearly every DAW that can aid in adding each of the above techniques into your compositional workflow.

Flickr photo by BoomeraATV

Step 4: Using Markers

Markers in the Arrange window.

Though they may seem mundane, Markers are an excellent way to track ideas, note scene arcs, and highlighting moments. Even with the aid of a visual element (e.g. if you have a video copy of the scene you’re scoring), Markers allow you to track specific ideas, notes, and points that may otherwise be lost from session to session.

Logic Pro has sophisticated marker functionality, but using them is quite simple.

• As you playback your recording, press ‘Control + K’ to insert a new Marker.
• To Edit the Marker’s text, start point, or add notes, open the Marker List window by pressing ‘Option + M’.
• From inside this window you can fully edit each Marker’s start and end points, the text used to display the Marker in the Arrange window, as well as add notes that further describes the marker. This is a great place to insert notes from yourself or the Director about a given moment or arc within a scene.

Looking inside the Marker List.

To Be Continued…

In Part 3 we will dive more deeply into the nuts and bolts of score composition, with further discussion of arrangement and some of the tools used in the process.

The main point I’d like to get across before we dive in is that there are an infinite number of ways to compose, and an infinite number of ways to interpret what might be considered appropriate for a scene or film. Much of what we assume to be appropriate is simply cultural influence – consistent use of what has worked well in the past for a given film genre thus makes that style popular for that genre. There is no clear-cut right or wrong way to compose or score.

That said, many composers feel torn between by wanting to create something that is well received, but not wanting to fall prey to what is considered popular. As a result, they often find themselves frustrated when they’re expected to (or are forced to) compose in a particular idiom. Even so, what sets a good composer apart from a great composer is this: A good composer is able to deliver a score that is appropriate for the medium and pleases those who need to be pleased. A great composer is someone who can do all of the above and still express his or her own unique voice through the music.

With this in mind, my intention with this series of tutorials is to walk you through the process of one of my compositions. It is intended to offer some new ideas and perspectives and hopefully give a bit of creative inspiration, but by no means should it be considered definitive – even for my own personal compositional process.

Flickr photo by Luchilu

Step 1 – Establish Your Foundation

I respect the man who knows distinctly what he wishes. The greater part of all mischief in the world arises from the fact that men do not sufficiently understand their own aims. They have undertaken to build a tower, and spend no more labor on the foundation than would be necessary to erect a hut. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

When working on a film, television episode, or game, the first step is always to establish your foundation. There are many aspects to this process, but some of the most critical points are as follows:

• Establish the style or genre of your composition. This will usually be strongly influenced by the director, producers and others involved in the project. Occasionally, your musical approach is inextricably linked to the type of project you’re on. For example, it may be inappropriate (to some ears) to have a heavy metal soundtrack for a Renaissance Romance film. In such cases, your musical direction will be more or less influenced by the project. Even so, when you are required to compose within a given idiom or genre, remember that you were chosen to work on the project for a specific reason, and remember that you got the gig because there is something unique about your own musical voice. Stay true to your voice as best you can, even when composing under strict guidelines!
• Establish the sound palette to be used for your score. Once you have the basic musical approach, establish next the instruments that will comprise your palette. As above, this may also be linked with the musical approach (e.g. Renaissance music may want a harpsichord or small chamber ensemble), but it may be possible to stretch the genre a bit by incorporating non-traditional instruments and sounds here and there.
• Establish the themes (if appropriate). Not all films call for a full Wagnerian approach to scoring, where each character or concept carries a specific theme. However, it may be appropriate to have some recognizable themes return over the course of your score. Talk with your collaborators to explore these possiblities.

Flickr photo by Eridony

Step 2: Find Your Current Target

Moving forward in the composing process, let us say that all of your foundational layers have been set. You’ve established the genre or musical style. You’ve selected the base pallette for your instrumental arrangements. At this part of my process it is now time to start making some music! There’s no time like the present to get into the studio (or with your instrument of choice) and begin recording some ideas. Perhaps you have, by now, written a couple of scratch themes that might work for the project, or perhaps you just have the basics of the palette selected. In either case, now is the time to begin sowing the seeds of your score.

For me, this process is enjoyable and fruitful – provided I can stay focused. For me, this cycle of composing repeats itself over and over for the duration of the project, and the primary function of this cycle is to simply identify the current musical target. This may be something as simple as ‘create a new scratch theme for Character X’, ‘recapitulate the main theme’, or ’score scene 14 in its entirety’.

For the purposes of this tutorial, I’m going to create an imaginary target. Let’s say that I need to score a scene wherein the main character is in deep reflection over a recently traumatic experience in his life. There may be some simple voiceover, and a montage of visuals to accompany this section – you know, the usual film montage stuff!

Part of establishing the current target is getting as specific as possible about what kind of final output is needed. The more clear you can get on this stage, the easier it is to stick to your schedule and to deliver a solid product at the end.

Flickr photo by David M*

Step 3: Begin

For me, one of the most difficult aspects of composing is simply doing it. The discipline required for composing should never be underestimated, and you must do everything you can to treat your composition time as sacred. Turn off the phone, close the door, disconnect your internet – whatever you have to do in order to truly focus and ‘get in the zone’. This zone will be different for everyone – but it is critical that you find a system that works for you.

Once the time for composing has been set aside, you must simply begin. Start writing as much as possible – keeping all of your ideas as separate files or sheets or cues, whatever you need to get the energy moving and to move through the haze to find the jewel at the center.

From a purely practical perspective, there are a great number of tools at our disposal as composers that can aid us in the quick capturing of musical ideas. For some, a sheet of manuscript and a pencil is all that is required to begin expressing ideas. For others, time at the piano or guitar and perhaps a portable recorder. Still others, like myself, use software systems such as Logic Audio to take us through all phases of composition. In Step 4, I’ll give one example of one tool that can be used to help us in throughout the composition process.

Flickr photo by Bunello

Step 4: Multiple Takes

One of my favorite tools for sketching out ideas in Logic 8 is the ‘Takes Folder’. Essentially, this tool allows you to record multiple takes of a given line, and select among the best takes. Logic has special provisions for both audio and MIDI takes – so it can be useful for tracking live audio or using software instruments. For the purposes of this tutorial, I’m going to use MIDI Takes, since most of my initial sketches are done using a software instrument (usually a simple piano patch).

• From the File Menu, select Project Settings -> Recording (or use the key command – option+*).
• In the MIDI section, select ‘Create Take Folders’ for the ‘Overlapping recordings:’ field.

Setting MIDI Takes option.

Step 5: Recording Takes

Next, we’ll set up the cycle record functionality of Logic by dragging along the Bar ruler at the top of the Arrange window. You should see the Bar turn green in the areas where you’re now set to Cycle record. Additionally, the Cycle transport icon will turn green.

As you begin recording you’ll notice that at the end of the cycle, the time slider loops back to the beginning of the cycle, creating a new take that is ‘encapsulated’ in a folder. Before ‘unpacking’ the folder, your track will look something like this:

Packed folder of MIDI Takes

By clicking on the small arrow in the top right-hand corner of a packed folder, you can select which take you wish to audition, rename a take, delete a take, or unpack the folder into individual tracks. There is a lot of flexibility here for capturing ideas for your next cue!

Unpacked folder of MIDI Takes

To Be Continued…

We’ve only scratched the surface of one possible compositional process. In our next tutorial, we’ll dive more deeply into thematic development and arrangement!

Step 1

When you first start using Logic, the Environment can be a bit of a scary place and many users tend to never visit it that often, if at all. The truth is that no signal, MIDI or audio, gets in or out of Logic without going through the Environment. The easiest way to visualize it is like a giant patch bay. A bit like Reasons ‘Tab’ view.

Open up a ‘New’ blank Logic song from the File > New menu. Create a new ‘Software Instrument’.

Step 2

Now open up the Environment from the ‘Windows’ menu or press Command+8.

In the Environment you should see the Software Instrument you just created. Insert your favorite synth (I’ve used Spectrasonics ‘Ohmnisphere’) and pull up a nice ‘Pad’ preset. If you look at the channel strip you’ll see a small socket in the top right corner. If you click, hold and drag that socket you’ll see a patch cable appear which can be connected to any other object to pass MIDI information. All objects in the Environment have one of these. You use the same socket when plugging into an object.

Step 3

Let’s create a new object. We’re going to use the Chord Memorizer. This cool little thing lets you map anything up to a 12 note chord onto one note on your MIDI keyboard. You can store 12 chords over a one octave range per object. If your keyboard skills aren’t great this really is the ‘one finger’ cheat to playing complex chord progressions both live and when composing. Make the new object by choosing New > Chord Memorizer.

Step 5

Select the new Chord Memorizer and rename it ‘Pad Chords’ in the left hand dialogue box. Now grab its socket and plug it in to the Audio Instrument channel socket. You may notice that a new socket has appeared on ‘Pad Chords’. We’ll come back to that later.

Step 6

Now double click the Chord Memorizer. A new floating window will appear with two keyboards on it. The top row is the ‘trigger’ key and the bottom row is where you assign the chords. Click the C3 note on the top keyboard (by default top and bottom notes are the same) and you should see this:

Step 7

Now let’s map a chord. With C3 still selected on the top row I’m going to add the notes of an Amin9 chord on the bottom row. Press ‘OK’ to store the chord. You may find it useful to map your chord to its corresponding root note. For this example C3 will work just fine. Here’s what it looks like:

Step 8

Now we’re set up to test it out. Go to your Arrange page and double click below ‘Track 1’ to make a new track. Right click the new track over its name. A menu will open. Choose Reassign Track Object > Mixer > Pad Chords.

With ‘Pad Chords’ selected in the Arrange page, play C3 on your MIDI keyboard and instead of hearing C3 you should hear an Amin9 chord. Nice!

Download audio file (Amin9chord.mp3)

Play C2 and you should hear the chord an octave below, and so on.

Step 9

Let’s map two more chords. Go back to the Environment and follow Step 7. This time on D3 we’ll add an Fadd9 chord and on E3 a G chord. Don’t forget to press ‘OK’.

Step 10

Go back to the Arrange page and play about with new chords on C3, D3 and E3. I’ve recorded a sequence at 120bpm on ‘Pad Chords’ like this.

Download audio file (ChordSeq.mp3)

Step 11

Here’s where the possibilities of this tutorial really take off. Now we have some chords and a sequence we can start to really experiment with layering some sounds. I’m going to give you two examples of how you can do this.

Add a new instrument

In the Arrange view create a new Software Instrument (see Step 1). Load in an ES2 and select the patch called ‘Fat Grey’ in ‘Sequence Elements’ from the plug-in menu. Add some Reverb and Delay if you want. Go to the Environment and from the ‘New’ menu select ‘Arpeggiator’. Drag a cable from that new socket on ‘Pad Chords’ into the arpeggiator socket. Then drag a cable from the ‘new’ socket on the arpeggiator into the channel strip with the ES2. You should now see something like this. With the arpeggiator highlighted, set its parameters like the image below.

Step 12

Go back to the Arrange view and select the track ‘Pad Chords’ and hit ‘Play’ (the arpeggiator only works when Logic is playing). Now hit C3 or play back your sequence if you’ve recorded one. You should now hear both the pad and the arpeggiator playing the mapped chords.

Download audio file (chordseqarp.mp3)

You can keep doing this with new instruments until your processor blows up. Every time you drag a new cable, another will appear as if it’s almost daring you!

WARNING: The bigger the mapped chord the more power it will take to process the voices. Make sure your synth’s polyphony (or voices) are set high enough.

Step 13

Many soft synths are multi-timbral meaning that they can play more than one preset using discrete MIDI channels. A good example being Kontakt 3, SampleTank, StylusRMX and of course Spectrasonics Ohmnisphere. In order to access the multi-timbral properties of these plug-ins, its channel strip MIDI channel must be set to ‘ALL’. For this example though I’m simply going to set each parts MIDI channel to 1 to create my layers.

Download audio file (chordseqlayer.mp3)

TIP: The Modwheel will transmit to all synths connected to the Chord Memorizer track. That should get your creative juices flowing!!!

Step 14 – Recording the Chord Memorizers output

After some experimenting with the Chord Memorizer you probably come up with some cool new progressions and ideas. But what if you want to tweak the chords by adding some passing notes or suspending one chord, or just want the chords as a MIDI part? You can record the chords back onto another track if you like. Simply create a new ‘Sequencer Input’ object in the Environment and plug a cable from the Chord Memorizer into it.

Step 15

Go to the Arrange page and create a new track. Set it to ‘No output’ using ‘Reassign Track Header’. With the track selected, line up the start of your sequence and hit ‘Record’. When your done you should have a MIDI part with all the chords ready for some tweaking. Now delete the cable between Sequencer Input object and ‘Pad Chords’ by selecting the cable and pressing ‘delete’.

You can also use the exact same technique to record the Arpeggiator’s output as well.

Conclusion

I hope you’ve enjoyed this tutorial. As you can imagine, the creative possibilities of this Environment object are massive. And it’s not just chords. You can do some pretty interesting stuff with scales too, but that’s a whole new tutorial by itself. I hope you experiment with it and come up with some cool ideas of your own.

That said, there’s a great wealth of absolutely amazing free electronica out there. I’d recommend any fan of electronic music to take a listen to the brilliant Bleepshow podcast for many fantastic examples. It’s a highly creative area, and one which needs a constant supply of fresh talent, so it’s a good time to get started!

In this tutorial, we’ll be taking a look at some of the tweaks and techniques which can help you to create your own experimental electronica. Obviously, the point of the genre is essentially to explore the systems you have at your disposal, and hopefully you’ll be able to extract the principles behind these examples as well as following them literally.

Note: this tutorial contains embedded audio that will not display in a feed reader. Click back to the site to read the tutorial with audio or download the Play Pack at the end of the tut.

Cut-up Chords

When you’re creating a big electronica pad sound, it makes a lot of sense to render the track as audio for further manipualtion. In Ableton Live, you can do this quickly with the Freeze and Flatten commands. This will allow you to start chopping up the raw audio, just as you might edit a drum loop.

Here, I’ve chopped a few pieces out to create a rhythmic gating effect. You could use a plugin like Livecut or Glitch to do this, but both tend to produce quite recognizable results; do it by hand first until you know situations where you need things to be automated.

Live’s Filter Delay plugin is brilliant on pads; if you don’t have Live, you could consider something like Waves Supertap. If you’re serious about electronica, however, nothing beats the hands-on nature of Live. Automating the filter cutoff on each part of the delay can produce some interesting phasey effects.

Phasers tend to be overused on pad sounds. Try automating a frequency sweep like this over a transition to soften it, rather than smothering the entire sound in watery, slimey phaser tone!

Download audio file (chordwithcuts.mp3)

Chord with Cuts

Glitchy Percussion

Complex percussive elements are a hallmark of the genre, but they can be a little daunting initially. I like to start by building up a basic kick and snare groove, then layering lots of smaller sounds over the top.

Don’t just leave your vanilla kick drum sample in there; try adding some delay to spice things up. The filter curve on this PingPong delay ensures that there’s no clashing low frequencies and turns the kick into an almost tom-like additional percussion sound.

The Auto Filter here is automated to just occasionally take the top edge in and out of the kick, making it a little more organic-sounding.

Here, I’ve augmented the basic drum pattern with a loop played with brushes on a drum kit. It’s always a good idea to mix individual samples with loops. It sounds ridiculous but the noises in between the hits are often what make a good drum pattern: small snippets of reverb and variations in tone.

After chopping it up and reversing certain hits, I’ve added a slight high pass filter sweep across the pattern to lend it some dynamism.

Download audio file (percussion.mp3)

Percussion

Other Percussion

It can be a good idea to layer a clap sound and a snare together. In this example I’ve used a heavily bit-reduced clap sound to add crunchiness.

Download audio file (snareclap.mp3)

Snare and Clap

Here’s a great incidental percussion sound made from a short snare sample. The pinging, clanging delay is created simply by setting a short delay time, then automating it so that it increases and decreases producing quite random echos depending on when the sample is triggered.

Download audio file (click.mp3)

Click

Automation

Automation really is key when dealing with abstract electronic sounds. Too little and they’ll sound plastic and boring, too much and they’ll become unlistenable.

On this lead sound, for example, I’ve sent a square wave LFO to the filter cutoff, then gradually increased and descreased the LFO frequency to create an undulating effect.

Download audio file (lead.mp3)

Lead

This can be quite difficult to get right, as too much change to the filter can make the sound bitty and cause it to lose tonality.

Try experimenting with different levels of automation and effects on your sounds, leaving some sounds purer than others.

Usually, these will be the ones you want to stand out, but you can still use a heavily-automated sound and create great tones. Check out Marcus Schossow’s Swedish Beatballs for an example of how unbelievably over-the-top automation can still produce a great lead.

Here’s a sample of the unfinished track these tips were taken from. I’ll be back soon with more! If there’s anything going on in the track you’d particularly like to know about, drop me a line in the comments thread.

Download audio file (CSYWIPClip.mp3)

Experimental Electronica