As an artist, it's a beautiful thing to observe ones own creations as they evolve over long periods of time. The original loop for this track once resided only at the very end of a track from very early 2010 entitled "It's Please". On a few occasions, as I listened through this track, I found myself captivated by a heavily effected melodic groove that was originally created as an outro variation to use in live performances.
After my intuition was triggered by these sounds a few times, I went into the lab and extracted the groove as a loop. It was an E flat quarter note pattern put through a VST synthesizer that has multiple interweaving filter cutoff modulations, giving it a very liquid psychedelic feel. I took the original bpm of 176 down to 140 to give the notes more clarity and time to resonate. After sculpting the loop into its new home, I duplicated it 64 times. The track was then a 5 minute long entrancing sonic mantra, but it felt like it had room still to be filled in, so I went back to "Its' Please" and extracted one of the pad synthesizer VSTs and played with different chord variations to see what brought out and provided foundation for the already existing riff. After a bit, I found the sounds that completed the equation, and the intentions for this remix were fulfilled.
I titled this 'tranceforever', and used this as intro/outro/transition material in my live sets and as a meditative tool over the last few months, but didn't feel the urge to take a different level. However, today as I was meditating in my room to this track streaming out of my monitors, I found myself mentally creating sounds all around what I was hearing, and more than anything else being compelled to add some heavy half time drums over it.
Being as today is my Mayan galactic signature birthday, Blue Lunar Hand, I felt compelled to create something seeing as many universal forces were lined up. The first thing I did in this track was to bring up the drum sampler VST Battery as the second layer to the already existing 'tranceforever' audio file, which was still set at 140 bpm. I intended to write some thunderous crunkstep style drums to invoke a tribal shamanic vibe that would pace the loop at the half time feel and give my brain more of a format with which to base the bass on.
Once I had a good mix between the original loop and the drums, I started pulling out treasures from my 'random samples' folder including quotes from Martin Luther King and Lil Wayne. I pulled the 3rd dimension out of all the new samples with tens of effect patches as well as manual glitch cut and pastes. Quickly I had an entire sonic world of pyschedelic swirls to complement the drums and groove loop.
The next step was to create the bass with the vst plug-in Massive, which as any producer knows is some of the most fun! When I create my bass lines, I go into Massive and activate 3 oscillators, usually dedicating two of them to the low register octaves and one of them as an additional higher octave. I play with which filters sound best and once I have set one, I map it out and create a basic wobble. Once I've got all the sound design finished and the bass is sounding nice and three dimensional, I play with all variations of wobble setting, and usually end up with a very slow wobble rate but a very jagged micro modulator that gives the bass a sonic key edge feel.
The next step is finding a melody that ties all previously existing elements together, and once again Massive is my preferred vst for this step as well. In this process, sometimes I will get extremely detailed and complex with creating the rhythm of melodies, and sometimes I find that the most simple minimal style works best, as I did for this track. Once I have a track at this level, I step back and analyze all existing sections and sounds and listen through a few different variations. Sequencing is one of my favorite parts of production because it is in essence creating the very telling of the sonic tale.
After I have the track in an order I feel good with, I begin to use various VSTs to create transitional sounds between sections that create a cohesive uniting flow from one chapter to the next. From this point I have a working track that could be considered finished, but this is really just the beginning of another major editing stage during which I apply glitches, build ups, further transitional entities, and create final arrangement. This can be the longest phase in production. When I have at last solved the sonic puzzle, and have rendered it to a single wav file at -5-7 decibels, it goes into the mastering machine Izotope Ozone.
This device is unbelievable and provides the final boosts, EQs, and polishing over the production. I'll render a few variations and audition them on as many sound system dynamics as I can to ensure the final track is clean, full, and every single choice made or left unmade is exactly what I want.
Enjoy this free DL and stay tuned as the SRI GAJA release on Waveform Modulations this fall draws closer. Here is a screenshot from today's work:
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