Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Next Stop, Fourth Floor!

Song Title: Fourth Floor Rehearsal Space

Recorded On: Ableton Live 9

Instruments: (In Order Of Appearance)
                    DrumSynth Kick
                    Hi Hat Open
                    Snare Electro
                    DrumSynth Clap
                    Buster Synth Lead
                    Horny Morning (This is an audio effect and no, I didn't name it.)
                    80's Wavepad Pad
                    Bright Pad Filter Sweep

Uploaded to SoundCloud: May 29, 2013

Stats to Date: 2 Plays (United States)
                      2 Downloads (1 US/1 Portugal)

You can listen to "Fourth Floor Rehearsal Space" here: https://soundcloud.com/c-l-neal/fourth-floor-rehearsal-space.

This was the second piece I tried to write and the first I wrote successfully using a "four-on-the-floor" rhythm. I'd never done it before so to learn how I went looking for help. Other producers had told me this before and I'm here to testify, Youtube is your friend. Now, I'd gotten the idea that most people associate house beat four-on-the-floor with 130 bpm. How true that is, I don't know, but the video I watched that showed me how to do it, the guy who made it wrote in 123 bpm. So that's what I wrote this song in. And I tried writing just the drum part in 123 and then speeding it up, but it just didn't sound  right, so it stayed at 123.

I played it for Burch and he said, "Good four-on-the-floor." I'll take it where I can get it. At least it told me that I wasn't wasting my time learning how to do this stuff.

Being an EDM producer is hard. You're a one-man show (or one-woman show, depending.) I love to jam with other people and feed off their energy and ideas. Usually they are also better musicians than I am so I learn by watching what they do and listening to how they do it. It's not like that as a producer. I'm sitting in my bedroom all by myself and hoping that someone other than me likes the ideas I'm committing to the internet. If I get frustrated with something, there's no one there to say, "Hey, you can do it," and encourage you to keep going. The upside is that there's also no big, egotistical jerk trying to front the band and telling you how bad you suck, whether you do or not. And I've always been one of those people who is never quite sure when they've done something good. I wrote a book once that I thought was brilliant. My wife and kids read it and politely decided not to tell me how terrible it was. Then I wrote a poem that I almost threw away. Two days later my wife backs me up against a wall yelling at me for more of that. So I usually need someone else to tell me, not that I'm great no matter what but whether what I'm doing has any value at all. Cuz everyone sucks sometimes. I don't care if your preferred style of musician is Deadmau5, Prince, John Lennon or Beethoven, none of them produced all winners. But it's always nice to hear that you're doing it right.

Let me know what you think!

Peace out and catch you later...
ShankThr33 - It's In The Genes!










Copyright (c) 2013 Christopher Neal

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