elemental - electro-3 (electronic / old school R&B)
Again, I used the Beatmaker soundbank Electronica\Oniric kit as the starting point for this one. I made heavy use of Velocity and Groove to get some life and feel into the snare and hi hat parts. I loaded the bass and piano onto multiple pads and pitch shifted so I could get the chords, riffs, and bass line. I think the bass sample is from another kit but I can't remember which one. Main influences are probably Herbie Hancock and James Brown, with an electronica flavor. I tried to keep the piece moving and fresh, never repeating any combination of patterns for more than a couple of bars, and added the snare drum build and also the bridge at the end to try to make it more interesting and more like 'real' music. Hope you enjoy...
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Comments
As I said in my comments when I first posted this track, all of the sounds (including the piano) come from a kit provided with BeatMaker (Electronica/Oniric). The only extra work I did was to create the 'piano' was to edit the kit by importing the piano sample onto multiple pads, and then using the pitch-shifting capability to tune each piano pad to a different note. You should be able to figure out how to do this pretty quickly (use the 'edit' mode on the pads screen), or consult the manual. I got the idea to try this after listening to Jason7's "Under the Tree", which was a real ear-opener.
If you want to try this and make it relatively easy and intuitive to program chords and melodies from within the pattern sequencer screen, here are two useful tips:
1) Load the piano sample onto adjacent pads, so the notes will be clustered together on adjacent lines in the pattern sequencer; and
2) When you shift the pitches, put the lowest pitch on the highest-numbered pad. Then when you go to the pattern sequencer screen, the notes will be be ordered from low to high in the same way as when you write music the 'regular' way, with pitch increasing as you move 'up'. This is because pad 1 goes on top and pad 16 on the bottom of the pattern sequencer. That way it will end up looking somewhat like standard music notation.
If Intua includes a virtual keyboard in the next release, or the ability to pitch-shift from within the pattern sequencer - as many of us are hoping and speculating - then all of these manipulations will become happily OBSOLETE, and you will be hearing a lot more melody and chords in the pieces on this board, I am sure.
I am very new to electronic music and have spent many years playing music on 'real' instruments, so I find myself almost completely unable to create a piece that does not use this trick, i.e. it is almost impossible for me to create music without any melody or chords. (I was trying to do this with "Rumble and Click", but then couldn't resist adding the synth patterns). I know that one can get these elements of music by sampling hooks and chords from other songs, but that just doesn't feel right to me - even though one can create fantastic sounding music that way. To each their own! <!-- s:D --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_biggrin.gif" alt=":D" title="Very Happy" /><!-- s:D -->
Keep on enjoying this great product....best $20 I ever spent.