More Work in Progress: From Last Weekend

I had some studio time blocked out last weekend with the intention of developing a few musical constructions that have been lingering on my hard drive (there’s only about a few hundred unfinished ideas lurking around in there). But that plan went out the window when I started tweaking knobs and sliders in Thor, the synthesizer module in the latest incarnation of Reason.

I haven’t really spent much time getting aquatinted with Thor, so I just wanted to pop the hood and see what was there. Within a few minutes, I dialed up a tasty little lo-fi analog patch. That lead to a quick little melodic pattern… one of those things that literally just fell out under my fingers without any concentrated effort— I love those. I quickly captured the raw idea in the sequencer… and started building from there.

I fleshed out the basic structure in DP, creating some drum loops from scratch, and augmenting them with a few heavily de/reconstructed rex loops. I fumbled around a bit with my bass cello trying to find a bass line, then added some washed-out accordion as texture. On top of all that I layered in some more bass cello (arco, of course!). I polished off the whole thing with some noise effects and discreet samples… and that was it! With a process that usually takes me weeks, if not months, it was very surprising and rewarding to actually “finish” a construction so efficiently (and be reasonably happy with it, I might add). Definitely not my usual experience.

After a couple day’s listenings, I made just a few minor compositional tweaks and exported a rough mix…. You can download it here: 05_02_08_mix4.mp3

1. Sweet.
   “Drum loops from scratch”—using the Reason drumkit?

   Posted by Jon  on  05/11  at  11:18 AM

2. Jon… Yep. I have several drum kits in Reason. I built the basic beat from sctach… note by note, then layered in an edited/processed drum loop.

   Which reminds me… we STILL haven’t rescheduled our noisemaking session!!

   Posted by gustaf  on  05/12  at  08:39 PM