Month: August 2011

HAA! & PHISE: Ableton Live and original musical parts

This is an article taken from my class work from my Berklee Music online class on Ableton Live (instructor Loudon Stearns). The subject – what are the benefits of original musical parts?

Benefits of creating original musical parts

By parts I will include not only parts determined by instrument/note order (such as a trumpet, timpani or guitar part) but also a part that is either a hybrid or pure synthesis/sampled sound (not related to note order).

I have found a few approaches to building sounds and parts in Live.

The first I will title the “Happy Accident Approach” (HAA – sometime written HAA!). This method is the try it and see what happens method. It is a very powerful approach given the extreme sound shaping control available in Live. Load a patch, lob on some effects, twist some dials and as often as not, be amazed by the cool sounds coming out of your monitors. This method, though time consuming shouldn’t be underrated as the results can be very useful. I have a few tools that help me with this:


1) Touchable for the IPAD: Touchable has a very cool mode when working with devices. It is called snap mode. When snap is enabled the value of the parameters in place at the time of enabling snap mode are “sticky”. Then, when you change a parameter (say filter type, resonance, etc.) you hear the change in sound while you move the device parameter but once you take your finger off the IPAD the parameter snaps back to its original value. This is neat tool for experimentation. Although it can take some hand contortions to modify multiple parameters at once, you can get some very interesting sounds and then “Snap” back to your original sound.

Also the physical modeled (gravity/bounce) X/Y pad… major HAA! potential there.

2) Kapture Pad for the IPAD: This is essentially a librarian for the settings currently in your Live Set. You can work with sounds, device and effect settings and more and then “Kapture” a snap shot of the current state of LIVE. These snapshot can be grouped in BANKS, labeled and recalled non-sequentially. This is a simple and effective tool for allowing sound exploration while not losing what you previously had in terms of previous settings. A cool thing about Kapture Pad is that the bank/setting info is stored on the host computer, not on the IPAD allowing for any Ipad with the Kapture pad software to access the saved information. The information can also be archived (backed up) from the host for safe, off site storage.

3) Koncrete Performer: Somewhat less intuitive but visually alluring is Koncrete Performer. This is an actual controller for Live with a librarian attached. The interface are Multiple Nodes controlled by touch. Individual/Multiple parameters of Live’s devices are mapped to the nodes and can be controlled via touch. You sort of have to see this to get the idea but the interface is visually breathtaking. Projecting this interface during a performance would make a very appealing visual for an audience.

All of these tools allow for creating and archiving “Happy Accidents”.

The second method I use for creating musical parts is what I would call “Pre-Hearing Intuitive Sound Envisioning” (PHISE).

This method is a bit more unreliable but can be a HUGE time saver over HAA!. The main method with PHISE is to Pre Hear what it is you want to hear in the real world. Here are a few of the ways that this manifests:

1) Song idea inspiration – have you ever ridden in your car and started to sing a melody? Quick, grab the recorder on your phone and capture that melody. Now when you sit down to Live, input that melody into Live and start building out the tune. You have successfully used PHISE.

The Next Note Theory (NNT)

(briefly stated – at any moment in a piece of music, the most relevant information is the next note)

2) Using NNT, PHISE is expresed as follows: You have built a song/sound structure and you envision another part as yet UNPLAYED. It can be a vague direction or a clear path to the next part, chord change, sound, effect, rhythm, whatever. That is PHISE at its best.

To use this method you have to allow yourself to be very cognizant of the burst of creativity that your mind has provided to you in terms of a sound choice, a chord change, an effect, – any yet unheard (imagined)  part of the project you are working on (or have yet to start).

Warning – it is VERY easy to ignore these PHISE moments. I recommend you don’t. They are rarely convenient, can invalidate the work that came before them and can lead to to many directions from a very simple core. My recommendation is to document them all and when you aren’t having PHISE moments use the more rational mind and the HAA! approach to flesh out the inspirations.

Of course this process doesn’t have to be linear. You may be working on a project and pre-hear something on an unrelated project. STOP. Record or otherwise document that idea.

Finally, the two methods can work hand in hand. Happy Accidents lead to PHISE that then lead to Happy Accidents which then lead to… you get the idea.

So after doing all of that, what are the benefits?

1) No copyright infringement lawsuits
2) Other musicians dig what you are doing
3) Really great musicians and producers want to interact with original artists
4) You start to appreciate originality in other art forms (dance, architecture, painting)
5) In some case, wealth, fame, and a 401 K can come with successful marketing of original music parts.
6) It feels good to create original music parts.

Dvorak’s New World Symphony

This first performance of the Panama City POPS 2011-2012 season will open at the Marina Civic Center with Dvorak’s New World Symphony. We had played individual movements before but this is the first time we will play all four movements.  The themes in NWS are so strong an beautiful. In the adagio is a classic bass line that just scream classical bass playing. And the third movement (my favorite) is just going to be a wild ride. This is going to be very demanding but worth it!

Our bass section had its first sectional rehearsal today and worked on the bowing and some of the more demanding phrases. I’m really lucky to have other bassists that take the music seriously enough to practice. That is very refreshing.

We also are doing two arrangements from John William’s score for the movie Jurasic Park. These are really fun to play and at one point my bass sounds like dinosaurs. Nice.

Anyway, that is what is on the stand right now.

 

Ableton’s Soniculture Partner Instrument – the Novachord

I found something interesting. I thought I’d share.

The debut of the Novachord in 1940

First, some quick background. Ableton and various partners offer add on instruments for Ableton Live. These can be auditioned on the Ableton site. Recently they ran a special and I picked up a few instruments.

One instrument that I had dismissed when I was auditioning the various sounds was the “Novachord”; an instrument created by the Hammond Organ company in 1938.
Fortunately there had been a partner instrument sampler issued by Ableton that included a few sounds from the Novachord. The sounds were so compelling I created a new age composition on the spot to hear these great sounds in a musical context.

This morning I was reading the Wikipedia article about the Novachord (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novachord) and read that composer/arranger, Ferde Grofe wrote music for the Novachord. If you aren’t familiar with Grofe, he is considered the “Father of Arrangers”. This article has interesting information on Mr. Grofe.

http://courses.wcupa.edu/frichmon/mue332/spring2002/dougballard/composer.html

Grofe’s Grand Canyon Suite is a collection of pieces that describe sonically the Grand Canyon. He was instrumental in working with George Gershwin to create “Symphonic Jazz”, specifically Rhapsody in Blue.

So why is this Ableton related? Grofe wrote and conducted a piece featured at the 1939 Worlds Fair that was performed on 4 Novachord Synthesizers. And this morning, I found out there was a video of this!!

The opening bass sound ( a combination of the drone of a old propeller airline/horror movie bass pedal) is even today, a deeply moving and dramatic sound. Then the video plays some pieces from the 1930/40 era but if you go to 2:30 in the video there is a gorgeous, warm, analog string sound. To my ear the sounds that were used for these interludes are sounds that could still be relevant to current music productions.

Anyway, I think the Novachord Sound Set by Ableton/Soniculture shows just how much depth there is to electronic music and I as I am discovering, it’s association with some of the best musical minds of the 20th century.

The great contribution of Ableton is to not only break new ground with its techniques and innovative workflow but to also move the long and great tradition of electronic music forward while preserving the historic roots of the electronic music art form.

I hope you enjoyed that video as much as I did.