Lessons

Lesson Info

Creating Different Bassline Options

In the last segment I think where we left off I was trying to create a unique sort of bass sound using this movie like synthesizer that comes with ah native instruments and using guitar rig to kind of uh give it this this just warm, distorted sort of sound um so we um and it's ah it's it's very um yeah, there is ah as it gets brighter e get some really good distortion out of it. So um what's creating creating a baseline reading a hook that, um still, uh, fits the m the key of the original song we learned in the last segment that essentially all the white notes will work and that's a good thing because it's easy and so we're going to do here is try some a few things trying to come up with at least like the goal here is to come up with at least a couple hooks that it can be used interchangeably in the song um and that's going to be really helpful and the overall arrangement um perhaps weaken use create a hook that is some something kind of simple for the first part and then once it gets ...

going we can switch it to another hook that will be something a little bit more rich and more interesting um and you know, maybe a third one or something derivative versions of the different hooks so what I did when I, uh initially wrote the turn was I just um I did one that was like maybe something a little bit more more techie right? So we'll just create any pattern here um going tio our pattern select your here close on the plus button or if you want to do a shortcut you could just control shift in search um that will create any pattern and call this base line one and I'm going to drop that pattern rights over here doesn't really matter where because later on we're going to move it around um it actually I'll put it on top of this cord thing that was doing earlier just to give it a bit of a tiny bit of context on the double click and drag to create a loop this is how I write music e just okay um I try to find the notes that I'm going to play I'm terrible at playing the piano, by the way, so everything I do is done pretty much manually within the piano roll nfl studio, which um just makes it easier for you but I find the notes by fun by playing them all my people my keyboard like those notes, for instance, for this first check that I'm going to do so um so it laid out and see light up where I wanted to that's the note that I wanted to be on and then select everything hold shift checking copy it and created derivative version of that that's one um just like in the in the piano roll in the play list if you will downshift and drag, you'll copy it too, so now I've got something that's sort of looping here that's, that's one version and then take that and just set it aside and I'm going to try and come up with something else I don't know if that's going to be what I want, but when I create hooks a, I'll start rattling off like different different ideas just to see just kind of feel it out, so I'm gonna create another one I'm going to I can either go in here and hit the plus and create a new pattern another witch thing that I could do would be to actually duplicate the one that I did before and go make unique this is now this one is so the way I felt studio works is because each one each invite each pattern is kind of like its own object if you duplicate that pattern doesn't matter if you if you edit this this object here, it will be edited in all copies of it, so you'll notice in this little part right here if I drag this note it's happening in both but not this one because I made it unique, so um but I'm going to change the notes are going to do something different here and knowing that all the white notes will work I could probably just come up with any old hook that lives on the make the white notes and it'll that should in theory in music theory dokdo sure I'll make another derivative version put it over here all right so I've got I've got two ideas here right? I'm gonna make this one unique again go back in it again this time I'm not going to make it a derivative I'm just going to delete everything and start from scratch sure so when I was got several different versions here maybe for the last one what I'll dio let's make this one unique by right click there just left clicking in this little window here you've got all these options you make it unique um I think for this last one um kind of try to mimic the baseline of the original song it would make sense to do that um some delete everything hearing in and uh how did the original baseline goes so e I actually have to go back to the uh the song itself and take a listen which is something that I do quite a lot while I'm working on a remix go back and hear the original version yeah ok so it goes right oh it's more like that or even longer actually qantas but I'm not going to just do that because that's kind of boring I mean no offense to theory general song is actually works really well in the original song I'm gonna do something that kind of dances around these notes right? So maybe I'll start by chopping up these original these notes here to create some sort of cadence and then make the notes float around those original ones so if you hold down the nfl studio the left shift does a different thing than the right shift the left shift duplicates the sample the the object that you've clicked on the right shift chops it up so I'm going to do something kind of like this not be so exact about it after all we are experimenting here and I'm just gonna the first note is going to keep the original one of the other ones will be different ones and I might change the the ending time of the release time so okay all right we've got these multiple versions here I think ultimately what I came up with when I was working on this particular tune all actually loaded up for you so you can take a look this is how I am how I end up doing everything is I just keep experimenting with all these different ones and the end of the day pick the best one um so um you know, open up the, uh scroll down and of course everything is all the way over there um actually I need to go back one because um this doesn't have all of them pardon me all I find the right one is it like it's actually farther back sorry. Pardon me. Okay, cool. Um maybe was actually this to see your process yeah there's I mean this is because we're live is the way you actually do it and actually got totally totally there's no, I just kind of like stumble all day long it's what I do you know it's it's it's funny because this this particular project took me I mean, I don't know maybe I spent a week and a half working on this whole thing and so I'm trying to like narrow this whole week and a half down um so they can show it show it to you I mean honestly I mean uh it's a half of that week and a half was like checking my email and looking at facebook and stuff but totally slacking okay? All right, so here are the the variations that I came up with when I initially started this particular project it was one of them was this is another variation of the baseline that just playing it's very crude, right? You know, this is this one I think comes a little bit closer and thick and this one is basing it on the original baseline of the ok and I think this is the one that ultimately ended up with that's the one I decided like that's the one I like that one so uh like I was saying earlier what a what they wanted to do with this have something that was the main theme and then have ah simpler seemed to start it off with so it starts simple and it kind of gains complexity and then some magic moment it reveals the complex hook so this being the complex hook so I um basically scrapped all that and then began thinking about how I can turn this into a simple or version so hold downshift copy that over here and we're creating yet another derivative version that is the simpler version of this one um I believe what I did was I shortened it and wanted to be like kind of a shorter hook but ah have this nephews nfl studio you've got all these tools appear right you've got your draw a tool that allows you to place your patterns the last pattern use you click done is the one that you've selected you can also select your pattern appear in this window to pick the pattern that you want um here you have the paint tool which allows you to actually paint the pattern on as a looper you've got this delete tool and that makes you delete but you can also delete by right clicking on anything in the window he's got the mute tool keeps it there but makes it silent so that you can bring it back for later and then this thing which I'm going to show you is the slip tool it basically keeps the the beginning and ending of that pattern where do they are? But you can slipped the information inside it so it slips it based on whatever you snapped your quance ization too so I'm going right now it was on bar I'm going to change it to step right so that's all right, so I kind of like it's starting on this note simon you just slide everything on dh I want to keep it more simple so I'm just chopping away I'm gonna take it off the slip toe put it back on the draw toe um sort of chopping away at it trying to keep getting too simple as I can get it e make this one you know? You can do it, do something different with it and so you can merge clips together if you were to click in this window you've got all these tools for editing your your clips I'm gonna go into edit and all the way down here of merge pattern clips I'm gonna bring these together and now these are their own matt pattern clip, right? And then I'm gonna lubitz and this is going to be my original the first version that I mean a base so I've got like this simple or hook and there's going to be my more complex together again and maybe it it just a little bit right now we got two pretty good hoax they uh they should sound pretty good back to back like if we were to if this was to be that magic moment where it went from one theme to the next sure it sounds okay going from one to the next I mean with I can imagine that with helpers crashes and crescendos and other instruments try toe like visualize what this could do later on and I'm going to do all those things so um that's my my initial creating the baseline right? I'm going to ah basically maybe you put it and you know have it's this part start at thirty three and this part go for for thirty three bars before that happens so I click the paint click on this one and it was painted right across there's another way to duplicate nfl studio just for the sake of showing you this you can use the paint tool to write out loops or if you select the area of time and then you select the loops that you want if you will die if you click troll and b you can duplicate as well and it will duplicate as long as you're holding that down so like forward like it just duplicate really quickly that way so uh all right did anyone have any questions? Um how often do you check to see if the sound you're creating work with the original song um I'm actually going tio get into that a little bit but you actually you know, I it depends it really it really does depend um when I'm doing a remix is I I try to start from because much of an original point as I can maybe I'll come up with like three or four hooks before I really um I really dove in and check it against the original song but I'm trying I try to assume that like ok, I know this much about the original song I've got I'm working within my mikey and scale parameters so in theory it should work but um also what I'm showing you hear all this stuff that I'm showing you here actually went pretty quickly that first day in the studio maybe it took me like an hour and a half or something to ours and so um by the time I actually compared it to the original song I it wasn't really very long you know? So yeah so uh here yeah I like tio have um a bunch of different pieces to kind of toy around with at first before I start bringing in the song because I find sometimes that I could do something that that is ah if I just do one one little thing and then I bring the song into it, it kind of kind of ruins it for me. You know, where's that have multiple things and then bring the song, and I can, like, sort of, like, compare multiple things, but I don't necessarily love just building what I'm doing off of the original song. So that's, why I like, I like, I kind of wanted to put the stumps aside at first and start coming up with the's hooks. So, um, yeah, let me let me show you another really awesome thing here. So the next step that I've had these two elements said, that massive thing. Andi, I have this baseline thing. I kind of wanted to get some sort of a solo type of element. Um, some reason, I always end up gravitating towards these sort of woodwinds, flute sort of sounds.