Composing

Using an Octaver for Easy Funk - Musical Creativity 43

Alan — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 15:23:43 +0100

Mention an octaver to a musician, especially a guitarist, and you're heading for a conversation about Hendrix.

It can be used for other styles. So here's a quick trick for writing funk. Forget the bass when you start. I half-expected to get lynched, but bear with me, at least until the end.

Background

I like the old P-funk of Funkadelic and Parliament. I think what made me hear it more was the inclusion of a distorted guitar in a funk show. This was often played in sync with the bass guitar.

Setting the groove

Find a sparse drum track. You want big drums (not 80s soft rock big though). Make sure it's a tight loop. Set it to loop as your background track. Now remove the click track if you've got one. You'll play better this way.

Setting up the guitar

We'll get the distorted guitar set-up first. That'll be a distorted guitar from the 70s, maybe even a distorted DI from the 80s. Keep the speaker simulation to a minimum. We're not looking for a modern hi-gain sound here so go for a raw guitar sound.

Next add an octaver effect. I've had better results recently with it placed after the amplifier/amplifier plug-in, but normally I'd place pitch effects before the pre-amp.

Set the octaver so it adds a note one octave (12 notes) below the signal.

Roll the tape

Now play and record. Use an extended pentatonic scale (i.e. blues scale with a few additional notes) to get started. The p-funk guitars had lots of semi-tone intervals.

Fill it Out

Add a second guitar with a modulation effect, most commonly a subtle phaser playing rhythmic, strummed part-chords.

Finish it off

I've added a club-type reverb to bond the 3 instruments tracks together, aiming for a live club feel.

Make it more complex

You could add the octaver as a send instead of a insert, allowing to mix the levels better and potentially (depending on the quality of the octaver effect) retain the character of the original signal with more clarity.

Make it more authentic

Put on the star-shaped shades, pick up the bass and record the part properly. The octaver gives you an easy way gets you started in the groove, but it really should be done with a bass.

Part of a series by Award Sounds offering a selection of creative ideas to kick-start or rejuvenate a composition.

Venn Episode 1 in the works

Alan — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 06:47:52 +0100

I've recently received the video for the 1st episode of Venn (the previous release was a pilot and called Episode 0)

Again the episode is by Spinneyhead Presents. Episode 1 picks up from that and plays on the theme of the celibacy bet. The content is better than Episode 0, the scripts are better and from my perspective, the audio is so much better. It's definitely better than the first series, Memory.

This is the first episode that I've been happy with sound-wise. The quality of the recording far surpasses anything that the team has done before. I've seen series on BBC3 that had worse audio than this.

So what's this mean for me?

I can write music to fit the scene, instead of covering up audio errors
I can write less music. Yes, that's a benefit to all concerned. Check out Memory where I had to write a lot of music
I don't have to spend days or weeks cleaning up the audio manually (automated tools get you so far, but some things have to be tweaked manually)
The speech is already clearer and more intelligible
It's already more professional
It's easier to watch
More enjoyable from a production perspective

The audio has been improved greatly by recording with an off-camera microphone. Ian used a hand-held boom and microphone to achieve much better audio than possible with the on-camera microphone.

I'll post back when Episode 1 is released.

Use of Tremolo - Musical Creativity 42

Alan — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 21:27:29 +0100

I've talked about tremolo as a musical feature before, this time I want to go into more detail.

First things first, let's sort out the guitarists: I don't mean using the tremolo arm/whammy bar or whatever you want to call it ("handle" as my girlfriend called it - and no she won't be picking up my guitars for a while). The whammy bar creates a vibrato feature, not a tremolo. Vibrato alters pitch.

Amplitude

Tremolo is the act of altering the volume of a note or set of notes. For an electric instrument, the simplest to hear is by regularly turning the volume knob up and down. The notes fade in, fade out, fade in, fade out and so on.

It's a great tool for livening up a piece of music. The previous article on the subject covered some more ways of using it.

Recordings

Tremolo features on a lot of famous recordings. Three extreme examples are:

How Soon Is Now - The Smiths

Crush with Eyeliner - REM

What's the Frequency Kenneth - REM

But it's used more subtlely on many, many more recordings. Think of any country song and listen to the guitar. Many of the 1950s and 1960s guitar recordings had tremolo on them. Think Duane Eddy (although he mixed it with vibrato by using the whammy bar a lot). Lots of Elvis recordings featuring Scotty Moore had tremolo. This situation was accentuated and facilitated by the inclusion of tremolo circuits in the guitar amps, e.g. Vox

Types of effect

The common tremolo effect alters the amplitude or volume of the incoming signal apply a regularly repeating pattern before output. The most common pattern is the sine wave, although some FX units also allow square and sawtooth. The output signal increases, decreases, increases, decreases, etc.

The waveform applied changes how fast the signal reaches the extremes and how long it stays there before beginning the journey to the other extreme.

Depth

If the signal is applied completely at 100% depth, then the output will have no signal at the points when the applied FX is at its lowest point, conversely it will have the maximum volume when the FX is at its highest point.

Lowering the depth introduces a less radical effect, to the point that if the depth were at 0%, then there would theoretically be no difference between the input and output. As with most effects, the most appropriate depth is usually somewhere between the two extremes.

Symmetry

The waveform applied so far has been the same on both sides, i.e. going up and coming down. Altering the phase allows more time for the signal to climb and a quicker fall or vice versa. This is great for imparting a slower or a rushed feeling to the track.

Phase

For a stereo tremolo, the default set-up is to have the signal applied equally, but alternately to each channel. Changing the phase control alters the timing displacement of the second channel compared to the first, which can be used to create panning echoes or dotted note rhythms.

No Depth?

I'd usually use a tremolo inline with the signal, either at the recording stage (e.g. between guitar and amp) or at the mixing stage (as an insert). If there's no depth control, then patch the tremolo into a send and emulate the depth by the relative values of the signal and send faders.

For guitarists, if there's no depth control, then you maybe able to use it in the amp's FX loop if you've got a variable dry/wet mix. This may not work well, since the FX would be placed after the pre-amp. Depends what equipment you're using.

Playing with fingers

A classical guitar tremolo technique involves repeatedly plucking the same string with the first, second and third fingers. This is often a bass and/or melody note plucked with the thumb followed by the three fingers or sometimes a fourth is employed but the fingering changes.

The most famous example is probably Recuerdos De La Alhambra by Francisco Tárrega, although I think Agustin Barrios Mangore's Una Limosna por el Amor de Dios (Alms for the Peace of God) shows the technique more.

Various forms of flamenco use a similar technique, sometimes using the thumb plus four finger notes (not necessarily four fingers, often three fingers with one repeated) to get a 5-tuplet pattern.

Pick

For electric guitar, rapidly repeated picking of the same note gives a tremolo effect that can be used in solos. Do it too often and you'll sound you can't move your fret-hand fingers. Best to intersperse it with other techniques. Check out the Ozzy Osbourne recordings with Randy Rhoads, e.g. Tribute, to get an idea of how to fit it into a solo. He doesn't use it that often, but when he does, it works well. Nowadays, watch Matt Bellamy of Muse. There are plenty of others, but they're not coming to mind right now.

In other forms of music, e.g. drag, it can be the main feature. This is more likely to happen on the lower strings of the guitar, with a springy/slap-back reverb. Think Dick Dale. Although perhaps not part of drag, Miserlou (as featured in Pulp Fiction) is a great example of how a simple riff can lead the track. The repeated picking comes from his experience with an oud (or ud).

Part of a series by Award Sounds offering a selection of creative ideas to kick-start or rejuvenate a composition.

43 Reasons for Collaborating - Part 1 - Musical Creativity 41

Alan — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 19:22:07 +0100

A short series of articles on collaborating with other people to make your music better, make it heard or to help them move their music forwards.

1. Recording

1a Engineer

It's so much easier to play, record, change settings, do another take and all those other tasks when there's an extra pair of hands doing the engineering. It means you can focus on feeling comfortable and ensuring that you play to the best of your ability without having to change position and move a microphone, listen to the output, try again, etc. The more you work with an engineer, the more familiar you'll become with their way of working.

1b New outlook

Work with other engineers will remove some of the familiarity of the recording process or familiarity with a particular engineer but will open up new ideas. If you're acting as the engineer for someone else, then it may force you to think back to basics and undo some of your own habits that work well for you in your setting, but no so well for others in their own setting.

1c New kit

Not only do engineers have their preferred choices of recording techniques and equipment, some will have that equipment to hand. It's at the beginning and aspiring levels that it can make more difference since it's at the amateur and semi-pro levels that you're still learning which combinations work best for you. Perhaps you work with an engineer to try out their mics and return the favour later by recording them using your kit. The reciprocal nature opens up new opportunities and learning experiences.

1d Location or studio

Just as the engineer may have kit and techniques, they may also have access to other locations and studios. Want a good drum room, then you're probably better off with a studio, but want a particular type of sound, maybe even just a decent vocal booth and you may have luck with other musicians and engineers.

1e Crowd and audience

If you're thinking of recording a live gig, then the engineer may have access to a different audience (maybe bigger) than you're used to. Lots of live-recording engineers will have regular gigs. Getting a slot in one of those, could provide a ready-made, if not totally accepting, audience.

2. Mixing

2a Remix

Letting someone else mix your tracks has a few of advantages

provides a fresh pair of ears to your music
means you can focus on recording and playing
brings a different tone to your music if you use a mix engineer who has their own sound

Sometimes the mix you have just doesn't work, giving it to a mix engineer may help you out of that rut.

2b Revamp

Think of this being the use of "remix" that's becoming more prevalent nowadays. Hardly mixing in the traditional sense of setting faders, processing and effects, but getting involved in cutting-and-pasting the arrangement. In this case, the re-mixer would be chopping verses up, perhaps interspersing them with samples from elsewhere. Is there a better word for this?

2c Mashups

Taking the revamp approach a step further for a more extreme result.

2d Different mixing skills

There are a few tricks to mixing for 12 inch vinyl. Although many of these may be properly found within the mastering engineer's remit, knowing about them from a mix engineer's perspective will help move things along more quickly.

3. Playing

3a Skill

There are times when you have to admit you can't play an instrument well enough to be able to record what you want to. This is where the session musicians come in. At the more amateur level, it's more about finding a friend or a contact who can do it for you. Just beware of contractual implications if you go that route.

3b Extra Instruments

An extension of 3a, sometimes you just want a different instrument in your recording; one that you can't play. The most common for these would be real violins or cellos to augment sampled strings, or real trumpets or horns to augment brass sections. While you can get friends to fill in, again beware of contractual implications.

3c Vibe and Groove

Different players have different styles of playing. Compare the rock bassist to the jazz/funk bassist. Different styles and often even a different sense of timing. Actually, that should probably read that they can have a different interpretation of timing. By bringing in a musician who can add a different vibe, you can dramatically change the feel of a song.

3d Name and Kudos

This is the guest slot. Having someone with a known name can introduce you to their audience, but also give you the reputation of being able to work with others.

3e Broaden your Horizons

Playing or working with other musicians is a great way to expand your own horizons. Watch what they do, how they set-up, how they approach the gig, what kit they use and how they use it to produce the sounds requested of them. And that's without learning from the notes they play or the phrasing they employ.

Other Pages

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Part of a series by Award Sounds offering a selection of creative ideas to kick-start or rejuvenate a composition.

Revamp - Musical Creativity 40

Alan — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 20:48:37 +0100

Take an old track and change the style of it.

I'm amazed how many tracks can be given more life by changing the style of music. I pick tracks that I've never fully finished to my satisfaction and apply a different musical style to them.

Identify the original style

What's wrong with the original track?

Did it just plod along?
Lack of melody?
Lack of interest?
Too much repetition?
Didn't fit the video?

I usually pick a style that will help fill the gaps. For instance, if it's just plodding, I'll add something with a groove (e.g. motown). A few ideas:

Add some distortion to the drums (better still route them through a send with a guitar amp simulator) and blend the clean and processed signals. This may only be needed for a bar or two rather than the whole song.
Speed the whole thing up a few bpm will give it more energy.
Slow it down a few bpm and you may find that you can play with the groove more.
Change the starting key
For guitarists, look at playing with open versus fretted chords. I find that changing the key on a guitar can make a large difference to the tone. Consider the standard Am chord played at the nut compared to the tone of the same shape chord with a barre played at the 5th fret forming a Dm. Every decent guitar I've played provides a drastically different tone for these two chords. Same again if you move up another 5 frets.
Modulate
Change the dynamics
Change to double time - The change is about 2 minutes into The Stand-Off
Pause/Break - The change to double time is provided by a break, complete with drums keeping time
Play it on another instrument and focus on the rhythm or melody - does it highlight any issues or any ideas?

A good way to approach this is as a remixer or as a band about to cover your music. Ask the following question:

What could another band do if they had to cover your music?

Part of a series by Award Sounds offering a selection of creative ideas to kick-start or rejuvenate a composition.

Move the focus of the rhythm from on to off the beat - Musical Creativity 39

Alan — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 20:25:43 +0100

I guess most drummers will know this, but if you program your own drums or use loops, think about using a different groove for your song.

The basic pattern

Standard drum pattern that most of us learn is a 4 beat combination of bass, drum and hihat. Hihat every beat, bass on the first, snare on the 3rd. And repeat ad nauseum.

Then we get to add more bass, use 8th notes and so on.

What's the focus?

I was collaborating on a track a couple of months ago and as we we browsing the library of drum loops, we just couldn't find anything that suited. We ended up creating one ourselves and it was interesting to see the differences in how the two of us approached it.

I approached it very much from the basic, rock drumming angle, laying down the main beats first. My collaborator took a different approach and focussed on the choked hi-hat pattern. I then had to place the other beats around that.

Which was better?

It all fairness, neither. But here's the crunch, they drastically changed the feel of the music. It changed the feel so much that when I recorded a new part (say a guitar melody over the top), I played that differently.

So we recorded both sets.

One became the music for the opening credits, the other became the closing credits. We were also able to switch between the two main rhythms in the middle of track to change the feeling yet again.

Live Drummer

It's a common trick. Drummers will regularly change the rhythm pattern, if not you may as well use a drum machine! Using a live drummer means they can respond to the way the music's going. Moreover, they can change the rhythm, turn that around to drive it in a different direction. The difference for us was that we'd applied it more excessively than usual, but it still worked.

Ahead or behind?

Is this the same as playing ahead or behind the beat? No, it's neither. It's just syncopated, we were still playing at a regular syncopated interval. The choked hi-hats were on the "ands" of "1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and" for most bars/measures instead of on the beats of "1 2 3 4".

Part of a series by Award Sounds offering a selection of creative ideas to kick-start or rejuvenate a composition.

My composing workflows

Alan — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 19:52:56 +0100

I said in the previous article that I'd provide details of my most common composing workflows.

Sync to video Soundtrack

I'll get the video into a format ready for Logic Pro, mainly I'm looking for a QuickTime movie.
Import the movie into Logic, check the frame rate. Very important.
Set Logic to find the scene change markpoints. I'm having second thoughts about this process. I may revert to adding them manually. I like how some features are more obvious in Logic Studio 8, than in LP 7.2, so I'm going to play with these a bit more.
Read through the director's notes and play the movie. Start to get a feel of what I want to put in there while it's playing.
Set the tempo track up for the obvious places, hitting the markpoints at the right times.
Decide if it's an effect or musical soundtrack, then choose the correct instruments and play along. I'll probably want the clicktrack off when I'm not sure of what the timing should be. In that case, I'll figure out the time signature after I've played along to it a few times.
Tighten up the recording as I go along and improve the fit to the movie

Creating a library track

I'll usually start with a drum track
Add guitar riff and extend this
Add another guitar
Add bass
Add synth if necessary
Process the sounds, adding effects as appropriate
Mix
Create shorter edits and stings

Creating a bespoke track

Well, it depends what's been asked for. Difficult to say what I do until I agree the brief, but I may be more structured and layout a rough structure on drums, even if it's only marginally more interesting than just a click track. Usually there's a length of time to fill so that constrains it. Often I'll split it into three; the start, the theme and the end. I'll build up from there.

Creating a track in a new style

Get a reference track
Play the reference track and listen carefully.
Start to deconstruct what makes the reference track belong to its genre
Build up a track from that

In these cases, I'm more likely to have the idea in my head and then have to transcribe and/or record the sounds that I hear.

Extending a previous idea

If only a small extension is required, I'll try looping a few bars, missing out an instrument, introducing more percussion for a bigger ending, playing the main theme on another instrument. Quite typical tricks that work well for small extensions. For longer extensions and more complex pieces, I'm more likely to play it through on guitar (no matter what it was originally recorded/played in) and go from there. Sometimes I approach it logically, working out what notes should work next, other times, I'll just play and see what notes fit best. I discussed a few variations on this in an earlier article.

Challenge

Anybody's guess is good here. It really depends what the challenge is. Often I'll set a challenge for myself after hearing a piece of music and wondering if I could do that. The challenge is to create something similar but not the same. It's similar to creating a track in a new style, but the constraints of the challenge could be a lot more severe. Look at Jeff Yates' Norman Bates with a Briefcase. Fortunately he only had the title for his challenge, good job he wasn't told to do it Polka stye or something like that.

The usual

Throughout all of this, my standard route for composing is to have written most of what I want to play before I get to the recording stage. Sometimes I play with dice and figure it out as I record, aiming for a very live, spontaneous feel - something very similar to jamming. The difference is that I'll have played all the parts so far, so I've a good idea where the music's going. Often I'll have the majority created and just record the last few parts as spontaneous. I find that this way I end up with a mix of structured foundations and varied melody.

I can always re-record the added part if it needs to be more polished. Sometimes it works better that way, sometimes not.

I'm interested to hear if your workflow differs.

Use random notes - Musical Creativity 38

Alan — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 16:28:37 +0100

Create a random part and modify it until it becomes musical. I'll describe a few options for taking a random parts and the processes I use for making them more musical.

1. Creating the randomness

I set Logic on a 4 bar cycle and hit keys at random on my keyboard. I chose a clean electric piano sound since they highlight any dissonance. It's not truly random because it's difficult to unlearn how to play, but after cycling through the 4 bars a few times it did become a mess of notes.

I could have used the humaniser function of Logic with the notes set at random (oddly, to de-humanise the part) . Didn't think of this until afterwards.

The glue part was because I was recording twice. I had to glue the parts together. There was no need to hae done this, it was just because of where I'd started and stopped recording and what I'd wanted to include.

2. Lengthen the notes

I changed the notes to half-time, doubling the length of each note. I expanded the region and the cycle region to account for this. So now I've 8 bars instead of 4.

3. Deduplicate overlapping repeating notes

If an event has a closely following event of the same pitch overlapping, this will turn them into two events, but the first will finish just before the second starts instead of overlapping.

4. Quantize

The placement of the events was a mess, they were all over the place with no real rhythm. I played with the grid, visually assessing which grid seemed to fit best. This was purely a quick estimation. I also changed the quantize value a few times and I settled on 24ths (triplet semi quavers). I also liked 12ths (triplet quavers) but it seemed to rigid, especially for having come from random notes.

5. Process length for overlapping notes

I did this, then decided to undo it. I liked both, but decided to keep the longer notes ringing. This option means that Logic will identify chords and ensure that the events are the same length. Without it, some notes in a chord may ring more than others.

6. Humanise Velocity.

I processed the midi, running it through the humanise function focussing solely on velocity. There wasn't a major change here, just slight enough to add some odd stress patterns. Maybe a groove template or similar would have been a better feature. Not sure.

7. Effects

These are in the order I added them (they're in a different order in the signal chain)

7a) It was crying out for a rotary cabinet emulator. Didn't need much, just something to take the edge of the louder, higher pitch notes.

7b) Guitar Amp emulator. I like using guitar amp emulators on non-guitar instruments. It's rare they need the full-on, high-gain distortion models, but mostly, just a clean or slightly overdriven blues amp can make a massive difference to a sound. For this one, I went with a clean amp.

7c) Overdrive - to have more control over the tone of the overdrive than provided with the guitar amp emulator, I went with a separate overdrive effect. Again most of the effect was dialled out to avoid losing the music in the distortion.

7d) Compressor - again to take the edge off and make the sound shine through more.

Some other ideas?

To be honest, add any effect and see what the result is. I tried a few that didn't work out in this case.

Delays can work well at creating rhythm out of random notes, especially if only on some of the notes
Use the random notes to trigger an arpeggio or other sequence (either directly into a virtual instrument or using the arpeggiator in the environment)
Pitch change processors - ideally you need a polyphonic processor. I tried running it through Logic's Pitch changer with variable results, not expecting much. Mainly I knocked out a few notes from the scale, but I wasn't happy with the sound
Use the midi filters to process some of the events but not all. For instance, you can select just the highest or lowest notes and split them out to a different channel and/or instrument. Then quanitise them differently to the rest of the events.
Most of the modulators will muddy the sound, reducing the sharpness of any dissonance from the original notes.
A tremolo will work similar to the modulators by reducing the sharpness of any dissonance but also provide a rhythm. Can be used on all notes or focussed on range.
Trigger the notes via another method, e.g. use a gate or a compressor with a sidechain to create a stuttering or pulsating effect. At least you can then bring the notes in line with the rest of the rhythm.

Gallery of Screenshots for each part of the process.

Want to do better?

I've attached the midi file so you can try for yourself. Let me know how you get on.

Part of a series by Award Sounds offering a selection of creative ideas to kick-start or rejuvenate a composition.

Production Company structure options - Page 1

Alan — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 20:06:44 +0100

I mentioned some ideas about setting up a production company in order to complete the Side Project that I want to do.

In this article, I'll expand on those ideas and document a few issues that will have to be handled at some point in the organisation's lifetime.

Background

For a start, I don't intend to set up a traditional production company that has access to typical funding, equipment, etc. Instead it will be largely based on people being involved on a voluntary basis and rewarding involvement if the money's there to do so. Unfortunately this is as far as many get. Read around on a variety of creative sites and you'll see a number of projects that either remain a pipedream, are based on dodgy foundations (e.g. one person could scupper the organisation) or revert back to one person, perhaps involving a couple of close friends.

I want to move beyond that. It works in other industry sectors so it should be able to work in this sector with some modification.

The main issue I see again and again relates to how much time people put in and what they expect to get out of it. In the back of my mind, I'm always curious about the legal structure and implicit contracts between the people that are involved.

Here are some options:

Option 1) Everybody receives a share of the profits

Once a group figure out they need a structure other than working as friends, this seems to be the logical first step. It's a common set-up, but relies a lot on trust and assumptions. It has some issues with investment within the organisation and from without. A lot of people may sign-up to what looks to be a good organisation (and still may be a good organisation) only to find that the profits don't materialise despite some people making money out of it.

Benefits:

Fair
Looks good on paper
If the movie or series of movies don't make a profit, then neither do those involved, so no expectation of payout
Should help motivate members into pushing distribution
Can apportion the share according to the effort/talent involved

Concerns:

Accounting can find ways so that the movie never makes a profit.
What happens when the production company makes more than one movie, how to allocate funds, accrue debt accordingly?
The first production will get hit with a lot of the cost (e.g. buying cameras, editing suites, etc), so profits will be a long way off
How to accommodate external investment

Option 2) Some roles are salaried, everybody receives a share of the profits

A step up from option 1, this usually entails the main people who drive the project forwards recouping a small salary or fixed payments out of the organisation before profits are calculated. Again, it appears to be a logical step forwards, ensuring that those that put most in receive an fixed payment for their efforts. If the organisation returns a profit, then I guess it works. Do you have an example of this structure working successfully?

Benefits:

Fair for the people who are putting a lot of time in
Looks good on paper
Means that the salaried members are protected from the lack of effort/talent by the non-salaried members
Should help motivate members into pushing distribution
Offers an incentive for non-salaried to find salaried positions
Can apportion the share according to the effort/talent involved
Creates continuity in the organisation

Concerns:

Creates a divide between the salaried and non-salaried
The non-salaried may give up earlier
Accounting can find ways so that the movie never makes a profit.
If the project doesn't make a profit, then the non-salaried members are working to pay the salaries of the salaried members
What happens when the production company makes more than one movie, how to allocate funds, accrue debt accordingly?
The first production will get hit with a lot of the cost, so profits are a long way off

Option 3) Everybody receives a share of the revenue

By saying that the share is out of revenue, it reduces the risk of the production company accounting classing the project as a loss and the members receiving nothing. It means that anybody who contributes receives a share. It still may be a small amount, especially for the projects being funded by add-on advertising. It may be good to provide small shares with this model so members get paid, but get paid less (for the advantage of getting paid earlier).

Benefits:

Even if the movie makes a loss, members will get paid
Earlier payout for members
Better motivation for members

Concerns:

Production company will quickly end up in debt paying out from revenue without recouping costs
Less money for the production company to reinvest in future projects
Members do the minimum to get their share and no more (isn't that a potential risk in any structure though?)
How can the organisation afford to purchase kit?

Option 4) Split the revenue into 50% going to costs, 50% to share

A variation on option 3 where the production company has a better control over what comes in and what goes out. The 50% figure is arbitrary for this, but initially seems a good place to start. Your experience may suggest a different figure. This mitigates some of the risk that the company has in paying out from revenue (e.g. also having to pay tax, costs, debts).

Benefits:

Even if the movie makes a loss, members will receive some payment
Earlier payout for members
Better motivation
Production company receives revenue to pay off costs

Concerns:

Production company may still end up in debt paying out from revenue without recouping costs, but is less likely
Members do the minimum to get their share and no more (isn't that a potential risk in any structure though?)

Option 5) Everyone salaried or contracted

Perhaps the most typical professional setup where the production company cover the costs of hiring staff or contractors to do the jobs.

Benefits:

Control over professionalism and quality of products due to contractual nature
Very early payouts for staff/contractors, regardless of project's profit
Clearer ownership and copyright position
Greater potential for profit for the production company

Concerns:

Way beyond the reaches of startup companies due to the funding required
Payouts for members may be less than a percentage share if the production becomes a success
Less feeling of membership

Option 6) Everyone salaried or contracted, 3rd party funding

Benefits:

Control over professionalism and quality of products
Very early payouts for staff/contractors
Continuity of payments due to 3rd party

Concerns:

Way beyond the reaches of startup companies due to the funding required
Potential lack of control as the 3rd party encroaches on decisions (in case of investors)
Less feeling of membership
Direction set by 3rd party fund directors (in case of investors)
Someone has to be responsible for pay back the funds (in case of loans)

Option 7) Full co-operative

I really don't know much about formal co-operatives. I'll have to have a look into this more. I'll post updates to this as I find out more.

Option 8) Purchase

An option is that everyone has to become a partner where they invest an amount to become a partner. Provides the organisation with capital to purchase equipment and service. However, it's probably a bad idea to set-up a true partnership due to the equal liabilities involved unless you know the other partners very well. Look elsewhere for advice for benefits and pitfalls of legal partnerships.

I can see some benefits to members having to invest. Let's say that each member had to invest a few hundred pounds. That'd mean that you should only get people who are more committed, believe it will work and the organisation would have some initial capital. If it doesn't return a profit, it makes it more awkward and how do people leave the organisation, etc.

A better idea may be that a person buys the equipment, e.g. a microphone, a camera. They retain ownership of that equipment and can take it with them when they leave, no matter what it is. By default they probably become the operator of that equipment as well, although there may be a good case for others using it (depends on how well people get on).

Benefits:

provides well-needed equipment to the project
flexibility
new kit provides stimulation for new ideas

Concerns:

Avoids pitfalls of joining and complex leaving
If a person leaves and takes a necessary piece of kit with them, then it will need to be replaced
Can't really do this with services
need to understand who maintains the equipment (the person or the organisation)
different current and future values of kit: electronic equipment/software will be worth less in 3 years than a camera lens
organisation will still probably require capital
if the owner is no good at operating the equipment, who's going to tell them and what's the solution?

Continue to Page 2

Changing some tracks - Musical Creativity 36

Alan — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 20:39:32 +0100

I wrote the bulk of this text a couple of months ago after a day of not producing as much as I'd liked to. There are no real suggestions of how to improve or learn, but I thought I'd describe my thought processes so others may learn from my experiences.

Yesterday

I had one of those days yesterday where inspiration was lacking. Partly it may have been the brief I'd been given since it didn't have the depth of information I'd have liked. Mainly, though I think it was just me, I couldn't really find much to do, not that sounded right anyway. But I still managed to deliver something of sufficient standard.

How?

I tried creating music for the part from scratch. I wrote some interesting ideas. But they didn't really fit the brief as far as I was concerned. They're now exported to mp3 and the relevant project files archived for future reference. You never know what may be useful later on - I revisit unfinished files on a regular basis and often manage to complete them another time.

I then reviewed my collection of part-finished works hoping there was something nearly finished in there. Unfortunately there wasn't anything near finished. So I took two that really needed a lot of work and moved them forwards. One was almost finished from a composition point of view, but required a lot of mixing and processing, the other required more composition and almost no mixing.

Both featured a repeating rhythmic phrase and some background drums; one had a few bits of melody as well. The originals were rough versions of ideas that I thought worth keeping but didn't have the inspiration to finish when I first recorded them. They were a mixture of midi-triggered samples and audio recordings.

First Track

The first track was a sad and slow bluesy-jazz and had the following tracks:

drum loops
electric rhythm guitar
electric bass
electric lead guitar

For this one, it was mainly a case of arranging and mixing rather than composing. The original idea was over 3 minutes, the brief was for 1 min 50 seconds. So I worked at taking the best bits and arranging them into something musically attractive.

Before Arranging

Before I could arrange the work, I had to sort out the audio. It just didn't sound right. The original was recorded in one take per track, i.e. place some drums out, record the rhythm guitar in one go, then record the bass, then the lead guitar. Any of the audio processing was done very roughly just to convey the idea.

Rather than tweak and tweak and tweak some more, I removed all the processing and started again. After having listened to the track a few times, I knew where I wanted to go with it.

Clear some space
Guitar tone and amp selection
Set up a delay for the lead guitar
Compression for the drums
Correct reverb for drums
Mixbuss reverb, eq and compression

Clear some space

First of all I had to clear some space, the instruments were overlapping way too much. This involved some careful eq mainly focussed around making room for the bass guitar to be heard. Rolling off the low-end on the guitars and nudging the drums down in the same area helped bring the bass through considerably.

Guitar Tone and Amp Placement

I actually liked the tone I'd originally recorded with but it didn't fit in my vision of the mix. I changed the speaker emulation for a more familiar British 2x12 and turned the gain down to reduce the distortion. I also removed the reverb from the plug-in so I could add a different one later to fit in with the rest of the instruments. I'd considered re-recording with guitar amp and microphones but decided against this since the tone was sufficient for the background rhythm guitar.

Delay for lead

The lead guitar sings and needs to be heard above and beyond its accompaniment. I used a stereo delay on a aux bus for this and set the send so that it was audible. I did think about backing it off as I would do for a reverb, but I liked the extra character the delay gave the guitar.

Compression for drums

The drum loops were from BetaMonkey. They're good quality loops and are usually very dry or, in the case of the early ones, in a good-sounding room. In this particular song, the drums didn't cut through as I'd like. I could hear the snare too loud in the mix compared to the other drums. So I used a multiband compression on the drums with the gain mainly in the lower two bands and stepped down in the higher two respectively. Although setting the compressor up in this way is probably the opposite of what I'm more used to (i.e. heavier treble, lighter bass), this changed the character nicely.

Reverb for drums

To make the snare and cymbals live more in the mix, I used a reverb on an aux channel with a high-end pass. This added a nice, but barely audible quality to the drum track. The compression used in the previous step had brought the other drums up to a good level so this action balanced that out.

Mixbuss

Although nicely balanced, the instruments almost sounded like they were recorded in different rooms and the overall recording was slightly flat. A small eq alteration helped. I added the slightest amount of reverb to bond it together. I'm usually happy with a convolution reverb of a nice-sounding studio to get the feel for a track and then choose from there when I've got an idea of where I want it to be. For this particular track, I used a jazz club reverb for a more live sound. It fitted the bluesy-jazz feel of the whole track.

The final element in the chain was a limiter. I usually have two exports, one with the compressor in the chain and one with out. Then I've got the flexibility to hear what it would sound like compressed like many other tracks but still give clients the more dynamically accurate version without the compression.

The second track

This was a lot simpler in scope, but I spent a lot more time on it due to having to compose more parts and phrases to glue it together. The original idea was 50 seconds long and consisted of a midi-triggered samples of a piano, acoustic double-bass and an acoustic drum-kit. That's not that long.

Timing

I'd originally played all the parts on a midi keyboard. So the first step was to ensure all the notes were on time. This was a combination of quantising and manually adjusting the placement of notes. Some of the notes were also wrong, just not fitting in with the key. I manually adjusted these as well, rather than relying on any logical processing.

Drums

Oddly for me, the drums were samples rather than loops. I tend to find that loops fit in a lot better than any samples ever can. For this song I'd only used 4 drum sounds. I'd envisaged a drummer with an older style kick, snare and hihat, rather than the mammoth rock kits of the 80s. This simplicity, specifically the lack of cymbals, helped make the sound more realistic.

To add further realism, I patched in a light drum room reverb, just light enough to hear.

Piano

The piano sample sounded too artificial when solo'ed. I auditioned a few other piano samples, including some that were sampled from much better pianos and with much better recording. Yet I decided on the original but with two major changes:

Decreased the low-end of the piano by about 6dB below 300 Hz. Although the piano is mainly providing a bass rhythm for this track, it still comes through with the low-end reduced.
Reduced the velocity of the piano notes. Most were in the upper quartile which had a harsh sample layer. By reducing the velocity, I got to use a combination of different layers.

Structure

The original was 50 seconds long. I needed an extra minute. By thinking through the structure I wanted to introduce, I was able to create the 1 minute 50 required. It was just on the edge of having to introduce a different chord progression, theme or motif. Any longer and I would have had to. As it is, the different instruments coming in and out make it interesting enough for the short time. I looped the piano, bass and drum parts. Cutting out a few loops to bring attention to other instruments. I then added the guitar over the top and then the jazz organ.

Guitar

The guitar was troublesome. I knew it needed another instrument or two to keep it going to 1 minutes 50 seconds, but every time I played along to the song, I was left short of ideas and just had a tangled mess. I also sat down with the chords and tried working out a melody. Again nothing worked. It was accurate harmonically, just not interesting. I tried changing guitar sounds a few times - I find the inspiration from that can help a lot, even from a totally inappropriate guitar tone. In the end, I switched on the cycle function and hit record. About 45 minutes, later I had enough pieces I could use. These were pasted into the arrangement and unused pieces deleted.

The tone was deliberately kept mellow.

Jazz Organ

Again another instrument to fill in the gap from the guitar and bring the listener out of the emptier phrase in which it starts. I played this, then quantised/shifted notes manually. I was careful to use the correct quantisation for each phrase (mainly 16ths and 24ths, i.e, triplet 16ths).

Finally

There was almost no eq of the individual tracks, they sat well enough together without much alteration. I added a simple jazz reverb on the mix buss and compression similar to the first track. That worked well.

Results

I'm happy that I finished two pieces both of the required length meeting the brief.

Was it a good day though?

Probably not.

I wouldn't call either piece usual for me. That's not necessarily a bad thing. It wasn't so much that it was a different type of music to what I'm used to (they're not, I'm quite happy with that style). Instead it was more than I felt uncomfortable with the end results. They're good enough for background music which is what they're intended to be, but don't have the same melodic focus I'd usually want.

I was nowhere near as creative in the whole day as I was in the first hour of the following day. On that day, I wrote three good ideas in less than an hour. I spent an hour tidying up one of the tracks, bear in mind it was 7 minutes long. Like the above tracks, they'll take longer to finish, but that can wait for another day when I need to progress them further.

Part of a series by Award Sounds offering a selection of creative ideas to kick-start or rejuvenate a composition.