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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.

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