I’ve put this under this head, although the tutorial is actually by @davide - read on.
I like D+B as much as @ClaudioPorcellana likes Trance/ EDM etc i.e. not. But I read an interesting article positing that to broaden your horizons you should study the production of music you don’t like to see if you can borrow / steal some ideas.
So the obvious place to start (since I I only know of one D+B maestro) is with Scaler’s very own @davide, and went to his Soundcloud page here .
With my new special custom music hearing aids inserted, putting on my trusty Sennheiser HD650s and mentally blocking out the annoying drums, in an hour I’d written down a page of little snippets which grab your attention.
Many of them were very subtle, and may have been the hearing aids playing up, but I tried adapting a couple and they really worked. E.g. on the first SoundCloud track ‘Eventide Logistics’ right at the very beginning 24 seconds, I detected a low pulsing in the Synth wash with a frequency of about 2 cycles per second. Really effective.
I’d recently got ShaperBox 3 so I fired up Omnisphere with couple of matching pads and modulated one with a ShaperBox preset. So that’s number 1 in my small books of production tricks to try.
Now it may be that @davide will respond by commenting “what pulsing”, in which case I’ll check the battery levels in my aids, but I’ll also continue to write notes on his SoundCloud tracks - full of ideas.
[** Custard varies greatly between countries, but English custard was a school pudding favourite toping on things like dry sponge, and is yellow, lumpy, with a thick skin and tastes of … nothing.]
I’ve always respect music that is well
Produced even if I don’t listen to it normally. Good production can bring good ideas outside of your comfort zone. I think that’s how unique ideas gel into something interesting.
The custard you know is nothing like the Creamy egg custard I know. I love Asian custard as well.
It is interesting you should elaborate on that, @panda . I was not particularly fond of DnB music myself, and learned to like it because of @davide 's productions, particularly that last album he produced (my favorite track there: OMNIA).
I also got a kick out of learning that DnB rhythms sound like sped up hiphop beats, LOL
And we are back on the old chestnut of labelling music by genre. To me there are only two genres of music: that which I like and that which I don’t like.
I’m essentially in agreement with you on this one, and indeed, as my post indicated I’ve become determined to break out of the box more (I already have quite an eclectic set of musical interests) .
A glance at Music genre - Wikipedia confirms what sort of madness this can descend to in music with analysis of sub-genres and (yes…) micro-genres. Is there really a quantifiable and widely agreed difference between ‘mumble rap’ and ‘phonk’?
However, I also feel that many humans like to organise and structure things, and for non-tangible entities this tends to surface as ‘categorisation’. A meet B and says “What do of music do you like ?” The reply “all sorts” doesn’t really move things on, so it’s handy to have some handles. That applies to film, sport, and just about everything; it’s just shorthand.
You approach is also supported by the fact that (for example) music genre categories usually fall apart at the first rigorous analysis.
Imagine Taylor Swift fan girl chatting with prospective date and asking the ‘like’ question, to which the boy answers "Death Metal - I’m really into Slipknot’ and (rightly or wrongly) in 90% of cases I suspect that’s the end of a possible romance. We all get tarred with the genre label of many, many kinds.
BTW, Wiki says of Phonk “Alongside its musical aspect, phonk is characterized by a distinguishable aesthetic” ; so now you know
That is a good summary of the phenomenon. I am one of those people who stubbornly try to defy categorisaton (in German: “putting someone into drawers”). But it is social deadend as you indicated. Not just music wise… I used to live 30 years in the USA, and the typical German will ask…“where at?” and my true answer “pretty much all over the place, as in 38 states” usually ends any further conversation on the topic. I also assume if I listed those 38 states, they would drif off as well.
So with my “music”, I just share the channel, and let them decide for themselves what genre they would like to put it in. For myself, I am quite happy to be put into some kind of “ecclectic”, “avantgarde”, “fusion” or even “noise” drawer
