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Re: go into arrangement!

Posted: Sat Feb 01, 2014 9:33 pm
by UN!T
Yeah there is something a bit odd about sitting while trying create dance music. Perhaps this is why tempo are slowing down. Producers are sitting down because they are getting older and tired which in turn leads to slower tempos. Slower tempos leads to people shuffling rather than dancing which leads djs to create more slow tracks while sitting.... Its a vicious circle really. :D

Re: go into arrangement!

Posted: Sat Feb 01, 2014 9:49 pm
by Mono-xID
Straight mouse guerilla guy. Fuck jamming !!!

Re: go into arrangement!

Posted: Sat Feb 01, 2014 10:19 pm
by Lag
IMHO slowing down has little to do with producers growing older. It has to do with the internet existing and people being able to acquire music which is intended for clubs and play it in a non-club environment, unlike before where you either had to have a turntable and to buy the 12" to hear your favorite club track (which meant you know the difference between home-listening music and club-music) or you had to go to a club and hear it. The people who like electronic music (and buy the club tickets) want to listen to it when they are at work, so the industry answered the demand by slowing down and making something which is both listenable at home and at a club (dnb into dubstep, techno into mnml, trance into progressive house etc.), which is shit because I go to a club and miss my internet.

Re: go into arrangement!

Posted: Sat Feb 01, 2014 10:42 pm
by UN!T
Sorry I am going to disagree with you opinion. Delivery method has little to do with it people were able to acquire Cds and mixed tapes to listen in other places than a club. Its how many people got their start. Giving mixed tapes to promoters and selling them at shops.

This article appeared in Rolling Stone on October 7 1999. I recall when that happened as I lived in the city at the time.

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/ ... s-19991007

T

Re: go into arrangement!

Posted: Sun Feb 02, 2014 1:17 am
by Planar
UN!T wrote:Sorry I am going to disagree with you opinion. Delivery method has little to do with it people were able to acquire Cds and mixed tapes to listen in other places than a club. Its how many people got their start.
I'm going to disagree as well. I'd hazard a guess that for 80 or 90% they will prefer slower music as they get older. It's happened to every DJ I know (personally) and everyone I know into dance music as well. I'm not entirely sure why, but it seems to be fairly prevalent.

Re: go into arrangement!

Posted: Sun Feb 02, 2014 5:46 pm
by Lag
So basically what you are saying is there were no old people amongst the EDM producers up until 2005. and then within a year 80% of people decided they've grown old and started making mnml and dubstep, effectively halving their BPM? :D
And what was the percentage of people who would go out of their length to get a CD and cassette against the percentage who would just say "fuck it" but can easily obtain stuff now because it is just a few clicks away? It's like saying that Pioneer CDJs changed nothing in the industry because there were cd players with pitch in the 90s as well. :\

Re: go into arrangement!

Posted: Sun Feb 02, 2014 5:52 pm
by Lag
BTW I'm not arguing that people's preferences remain the same as they age. I am arguing that some producers growing older has nothing to do with the industry lowering the bpm. I guarantee you if three more "Blawan's" appeared now and successfully pushed the 145bpm Glenn Wilson stuff as cool once again, you would have the "I just thought it was a time for a change" lot like Adam Sellout, Hertz, Cox, Drumcell, as well as Spor, Tech Itch and the rest back into the speed-lane.
It's just money and supply and demand.

Re: go into arrangement!

Posted: Sun Feb 02, 2014 6:34 pm
by Lost to the Void
Its just a conglomeration of circumstance.
The major thing that happened was minimal,

Minimal basically took techno and made it much more commercial by making it compatible with house.
House is slower with more groove,always has been, and so was minimal.

Slower beats are easier to dance to for proper dancing and not jumping about (120bom is supposed to be a very natural rhythm for the body) so women tend to prefer it also as they respond more to a slower rhythm.

Production is more interesting at slower beats as there is more room for the sounds.

All this combined with an ageing overall generation in techno, and this generation mostly set the pace as they are leaders, because 85% of producers in techno are sheep, and also because most producers play other peoples music in a lve situation and it is easier to mix other peoples music (i no longer use the word dj in my vocabulary) if it is closer matching in bpm (hell, a good deal of people who play other peoples music also prefer similar sounding music as well as similar bpm).

Re: go into arrangement!

Posted: Sun Feb 02, 2014 6:38 pm
by Lost to the Void
I dont think however you can count dubstep in with this.

Dubstep came out if the strong soundsystem culture of london that came over from jamaica in the 50's
Dubstep is merely an extention of dub, and here at least, is not slow music, the bpm is 140-150 and more jump about, in the same way that dub was (people jump around at jah shaka gigs).
Sure the emphasis is on the half step, but it is not really slow music in a dancefloor sense.

Re: go into arrangement!

Posted: Sun Feb 02, 2014 6:42 pm
by Planar
Lag wrote:So basically what you are saying is there were no old people amongst the EDM producers up until 2005. and then within a year 80% of people decided they've grown old and started making mnml and dubstep, effectively halving their BPM? :D
That's a pretty narrow viewed selection of genres you've picked there. I'd say house, techno, DnB and breakbeat as broad types of "EDM" (I hate that fucking term) have all slowed down since the mid 90's. The Internet wasn't ubiquitous those days; so it's not that. It's more likely (I'm guessing) that heavy-weights in most genres are blokes who are now in their 40's and as their tastes have slowed down their followers (probably younger) have followed suit. Dubstep is an anomaly here, being more a reaction to DnB and then a lot of the original guys in that sound have moved into slower, housier 4x4 stuff. Ironically dubstep has caused DnB to up it's game and that's come back with a more mature, slightly slower sound. But I agree, there is an element of supply and demand with something like that.

For me personally, I value groove and complexity over energy and I've found that slower music (up to a point) is where I find what I want.
Lag wrote:And what was the percentage of people who would go out of their length to get a CD and cassette against the percentage who would just say "fuck it" but can easily obtain stuff now because it is just a few clicks away? It's like saying that Pioneer CDJs changed nothing in the industry because there were cd players with pitch in the 90s as well. :\
UN!T's point was that people could listen to this stuff at home before they could reasonably download it from the Internet (broadband wasn't common until the 2000's). Lot's of us here will have had tapes from the early 90's club nights.

Re: go into arrangement!

Posted: Sun Feb 02, 2014 6:44 pm
by Lag
I know, which is why I replied with:
Lag wrote:It's like saying that Pioneer CDJs changed nothing in the industry because there were cd players with pitch in the 90s as well.

Re: go into arrangement!

Posted: Sun Feb 02, 2014 6:55 pm
by Mslwte
It's just people jumping on the latest trends, so they can sell records and attempt to make money

Re: go into arrangement!

Posted: Sun Feb 02, 2014 7:27 pm
by UN!T
Planar wrote:
Lag wrote:So basically what you are saying is there were no old people amongst the EDM producers up until 2005. and then within a year 80% of people decided they've grown old and started making mnml and dubstep, effectively halving their BPM? :D
That's a pretty narrow viewed selection of genres you've picked there. I'd say house, techno, DnB and breakbeat as broad types of "EDM" (I hate that fucking term) have all slowed down since the mid 90's. The Internet wasn't ubiquitous those days; so it's not that. It's more likely (I'm guessing) that heavy-weights in most genres are blokes who are now in their 40's and as their tastes have slowed down their followers (probably younger) have followed suit. Dubstep is an anomaly here, being more a reaction to DnB and then a lot of the original guys in that sound have moved into slower, housier 4x4 stuff. Ironically dubstep has caused DnB to up it's game and that's come back with a more mature, slightly slower sound. But I agree, there is an element of supply and demand with something like that.

For me personally, I value groove and complexity over energy and I've found that slower music (up to a point) is where I find what I want.
Lag wrote:And what was the percentage of people who would go out of their length to get a CD and cassette against the percentage who would just say "fuck it" but can easily obtain stuff now because it is just a few clicks away? It's like saying that Pioneer CDJs changed nothing in the industry because there were cd players with pitch in the 90s as well. :\
UN!T's point was that people could listen to this stuff at home before they could reasonably download it from the Internet (broadband wasn't common until the 2000's). Lot's of us here will have had tapes from the early 90's club nights.
Correct.

Re: go into arrangement!

Posted: Sun Feb 02, 2014 8:46 pm
by ashley BORG
I agree with Planar here I experienced the change of the harder DnB sound to what is now classed as Cross-Breed (DnB & Gabba/hardcore)
Around mid 2000s the BPMs started getting silly and the beats went more 4/4. There was an influx of Eastern Europeans getting in to the scene, and their parties were bigger than anything else this side. So as Lag said supply and demand took over and the sound began to cater for these audiences.
Last year when I went to a night, the best set was a 2002 set because it still had the groove and tempo of what I knew as DnB. Over half the crowd in a London party was Eastern European.
I've found in DnB terms my tastes are in slower BPM tracks which also have more melody and rhythm, the other stuff just leaves me bored since it lacks variety.
Last week Tech Itch had a rant on Facebook upon the release of his album effectively calling anyone who makes Cross-breed a cunt if they try to pass it off as DnB.
In Techno terms I can handle the high 130 BPM stuff because its much slower than what I grew up listening too.

In the end I think variety is the most important thing, which is why strong heads are needed to ensure all sides of a genre a pushing forwards.
Personally I'd say if all techno was under 130 it would be a pretty sad thing, since so many good tracks from the past would never get played out.

Re: go into arrangement!

Posted: Thu Feb 06, 2014 8:11 pm
by Shylock
When I worked with a popular techno producer, Wont say who :roll: he showed me how he does an arrangement and I thought it was a great idea and still is part of my 'formula' today.

Create a 16 bar loop of all your tracks, Kick, Porc, Synths, Bass etc etc until you have a good groove going and are happy.. You should make this the 'fullest' part of your track. Then ctrl + v all the tracks until you have 192 bars or however long you want your track to be of this loop.

Then just delete the parts you don't want to create an arrangment, for example for the 32 bar intro you'll probably want just the kick, bass, hats running and building into the main part of the track before any breakdowns etc.

Working subtractively like this makes sense to me, when you have the basic arrangment then you can add automation and then go into a proper mixdown.

I'm sure everyone doe's it differently but that is how I generally do it.. I suggest aswell for you to checkout this chap on youtube. He does dubstep but has great advice on being productive at making music in general.

youtu.be/XVQ8c19unnM

Re: go into arrangement!

Posted: Thu Feb 06, 2014 8:39 pm
by Críoch
I really like Danny J Lewis. He's done some stuff on subtractive arrangement...

At the end of the day, one should be doing a bit of everything, innit? Bit of jamming.. doing some live overdubs (even in the sound design process, recording automation in clips with a mod wheel or midi controller).. and to clean it all up; getting subtractive.

Think these are all of the vids in the series.

youtu.be/Y_z9HsQVFqQ

youtu.be/-sf8yyPgOyk

youtu.be/p-OxoNmgtJM

EDIT: You Tube links seem to be invisible with these.

Heres the addresses:

Main Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_z9HsQVFqQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-OxoNmgtJM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-OxoNmgtJM

Re: go into arrangement!

Posted: Thu Feb 06, 2014 10:28 pm
by Shylock
Nice! I'll check them out ;)

Re: go into arrangement!

Posted: Fri Feb 07, 2014 3:49 pm
by delve
I personally work subtractively, mainly for my arrangement. Unless, I recorded everything being mixed on the fly. As for tweaks and automation, I try to record them while I am jamming. if not jamming then I mouse it. Sometimes recording with both the audio along with my midi at the same time can be very good. It allows for both parts to be laid down, which in turn allows for editing it either in audio or midi part which can then be recorded if needed. ;)

Re: go into arrangement!

Posted: Fri Feb 07, 2014 7:42 pm
by Mono-xID
Shylock wrote:Create a 16 bar loop of all your tracks, Kick, Porc, Synths, Bass etc etc until you have a good groove going and are happy.. You should make this the 'fullest' part of your track. Then ctrl + v all the tracks until you have 192 bars or however long you want your track to be of this loop.

Then just delete the parts you don't want to create an arrangment, for example for the 32 bar intro you'll probably want just the kick, bass, hats running and building into the main part of the track before any breakdowns etc.

Working subtractively like this makes sense to me, when you have the basic arrangment then you can add automation
This is exactly my method !!!

Re: go into arrangement!

Posted: Sat Feb 08, 2014 7:32 am
by delve
Hey thanks for sharing those subtractive tutorial vids ICN! Can't wait to check them out and see how he works them out. Maybe get some new ideas also. (c:}