Idm (...again) Squarepusher How Does He Do It?, Greenways Trajectory? Options

[sir_dss]

Hello,

I have done a search for this already and haven't got a clear answer. I'm getting heavily back into turn of the century IDM. Go Plastic by Squarepusher is blowing my mind...especially the track Greenways Trajectory. The music still sounds modern and from the future.

How on earth would you do this sort of drum programming? What I've found online is that:

*** The IDM(Aphex/Autechre/Sqpush) guys keep their technique secret and may even be lying about things to add mystery to what they do

*** They have spent years developing their style.

*** They may or may not write their own code for algorithm/software/plug ins

I just want to know how you can develop these fantastic beats!

[mortalengines]

Well first of all, both of those guys are like, TOTAL GENIUSES....and they are probably extremely obsessive over what they do...... For all I know they sit around and completely mess with teeny little slices of audio: cutting/pasting/pitch shifitng.....I LOVE Go Plastic....I bought it about 3 months ago for like, 8 bucks. For what it's worth you can download a couple of free apps like LiveCut or SupaTrigga and if you slave out select parameters to a midi controller you can get pretty close. Ableton Live has Beat Repeat which is a neat toy as well if you slave it out to a midi controller. Reaktor 5 has a couple of modules developed by Tim Exile that will also do similar stuff to drum loops.


www.myspace.com/mortal_engines

[sir_dss]

Cool...I just got LiveCut. I'm using Mac OX 10.4 with Logic 7 and it seems to work fine.

Could you elaborate on how you use a midi controller with LiveCut and how that would work?

Thanks

Well first of all, both of those guys are like, TOTAL GENIUSES....and they are probably extremely obsessive over what they do...... For all I know they sit around and completely mess with teeny little slices of audio: cutting/pasting/pitch shifitng.....I LOVE Go Plastic....I bought it about 3 months ago for like, 8 bucks. For what it's worth you can download a couple of free apps like LiveCut or SupaTrigga and if you slave out select parameters to a midi controller you can get pretty close. Ableton Live has Beat Repeat which is a neat toy as well if you slave it out to a midi controller. Reaktor 5 has a couple of modules developed by Tim Exile that will also do similar stuff to drum loops.


www.myspace.com/mortal_engines

[shamburglar]

Old school trackers are a good start to achieving that sound, You can meticulously sequence down to insane minutia. They're a little difficult to learn at first but there's a new one out there right now called Renoise and its awesome for making the crazy beats, you can sequence down to like fractions of a tick. Or get Livecut if you're lazy and don't really care about exactly banging out the beats in your head.

[mortalengines]

Ok I threw together a track in what amounted to about an hour to 1 1/2 hours worth of work (actually more than that due to mastering and rendering). Not exactly perfect but is a good example of what I am about to explain. I have an old acid loops CD called "Fast Breaks" (cost about 15 bucks 4 to 5 years ago) and I found about 6 loops that seemed to work together by themselves (all at 160BPM). I use Ableton Live....you can make the same thing happen with Logic (probably with better results once you figure it out) but I am not sure how to explain how to do it so hopefully some Logic users can chime in whenever they feel the need.

Ableton lends itself quite easily to 'slaving" out anything it does to just about anywhere else on a midi controller (technically, you don't really even need a keyboard as you can assign notes or loop triggering to individual keys on your computer's keyboard). The fun part begins with my setting up 6 different loops and assigning each loop trigger to a different note on my little m-audio oxygen 8 (via "Midi Learn"). That way I can pretty much trigger any loop I like at random. Then I set up LiveCut and I assigned a couple of parameters like Cut Proc, stutter, Pitch max, Pitch min, Area, seed, etc....to various knobs on my midi controller via the "Midi Learn" function and from there either triggered different loops or twisted knobs (it is kinda trial and error at first and then you'll find a groove real quick) at a frantic pace. This is all live...I didn't go back and fix ANYTHING after the fact. As a matter of fact everything you do should be recorded to a separate track via submixing.....don't try to save parameter changes or anything....it is pretty much useless trying (trust me I tried)....just record it and be done (you can rearrange later if you like). I also set up a Resonator plug and a Grain Delay and a Limiter in the chain (All Ableton Plugs) and played with the Frequency parameter (an x/y grid) on the Grain Delay with my mouse just to keep things interesting (just a drum loop gets kinda boring....play around with different stuff to see what happens in your chain). The limiter did a nice job of keeping things in your face and out of the red (the signal gets pretty hot at times).

I am happy to explain further.....just let me know....this is WAY easier than it sounds and a lot of fun. I don't normally work at 160 BPM but after doing so for the sake of telling you how....I just might start doing so more often. This is a wav file to get an idea of what I am talking about. If you like I can send along an mp3 if you give me a personal email ( or I can just convert and upload to yousendit if the demand is there and post it here). Good luck and have fun. None of this is written in stone by any means....there are no rules.


https://rcpt.yousendit.com/597472483/36ca87...5a3bfd2784677be

www.myspace.com/mortal_engines