Etude 001

Etude001 by LMGM

It begins! This is my first installment of what will hopefully become an everyday thing: short, quickly-composed études made to explore various aspects of the music-making tools I want to acquaint myself with.

In this case, I've taken 3 short samples of guitar fret noise taken from a blues recording (it was sampled by a friend, so I'll have to add the precise citation later). Once I looped them, trimmed them, and shaped them with Ableton Live's Warp feature, I used a noise gate to give the loops a cleaner, punchier feel. Then, I used a bass provided by the built-in oscillator-FM synthesis instrument, Operator, to fill out the texture a bit.

So, the entire 3-minute-plus track has been composed from 3 very short loops, the manipulation of noise gates, and a MIDI-controlled bass kick.

By the way, the bass kick is pretty low, so you'll want to listen to this through something better than your laptop speakers.

Oh, and by the way, let me know how the Soundcloud player up there works for you. I like their audio hosting interface, but there is something dodgy going on with their servers and it is driving me insane.

ADDENDUM

Here's the explanation of where those fret noises come from, by my buddy Nate:

"Those fret noises come from guitarist Jeff Parker's introduction to "In Accordance" from a record titled One A.M. by a Chicago MC called Diverse (Chocolate Industries CHLT039CD, 2003). Parker played these parts live to recreate a sample that Diverse had originally used (also featuring Parker on guitar) from a tune called "Lonely People" on the Ted Sirota's Rebel Souls CD, Propaganda (Naim CD 036, 1999)"