Procrastination riff. Last week, I intended to spend a little of my off time playing around with FLStudio, but I never got from the piano to the computer.
So this week, with multiple work projects looming, I sat down at the computer, and instead of working, I played around with FLStudio.
Sometimes, that’s where the best riffs come from.
Sometimes, a simple progression can ease a complex mood. Just a little bit of Thursday evening noodling, inspired by the late March snow and thoughts of warm hearts.
A theme for @Puggpaw.
I’m not quite sure when Tara and I started following each other on Twitter, but she is a tweep in the purest sense. We’ve never met apart from exchanges on Twitter and Facebook, but together with @KirstensDesk, we’ve forged a tight creative circle over the Internets. Those two offer the occasional virtual nudge to keep me creating and prevent me from getting drained by the everyday. They’re both wickedly funny and amazingly creative.
I put down this arpeggiated riff some time ago, after Tara posted her latest experiment in glasswork. I would love for her to get a kiln so the world could purchase those beautiful beads.
Until then, we’ll just have to make do with “Glass Trance.”
A theme for @seoulbrother.
A long while back, I hatched a plan for trying to focus my scattered musical ideas: Create short 30-second themes for my tweeps’ imaginary TV shows. I got as far as creating my own clip before my limited attention span took me off to other vistas.
For the past year, I’ve been experimenting with FLStudio, a powerful DAW perfect for getting down musical ideas quickly. It’s just the right workflow for an amateur musician like me.
After futzing around with a variety of nothing the past few weeks, I finally landed on a melange of beats and squeals that I liked, and it brought back memories of the failed theme project.
So consider this a tribute to my friend @seoulbrother.
I have Albert to thank for my venture into Twitter back in 2008. He encouraged me to give it a try in the early days, and for weeks, he was my only follower. After I began tweeting regularly, he gave me an #ff when such things had an impact, and I was followed instantly by 40 of the coolest people on Twitter, several of whom have become dear tweeps.
He and I became friends after I met his wonderful wife in graduate school. She and I were journalistic nomads, each having left the newspaper business after devoting years to the craft, and we were doing these crazy sojourns in a doctoral program, hoping to become professors one day. We bonded instantly.
On one of his visits to campus, she introduced me to Albert, and we were soon geeking out about technology, music, and just about anything else geekable. I can’t say enough good things about the guy.
It seems fitting to offer my first theme to him. Here’s to you, buddy.
Further forays into FLStudio. This experiment involved mixing sounds from a carved-up beat (done with the awesome SliceX) with the regular FLStudio pattern machine.
I also tweaked a Toxic Biohandler sound to create the phased bass (I’m happy to share if someone wants the parameter file) and added an arpeggiated synth in Poizone.
This beat also loops nicely — feel free to grab and remix.
Trance attack.
Quick :45 sketch using the Poizone synth and its gate effect for a pulse synth and added a Sytrus ARP sound on top.
Once you get the hang of FLStudio, putting down ideas like this becomes as simple as sketching with pencil on paper.
“Ominous” remixed. (Best listened to with headphones.)
I replaced the random bleeping synth with a more modulated sound and got into the floating synth a little more quickly (my favorite part). I also slowed down the tempo a tad to let the notes linger a bit more and create a dreamier feel.
