Music, Art, Ideas, Me

Dub Decepticon

Evan Kepner — Sun, 13 May 2012 22:10:09 +0000

This track is my first attempt at dub step, and I’m actually pretty happy with it. An unbelievable amount of effort went into this compared to my other tracks. To make this I worked almost exclusively in arrangement view in Ableton (where other tracks were made in session view). There are 15 unique bass tracks, 9 drum tracks, 2 high synth and 4 vocal. All of the bass and synth instruments were put together from scratch using the Operator instrument.

Credit where credit is due, none of this would have been possible without the tutorial video on dub step from Tom Cosm (http://www.cosm.co.nz). Since this is my first attempt a lot of what I did follows his setup, but I definitely took my own route on the piece as a whole. The video is incredibly valuable if you’re trying to learn Ableton (especially related to the Operator instrument and this genre).

Snow Day

Evan Kepner — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 22:19:49 +0000

I had today off of work and have filled it with making some new music. I’ve been experimenting a lot with different simple chord progressions and pad ideas to do more free soloing. Both of these clips are in that style, “snow day” is more structured while “drunken boxing” sounds exactly like the title. There’s a lot of free space in both, but that’s what I was going for. Each clip is 100% custom, there’s no outside loops used in either and I’ve customized almost all of the sounds from the presets in some fashion. I’m definitely starting to grasp more on and more of Ableton’s capabilities. I have not made much use of the MIDI control mappings outside of note control, but that may be something I will mess with in the near future.

Snow Day

Drunken Boxing

Sensory Overload

Evan Kepner — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 22:06:27 +0000

I think the title says it all… this track had a lot of moving parts, I finally upgraded the guts of my PC as well as my version of Ableton and was really putting things to the test with effects racks and combining audio and MIDI tracks. This is probably one of my most complex compositions so far with all the different settings I tweaked to customize the individual sounds.

Productive weekend

Evan Kepner — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 02:39:27 +0000

Apparently I’ve had a lot of ideas in my head that I didn’t know about. I churned out two clips this weekend and have discovered a lot of new cool stuff in Ableton. I’m a total convert to instrument racks now that I understand how to use them more effectively. This clip is using some string loop samples with my own instrumentation and drums on top of it. This strikes me as something that needs lyrics over it, but that is way out of my realm.

Echoes

Evan Kepner — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 03:54:39 +0000

I just put this together in a single sitting, it’s really different from a lot of my other work but I like it. I was using my bass to record the different lines and then an array of audio effects to produce the results.

Glitchy

Evan Kepner — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 03:09:59 +0000

It’s been forever – I finally made a complete new clip in Ableton. This clip has become the current background music for a space-shooter game I’ve been working on. There’s a lot happening in the clip itself, I’ve been using a lot of effects and filters to create the glitch-effects on different drum patterns I’ve worked out and to modify the sounds of my base instruments.

Swing

Evan Kepner — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 22:33:02 +0000

I’ve been working a lot on the upright bass lately and been taking a break from the computer. I really need to figure out how I’m going to tie the two together. This clip is called “swing” because I think the percussion swooshing in the background sounds like swinging. The instrumentation is very basic, I was trying to keep things toned down in terms of total instruments used, but still have a lot of complexity in the note selection. The higher pitched audio that comes in during the slow chord progression is something I could easily emulate on my upright with the bow and then expand from there. One of these days I’ll actually manage it. The image shows part of the overall set, I have gotten much better at integrating audio clips with my own MIDI work, but I am still working on that integration with live instruments.

Equinox – Single Take

Evan Kepner — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 02:09:09 +0000

After my issues with recording my bass mixed with other MIDI effects I started small – this is a single take live recording of me playing with the melody to “Equinox” over standard blues changes. There’s no after editing, and the drums are also an audio file from LoopMasters not MIDI. The comping is set to the right output, while the soloing is set to the left with the drums mixing equally over both.

I’m hoping I can figure out how to get a mono-input to give stereo-output in the near future, but the bigger fish to fry is finding the appropriate levels for live recording together with MIDI composition. I’m unsure if it’s the quality of my pre-amp or just some settings on the PC that I don’t know about yet. The pre-amp is really basic, it’s a Tube MP Project Series and was basically the cheapest thing I could buy at the time a few years ago. I may try hooking my Ampeg SVT-3 Pro up instead to see if that makes any noticeable difference.

Hello SquarePusher

Evan Kepner — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 23:49:15 +0000

I’m a big SquarePusher fan – the guy does techno and bass really well. This clip is my incredibly short remix of the melody in “hello meow”. My original intent was to play along with my bass in the recording, I can play along just fine but when it comes to the recording all the levels are way off and I can’t get the stereo to balance… therefore this is a SquarePusher tribute clip sans bass for now :’(

The original!

Loopy

Evan Kepner — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 14:09:54 +0000

This song is my first attempt at integrating other people’s loops into my own work – thanks to LoopMasters for providing some great free tracks through an Ableton Live Pack. This track uses some drum sets and a piano track from loopmasters, I’ve tweaked a few things but overall left their loops intact. The strings, bass, and some other drum parts are my own creation using my MIDI keyboard and the arrangement is my own.

I found a competition on TalentHouse looking for DJ/Producers to help with the collaboration of an upcoming album, I’m thinking of making a submission just to see how I’ve progressed so far. There is still so much to learn, but it’s very exciting to finally be making music that is starting to sound like something. The clips keep improving and I’m learning more about the software so my “quality from quantity” approach seems to be working. This song represents my 11th piece, I can’t wait to see what I make by the time I get to 100.

This image is the audio view of one of the drums tracks I’ve used from LoopMasters – it’s very different from my normal MIDI drums but just as flexible. Once I start integrating my own upright and electric bass I’ll be dealing with more and more output of this type.