#102

A conflict/challenge I experience trying to blend the acoustic and electronic is how to relate to the grid. Recording acoustic instruments to a click/drum-machine seems to take away something, especially folk, there’s something about human time keeping that adds emotion.

I did an experiment last year which actually was pretty promising. I recorded myself playing piano. Then I went into Live. Warped the track, set warp markers for every downbeat and I programmed a simple 808-beat. But instead of having my piano stretched to fit the grid. I made the piano clip leader. There’s an option for that in the Ableton Clip view. The result was that the song got a human grid.

It was pretty cool when the 808-suddenly became human. Sped up and slowed down as I allowed myself to “hang” on the last chord of verse/chorus. I should do more of that. It’s a bit of work, though.

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#103

I wonder how well this works (I haven’t tried it):

BeatSeeker is a responsive Max for Live device that adapts Live’s tempo to stay in time with a drummer or other rhythmic audio. It lets bands maintain their natural groove when performing with Live.

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#104

There’s also this one by James Holden:

EDIT/ADD: There’s an interesting quote in that article:

“The point here is: if everything is recorded together in the same take then quite large variations in timing are no problem – they don’t sound like errors, just the natural movement of the music. But if the parts are multi-tracked, or sequenced parts are mixed with human parts, then the timing errors are glaringly obvious, they sound wrong because they are unnatural, and our capability to identify the uncanny marks them out as unpleasant and undesirable.”

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#105

Yes the “everyone alive” album is 100% samples, it’s actually after that experience that she felt kind of limited by that approach and decided to create her own loops, samples, and mangle them the way she had with other people’s samples on her debut album. There’s a lot of info about her process on her website for anyone who’s interested.

Also this feature is now included in Ableton 11 natively.

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#106

As a follow up to my problem definition I spent some time listening analytically to the latest Sylvan Esso-album. There’s so much there to like and learn from. For me SE combines the intimacy of folk with pop-hookiness and the excitement of electronic sounds and beats. So, right up my alley.

I keep returning to the Brian Eno concept of Control/Surrender. Trying to fit electronic “crazyness” to a folk song is sort of a Control-problem. Whereas experimenting with your gear, come up with some crazy loops, commit to them and hum a folky tune on top could be a freer approach that is more in the spirit of Surrender.

Eno’s point is that it’s not an either/or-thing. Rather we alternate between Control and Surrender-phases through our creative projects. Yet for solving my problem (which I quoted) I think starting with a mess and then create some kind of order is probably more fruitful than adding the mess afterwards.

Now, there is dubmixing of course.