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IGNITION AGAINST THE BLANK PAGE - Part 1: ‘Technique Sampling’ & Referential Approach with Ingrate

Added 2023-02-02 15:30:01 +0000 UTC

IGNITION AGAINST THE BLANK PAGE

Part 1: ‘Technique Sampling’ & Referential Approach with Ingrate

In this Lux Cache tutorial series, we explore methods and techniques for breaking through ‘creative block’, focusing on the analytic, creative and inter-medium exercises that can generate inspiration & innovation in experimental electronic music. For our first chapter, we invite Bloom ©2019 & ANYINES alumni, Ingrate, to share his analytical approach to ‘technique sampling’, building on inspiration from some of his favourite 2000s pop & dance production and the application of this approach in his own work.

This tutorial is available as both a Patreon text post and a preferred .pdf document format. We ask you kindly to not share Lux Cache content outside of the Patreon, our contributors rely on your donations.

INTRODUCTION
‘TECHNIQUE SAMPLING’
EXAMPLE 1: SASHA - ‘GOLDEN ARM’
EXAMPLE 2: MADONNA - ‘WHAT IT FEELS LIKE FOR A GIRL’
EXAMPLE 3: PEACE DIVISION - ‘DO YOU SEE ME?
APPLICATION
1. ‘CRYPTIC POSER’ by Ingrate
2. ‘YOURSELF’ by Ingrate
CONCLUSION

INTRODUCTION

It is a thin line between nostalgia, renewal, meme’ing, inspiration and referencing.

Electronic music, and please allow me to make this generalization for even the niche stuff that you and I are probably producing, is one of the most reference-heavy genres. It is also one of the genres where choice and obviousness of reference cause divisions in taste and what is perceived as cringe or based, corny or cool, bad or good.

I see referencing as moving across 2 planes, with time dragged behind it as a continuously more depleted source of inspiration and contemporary trends travelling alongside at blazing speed.

While the way you interact with the past and contemporary is an act of delicacy, it is also a powerful tool for coming up with new combinations of sounds and ways of working, hopefully propelling the creation of something unique and unheard.

The most direct type of referencing is sonic/textural; directly replicating a sound with con- notations to existing work.

But you can also reference and "get inspired" from

Melody
Rhythm
Structure
. . .

And technique, which sort of encapsulates everything.

Fig. 1: How you may view the spearhead of musical innovation - a trendsetter.

‘TECHNIQUE SAMPLING’

One of the most well-known learning resources for music producers is the YouTube tutorial, especially recreation tutorials such as “How To Make A Skrillex Bass”.

Usually, these tutorials are so good that you end up with an exact copy of the original sound. Other times you would end up with something that’s not quite there, or you might turn an odd knob during the process and find a new direction for the sound.

The tutorials usually follow a strict and fast-paced format.

"Set OSC 1 to a sawtooth, OSC 2 to a pulse, and adjust the attack to 0.52..."

I believe there is a lot to extract from the simplicity of this process by breaking down a task into smaller “do this, do that” subtasks, which can be especially useful in music production.

Fig. 2: Reels are the next big thing in the tutorial scene

My spin on this is listening to music with the aim of identifying how an element was created and what purpose the element serves in its context, describing it meticulously in a step-by-step recipe and building a “Method Handbook” which you can pick up and work from. Part of this process is forgetting the source material so that you don’t get caught up in comparing your results, but for illustrative purposes, the “inspiration track” will be included here.

EXAMPLE 1: SASHA - “GOLDEN ARM”

🔊 Sasha - 'Golden Arm' | YouTube

A lot of Sasha’s tracks are either too big-beat, breaky or trance-y for my taste. This one from the album ‘Airdrawndagger’ is mostly free from period-specific characteristics (you could say that it is timeless...) and has an honest quality, in that it consists of few elements and no annoying “polishing” layers. It has a simple structure, no huge and epic trance breakdown, just switches between an A and B part and a little break with no drums halfway through.

To my ears, the main melody sounds like it is derived from a sample which has been chopped and restructured. It sounds like there is a reverb on the original sample, which gives the chords an “airy” feeling, but the production remains fairly dry as the release of the sample chops is very short and there is only a slight, filtered delay tail. Since the reverb is part of the sampled audio, it can be heard with the chords but not after them.

From this, I derived the following method:

CHORD PROGRESSION TO SAMPLE CHOP

Writing the simple progression - The important thing is not how it flows on its own, just that it contains good chords
Try to incorporate leading notes or allusions of a melody
Experiment with adding a reverb, delay, rhythmic gating etc.
Bounce the progression to audio
Slice the audio and replay

🔊 EXAMPLE 1.wav

(Begins with the source audio which is then chopped)

Fig. 3: Chord MIDI, resampled audio and the sliced sample on the right

EXAMPLE 2: MADONNA - “WHAT IT FEELS LIKE FOR A GIRL”

🔊 Madonna - What It Feels Like For A Girl (Instrumental) | YouTube

“What It Feels Like for a Girl” is one of the more polished tracks on Madonna’s 2000 album "Music". It sounds like a Boards of Canada and Kaskade hybrid. But there is still a hint of naivety in the production. This is more prevalent in other tracks on the album, where it sometimes sounds like you let a kid loose on an MPC but in an extremely interesting way. This naivety draws me in since it makes the production sound both transparent and courageous.

We sort of have the same thing going on here as in the previous example; the chord progression consists of a sample that is chopped and played in 1/8ths. The difference here is that it is not a melody but the same chord for a bar, with every “chop” of the chord having a variation in timbre. To me, it sounds like a chord strike and its reverb/release tail that’s reversed and replayed so you get the little jumps in timbre for each 1/8th hit.

CHORD PROGRESSION/MELODY TO SAMPLE CHOP V. 2

Write a (or use existing ) melody/chord progression (Try not making it too busy, leaving room for a release tail or reverb to be heard)
Bounce to audio
Slice the audio in 1/8ths
Replay the sliced audio in a 1/8 pattern
1. Experiment with reversing the samples
2. Experiment with chopping and replaying in different timings than 1/8

🔊 EXAMPLE 2.wav

(Begins with the source audio which is then chopped)

Fig. 4: Sliced sample replayed in a 1/8th pattern

EXAMPLE 3: PEACE DIVISION - “DO YOU SEE ME?”

🔊 Peace Division - 'Do You See Me?' | YouTube

I have a great appreciation for early progressive house. My favorite tracks utilize simple and raw techniques but are put together in an elegant and deeply layered manner. The intro gives you space to appreciate how each sound plays a certain role in the complete rhythm.

Again I think the production is transparent, in that you can hear how everything is a sample, there’s no soft synth playing a full melody, and the tonality comes from how the percussion, one-note bass and effect sweeps relate to each other.

I love the expression and melodic nature of the percussion coming at 3.35. It sounds like a rise FX sample that’s played with varying sustain but in the same pitch.

ONE NOTE SAMPLE

Find a sample, at least a second long with development over a short time

! Try sweeps, rises and other FX samples

Make a rhythm or melody utilizing differences in note sustain

! Avoid playing the sample in multiple pitches

🔊 EXAMPLE 3.wav

(Begins with the source audio which is then chopped)

Fig. 5: The sample is reversed and played in one pitch, only varying in sustain

APPLICATION

1. "Crypto Poser" by Ingrate

From "Crypto Poser / The Enigma" (Bloom, 2018)

This one contains a pretty clear sonic reference to the main synth of “Bodyrox - "Yeah Yeah”. I remember using a YouTube tutorial to try and recreate it. Mine is a bit more distorted but the stacked +4 semitones oscillator gives it that dumb electro-house feeling.

I wanted to write the most ear-catching melody I could, using as few notes as possible to further add to the idiocy. My reason for using this synth sound was to invoke some immediate primate response when the brain recognizes that sound and translates it to a “forgotten banger”.

Fig. 6: Three-note melody

2. "Yourself" by Ingrate

From "With a System in Mind" (Anyines, 2020)

The first draft for this was just the pads and a big techno kick. I was having trouble making the track sound sonically fulfilled and creating forward momentum, until I chose to rebuild it, keeping Fluke’s epic track from The Matrix Reloaded “Zion” in mind. The two core elements that Fluke’s track is built around are the big but simple bassline and percussion, so I chose to add the same two elements to my track while imposing some guidelines for them:

The bassline should be a max 2 bar loop, with the beginning of each bar returning to the same notes, and a mix between fast consecutive notes and some space to keep it rolling. For the percussion, I wanted it to sit pretty high in the mix and not disturb the low end, and avoid it sounding like some “Cinematic Drums” preset (nothing against presets, but they can also become referential or have certain connotations). I used a percussion loop to give it a sampled feel, i.e., you can hear the room of the drums being cut off. I like to embrace these little unpolished production artefacts that you can hear in the end result.

Fig. 7: Bass and percussion tracks

CONCLUSION

Whilst these methods could come off as quite simple and maybe basic production techniques, that is exactly the point. Splitting an “advanced” process into simple, small tasks that you can always pick up.

Developing the methods yourself using your current knowledge and ability of analysis, and not simply replicating a "how-to", is another aim of this process, since it will train you in coming up with new methods from scratch, which you can also add to your collection to work from.

Even though it will undoubtedly have similarities to other people’s way of doing it, you will likely end up with a slightly different procedure, which can also become the characteristic of your production.

Hopefully, it can unlock new ways to engage with the music that inspires you and how you understand your own work.