Sampling The Blues

I linked to Nicolas Jaar's work a few posts back, and his style kind of knocked me on my ass. Not just because I like it so much, but because I got a few ideas and techniques out of listening to his work that helped me remember why I liked making music. So, a few things popped out at me that I wanted to apply to future tracks.

- Use found sounds and samplers for building kits and other rhythmic components
- Shift my guitar work into electronic frameworks
- Pull back, and allow the space in-between sounds to breathe a bit

Since I was taking a break from the Yeti track, I was looking for a core idea for a new track. I had already been noodling on the guitar again, and had de-tuned my acoustic for slide blues, so that's where my brain was at.

I worked out some basic riffs, and tried to concentrate, with a metronome, on a combination of rhythmic tightness, and feeling. Blues is a very shifty, expressive style of music, and doesn't lend itself well to static tempos - it tends to shift gears, both slowly and quickly, a lot.

So I spent a few hours doing many takes of a variety of riffs, trying to stick to two basic variations. Then I did some takes of rattling, sliding, plucking, clicking, tapping, thumping, and a variety of other noises. Not only did I want to layer some these sounds in with the riffs, but I also wanted to see if I could build a simple rhythm kit out of those sounds.

What I ended up with were some good, usable basic riffs to hang the song structure on, but I definitely got a kit out of it. It felt good to not have to think about digging through sample libraries or spending hours on a drum synth trying to find the "right" kick or snare for the song, and instead building the drums out of the instrument I was playing, and my desk, and a brass slide.

After getting some of the initial tracking done, I realized I could do a separate recording of a little blues intro - that way I could do something expressive and melancholy without worrying about the tempo, as it was a lead-in. And that went pretty well, I think, although I probably would have recorded it differently - I should have double-mic'd or balanced it with a direct-in pickup channel. But hey, I think it was a good take anyway.

The general concept was to meld some emotional blues with a robotic - but organic/analog - percussion kit, which evolved into the idea that the song would be about someone's mind trapped in a computer, like Tron. It would give me the opportunity to create a semi-organic computer "environment" for the song to live in, while a frustrated, emotional blues thread ran through it.




The version posted at Soundcloud isn't completely current, as I already have some vocal tracks and some other changes in my master version, and I'll be layering some choruses and looping some harmonica riffs. But this is the last good mix I'll probably post until I complete the song.

I had jumped back into making music, mostly with synths, and wasn't exploring the one instrument that was in almost everything I'd made back in the day. So I'm going to keep trying to blur these lines, as it's fun.