I’m VERY proud to report that Bassadelic.com will soon be offering a class for electronic producers! The Bassadelic Academy will be a special and advanced section of the site where aspiring musicians and producers can learn the ropes about creating bass-heavy EDM tunes in a unique way…
At the end of this class, you will have your own album.
Starting in a few months – provided that the Mayan Calendar is wrong and that we’re still all here ;) – the class will start, and will be centered around creating complex, bass-heavy, funky electronic tunes, with a little bit of influence from all over the spectrum of modern dance music…
You will learn:
-> How to seamlessly incorporate multiple genres into individual songs, adding variety to your tunes, the way the pro’s are doing it!
-> How to structure your songs, the best way possible!
-> How to mix a complete track – from the storyboard to the club!
-> How, specifically, to make an entire album, from start to finish!
-> How to maintain a philosophy in the studio of having extreme levels of motivation!
-> How to keep the funk alive, and make the most-funkinest tracks around – which is ALWAYS a good way to separate your music from the rest, as you’ll be seen as a MUSICIAN, not just a technically-minded sound enthusiast ;)
You’ll also learn how to go about making an album, bit by bit, layer by layer, sample by sample, as I film and describe the entire process of making my newest album – AS I’M MAKING IT! You’ll get a firsthand look – it’ll be like being in the studio with StrangeFlow!
In addition, you will also gain access to thousands of original samples and beats, of which you can use however you see fit! As well, you will get to keep the StrangeFlow album that you will get an insider’s view on, as you’ll see how the entire thing was made!
The bottom line is this: when the class is over, you will have yourself an album. Let me repeat that: if you follow the instructions, and watch all the videos and read all the notes, you will have an album of your very own. Your own unique product, that you can then give away or sell or play at the club!
Also, you can reread and review any of the Bassadelic Academy lectures and videos in the class, for as long as you want! (or until they find a way to shut down the internet)
So, in just a few months, the class will start. I will post more details as soon as possible! I’m super excited about this, and I hope you are, too!
Ok, so I wanted to write an article that – wait a minute, let me back up a moment… I NEEDED to write this article. It should’ve been one of my first articles, now that I think about it.
So, by now, as many of you know, I make music. Sometimes it’s glitch hop, sometimes it’s wonky, sometimes it’s weird skwunc acid chopped n screwed, etc… I try not to be a bandwagon jumper, although I will admit, when there’s a new style that comes along, sometimes I get into it, because I like the ideas or the sounds and vibes behind it… But, as opposed to your typical bandwagon jumper, most of my music has that trademark-StrangeFlow-sound to it… meaning there’s some funk in it, some hip hop rubbed on it, and often, I like to keep things somewhat tripped out, in a musical sense. It’s just the style I tend to go for.
Having said that, there’s a particular aesthetic in music I’d like to talk about… something I have dabbled with, but got pretty frustrated with, as well: for lack of a better term, I’ll call it that “Clean White Crunk” sound. Yea, it’s probably a little racially insensitive, but it sums it up pretty well, and besides, I don’t think it’s TOO horrible giving a little shit to White Folk (a group to which I am a member of) …
And besides, I’m not talking about ALL White Folk… But that aside, my point is: there are a lot of producers who make beats and mixes and tunes and epic-fucking-productions that are… well, *technically* perfect, but lack something very fundamental. DIRT.
You don’t have to bring your laptop into the shower with you. You see my portrait above? Do you see any gear in there? I mean… any computer gear, that is?
A LITTLE HISTORY
A little 90s history for ya… (some of you are probably very familiar with this, though) Some of you might remember back when the CD first popped up and took over the tape and vinyl era. A lot of people thought it was great (except for how fucking expensive they were back then) but after a while, some folks started expressing a certain complaint… They argued that there was something about digital music that lacked a certain authenticity, a certain soulfulness… When I first heard that argument, I dismissed it as naysayer bullshit. But then I learned a bit of the technical aspects of digital recording that got my attention.
If you look at the waveforms of a lot of digitally-produced tracks, they do look a little flat. Maybe, to some extent, it’s hard to work against that, BUT – what basically happened was that a lot of the peaks and variations in volume were compromised and/or truncated… You hear it in pop music more than anything else, so I will admit, it’s not just an electronic-music thing. But, when you’re dealing with digital musical encoding, you are, fundamentally, dealing with electronic music, in a way…
The ‘digital flatness’ argument is a good one, and although one thing I can’t stand is hearing an old 70s or 80s rock musician complain about ANYTHING in modern music (because usually their arguments against modern music are complete bullshit… “Oh, the lyrics were better BACK THEN…,” or, “Everything was better back when we only used guitars, ah these kids with their synths, I’m a crabby old fuck who can’t stand change, poor me, poor me!” etc…) I have to admit, they did have a point about the digital flatness thing…
Though, I must point out, there are DEFINITELY some artists who understand that argument, and act accordingly – and at very least, I must admit there certainly are artists who DO include peaks and valleys in their music. I’m not ripping on ALL electronic music, or ALL music in general, for that matter. Obviously, if I hated electronic music, I wouldn’t be writing this blog, would I?
…OR WOULD I?
No, no; I love electronic music. Don’t worry about that!
DON’T SCRUB OUT ALL THE SOUL!
The problem with making music with computers is that sometimes folks making music come up with sounds that are very vibrant and colorful and rich, but lack grime. And before anyone “calls me out” on that – no, I’m not insinuating that everyone has to make British grime hip hop… I’m just saying, add some dirt. Where’s the dust? Where’s the noise? Why did Americans have such a hard time digesting electronic music for so long? One reason (out of a list of about a hundred reasons… many of them stupid reasons) was that the music “doesn’t sound real.”
Back in the day (and still, to this day, though to a much lesser extent) this was something people would say, and, to be fair, some people still use that argument today (to which I would respond, “oh yea, and what the hell has your precious ROCK music done, besides give us the White Stripes, in the last fifteen years, that isn’t completely trite and unoriginal? To which they would have nothing to say, at which point I’d take out my pocket knife, slash their tires and run off)
But there is SOME reasonability to their argument, even if it came out of their rock-centric bias; where the fuck is the mud? The grime? The blood stains? The cum smudges? You hear all sorts of super-clean sounds in certain styles of electronic music, especially in glitch hop – to a point where some of the beats almost sound like plastic! A tiny little plastic drumset that nerds use to make their little bleeps and bloops on.
Am I hating? Ok, maybe a little bit… But I’m trying to promote a positive idea here… Although it’s somewhat subjective, it IS annoying to hear songs that lack any soulful humanity, aside from subtle velocity variations… or having three different snare sounds going on, instead of just one. Come on, make with the grunge (not talking about grunge rock) and make with the grime (not talking about grime rap) and make with the dust (not talking about pcp…. Or am I?) It’s entirely possible to have a shiny sound but still retain a bit of lint in your new mix’s belly button.
There’s so many things you can do…
SOME THINGS YOU MIGHT CONSIDER
…You could use samples. Actual samples – and please don’t scrub ALL of the 70s dust off of them.
…Distort things. MORE.
…You could even RECORD some feedback or noise and loop that in the overly-clean fashion that a lot of musicians do nowadays.
…You could incorporate real (actually-real) sounds into your mix.
…Accept that fact that it’s not the end of the world to incorporate a TINY bit of randomness or “clutter” into your mix; in fact, it might help…
…You could TRY going for the lo-fi aesthetic, maybe not in EVERY way possible, but it might be something to look into (and to elaborate on this anymore could be a whole ten page article in and of itself, and I’ll save that for another rainy day)
IN CONCLUSION…
I’m not saying every single aspect of the song has to be a pigpen; in fact, I enjoy the relatively clean bass. But there’s so much more than just the bass…
Why make something that sounds like you jerked off into Ableton for two hours when you can make something that sounds like you not only jerked off into Ableton but then also forgot to clean up after you made that mess? Damn, that’s a really disgusting way of putting it… Ok, I take back that last metaphor, but only on account of it being too gross… The point is, you don’t ALWAYS need to polish your grooves until they sound fake, corny, and nerdy. That’s really what I’ve been trying to get at, with this whole weird rant.
Again, I’m not saying you have to make your mixes as dirty as MY bathroom (I don’t know where all those flies came from…) but why would you want to make music that sounds fake? There’s at least a LITTLE bit of credence to that douchey modern rock fan argument against electronic music, as much as I hate to say it. Even if a mix is ‘technically’ perfect, if it sounds like you asked your computer to make a song for you, what’s the point?
So, this is just my opinion, and certainly, there are fans of the overly-clean sound. I just wanted to get my thoughts out, because, for one thing, it’s my blog and I can rant about whatever I want – but for another thing, I think adding soul (or NOT scrubbing the soul out) might be a piece of advice that too often gets left out of the discussion…
It’s an issue I wanted to discuss, and feel free to ignore this if you’re totally into that Clean White Crunk sound. If you like it, then by all means, I respect your artistic integrity to incorporate it – and I truly mean that, too – I just feel it’s something that’s probably overlooked by a lot of folks. Electronic music has come a long way, and, like I said, there are a good number of folks who already understand what I’m saying, and have been adding soul to their beats for a while now. Even mainstream rock and pop fans are starting to come around to rave and ‘edm’ now, so that’s good, right?
At least they’re not still calling all of it ‘techno’ and then running off to their shitty Saves the Day concert… or whatever it is rock fans do. It’s still a mystery how people are still so captivated by the blandest possible rock music… But, I’ll stop now before I start ranting about that.
Some of these might seem fairly obvious, some of them might not… But I thought I would write up this post as a basic reference… So here you go…
1.) A Good Night’s Rest
This seems like a pretty obvious point, so I won’t go into a terribly long analysis of why it’s important to get a good night’s rest. Of course you need your sleep!
I have an especially hard time getting my sleep, as I have to get up early, so to get a full night’s rest, I try to get to bed around 9.30 at night. That’s the hard part. Getting up early isn’t as difficult as getting to bed early. But, luckily, most people don’t have that problem. But whatever your schedule is, if you get the proper amount of rest, you should wake up feeling refreshed… Or, perhaps you need some coffee to wake you up. I know I certainly do.
Alright, enough of the ‘good night’s rest’ point, as I don’t feel I need to elaborate on this one anymore. It’s fairly obvious, so, moving on…
2.) Keep Food and Coffee In your Body
It’s not only important to get a good night’s rest, but it’s also important to eat well. I’m not going to lecture you on the ‘proper diet,’ exactly, but I will say this: make sure you put enough energy into your body that you will be able to put enough energy into your music. It’s really as simple as that.
Like I said earlier, I drink coffee. Some folks will definitely say you should not drink any coffee, as it’s… bad for your…. I don’t know… your soul, or something? Or it’s an addiction, blah, blah, blah. Well, I say, ‘sure, it’s an addiction, and an addiction I’m comfortable with!’ I don’t see why having an addiction to coffee should keep you from making good tracks. The trick is to know your body. If you feel like you’re drinking too much coffee (if you DO drink coffee) well then, sure, stop drinking so much! But if you’re like me, you enjoy a good half a dozen shots of espresso… Now, I’m not recommending you drink THAT much…. I probably shouldn’t be. In fact, I should probably warn against drinking that much, as it’ll probably lead one’s heart to explosions… but that’s really for another article. But I will say that when I drink that much espresso, it certainly doesn’t hinder me from making music, in general.
Wow, got into a coffee rant. Hmm… I suppose that was bound to happen. Ok, moving on…
3.) Set Time Aside
How the hell are you going to make music if you only set aside an hour a week for mixing?
Sorry to curse at you, I’m just trying to make the point that you’re probably going to need more time than that. I would set aside a good afternoon-sized chunk of time for yourself, at LEAST once a week, if you plan to make electronic music. But, I should’ve prefaced that point by saying that, well, if you plan to make music on a regular basis, and learn the ropes of what it means to become a decent musician, you’re really going to need to spend some time at it.
When I say one afternoon a week, I’m talking about a basic amount of time… Obviously, you could do it everyday, and do it for nine hours. There is, of course, the ‘ten thousand hours’ philosophy… the idea that, if you spend ten thousand hours on something, you will become a master at it. Well, I can tell you one thing for sure: if you DO spend that much time on pretty much anything, you’ll probably be somewhat decent at it. But it’s not just about quantity of time, it’s about quality, too. Maybe you don’t need ten thousand hours, you just need ten hours every week for three years… That would be 1560 hours.
The point is, you can’t spend two hours on a Sunday morning doing it, and expect to get decent results. Whenever people say things like, “oh, I don’t have any time at all for THIS or THAT, not EVEN two hours on a Sunday,” then I assume one of two things…. 1.) They clearly don’t have enough interest in it if they’re not able to spend just two hours a week on it, or, 2.) They’re lying. Straight up. They can spend how many hours watching movies and getting drunk or stoned or going shopping for things they don’t need, but they can’t spend at LEAST a couple hours on something they claimed they have an interest in? Nope, not buyin’ it.
So, do yourself a favor and decide whether or not you really do have an interest in making electronic music, or whatever kind of music you’re interested in, and commit time to learning everything you can about it, and commit time to making it. Like I said, it’s good to have a good chunk of the afternoon set aside, but obviously it differs from person to person. But you want multiple hours set aside because you need to get yourself into the music-making mode, and that sometimes takes a little while, especially if you’re new.
4.) Listen. Inundate. Internalize.
Figure out what artists are making music that sound similar to the kind of music you’d want to ideally make. It’s probably not super-hard to do. One you have that figured out, go and listen to their music. That’s it. Listen to their music, listen to music similar to theirs, and inundate yourself with the types of sounds you want to reproduce. Internalize it. Get so familiar with it that you can’t help but make something similar… I don’t mean that you should copy them, I’m just saying that if you’re REALLY into the sounds of Flosstradamus, and want to make music in a reasonably similar vein to Flosstradamus, well, then you should probably listen to as much of their music as possible, eh?
Another important point about internalizing music is this: find out who inspired the artists you’re inspired by. Learn the history of the music, and allow yourself to be influenced by that music, as well. It’s one thing to take influence from the present, but do you really think all the artists out there right now are ONLY taking influence from songs made in 2012? Of course not! They’re taking influence from the great canon of world music of the last ten thousand years! (well, some of them aren’t, but these fly-by-night one-hit-wonders tend to dry up creatively PRETTY quick…)
So learn some history, internalize your favorite sounds until they’re a part of your essence, and listen to your favorite tunes in your selected genre-of-choice to get yourself into a specific music-mindset, and then make the best damn song of the decade!
5.) Skeletal Preparation
Prepare with pencil and paper. Or draw up a rough skeleton of your track in the sequencer. Or, if nothing else, write down a list of ideas you have for your tune(somewhere you’ll see them) and look at it often, as you’re recording your masterpiece. It’s one thing to have notes in your head, but you might find, halfway into your track, that you’re straying from your original vision. What do you do then? You go back to your notes and see what you originally wanted to accomplish.
I do want to point out, however, that sometimes it’s good to let a track stray. Sometimes I’ve started a track and thought, “Ok, I’m going to be working on a junglish glitch hop tune, and then it turns into some kind of weird chopped-n-screwed acid-glitch tune. And sometimes, that’s great! So on this point, I’ll have to leave it up to you to decide what to do, as it’s all about what you want to accomplish as an artist, and one of my rules of respecting Artistic Integrity is to appreciate that an artist can delve into whatever territory they want to. Having said that, if you’re first starting out, it can be helpful (to say the least) to have a few notes (at least) about what you want out of this track.
Your notes could be both vague as well as specific… What I mean by that is that you might have some open-ended statements in your notes, such as, “make it bass heavy,” (a statement which could really lead your track in a thousand different directions) but you could also get incredibly specific, like, “incorporate hi hat triplets at 100-ish BPM,” and, “try to recreate pitched-down short-vocal repetition for the intro, like the one in that ‘Roll-up’ track by Flosstradamus,” etc (I’m using Flosstradamus as an example, because I mentioned them earlier…)
The point is, it’s NEVER a bad idea to have some notes. Even if you decide, halfway through the track, that your notes were great but that you’d like to take the song in a new direction; it might happen this way, but it might not, and having notes still wasn’t a BAD thing to do… So, try to make notes. I’d recommend LOTS of notes.
6.) Think Big, Fuck Haters.
Ok, so I’ve covered all of the essentials, but here’s something else to consider. Think big. Think REALLY FUCKING BIG. If you’re just starting out and don’t think you can conquer the universe with your beats, well, at least you could hope to get there at some point, right? And, why not? There are so many god-awful artists out there who ARE making it, why not pulverize their influence on the club by making something ten thousand times as good as the shit they’re upto? Why not? You can’t give me one good reason why you shouldn’t. Nobody can. Decide to make the best fucking Flosstradamus-influenced bass-trappin’ or neuro-glitchin’ or electro-stompin’ tune you possibly fucking can! (Again, the Flosstradamus reference… lol. Insert whatever artist name you want, though…) If it’s dope as fuck, I’d love to hear it, and so would everyone else. Don’t try to be good enough, try to be the best.
Modesty is overrated, and you deserve to make the best track you possibly can. Don’t let haters influence you, either. What are the haters up to, when they’re not hating? Working boring jobs, dating some lame boyfriend or girlfriend who sucks, and getting their teeth pulled next week? (woah, got pretty specific, there, didn’t I?) Maybe they’re hating because you get to spend your time making awesome beats, and they’re stuck in their dead-end life, going to youtube or facebook and hatin’ is their only means of having a good time.
Whatever the reason, don’t let them get you down, and don’t let them keep you from being your best… because with enough motivation and practice, you CAN become an amazing musician. It’s not just wishful thinking, its mathematics. It’s logic. How do you think the Beatles got so good? Were they just insane geniuses on acid? (Well, that’s part of it, I suppose…) No, that’s not really it. They played hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of shows, and fine-tuned their craft and their sounds for years before they got big. I mention the Beatles because to a lot of folks, they’re the pinnacle of modern music… (Wait, is pinnacle the right word? Or cornerstone? Yea, that sounds better, I guess…) They’re the cornerstone of truly great music, to a lot of folks… and they were around for about seven years before they were on the Ed Sullivan Show and electrified audiences by singing about holding underage girl’s hands.
My point is: give it time, but set out to be as incredible as possible. It won’t happen overnight, and it’s a good thing it won’t too; because if it does, people will soon find out that you JUST started, and that you likely have no idea what you’re doing! If you spend time with it, you, too, can do some truly great work.
2013 & Beyond… What Styles of Music Will Get Big in the Future?
Ok, so, I thought I’d give my take on this subject, having seen the progression in electronic music firsthand for well over a decade. I’ve seen spikes and lulls in popularity of different genres and subgenres, and I’ve seen the rave scene transcend into different moods throughout the years, and I would like to offer my perspective on where electronic music might go in the next few years…
The Great Dubstep Crash
First thing’s first; we’re going to be living in a post-dubstep era. What that means specifically is that dubstep is already influencing a number of producers who would definitely NOT consider themselves dubstep artists, as the style is (and will be) having a major influence on everything around it.
Now, I’ll point out that I’m living in the West Coast of the United States, and the dubstep era for folks here might be taking place a bit later than it did in England, where it originated. There’s a lot that can come out of that knowledge, though – I remember hearing, a few years ago, that London was “completely saturated” with dubstep, and a lot of people were getting tired of it… So, what’s happening here in the states? Well, a lot of people have been getting tired of it, as well!
What’s next? The tree that the seeds of dubstep are helping to grow as we speak! I like to think of it as sort of a parallel to the rave scene twenty years ago, when house music begat everything post-house… (now, obviously, I wouldn’t necessarily say we’re in a post-house world, as house is still alive and well, and I explain why in this article, here…) but the point is, even though dubstep might not have quite the influence that house music had, back in the day, it is comparable. In terms of U.S. popularity, it’s definitely a new wave of electronic music and culture. Along with that come producers who weren’t previously involved in electronic music.
The point is, after the rubble and dust that’s come out of the meteorite explosion of dubstep comes a lot of interesting post-dubstep music. It will have a little bit of dubstep DNA, but perhaps different. There has been a style emerging that some folks call “100 BPM dubstep,” and others call it “neuro,” and still others insist it’s a kind of glitch hop. Whatever the fuck it’s called, it sounds a LITTLE bit like dubstep, but goes in its own direction, and its just one manifestation of what I’m talking about with the post-dubstep aftermath…
Trap
Another manifestation is – actually, it’s downright wrong to say this next style of music is entirely influenced by dubstep… I’m talking about trap, and it’s been going strong for years in hip hop and rap circles, but recently, it’s started to become infused with electronic music… Or, perhaps, electronic music is becoming infused with trap? Well, whatever the reason behind it, it makes for some interesting fucking music, that’s for sure.. Here’s one by Flosstradamus…
Not to be simplistic, but having said all that I just said about dubstep and post-dubstep, one other good tip for spotting a future trend might be to look to what England is doing, post-dubstep. Theirs has always been a much friendlier attitude towards electronic music on a mainstream level. Things here in the States are getting closer to that point, though, and more “mainstream-ish” or commercial incantations of what we call “edm” might be coming on…
To be fair, it’s been happening for awhile in rnb. I’ve noticed the juno synth and old acid house scales being employed in mainstream US rnb in the last year or two…. (And yes, I did use the phrase ‘acid house scale,’ because when you use midi long enough and try your hand at pitching up notes in that artificial computerized way that acid house producers did and a lot of folks still do, you sometimes notice a slightly-off version of the Western scales we’re used to) As well, look at how Diplo seems to have had his hands in everything dance-worthy as of late.
So I predict a lot more mainstream uses of electronic music.
Juke
Juke will get bigger. A style of Chicago dance music that developed, for years, out of ghetto house music; juke is catchy, fun, and FAST. I predict that, as we move out of recession, and the bulls go on parade again, and folks are getting their jobs back, a sense of optimism will manifest itself in music. Do you remember how music seemed to REALLY change a lot, a couple years after the year 2000? I think September 11th had a lot to do with it… Let me explain…
In the late 90s, music was getting faster and faster and faster, there was a healthy middle class, Clinton was in office, and then we got Bush, 9/11 happened, and music suddenly started slowing way down as things seemed to go in a much different direction. I could also liken my sentiments about juke and fast music to what I previously said about dubstep…. You can’t REALLY dance to dubstep. Come on. Yea, you can sway, or whatever, but people love to dance. Juke is gaining momentum overseas with artists such as Addison Groove, and if you look at history, you’ll see what happens to American music when it goes to Britain… it gets a makeover, takes on certain British characteristics (sometimes major, sometimes subtle) but often times, it comes back to the US, like a kid back from a foreign exchange program – with excitement in their eyes and a new appreciation for life, having experienced culture shock, firsthand.
…And that footwork dancing! You really have to see it, because I can’t rant and rave enough about how fucking cool it is. I heard somebody describe it as ‘a kind of breakdancing,’ but I think it is really it’s own thing. Though it’s not a brand-new thing in Chicago, since it’s been underground for so long it’s had a chance to bake and develop organically, fully cooked, and ready for the masses…
Here’s Addison Groove…
ALSO—Jungle-Juke Hybrid Sounds
A revolution has been brewing, and it goes by the name of ‘footwork jungle,’ or ‘juke / jungle,’ or something ‘jungle / juke,’ (you get the idea..) It’s a VERY exciting new sound, and I predict it’s going to get a whole lot BIGGER in the months to come!
There’s so much room to explore, musically, in the cross section of these two fast rhythmic styles of dance music. The territory is still being charted AS WE SPEAK, and to me, as a producer (and long-tome jungle fan) this excites the hell out of me. Juke has been steadily growing on me this last year, and I’ve been lazily hoping jungle got off it’s ass and did something new and different (instead of rehashing itself over and over, which is only partially fair, to be honest).. I recommend you check it out! Here’s a tune I found, but there are more, and I am going to try to post as much good jungle/juke as I can in the coming months.
Manni Dee & Deft – Jungle Jook
New Orleans Bounce
New Orleans bounce music is also something to keep an eye on. It’s also quite fast. Shockingly abrasive, drawing influence (as some genres do) from primarily just a couple of different beat samples… Ok, well, maybe that’s not doing it justice, because you can work around sampling “Triggerman beat,” (from “Drag Rap” by the Showboys) or the beat from “Rock the Beat” by Derek B, or, “Brown Beat” by Cameron Paul – but those three are, by far, the most popular. (I can’t help but be reminded of jungle and it’s heavy influence from the Amen Loop, and how much power just one single beat – or just a few beats – can have…)
This one’s by Diplo, and features Nicky Da B, and it’s called, “Express Yourself” and it is definitely in the vein of the New Orleans Bounce music… It’s fucking exciting, in my opinion. A departure from some of the other bounce tunes out there, of which there are many, but this one is by far my favorite:
Glitch Hop Getting Bigger
I also think glitch hop, with it’s lazer-funk zeal and extreme potential for dancing, is going to come out of the closet, as far as mainstream appeal. To some extent, this is already happening, though, so I don’t mean to downplay it; but what I’m talking about is a full-scale invasion of funky and sometimes hardcore and fuzzy grooves.
Here’s one by iONik…
So what about rock? Well, I’ll level with you – I lost interest in rock years ago, with one of the only exceptions being bands like the White Stripes, and I honestly couldn’t give a damn what rock is going to be up to in the next couple years, so I’m going to move on to rap. Yep. I’m a douche. Until rock gets more interesting, I’m not going to bother keeping track of it.
So what about rap? Well, in my opinion, I would liken the over-the-top glamour-era of mainstream gangsta rap to the over-the-top glamour era of hair metal…and look what happened to hair metal…
A lot of folks say grunge killed hair metal, and that might be true, but really, I think that shit was about to crash and burn, anyway. Not that grunge coming in wasn’t a very good thing, however. Maybe we’ll see a rise of what people now call “underground rap,” or maybe it’ll be something called, “cloud rap.”
A New Generation of Hip Hop
Yes, cloud rap. Airy textures, breezy atmospherics, and lyricists rapping in the clouds… It’s a nice image.
Some rappers who are helping to bring the cloud-rap style into popularity are Main Attrakionz, Lil B, Inkrowd, G-Side, and A$AP ROCKY. I was thrilled when I heard A$AP’s chopped-n-screwed-influenced tune, rhyming about how ‘everything is purple.’ It probably is not considered cloud rap at all, but it’s still airy, breezy, slowed way down, and, in the case of A$AP, sounds a bit dark. A ‘dark chill,’ if you will, and no, I’m not talking about witch-house, though witch-house seems to have been gaining a little bit of steam, with it’s lofi and “spooky” aesthetic. Personally I’ll be happy if all this witch and werewolf and vampire nonsense goes away soon, but I won’t say it isn’t popular, at least for the moment, in some circles…
Another interesting bit of music to peep is this: Space Age Hustle released a mixtape of cloud rap, and you can grab ithere. It’s worth a listen..
Aside from cloud rap (which is quite fun and interesting) the point I was trying to make, though, as far as rap music goes, is that there will probably still be gangsta rap for at least the next few years, but perhaps there will be more rap that is a bit less flamboyantly-gangsta, as in, rap styles that stray from the Gilded Age imagery of super-rich MCs with bags of money and naked women standing around and golden-everything. For a lot of folks, MONEY IS A THANG, and it’s a little frustrating, sometimes, to see someone showing off how easy their life is, especially if you have it a bit harder than they do… If you haven’t noticed, there’s been a 99% Movement going on for a little while, and even if you’re not actively and personally Occupying Wall Street, you might agree there’s a disturbing disparity between rich and poor, and showing off how rich you are and how poor everyone else is might not look quite as fucking hip as it did a few years ago… Just saying…
So, there it is; my prediction for the near-future of music. Hope you enjoyed it, and if you did, I would love it if you’d click the ‘Follow’ button up near the top on the right side of the screen. Feel free to leave any comments you have, as well. I’d love to open up the comments section for anyone else’s predictions on what the future of music holds! : )
Alright, everyone. Time to review some distortion plugins. They can be extremely helpful, and there’s so many out there that, well, unless you try them all, you’re not going to know which are the best ones. OR, conversely, you could read another one of StrangeFlow’s awesome blog posts!
Some plugins are expensive, some are free. All of these are free. I feel like you can probably get pretty much everything you want from a softsynth distortion plugin without paying a damn bit of your hard-earned weed money on any of them. Though, if you want to give donations (which is always a nice thing to do) feel free to give any of the wonderful programmers who put these together a few bucks. I’m sure they’ll appreciate it.
I’ll also point out, there are a lot of sites that these things are offered on, and I want to make it clear that I’m still under the distinct impression that they’re not JUST free, but also LEGALLY free, as well. If anyone has any information to the contrary, please let me know, and I’ll remove these fine plugins, and not say a bad word about any of them! In fact, I’ll admit I was wrong and apologize, and if you like, I’ll keep the plugin on this page and tell the readers where to go to pay for it! :) Alright, well, having said all of that, let’s get started, eh?
This is a very basic static/noise distortion plugin. Has a clean GUI, and it’s a pretty basic plugin. It gets the job done if you’re looking for some basic ‘old’-sounding static in the background of your sounds. Seems like it could prove itself as being quite valuable, even considering how simplistic it is. Not too many controls, though, so there’s really not too much to talk about, so I’ll just leave it up to you to play around with it and see if you like it. Very basic, but potentially helpful.
This one’s sick. Clean little GUI for some very powerful control knobs – including a saturater, a crusher, valve, distort, overdrive, and even low / high knobs on the feedback, should you decide to click on the little feedback button. You can turn the output and the input up or down in volume, too.
It’s a straightforward piece of heavy-machinery. This little VST is really going to give you a lot of power, and a lot of options, when you consider how many variable tunings and knob-twiddling presets you can create. Doesn’t give you any presets with the plugin, which is not ideal, but I won’t hold it against them, because… well, honestly, half the time plugins give you preset options, a lot of them are completely unnecessary. Like, for example, when you get a plugin or a piece of software and there’s 100 different presets? …and you know, after using it for a while, that you’re only going to use, maybe, 5 or 6 of them, altogether? Yea, that’s how it usually is…
So, like I said, I’m not necessarily turned off by the fact that there aren’t any presets on this one. The range of possibilities will keep you going for a while, in my opinion. I feel like if you were making something like breakcore, this is the type of plugin that would be extremely, extremely useful. There are others like it, certainly, but if you’re new to distortion, and you’re looking for a nice little piece of soft gear, this one probably won’t do you wrong. Plus, it’s free, like all the plugins I’m reviewing. So, again, that’s another reason I can’t really be too harsh on any of these. (get it? Harsh? An article about distortion and I fit the word, “harsh,” into a sentence? FUCK that’s hilarious, isn’t it? No, it’s not? Ok.. well, moving on, then…..)
Soul Force!
Alright, so, back to another very simple plugin. This time, I’m checking out something called, ‘Soul Force!,’ which is an extremely simple little piece of gear with a shape knob and a feedback knob. That’s it. Oh – and a little button to turn the thing on and off, and also a dial to switch between ENV and WAVE. Looks like a comic-book type of font they were using.
Well, like I said, I’m hesitant to say anything too HARSH about these plugins, because they are free, and there’s nothing wrong with a simple VST. Nothing wrong with that, at all. I’m not sure how much I’m going to be using this one, though. Not too much control. Basic feedback / distortion, without any bells and whistles. Not a ‘bad’ VST, just not extremely useful, compared to some others… That’s my analysis.
Ok, so, maybe it’s because I don’t speak Japanese, but – in fact, no, that’s really all of it – this one confuses the hell out of me. It’s in Japanese, and I can’t figure out what the hell is happening. I mean that’s not entirely true. You can get used to it, if you fuck around with it. It has distortion, certainly – and the black knob in the upper right corner controls some kind of fun echo. It’s fun, and I’ve used in the past, but I don’t feel like I have as much control over it because I don’t know what the words or phrases under the knobs mean.
But, that’s my bias, and I’m sure someone who speaks Japanese could understand it, so I can’t say too much about this one, I suppose. I thought I would mention it, though, because it is fun to play around with. If you’re doing a live mix, you better have a little bit of experience with it. If you’re just in your studio and trying things out, then, by all means, fuck around with it to your heart’s content! …Is that the phrase? “To your heart’s content,” or, is it “until” your heart is content? I mean, “to your heart’s content” doesn’t make much sense. Must be old English. I don’t know. I guess I didn’t need to bring it up all of a sudden, but I don’t understand some of these clichés we’re always supposed to use, especially when they just sound wrong. Some people give rap music so much shit because there’s phrases that sound “wrong,” grammatically or whatever (to some folks) but then those same folks who were complaining will go and use phrases like “to your heart’s content” which doesn’t make a damn bit of sense at all, does it?
So, use this plugin until you’re hearts fat with joy. There. Yea, fat with fucking joy. Not until your heart’s content. You’re not going to fall in love with a goddamn plugin. This is reality. You’re making music, right? You’re not going to get a date if you a good distortion plug in. Oh, we all wish you could, we all do. Especially those of us who remember ‘Jungle Night,’ at the Temple Club in Lansing, Michigan in 2002, when you’d see 20 people at the club, half of them about to go on and play some breakcore; all of them male, except for two girls, and it seems like they’re both there because they’re dating guys who are about to go up on stage and play a show and entertain everyone with their incredible distortion filters. Umm… anyway, you can get this one here.
Delamancha: Thrummaschine
Oh, damn. Thrummaschine is a fucking beast. Go get it after you read this. Well, go get it, after you read a few more of my articles, and buy a couple of sample packs (:
Delamancha is responsible for this one, and also for the Sumo one. It’s a pretty awesome company, and they have lots of great things on their site. I really recommend checking it out. If you like what they offer for free (which is A LOT) you might consider paying a bit for some of their other programs, if you like.
Alright, now, about the Thrummaschine… This one’s got so much going on, it really takes a while to process all of it. (ha, get it? “takes a while to PROCESS it?? We’re talking about… distortion, and… nevermind. I’m done with those jokes) You can use this to oscillate your sounds, add overdrive, distortion, bit-crushing action like all the top dubstep and glitch hop producers and DJs (well, mostly producers, not so much DJs) and it gives you a range of possibilities for everything, too.
It’s organized into frequencies – on the left is bass, then mid, then high. There’s a kHz dial that you can manually tune, giving you as much control as they were possibly able to give you! They have LFO, as stated earlier, and so, not only can you oscillate the shit out of everything, but you can oscillate in sine, saw, triangle, ramp, or square – in each of the three frequency ranges, too! You have to get this and see what I mean, it’s really a beast. I could go on and on about this one, and how they actually have some decent presets, from ‘bassmachine,’ to ‘extrememachine,’ and everything in between. You know what I’m talking about ;)
Anyway, yes, this one wins, as far as being a bulky distortion VST with a lot of bells and whistles. A lot of them are really cool whistles, though, so I don’t want that last sentence to sound sarcastic or condescending. It really is quite decent. I recommend this one. Use it until your heart gets fat and you’re so fucking happy with bloated joy and joyful with fat happiness that you fucking freak out because your heart is so content. It’s a good plugin. I like it. Go to their page to get this nice plugin.
Well, hope this was helpful. Though there are obviously a great many plugins out there, I felt like these were worthy of review. These are some of the most popular and most used, so I thought I’d dissect them a bit and tell you what I thought, and, again, I hope you get some use of them. Let me know, leave a comment or send an email and say hello! :)
Below is a rant, but a rant with a purpose… a phrase which sort of sounds like, a ‘rat with a porpoise.’
…there’s no point to that last sentence, I’m just being REAL.
First Things First… Remixes…
So, first things first… this isn’t really an article about Three’s Company… I know, I’m sorry, I know you all expected me to talk about Jack Tripper evading Mr. Furley, alongside Jack and Janet, struggling to pay the lofty $300 for rent in Santa Clara ever month… (OMFG $300 to live in Santa Clara???? I know it’s just 70s-money, but still…)
No, actually this is an article on something entirely different… I remember a buddy of mine (whom, when making music, goes by the alias, CancerofLove) making a joke about dubstep, making up the concept of Three Stooges Step. It was a joke about how there are far too many dubstep remixes out there, and not just too many, but stupid and ridiculous remixes that really don’t need to exist… Well, I went and looked it up on teh Youtube, and sure enough, there was MORE THAN ONE Three Stooges Step. Damn. (What was I thinking, experimenting with wonky bass music, when I could’ve easily gotten thousands of plays remixing the Three Stooges? Ah, I’m so stupid…)
The point is not JUST that there are a lot of dumbass dubstep remixes. The other point is that, nowadays, with so many people mixing and remixing and re-re-re-remixing (skwunc) everything under the sun, a pattern emerges…
It’s just one more piece of the puzzle, or… just one more stinky swamp hole on the flowing river voyage of the impatient, drifting raft that is modern electronic music… Let me explain…
Trap is now gaining momentum in the EDM world. So, what are you seeing now? Tons and tons of trap remixes. Is that a bad thing? No, it’s just a thing. Well, it’s not exactly a bad thing UNTIL you start seeing a poor-quality / slapped together ‘trap remix’ of the Three stooges. Instead of adding a wobble, you add an 808 snare… and, BOOM! NEW REMIX!
Same can be said about Moombah remixes… And the same will be said about acidscrew remixes, in five years (when that shit gets fucking huge?) And it’s not entirely new… I remember a time, back before torrenting, when, to find new and free music, you’d throw you fishing line into one of the great digital ponds of the early 2000s known as ‘Napster Clones,’ and, goddamn, there were a whole lot of ‘techno’ remixes of everything imaginable. (…anyone remember the ‘Aphex Twin Techno Remix’ of the Tetris theme song? It clearly wasn’t Aphex Twin, but… that’s only the tip of the iceberg of my ability to complain about old Tetris remixes, so I’ll move on) The point is, it’s happened before, it’s happening now, and it will probably keep happening.
It’s one sign that a genre is getting popular. People try to cash in on it. It doesn’t mean that a genre in and of itself is bad or stale, just because there’s a lot of bullshit out there, though. That’s an important thing to remember. A lot of people say hip hop is dead, but I think if you look around, there’s all kinds of great hip hop. Glitch hop, in my opinion, is a kind of hip hop. I thought Glitch Mob was going to carry that torch, until they douchily disavowed themselves from glitch hop and then went on to make their sorta-top-40-ish / faux-progressive / unnecessarily-epic / funk-lacking / ‘almost-rock’ sound… But it’s OK. There are others who make good glitch hop. There’s a lot of stupid glitch hop, but that’s how it is for any emerging or established genre…
Is Hollywood Pretending to Be All About it, Yet?
Another thing to look out for, when spotting a trend, is wether or not Hollywood has caught wind of it, yet. Hollywood is an industry. There are very few companies that run the studios, and they are known for their conservative ‘risk-taking’ maneuvers. About a year ago, I started seeing previews for upcoming blockbusters with dubstep playing in the background. (someone must’ve finally given them the fucking memo that it’s OK now to play abrasive electronic music?)
So, Hollywood was a little late for the party. Doesn’t matter too much, in reality, though, but I must admit, I did find it annoying that the establishment finally decided to recognize something that had been going on for years in the ‘underground.’
Well, now we have two signs that a genre is big, or was big, or is getting big; Hollywood finally embracing it, as well as an overabundance of shitty remixes of that particular genre.
Irritating Purists
puritans were douchebags. a bunch of douchebags…
Another way to tell if a genre is getting big? When everyone’s starting to get into it, a lot of the hardcore purists have traditionally distanced themselves from it, saying it’s no longer ‘pure,’ or ‘good’ anymore, or saying something similar to that.
Some folks dug it, and will always dig it – but then you have these cats who want to pretend that when THEY were into it, it was during the golden age of it… I remember people bitching in 2008 about “dubstep’s good old days,” to which I wondered exactly when these “good old days” were… a year and a half earlier, perhaps? (I don’t care if anyone disagrees with me, but I will always maintain that dubstep was really fucking boring in the beginning, and not just compared to the filthy stuff, but compared to ANYTHING… I never cared for that ambient-scifi-soundtrack vibe…)
So what’s my final assessment?
If you’re favorite genre has all of these things going for it… shitty movie previews with X genre in it… annoying remixes with X genre…. and annoying purists getting all huffy about the state of X genre… It might be a sign that a genre is dead, but not necessarily. If nothing else, it’s, at least, a sign that the genre is gaining momentum.
Like I said, it’s likely going to keep happening. If you don’t like the way a genre is going, do your best to change it. Make something truly exciting in whatever style it is you’re going for. Make something that’ll snap the neck of a giraffe! Whatever that means! Make something that’ll truly make everyone in the club stop and take notice, and bounce their asses off until they’ve bounced so damn hard they’ve got no asses left to bounce! (I’ll give you a minute to picture that…)
The truth is, it’s easy to say that things are different now – what with modern technology and the interwebz and smart phones and anal sex parties happening constantly, all over the place; but, in reality, the formation and peaking of cultural movements tend to follow similar wavelengths. The variations attributed to these wavelengths might differ, here and there, but you can look back fifty years and see similar things that have happened in culture…
In nearly every decade or era of the 20th century, Hollywood has been more than a little skeptical of cutting-edge trends in music; secondly, there was a ton of shitty rock music back then (that you don’t hear nowadays because…well… because it was so shitty) and finally, there were DEFINITELY purists from decades past who declared this or that genre to be dead. For example, how many times has rock been declared DEAD in the last 40 years? Say… perhaps, as an afterthought, a genre of music need be ‘declared dead’ before it really takes off? ;) Ha. There’s a rant for a rainy day… (Though I do live in Seattle, so perhaps that rainy day will be tomorrow?)
Look at the big picture. That’s all I’m saying. These things move in cycles. It’s fun to get caught up in the moment, but keep in mind, your mom and dad thought their style of music was just as cool as you think whatever new style of music is, too…. and, there’s really nothing wrong with that. It’s quite natural. A lot of things that are happening now have a lot more to do with natural processes then we might realize; which is not, by any means, a call to justify all of them, but it’s just something to consider. We live in a time of sped-up cultural activity. And when I say that we live in ‘a time,’ what I mean is, we live in a one or two hundred year period of time, as opposed to a period of time that might span the last decade or so…
Alright, well, rant over. if you’ve made it this far into my article, well, good for you! You now, easily, understand everything there is to know about ‘the musics.’ So, I will now gladly reward you with this pic I found online:
StrangeFlow reviews some great distortion VST plugins that you can use, right now, in your new glitch hop / dubstep / hip hop / bass / edm trax and tunes. Enjoy! I know I certainly did. I enjoyed it until my heart was fat with happiness.
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