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Using step components to make generative ambient music on the OP-XY

By Mo chreach!

Summary

Topics Covered

  • Different Track Lengths Create Drifting Phase Magic
  • Scale-Aware Random Transposition Adds Tonal Variety
  • Reverb Alchemy Transforms Dreadful Into Thoughtful
  • Post-Rationalization Turns Jokes Into Deep Art

Full Transcript

so I'm going to do a new project here and I'm going to call this uh because I'm very lazy I'm going to call it amp and this is we're going to make

something that's definitely ambient and we'll keep it a bit simpler this time NOP uh it's a little bit quiet no let's put

it the track to we'll put up the compressor as well right okay again I'm going to do because we're probably going to do brain

here I'm going to do Dorian D Dorian I love I love it it sounds nice and it's you know it's simple enough that I can remember which notes cuz it's still you

know essentially like a c except because we're in this Dorian mode here it starts on the D here and let's change that so that the brain knows that this is what

we're doing and if I go down here to so I'm on the brain track here so auxiliary brain change the root note to D and I'm

going to change the scale to Doran oops wrong one Dorian right let's get a base up I'm going to load up a specific sentence here so I press shift module

and then I'm going to do let's go into axis and see what we can do okay so if we go we put this in

here now how could we mess this up so that we lose the beat not going hear that let's put something over the top I'm going to go to wave table I like wave [Music]

table okay so let's let's do something where it falls out of sync with each other there so if we say that this one

we're going to have it's happening every three beats uh like this but if we change we can change the length of this track

right so currently it's got full full 16 steps but let's say that we just going to go down to here obviously it's a bit intense

let's just slow it

[Music] down so it's going out in and out of

phase it's a bit faster right let's turn it down and let's do random transposition of this so that we get a little bit of

tonal variation no not Bend although Bend is cool you know we can do [Music] random let's do another one here

okay now we need a pad of some description right actually one of [Music]

these let's turn off the [Music] so let's go back to the base and then mess with the base so we can do this

where the base is held these first two are quite cool so this is called pulse and hold so it will either repeat the sound but it it stops the sequencer to

repeat it so it stays on the step right so it's not like a ratchet type effect where it does it twice in the same beat so if I do this here let's go PS

[Music] so let's try

[Music] transposing let's let's mess around with

the p a bit um okay so we can say if we when you get here we're going to say that there is a random chance that you're going to jump back to we could

say that it'll jump back to Here For example back to step five so jump step component I put a step component on this step here there's no note or anything but when it hits that it will jump straight back to here so it would just

go in a loop back over here over and over and over again but we can also say Well only do that step component you know every we'll do

it every fifth step or we could say that it will do it on four steps and the fifth it'll stop so watch Bo

so so it's really putting stuff out of Si let's make this a bit more tonally interesting it's a bit boring just now and let's put in let's go to the brain

okay so I'm going to put this one I'm going to put as just Doran to start with so nothing's happening but then I'm going to say this one can also be

randomly it's going to randomly transpose when it gets here but it knows the scale that I'm in so it's transposing in a Sensei of [Music] way this is quite

[Music] nice the base the base is a bit boring let's go back and I mean boring is not necessarily bad in this case

right we're trying to make something that's nice and relaxing I could see myself work to this you know P time typing away let's mess

around it everything needs more Reverb so let's get

the this definitely needs more Reverb [Music]

let's that's [Music] better all right let's get this bouncing around we're on the mixing screen right

so track four we hold this one we change the panning so we can pan it to the left now when it comes back around to the that that one and it will

go it's kind of boring if it's just very predictable where it's going to be but we can see um this one is the parameter component so it won't do the parameter

lock every time so we're going to do it so it's random so it randomly does that parameter Lock And if you watch over here this is actually the panning you can see that it's not changing it every

step so here didn't change it it didn't change it and did change it that time so you can see it's bouncing around

which is kind of fun definitely to change spice up the base a little bit got bit delay on it yeah that's better lots of

[Music] delay not quite that much [Music] starting to sound a bit like uh Donkey

Kong music is the underwater anybody ever played Donkey Kong Country I think it's like underwater level in that that has music that has

that's totally similar to this you know what let's uh make it a little bit gnarlier yeah this sounds nice let's get

a bit of the saturator [Music] [Applause] [Music] yeah that's

better music for donkeys yep hi bro donkeys actually always think the donkeys look quite thoughtful for being

you know you know you call somebody a donkey it's a it's a it's a an offensive term right it means they're stupid but I don't know I thought always thought they had a kind of thoughtful look about

them very little discernable repeat here right apart from the base so for example we could add another one here that will be a

[Music] jump and we can say that that only happens every third time round the third's always good cuz it'll put things

right over it donkeys are actually pretty smart they protect the rest of the farm do they really yeah I think I've only ever seen one in a kind of a

like a sort of Farm Zoo there's one near here it's called Octor Wildlife Center and there's a donkey there donkey was cool but when I was we the goat freaked

me out it had those weird eyes and I didn't like I did not like that very much you know what this gives me a

thought why don't we add in some weird ambient nonsense talk right let's mess around with the input now if I go to

here to track five I can select my headset microphone here so I've got my my microphone going in here and uh we

can turn it on I'm going to turn this off so that you can my main microphone's not on and uh we can do something

stupid if we say on this and let's put up lots of [Music]

donkeys donkeys donkeys donkeys not actually not actually that that

[Music] that why why why why why you

[Music] prot they only make

[Music] I'll mute that temporarly hopefully you

can still hear me again so that's it's tons of fun doing I like I like you know it's the type of thing that's almost too embarrassing to to actually do you can get some really interesting sounds and

effects with it right let's uh sample some of this I don't have anything on this just now I'm going to go into eight and I'm going to go on to not multi sample but the uh drum sampler because

um I'm going to these are going to be a tonal right and then I'll sample them and then record over the top um now if I do this then you can see there's these there's nothing on this just now if I press sample I can record to any of

these slots and I can record something like that's 20 20 seconds long huh no it's over

there see get something from the chat as well is that new music

for donkeys music for donkeys no obviously it doesn't have the lashings of Reverb that we need in order to write it to

sound see H sounds Dreadful right put tons of Reverb over the top it sounds uh deep and thoughtful

no super there super there super there super there super there super there see this will work perfectly um now we can edit the samples in here so at the

moment the start point is or here's the start Point here just try a different the end point we'll get rid of a bit you can Zo zoom in as well if you

want to have a look and see what's going on this is fine let's get [Music] this pure AIX twin the more ridiculous

the be yeah see you start off right you start off it's it's tongue and cheek and then what you do is you post rationalize it and you say actually I meant this very deep and meaningful thing right so

so this is what we're going to do music for donkeys started off as a joke in the comments but now it's going to be deep and deep and meaningful

right okay let's not the donkeys no it's over there it's over there it's over there what's over there

donkeys there there there there filter this get rid of my horrible I don't know if this mic picks that up is but this one definitely

does okay right so let's uh sequence some of this in [Music]

there music music music music or [Music] or let's make sure that that doesn't happen too frequently we can

say um on a step [Music] let's do this one we'll go this one so it's a bit

easier to keep track of we want it to jump to step one and we want it to do it

randomly oh no this one want that to do it randomly and then we're going to copy this right so we see how it's jumped back and this time it's passed

through right so if we do this ah can we not copy that step because it's just got a step component on it okay well we can do the same thing here and here and here

and say oh no that might be a little bit too unlikely to happen let's put two of them beside each other to jump the first step again randomly so this means that

it'll be pretty rare that it gets past both of these so it's not got past the first one yet no it still not got past the first one oh no it's got past the first one but

not the second one what it's through [Music] [Applause] music donkeys donkeys

donkeys right let's uh we need even more reverbs so that people know that we're serious mus music music even more Del

or donkeys donkeys donkeys and let's add a filter to this track as well add to the high pass filter as well and get rid of some of

that kind of [Music] mudy music music there we go that's

better more macaroni donys donkeys it that mean that you want me to add a sample with the word

macaroon or or is that a a musical term that I'm not familiar with I don't know what macaroni might be if it was a musical turn Don cheese it

up we can do [Music] that okay let's let's let's do no on

this step and then so it's not too frequent again when the jump back to one we want that to happen every second [Music]

time a small part of me is waiting for the break Peak to start okay like let's see what we can do to mess around with this cuz it's still the [Music]

samples really let's turn off a [Music] secs better okay and Let's

do let's do that there and do it every fourth time [Music] [Applause]

round so now you know it's really getting wobble BAS we can make them the base wobbler that just makes me think a sweet

Mason wobble base Bobble base let's add a bit more

[Music]

Basin this is it in a good [Music]

way is this ampion is this ampion laser Fox please please tell me and of course we can get

[Music]

we can slow the tape right down

[Music] [Music]

that's good thank you the laser Fox ambient certified right let's let's mess up dungeon cor is cool this the first time

I I I heard about that was only quite

[Music] recently and of course we can mute this track right so if we hold down our

auxiliary button and we press the tape we can turn it on and off [Music]

[Applause] [Music]

[Applause] [Music] [Applause]

[Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] right we can Pro we can uh record these as well of course as we can param to

lock it [Music] yeah that sounds very [Music]

cool I kind of feel like we need some sort of not interpretive dance that that's a step too far but we need um

people on maybe maybe poetry live poetry you have six lasers now why do you have these lasers

I feel like you know I'm not going to the police or anything but why do you need six lasers laser okay this makes total sense laser show production that's pretty

[Music] cool right okay so that is uh that definitely this is ambient now

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