Feeling uninspired? Struggling to start a project? Join Al as he reuses, recycles, and repurposes sounds as part of Spirit Studios' new campaign: Creative Block. Download the sample pack here: tinyurl.com/641ly6no
Feeling uninspired? Struggling to start a project? Join Al as he reuses, recycles, and repurposes sounds as part of Spirit Studios' new campaign: Creative Block.
Download the sample pack here: tinyurl.com/641ly6no
[Intro title music plays and continues playing whilst Al introduces the episode]
Al: (00:05)
Hello and welcome to the Spirit Studios Podcast. My name's Al and, if you're like me, you may sometimes find yourself suffering from creative block. It's that feeling where you want to sit down and make something, but you're not feeling particularly inspired and maybe don't know where to begin. In fact, it's often that initial starting point that's the hardest to get past.
Making music today is awesome; DAWs like Logic, Ableton, and Pro Tools give us almost limitless creative possibilities, but that itself can sometimes be an obstacle. If you can make anything, then what do you choose to make? Sometimes we just need that initial spark to get our creative ideas flowing, so to help producers kickstart that process, Spirit Studios are launching a new campaign called Creative Block.
(00:51)
Over the coming weeks, we'll be releasing a series of videos filled with challenges and exercises that are designed to push your creative boundaries and get producers to experiment with different processes or play around with existing ideas. The prospect of a blank project can often be daunting, so we'll be challenging you to reuse, recycle, and repurpose a collection of sounds, samples and ideas, giving you the catalyst to start creating. I've put together a video in this series, which is launching on Thursday, the 18th of February, and in this episode of the podcast I'll give you guys an insight into the creative challenge behind the video and suggest a bunch of different ways you can get started on it.
Al begins episode: (01:37)
So, as I mentioned in the intro, a core theme of the creative block campaign is to reuse, recycle, and repurpose existing material. One of the most notable ways that artists and producers do this when making music is through sampling. In a nutshell, sampling is where we take a section of existing audio and repurpose it into a new production. The sample is the starting point, but then how you repurpose or flip that sample is where you can get really creative, there's loads of places where you can get samples from. You could take a section of an existing track by an artist that inspires you and rework it into something new, and there's nothing wrong with that, but you can get into copyright issues, should you decide to release your new version to the public. You can also get ahold of samples by downloading sample packs, and a great place to go for these are sample websites like Splice or Loop Masters. The samples on these websites are royalty free and have been made specifically for the purpose of being re-sampled, so anybody can use them to produce with. Sampling is the focus of my Creative Block video and we wanted everyone to have access to the same sample to get started so, to make this possible, I've created a brand new sample just for this challenge. Now, classic jazz and soul records often make good sources for samples, so I've taken some inspiration from sixties and seventies records to give this sample some of that vintage vibe.
(03:05)
[Jazzy soulful sample loop]
Al: (03:38)
So you can get hold of this sample by following the download link in the notes for this episode, this will take you to a zip folder with the full loop that you just heard as well as the stems for each instrument in the mix. So in a moment, I'll talk a bit more about some of the ways that you could use the samples, but first I'll just give you some insight into how I put the sample pack together. I started off with this electric piano loop playing a mellow chord progression in the key of F major.
(04:22)
[Electric piano loop playing mellow chord progression]
(04:22)
Chord progression goes F major 9, D minor 7, G minor 9, and then A minor 7. This repeats, but the A minor 7 switches to a C augmented 7th to give it a jazzy flavour.
(04:33)
[sample loop plays again]
Al: (04:38)
We've also got an electric guitar playing the same progression, and then I've ran it through some effects like chorus and delay to give the sound a bit more depth.
[sample loop plays again with guitar].
Under all of this. We have a bass guitar.
[bass loop plays].
And then on top is a shimmering lead melody made from some virtual keyboards and a glockenspiel.
(05:20)
[keyboards and a glockenspiel sample plays]
Al: (05:35)
To help make this sample sound more like it was pulled from a crusty old vinyl, I've warped it with some tape emulation plugins, like Sketch Cassette and the Retro Color RC 20. This is adding that subtle wow and flutter pitch modulation. I've also used the RC 20 to create a layer of vinyl noise, which I've bounced out and included as a separate audio stem, which you can use to dirty up your pristine recordings.
(05:58)
[vinyl noise sample plays]
(06:02)
So the challenge is to create a new composition using the contents of this sample pack. In next week's video, I'll be creating a brand new track with these samples as my starting point and I'll also share my workflow and different techniques I use to produce with samples.
(06:20)
[full jazzy soulful loop plays in background while Al talks]
(06:20)
So what approaches could you take when sampling a section of music? Well, to start with, we could keep things simple and not change the loop at all. Instead, we could just add some drums and create the foundation of a song.
Al: (06:33)
[loop plays with added drums]
Al: (06:53)
We can also change the character and the feel of a sample by messing with the time and the pitch. This is a common technique used by producers when they want to fit the sample into a beat with a different tempo, or they want to transpose the harmony into a different key. If we keep time and pitch linked, then when we slow a sample down, the pitch also goes lower.
(07:21)
[lower pitch sample plays]
Now, if we add plenty of reverb, we can make this mellow sound even more dreamy.
[lower pitched loop plays with added reverb]
(07:43)
Using the transpose feature in our DAW allows us to change the key, but keep the tempo at it's original speed. Producers like Kanye and 9th Wonder make extensive use of pitched up soul samples, which makes it a great sound for creating classic hip hop beats.
(08:06)
[sample loop plays in higher key]
(08:06)
The characteristics of old vinyl records have become a production sound in of itself and many producers will make their samples sound more lo-fi by using filters and EQ to remove high and low frequencies in the mix.
(08:29)
[filtered and EQd sample loop plays]
(08:29)
We can push this further with those tape emulation plug-ins, degrading the clarity of the sample for creative effect.
(08:35)
[sample plays again with added tape emulation effect]
Al: (08:48)
Experimenting with this kind of processing can help create a mood, which in turn can give you more ideas about where you want to take the production. So if we're going in this classic hip hop direction, the next thing we can do is start chopping up our loop inside a sampler. Samplers give us the ability to take a piece of audio, slice it into different pieces, and then map these pieces to a keyboard or a beat pad. By hitting individual keys, we can now trigger different sections of the sample and create new rhythms and phrasing out of this repurposed material.
(09:22)
[beat pad triggers different parts of the sample in a loop]
Al: (09:31)
Then we can just add some drums.
(09:32)
[sample continues to play, with drums]
(09:55)
We can create tracks in different styles, depending on how we process and chop the sample. We can then enhance this mood with the new sounds that we add to our arrangement. So if instead we slow the sample down and add some hard spacey drums, we can get something like this.
[plays slowed down sample with hard spacey drums]
So what if you don't want to use all the instruments in the sample loop? What if instead, you just want to sample one or two elements from the mix? Well, you can do this by using the stems included in the sample pack. By using the stems, you can arrange your own version of the track. For example, you might just want to use the keys,
[keys play with vinyl noise]
...and maybe some bass
[keys play with added bass]
...without the vinyl noise
[keys play with added bass, without vinyl noise]
...or maybe guitar instead of keys
[guitar plays with bass instead of keys]
Al: (11:39)
You might find that pulling out different stems from the sample pack gives you more flexibility in the ways that you want to use them. So we can start off with just the keys and speed up the tempo to give it more energy.
[sample plays]
What if we also raise the pitch and take out some of those low frequencies?
[sample plays]
...Now we can bring in some new drums to create an intro
[sample plays]
..Then drop in the bass
[sample plays]
Al: (12:34)
We can go in a different direction if we use just the guitar and then drown it with reverb.
[sample plays]
Let’s also re-pitch the lead melody and add a new bass part.
[sample plays]
We don't even need to reassemble full sections of our stems. For example, we could just take this D minor 7 chord from our guitar track, drop that into our sampler. Instead of playing back different sections of a loop, we can now map this chord to the different pitches on our keyboard. This means we can now trigger minor seven chords in every possible pitch.
[triggering minor 7 chords escalating higher in pitch]
Al: (13:36)
Now, if we want, we can play in a completely new chord progression, that doesn't sound anything like our original loop.
[loop continues to play]
This approach of resampling individual chords and notes actually gives us the option of building brand new sampler instruments. These instruments can be played on a keyboard and use Midi notes to trigger the sample at different pitches. So let's grab the first note of our lead melody.
[first note plays]
This note actually contains two sounds - a synthesized brass sound and a glockenspiel. By mapping this one note to a sampler instrument, we can now play chords with it.
[individual notes of a chord play]
We can add some chorus, and now we can put down a new progression.
[chords play in a progression]
Al: (14:51)
Let's use an arpeggiator to play the notes back in a sequence...
[arpeggiator plays sequence of notes with added bass and drums]
Al: (15:13)
So processing and re-sampling loops allows us to change the character of a sound, create original arrangements and even build new instruments. But what if you don't like any of the sounds included in the sample pack? Well, you're not going to get out of the challenge that easily! In the sample pack download I've also included the keyboard chord progression as Midi You can take this mini chord progression and drag it straight into your DAW and because it's Midi data, you can use this to play the chord progression on any virtual instrument that you like. So maybe instead of the electric keyboard, you'd prefer to hear the chords on a grand piano
[loop chords play on a grand piano]
Or maybe an organ
[chords play on organ]
...or strings and brass
[chords play on strings and brass]
....or something more colorful, like a sitar.
[chords play on sitar]
You could go for something completely different and drop the Midi into your favorite virtual synth.
[synth plays atmospheric slow chords]
Al: (16:55)
There's no right or wrong way to use the contents of the sample pack. The whole idea is that it's just a starting point to get you feeling inspired and hopefully in the zone to create something that you weren't necessarily expecting. Embracing experimentation is essential and there's loads of other ways you can manipulate our samples to get the ball rolling. You could reverse the guitars.
[reversed guitar chords]
You could go large with reverb and delay....
[highly delayed reverb glockenspiel plays]
...Or just annihilate the whole thing with unpredictable glitch effects.
[extremely distorted warped sample plays]
So hopefully this episode has given you a few ideas of how you might want to use the sample pack as part of our creative block challenge. Once again, you can download this pack by following the link in the episode description. If you want to stay up to date with our Creative Block series and get involved yourself, then make sure to follow us on our social channels, where we'll be posting all of our content.
Al: (18:12)
Really the best part of this kind of campaign is that we get to hear loads of awesome music and ideas from our creative community. So if you take on the challenge and breakthrough creative block, then feel free to share your work with us. If you'd like more information about Spirit Studios and the courses that we offer, then please visit us at our website at spiritsstudios.ac.uk. Thanks again for listening. We can't wait to hear what you come up with. Cheers!