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Tech Sessions #10

Going Live
Sorry for missing a week but with the Atlantis Music Conference in my hometown of Atlanta and my Elements crew hosting an opening night showcase, things got crazy. With that, let's ask the question, just how important is live instrumentation?

In R&B, it's essential. In hip hop you get away with not doing it but why would you want to limit yourself? With so many hot samplers and software based instruments in the marketplace, it's easy to think that we can get away with a decent MIDI setup and a few of these.

Now this is true and not true; it really just depends on what instrument we are discussing and how much you want to spend. Obviously, most of the cats reading this column are not ready to drop thousands of dollars on the top-shelf sound libraries that emulate anything and everything perfectly.

So again, your choices really depend on which instrument we are discussing. One of the trickiest instruments to re-create is guitar. It's also one of the easiest to learn and one of the most affordable to purchase.

Now many have tried from the people that provide refill sounds for Propellerheads' Reason to Steinberg's Virtual Guitarist to the sounds that come out of hard synths/samplers.

And while sometimes you can get near the "sound" of either acoustic or electric playing, the feel of true guitar playing is often lost. This is why any keyboard or synth, can to a large degree, be recreated with accuracy because the creative end of the MIDI world for the most part revolves around using a keyboard to replay the sounds coming out of the sound source. So keyboard sounds still can be played with the keyboard "feel."

Drums is another scenario that comes to mind. There has yet to be a to be a definitive hip hop or R&B collection to come out that can top the sound of sampled vinyl or the sound of live playing that has been sampled and/or sequenced.

Learning to play physical drums also is a major plus when it comes down to taking your drum programming to the next level because at that point you will instinctively have two sets of habits which dominate your rhythm style; the habits you have now and the ones you'll pick up when having to crank out a beat using your feet in addition to your arms.

That's not to say that the sounds that come out of samplers/synths are always whack. Strings can be found from both soft and hardware sources that sound absolutely incredible.

Some modules come with believable horn sounds and there are a couple of horn libraries out there that do not sound completely synthetic for use with Reason, Sampletank and more.

Moving ahead to the serious human element, if you use claps on your tracks and have not sampled yourself clapping then hey its your loss. If you've never done something that sounds stupid on paper like recreating a 808 "boom" kick with your voice and then laying it under a real 808 then again, it's your loss. Be creative with what you can do by just making sounds.

Also, you'd be surprised how far $50 can get you in the percussion section of any music store. Those little knick knacks when thrown in front of a mic often sound ridiculous and can breathe flavor into the track they are placed on.

So while it's along road to being a mind-blowing technical player on any instrument, it doesn't take that much to get started filling out your songs with real flesh and blood sounds on more than a few.


Glover is one half of the Atlanta, GA based production squad The Audio Assassins which are founding members of The Elements. You can find them both at Audioassassins.com and theelementsinc.com

Message Glover what instruments you play or tips on how you incorporate sounds that you don't play.

Glover

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