Predator

Yesterday’s track ultimately became a reminder of one of the most effective cards I’ve ever gotten from Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies¹I’ve talked about them before, but if you don’t know what they are, it’ll be fastest to just do a quick search. Also, I don’t actually own a set of the cards – they’re difficult to find and normally expensive when you do – so I resort to some of the web sites out there that randomly provide the text of one of the cards. cards: Don’t avoid what’s easy. And in that spirit, we arrive at today’s track.

Because I didn’t even start until around 10pm, this was the first time this month that I’ve ended up posting after midnight. Working ahead has been a lot better for me, and I’m going to try to get back on schedule this week. I had a nice day, though: dog park, hanging with Mary and watching the SNL 50^th anniversary show, visiting the neighbors…

The neighbor visit became the song prompt for today.  At one point, I was talking about that Brian Eno card and that led to the genre selection for this track. My initial thought was, “I don’t have time to do a fully-produced dance track,” but then I thought, “but I do have time to do something like a minimal or tech house track.” 

The Process

There’s no great mystery to a track like this, though the specific order of operations often changes depending on what’s grabbing me on that particular day. Sometimes I build the biggest section (termed, “full loop” in my head) and then build the arrangement by subtracting things out. Other times, the build of the song is exactly how I wrote it – each part appearing as I selected or played it.

Predator was a hybrid of those two. The opening beat was the first thing I latched on to, then the bassline. I came up with a rough structure, but did it based more on elapsed time than a specific measure count. I moved the playback wiper out to around five and a half minutes, found the nearest multiple of 16 for an even distribution, and then placed markers every 16 bars to provide guide posts for various things appearing or disappearing.

The bassline was interesting. My initial plan was to do a fairly typical “twist the filter and resonance knobs” or automating them with an LFO to have it constantly changing and increasing energy, and if I revisit this in the future, I might add that, but in this instance there were actually three bass patches I used that differed only in what waveforms were used for the oscillators. The order you hear them across the track is sine, square, saw, square, sine. This provides the increasing and diminishing energy, but without the need for me to fiddle and tweak controllers for 30 minutes.

I had actually picked the slow synth sound prior to even fully committing to this being a house track. When I got the first beat rolling and played a slow note over it, though, the rest of the piece sort of locked in. I wasn’t sure exactly what I’d be doing, but it would all be built around the initial drum loop, the bass, and that synth.

The rest of it was arranging and finding sounds that fit the vibe to fill in the various holes. It’s almost set up in a verse/chorus format. This is the type of track you’d hear in a dark after-hours techno club back in the day  – back when people danced to the music instead of watching the DJ. The repetition becomes a mantra of sorts and if I were actually writing this with the intent of it being a commercial release, I’d have made the initial mix at least 8-10 minutes long.

So referring back to Oblique Strategies and sprinkling a dash of Ira Glass²See yesterday’s post for more info and a great video, this track is relatively easy for me to put together, but it’s easy because I’ve done a lot of similar work. My sound choices are based on past experience where I learned what kinds of things work really well, what can work with a little help, and what’s  going to make it all a struggle.

After years of practice, I know that while I could get crazy with effects, they’re not really needed. I only used a little panning, reverb, and delay here or there. I also know that I should really go in and surgically correct a lot of the bass frequencies. The various kicks are all colliding and it’s a muddy mess. I’m using Gullfoss to do a quick and dirty taming of all of that, but I should really go in and do some EQ and sidechain compression.

It’s not rocket science, and nobody’s going to be whistling the melody, but it’s also a track that I could easily drop in one of my DJ sets³The club in my living room is pretty exclusive, though and one that I’d put in a housework or driving playlist.

Colophon

Instruments & Samples 

GForce BassStation, Tactic2, Serum, Curve 2, Spire

Effects, Mixing, & Mastering

FabFilter, Gullfoss, Valhalla VintageVerb and Delay, PanMan, Movement

---

Notes

• 1
  I’ve talked about them before, but if you don’t know what they are, it’ll be fastest to just do a quick search. Also, I don’t actually own a set of the cards – they’re difficult to find and normally expensive when you do – so I resort to some of the web sites out there that randomly provide the text of one of the cards.
• 2
  See yesterday’s post for more info and a great video
• 3
  The club in my living room is pretty exclusive, though