Trying to get more organic, less mechanical rhythm
Astralist
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Posted : May 28, 2013 09:14:27
Hi all,
Lately in my production I've been trying hard to work on my rhythm. The problem is, I often feel like my rhythms are very boxy and mechanical, and I'm after something more flowing and organic. More goa, breathing rhythms that are driving, but not annoying. I've been stumped on where to start, and feel gridlocked as if I can't escape the feeling of rigid 8th and 16th notes which can get annoying fast and doesn't always flow well.
Here's a couple of examples of driving rhythms, that to my ear sound not too mechanical, and maintain an organic flow.
The screamer that comes in at 1:10, sounds simple, but my attemps at something similar sounds real choppy:
The vocal thing at 3:03 - wtf:
The phasey gated sound at 3:28:
I could give a hundred examples, but my question is what can I do to work on this? It's somewhat frustrating as everything I do seems overly rigid, and comes off as if it's trying too hard or gets too manic.
The only effect I can think to help a tiny bit is some delay, but I never can get the right delay tempo for something like this, that doesn't come off as incoherent mudfest. How can I start to create better rhythms, soften things up while still being driving?
Soma_Happiens
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Posted : May 28, 2013 10:47
fractal fields
IsraTrance Full Member
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Posted : May 28, 2013 13:09
Its all about variation, how to achieve this:
Use all available parameters and wack them off a tiny bit.
This is what a humanizer does to an extend (mainly grid).
Get off the grid (ever so slightly) use different note lengts velocity adsr settings etc.. create a ever changing flowin groove
experiment
Kitnam
Mantik
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Posted : Jun 2, 2013 01:13
first of all i like you music taste =)
the last posts allready have good advices. generally electronic music especially digital electronic music is very static per definition. adding slightly shiftings, and slightly parameter-automations which are of the timing-grid is a key-concept. it will also highly support your arrangement-decisions. also putting a decent and soft bus-compressor at start can help a lot. this depends on your decision. i highly recommend it, but a lot other producers dont like it.
it starts and depends on the fundamentals, which are volume/gains. start to add velocity here and combine loud and quite notes within your midi-lines. this all indeed has to sit an a well balanced gain-mix. so allways try to adjust the gains of your elements/channels on the go.
working with gain-velocity automaticly relates to the vca-envelope settings of your synth. usually soft attack-times and more release can help for more organic feel.
then you shift notes slightly back and for by milliseconds/frames.
the note-rythm itself is created directly from this first 3 steps: velocity/volume-balance/timing. at first you will usually create a few louder notes which build the main-rythm nodes of your midi-line. the you support them with soft and slightly time-shifted notes which hang around the main-notes. try to think in waves. they are rolling up, rolling down. so your elements roll up and down. (delay-fx is a shortcut for just rolling down- which makes it very famous.)
for the first creation its more easy to start with short loops and then add loops which are getting longer for more elements you add to you song-theme. so at first you start with 2 bar loops (usually drums), then you add some new element-loops which play every 4 bars(main-synthies), 8(sweeps, textures), 16bars (longsweeps) and so on.
before you then add other effects you do the same with panning, but this rule can be dodged as long as the elements depend on some kind of fx-plugin (which means its not a mixing-focus but a sound-creation focus).
when your element-count starts growing equing more and more is needed (all examples you have posted have where sitting above the bass as i remember) lowcut is your best friend anyway. and dipping 200-500hz also (helps greatly agains "choppy" overpresence)
this allready is a whole world of endless possibilites you can stay and hang there for a while without using any effect-plugins. indeed you add them later. but the base and root of the organic feel is build on the fundamentals.
when get a satisfied only with that. that add some slightly plate-reverb on your whole mix (dr/bass excluded) and see it all glueing magicly together.
there are a lot influences for "organic" feeling working together. so its not linear to get there. you will have to adjust and fine-correct the parameters a lot. its hidden in the details, because waves are very sensible and at the and you main-bus only renders all to one stereo-wave.
Fakso
IsraTrance Junior Member
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Posted : Jul 24, 2013 14:20
for a jackin deep house /tech house track in which organic groove is important I had the idea to just extract a groove from a drum loop that is somehwere near the groove I want and applied it to all my clips, except kickdrum(!think this should be rocksolid), works perfect
https://soundcloud.com/noordzee-laborant
Colin OOOD
Moderator
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Posted : Jul 24, 2013 14:56
IMO you can get at least 80% of the organic rhythmic feel you need from velocity variations alone, especially when programming rhythm patterns. If you're making psytrance then the drums need to be smack on the beat; making your percussion sound like a drummer is a good thing but you want it to sound like a really good drummer who can actually hit the beat, not like an amateur with sloppy timing.
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Nectarios
Martian Arts
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Posted : Jul 24, 2013 17:48
+1 to what Colin said. Quantization is important for everything to smack nicely. Swing can add a nice groove, but again, swing is a form of quantization, nothing is random.
If you want organic sound, use organic sounding sources to begin with.
knocz
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Posted : Jul 24, 2013 18:39
Just to complement what has been said, rhythm has been with us longer than melody, and there is a lot more theory about it. Nevertheless, rhythm is intrinsically a part of us.
The best way to get expression is to play it yourself: forget the mouse, forget the grid, and just play. If you grab a drum (a djembe, for example), and mangle with it for a couple of hours, you'll create very organic and dynamic rhythms, and you'll get better at it over time.
If you don't have some sort of drum midi or pad controller, neither a keyboard controller (those who know can play wicked drums on those things), you can always use your microphone (say, your laptop embedded mic), tap some rhythms on your table of anything that can give a nice distinction between soft and hard sounds (say, your finger or your fingernail..) and use an audio-to-midi algorithm (like Ableton 9's Audio to rhythm function) to capture the expressive MIDI notes.
With those notes, you can play whatever you want.
Finally, I'd recommend you laying off the quantize function and the note grid. The better you get, the more accurate you'll become, but sometimes it's all about the inaccuracy.
Super Banana Sauce http://www.soundcloud.com/knocz
PoM
IsraTrance Full Member
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Posted : Jul 24, 2013 21:38
you can try to use modulation to give a more organic sound ..coming from fxs ,fiilter whatever.. but it s more about the sum of everything.. source as close to what you are after.. good programing ,mixing...
tbh almost everything today sound very rigid ,robot stuff..sound is not as evolving/random as hardware rig/ and analog stuff ect if you don't aim for it on purpose..while in the past you didnt have the choice.
lot of old goa can sound almost like it s some guys playing it imo comapred to today stuff..when you get used to listen goa, that rigid thing is one of the first thing that irritate you when listening modern stuff after the loudness
Colin OOOD
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Posted : Jul 24, 2013 23:18
when i load a percussion sample into stylus for example i find myself quantising the midi when loaded into cubase all the time cos in a fast paced music like trance it just sounds wrong when not synced.
but colin is absolutely right imho, the volume differences coming from the original material make the loop sound organic even when quantised (equaling the velocity programming in midi), at least organic enough for dance music http://www.ektoplazm.com/free-music/stereofeld-frequenzwechsel "I've always been a believer in musical repetition to draw in the listener and make the music hypnotic. Another thing I believe in is repetition." Alan Parsons
golftest12
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Posted : Jul 27, 2013 04:26
When having slow bpm one can move the bass midi notes a tiny bit to left or right at places, don't overdo it, but it can give you some randomness... this really only works with 140 bpm or under!
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