MIDI Mixology: Latest Experiments with Waveform 11

Opening thoughts

With this piece, I wanted to integrate funk/jazz influences into a four-on-the-floor pulse to create a cohesive piece with subtle rhythmic and melodic complexity that sits on a steady foundation. I decided that I would begin with a rhythmic motif by recording a hat pattern and refining individual note velocities to “humanize” them and simulate the effect of accented notes and “ghost strokes” in rolls. This is where my first roadblock arose – I figured that manipulating velocities alone would not be enough to create an authentic sounding hi-hat groove; I sifted through various hi-hat one-shots and individual samples and found that no matter what, the loop I created was sounding too robotic. This is when I decided to export the midi file of that hi-hat pattern to Logic’s default “East Bay” drum kit VST, where it seemed to sound considerably more human (perhaps due to better velocity sensitivity and a larger library of individual hi-hat samples) – I then exported this as an audio file, creating the first dominant element of my piece.

I use low-pass automation to gradually introduce this syncopated pattern, atop an admittedly cheesy “Uno, Dos, Tres!” audio sample that I distorted, pitch-shifted and time-warped to fit the 115bpm mould, and not provoke too intense a cringe in the listener. A fairly high-frequency (All effects are EQ’d as such) sweep sits underneath this, before I introduce the chord progression.

The chord progression and general melodic aspects that we hear in the introduction were born out of a lot of aimless improvisation. I settled on this particular chord progression as it lent itself well to sitting on a consistent 4/4 pulse without being “boring” (i.e a basic half note harmonic rhythm). My use of 7ths and 9ths give it a jazzy feel without being too tonally ambiguous, and I build the entire piece off this progression. This is played by an electric piano/pad sound that I built out of sine waves (I found that the triangle wave used in Waveform’s default electric piano sound was too aggressive and tended to slice through the mix as opposed to sitting underneath other elements – I added filters to it through the 4OSC instrument in addition to the EQ settings I added in the mixing phase).

Choosing effects to put on the electric piano playing my chord progression was an interesting process – since these are extended chords, effects like reverb and delay tended to make them sound murky and indiscernible, which is definitely not what I wanted. Changing individual note velocities didn’t seem to aid this. Instead, I opted to add a phaser and subtle tremolo to add some movement to the progression, without detracting from the harmonies themselves. To “humanize” the progression, I offset individual notes in each chord ever so slightly to give the impression of a rolled or subtly arpeggiated chord. The forest fx adds an ambience to substitute for the “room” that a reverb-laden sound would sit in.

The rationale behind the pre-chorus

We then move into a more conventional four-on-the-floor element: a snap on the 2 and 4 of each bar. While I did promise myself that I’d be a tad more sparing with my use of reverb on this project, I felt like this was a sound that needed more airiness, and so I decided to bite the bullet and add reverb to it. This, coupled with the introduction of a bassline, starts to hurry the piece along. The bassline in this section is less percussive; I wanted to use a smoother/legato bass sound – similar to a moog synth – here and settled on Subtractive’s sub lead, which I felt was one of the few options that was not super aggressive, or comprised of unnecessary and distracting high-frequency sounds, making the job of EQing that little bit more hassle-free.

To fill up our middle frequencies a little more, I layered the electric piano playing the chords with a second pad sound playing the same progression, with the use of a slightly more high-speed phaser to add some movement to the chord progression.

Instead of moving straight into a hook or drop as EDM convention would dictate, I took a bit of creative liberty and decided to have a bit of fun with my MIDI keyboard, improvising a little funk lead solo. There were not a lot of Subtractive sounds that lent themselves well to this, though – they were either too dry and lacking the articulation that I wanted, or too reverb-heavy, making it difficult to create a clear melody. As such, I decided to record this part on one instrument and duplicate it once it was what I wanted melodically. I automated the pitch wheel to give the impression of a reed instrument through pitch bending and legato articulation. However, to avoid a gimmicky synth saxophone sound, I layered this line with an electric piano to give it a different timbre. Both of these use a high pass filter to avoid clashing with the chords or bass, and are panned in opposite directions to each other to work more cohesively and fill up the space. They slowly shift in opposite directions as well, creating a sense of movement.

The last element I wanted to add to effectively ‘throw off’ the listener before the hook was a half-time drum groove, which is subtly introduced under the lead improvisation right before the hook.

The Hook

The drop sees a few fundamental changes. We revert to a typical four-on-the-floor groove, stripping away all elements except for the snap. On the percussion side, it’s a simple bass drum on each of the four beats and snare on the 2 and 4. The melodic layers are an interpolation of the chord progression from the first part of the piece, articulated differently. The lead is composed of two layered synths; both are saw waves playing the main chord progression, and they sit atop a bassline playing the root of each chord. It is effectively in ABAB form, with different little melodic or rhythmic flourishes occurring in between chords.

With the bassline, I used pitch automation to give the effect of each root note fading out as it is played. I thought about converting each individual bass note into an audio file and employing a slowdown effect, however found that that limited my options when it came to passing notes in between chords, causing an already fairly bare drop to border on too raw.

The improvisation in between the 4/4 pulse is meant to be fairly random-sounding. First, I use one of my funk leads from the pre-chorus improvisation in an offbeat melodic fill-in. Next, I manipulated a cowbell sound to serve as a percussive fill-in. Using pitch-shift and reverb, the cowbell sound takes on a new quality, making an interesting segue between chords with a descending triplet fill. I wanted to fill the negative space in the drop with a variety of sounds, and used synth, bass and percussive fills to achieve this.

The second part of the hook sees the reintroduction of the hi-hat pattern from earlier in the piece. A couple of new elements are introduced as well; firstly a high, sustained note played by a synth (on which I applied a heavy amount of tremolo to give it a quivering quality). After this, a repeated arpeggio played by small square wave plucks, with a decent amount of reverb, is introduced. This brings us out of the first hook, subtly moving the piece along.

The bridge onward

It’s difficult to identify this section under the conventional structure of a song. At first, we return to the original electric piano and pad chord progression, sitting underneath the plucks from the hook. Reintroducing the hat pattern, we then move into a breakdown of sorts, where the half-time idea makes a return in full flow. I wanted to use elements of both the introduction and the hook to move away from our four-on-the-floor foundation for a brief phrase. How this sounded changed a lot throughout the process – I originally thought about stripping away everything except for the percussion and forest FX, but found that this was far too bare. I then accidentally copied and pasted one of the synth chord stabs from the hook and found that this actually sat on the half-time groove quite well – bringing in the pre-chorus bass and keeping the arpeggiated loop from the hook, this was interestingly cohesive. Towards the end of this section, I decided to bring back the improvised lead melody from the first pre-chorus and have this sit atop a second iteration of the hook.

This segues into somewhat of an apex, where we have a final four-bar iteration of the four-on-the-floor hook, with all major hook elements combined. I decided to make use of my original idea for the bridge, ending the final hook on a perfect cadence and closing out the piece with raw percussion.

General musings about frequency and dynamics filter choices

My EQ and dynamic choices were fairly intuitive, based on getting the most important frequencies and textures out of each individual sound. For instance, my bass drum originally had a pronounced mid-frequency resonance which I eliminated using a low-pass filter. Similarly, the hat pattern originally covered a number of mid and high-range frequencies, which would

have clashed with our snare had I not made use of a high-pass filter. The same thing applied to melodic components as well; preset synths have an ugly habit of covering more frequency ranges than they should, and as such, I had to cut higher frequencies on my bass sounds, and conversely reduce low frequencies on my higher-register leads. I certainly wanted to “fill the space”, particularly in and around the hook. However, given how texturally heavy some of my sounds are, it was about striking a delicate balance and not getting too ‘murky’ a sound.

Perhaps the most notable use of dynamic compression in my piece was the sidechain compression that I used in the hook and post-chorus sections. I sidechained all melodic components in the hook to the bass drum to allow it to cut through the mix and drive the rhythm of the piece. This also enabled the hook to be more reminiscent of a quintessential EDM “drop”, simultaneously ensuring our low frequencies were not too intense and did not clash. Further to this, the tremolo in the sustained synth and main chord progression served to humanize the sound, and create nuance in the melodic components’ dynamics.