Samples!

About two weeks back I snapped. Off I went into work, founda a drumstick, and recorded myself hitting various drums we have at work. They are not very good drums. They're second hand, so probably out of tune, poorly maintained, and generally ideal for ideas I'm having about making a set of instruments and presets for what I'd describe as "Lo-Fi Minimal House".

Here's the thing. Making big fat lush tones would require me to create multiple sets for each "voice" in the arrangement, bouncing them out, then importing the stems into yet another set; if things don't work like I hoped, then I'd have to redo the whole stem set again.

Also, I can't afford to upgrade to Ableton Live Standard or Pro or whatever. I'm stuck with eight tracks in a set. So... work to your limits, obviously. If I can't make lush massively overdubbed and sidechained slabs of electronica, I can retreat back in time to the 90s.

The last time I asked for feedback, someone said the subject tunes reminded him of something he'd hear on Radio Active in the 90s.

Perfect.

One of the things I've noticed with 90s music is that often you don't have many instruments playing at once. You might have a loop, and the drum machine of course, but generally the focus seems to be on one or two instruments at a time. I might be wrong about that though.

Anyway, I've also been snaffling some loops out of my Tall Dwarfs and Chris Knox collection. Once again, that lo-fi sound and appeal. Add some distortion VSTs, suitable sample banks and synths... this should be interesting.

Exit through the gift shop.