In early 2022, Noks sent me a demo track with her voice & guitar, recorded in her room in Dakar on an old Android phone's onboard microphone. I tried chopping it and adding a beat, but only got the guitar riff: I failed to chop the voice mingled with the guitar. I let the project rest for almost two years and now in January 2024 I'm back at it.

What unlocked progress is Alexandre Défossez's Demucs (forked from Facebook Research since he left Meta), through the Stemroller front-end, whose stem extraction let me get separate guitar and voice tracks... Easy voice chopping into a drum program on the Akai MPC One, where I added the other ingredients:

- Kick drum & high hat from the MPC's Drumsynth's Wild Night preset
- Senegalese drum sampled from Dembe, by Boubacar Diagne (unauthorized)
- "Clean+funky" preset from the MPC's Air Organ's "Funk+reggae" collection
- "Rhodes tremolo" preset from the MPC's Air Stage EP

Effects (all are Akai Air):
- Guitar: Maximizer ("Clip catcher"), Enhancer ("More transparency"), Stereo Width ("Add width to mono signal")
- Voice: Limiter ("My input is too quiet"), Diff delay ("Room echo"), Compressor ("Peak grabber")

Typical MPC workflow (main loop buildup, then copy and substract instruments) with the voice then added to each section. The three-bar sequence length felt quite odd to me !

Also, I had no idea what scale Noks was playing in, so I fed https://ai-midi.com the guitar to find it's notes and deduce the scale I would play in... I believe it is A major and, even if it is not, that is what you have.

Stem separation and audio-to-MIDI - truly an AI-enabled production !

On ne choisit pas

Two year old daughter Diane & me, making noises with the MPC on a cold holiday evening in Dol de Bretagne, Brittany...

Dolgirl with the dolmen (short demo)

Just a short experiment - might as well upload it !

An exercise in shovelware (short demo)

Late night experiment resulting in not what I had set out to make - but there it is anyway... When I add "short demo" to the title, take that as a warning !

Not reggae (short demo)

T-miss said "J'aime" in the microphone, decreed she wanted 100 BMP and we went from there. I made the bass, she insisted on the snare drums !

Usual suspects: Hype's "Perc Soft Org Bass" and Drumsynth's "Wild Night" - nothing fancy !

Just a touch of fanciness: I resampled a sequence to mangle it with the MPC's XYFX's tape stop with low pass filter.

Saturday gem (short demo)

This began with Hype's Richsynth, played with the Launchkey Mini Mk3: the arpeggiator's "mutate" and "deviate" parameters are great kickstarters of inspiration ! Also, I shaped the velocity in a bell-ish curve across the sequence - which makes it much more lively !

I wanted pads - but I ended up with Fabric XL's "Full Choir Ooh" following the arpeggio's chords. To save RAM, I started with plain Fabric, but for this patch I have found that Fabric XL is perceptibly superior.

A bass - Hype's "Perc Soft Org Bass", with a low pass filter because Richsynth and the choir were already disgustingly crowding the rest of the spectrum.

Drums are the usual "Wild Night" patch from Drumsynth. But here begins the ugliness: the arpeggio I generated was five beats... Yeah, try fitting that anywhere ! So, my eight bar pattern was actually a polyrhythm - sort of (pay no attention to the two added bridge notes to adjust the end to make it fit)... And the sequence is set in the MPC One at 120 BPM, which is clearly not whatever this track's tempo is. So, simple drums that somehow fit - don't look under the carpet !

I wanted a guitar solo but I can't play guitar worth shit, so I used Fabric XL's "Psychedelic Strat 1". No synth guitar can ever be any good, but this one approximately suited my modest purpose here - octaves above the rest of the mix.

You may have noticed that the sections with guitar don't have drum and bass... I'll pretend it is deliberate, but the real reason is that, because the rhythm is wacky and the guitar freely floating, it clashed horribly with the rhythm section.

Oh, and Fabric XL's "Crossing the Void" sound effect fading in the coda's fadeout

All this on a sleepless night.

There you have it - all the dirty secrets !

Fleeing From Nothing (sleep deprived edit)

Two guitar samples from Line's Strat' clone and off we go. Also, a single piano note - leave a comment if you know where it is !

Guitar strum samples from a Yamaha Pacifica over a Roland Cube-10GX to the MPC - clean with as little effect as possible, because the mangling occurs on the MPC with combinations of Reverb Large ("small room" or "large room""), AIR Compressor ("control"), AIR Delay (eight notes), AIR Amp Sim and Distorion Overdrive ("light disortion") and reversal... If anyone manifests interest, I'll detail what went where. Varied sample length, from single first note to the full strum.  

Drums are Drumsynth a usual: nineties' kick, bandpass snare, shaker, complex high-hat, noise clap.  The bass is Fabric XL's Psychedelic Bass, from which I removed the default's delay - Akai's presets often abuse delay. The pattern is Line's idea - much better than mine was.

The single piano note is from Fabric XL's Yamaha C7 Grand. Guessed where it is ?

Intro and outro use XYFX manual beat repeat on the whole sequence, so I had to resample them and played them from a drum program - a workaround for XYFX not being automatable as a master effect.

That's it - weird guitar sounds and Pauline's groove... I felt I had to make something with that !

2024-03-17

You're holding it wrong

This time, I wanted some vocals - for a human touch. I'm a miserably incompetent singer, so I borrowed someone else's voice... Not actually singing either, as the four short vocal parts are extracts form a Le Corbusier interview: "Entretien avec Georges Charbonnier (1950-1953 ⧸ France Culture)" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8IvnvzSRoI) - first verse cleaned up with cleanvoice.ai and the three others with Audio Studio because cleanvoice.ai artefacted them. Lots of filters on that voice: AIR Maximizer "Light mastering", AIR Vocal Tuner "ML natural" (in F minor, as is the whole song), AIR Spring Reverb "Light & clean", AIR Compressor "Light control". I'm happy with the compromise between clarity and vintage feel.

To go with Le Corbusier, I wanted sound from his time - so what better option than a Minimoog Model D ? Akai's Mini-D emulation's "Retro lead" preset did the job of heralding the arrival of Le Corbusier's voice on the track. I might have tweaked it.

Bass is also Mini-D - the "Silky" preset is a favourite of mine. I might also have tweaked it - I don't remember either. 360kHz non-resonant low-pass filter and AIR Compressor's "control" preset.

The other arpeggios are Akai Hype's "Trance Arp" preset - anachronistic but it works, with AIR Para EQ's "Thin" preset. Long story about composing one of those: the arpeggiator's input was the Model D lead - so they go well together in spite of my keyboard incompetence... All the gory details including a MIDI cable to send from the MPC to itself, here: https://www.mpc-forums.com/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=217503

The opening arpeggio is the "Warm standard" preset from Akai Fabric's organ, with a slow high-pass filter sweep to make it livelier - and AIR Compressor's "classic" preset. Composed with the Launchkey Mini Mk3's aprpeggiator.

Drums are my beloved Akai Drumsynth, but this time I took care to tune the drums to be in key. No one will notice.

Made on the Akai MPC, April 2024.

Le Corbusier en week-end dans la ville des objets à réaction poétique

Literally a user acceptance test... A bunch of hardware came in, it is literally a sound check and starting to get a feel of the possibilities.... Throw stuff against the wall and see what sticks... Here is your pot pourri - I wonder if anyone will find it palatable, as it goes nowhere fast.

Sequenced on Akai MPC One.

Some drums from Akai's Drumsynth (same "Trance EDM" preset as the Corbusier track), but 90% of the drums on this track are from a Roland TR-8 sequenced from the MPC, including CC to tune each drum... - get your MPC TR-8 MIDI (including CC) configuration with proper names here, made by yours truly: https://github.com/liotier/AkaiMPC/blob/main/MIDI%20programs/TR-8/TR-8.xpm

Opening arpeggio was generated by fooling around with the Launchkey Mini Mk3. It is Hype's "Rich FM" preset, sometimes filtered by the MX-1.

Bass is Mini D's "Mini wood", sometimes filtered by the MX-1.

Pads are Fabric XL's "Winged Flight", gated courtesy of the Roland MX-1's Beat FX.

An unauthorized, yet short, choir voice sample from Lokua Kanza's Mungu, played chromatically and gated courtesy of the Roland MX-1's Beat FX.

Middle arpeggy lead is a Roland TB-3, sampled on the MPC to apply a compressor - it was way too peaky. The TB-3 doesn't take notes from external MIDI - damn.

Some "Slap Bass DI" from Fabric XL, borne from fooling around with I don't remember what feature of the Arturia Keystep 37.

Final digitaley bleeps come from a Roland System-1.

Volume and filtering automated by the MPC sending CC to the MX-1 - get your MPC MX-1 MIDI CC configuration with proper names here, made by yours truly: https://github.com/liotier/AkaiMPC/blob/main/MIDI%20programs/MX-1/MX-1.xpm

Mixed and mastered on the Roland MX-1 (preset 2: Low cut->Enhancer->3 band compressor->Stereo imager->Limiter)

Recorded with Audacity on a Debian host. Fully digital signal path: instrument's USB ports -> MX-1 -> S/PDIF ->  TOSLINK -> USB audio interface... Not having to worry about noise is nice - though carefully setting an output level on the MX-1 remains necessary to maximize volume while avoiding clipping.

User Acceptance Test

This track seems to have disappeared from the web, so here is an upload !

Rage against the Machine - Testify (Beef Theatre RMX)

This gem has entirely disappeared from the web for years, so reupload !

Newborn Division - Hit Me Baby One More Time (Britney Spears cover)

Dance like no one is watching, make noise like no one is listening !

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