Z_tracer (Glitch Electronica)

Another short piece. Real short this time. Seem to have developed loopitis and can’t really finish entire tracks anymore. Ah well. If anyone has any suggestions on where they think the track should develop to next let me know.

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maybe you are focusing on individual sessions for long periods of time lets say (4 bars/8 bars) till you are satisfied with both sound and mixing ??

i like this topic of composition a because i struggle with it a lot in 2017

but as an overall recommendation

  • try to block as much of the arrangement as you can before …commiting to work on an specific part lets say …working on the breakdown of the song or intro (whatever) this is going to let you have a feel for the direction the song may take after each section and also it kinda tells you when to repeat and introduce smaller variations !!

i know youre style is more glitch/experimental influenced so no conventional verse/chorus/bridge …kinda deal is going to apply as easily

but ive noticed that the main part is always the drum work …so try and block setions based on your drumwork and then work the edits and the glitch chops

hope this is somehow helpful to you :slight_smile:

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100% agree with the long sessions. I think it’s actually sound design that’s slowing me down, I spend about 75% of my time or more just creating and editing sounds without actually composing. I actually seem to enjoy it lately more than actual composition weirdly. Like making sound for the sake of sound.

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right at the beginning. arranging is my biggest weakness :innocent:

i like minimal music, and there is the key little variations at the arrangement
the same, minimal variations also exist in commercial pop music, at least for a few world hits.
my bass guitar teacher pointed this out to me

as an an example
sade smooth - operator
the bassline from 10-24 or 1:37-153


it always sounds the same, but it is not
our ears may unconsciously find it interesting, not boring
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@anon81231982, I used to lurk on the forums when I first bought my renoise license 1.9…back then I listened to a lot of the stuff you were doing, ambient drones, soundscapes and textures.
listening to these last few songs, they sound like really professional full songs. Sounds like all the time spent on sound design (drones, textures, soundscapes) really paid off now that you are adding other elements, drums, bass etc…sound cool as fuck. You into granular synthesis quite alot? Sounds cool.

@random, coming to renoise sequencing as a bass player is a good angle to come from…you already understand the main driving forces of a song bass and drum…its true less is more sometimes…no one wants to hear someone solo throughout a whole track…I really want to try sequencing out some reggae guitar tabs into renoise…any idea where I can get hold of good tabs that notate the whole band (guitars 1 and 2, bass and drum, vocals)?

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Thanks mate, appreciate the kind words.

Yeah I like granular a lot, I got some really cool stuff out it but I’ve not been doing much of it in the past few months, though I do wanna get back into it again soon. Lately my workflow is kind of all over the place, but mostly I do a lot of re-sampling. I keep getting loads of different ideas about how to use Renoise in weird ways to mangle and process audio. Then I get stuck into these sessions where I spend like 2-4 hours trying to setup the idea that I have in my head, kind of like patching a modular synth but in Renoise instead so everything is different and I have to figure out workarounds when I get stuck on an idea. Usually I’ll get lost in the “patch” after a while and just save the project file, then sample a load of sounds from it and the use them for future work.

So yeah mostly re-sampling work lately. In the past four weeks I’ve gathered about 3gb of sounds which I’m in the process of chopping up into sample packs. Taking bloody ages.

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there is not much, it bothers me too, especially reggae lives with syncope/off-beat
know only 1 book (not reggae) written for bass and drums. (bass grooves - ed friedland)

best tabs search: (sometimes with drums guitar bass)
https://www.911tabs.com

reggae:
https://www.broz-reggae-tabs.com/tablatures/liste_artiste.php

to play, watch
https://sourceforge.net/projects/tuxguitar/files/TuxGuitar/

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thanks for the links.

I need to find reggae tabs that have the whole band and traditional notation in addition to tab, then I can practise both translating things from the fretboard into renoise and reading traditional notation for rythm, because tab alone doesnt have rythm…

I have an old beatles book of tab, maybe Ill start trying this again with that.

Its tough converting notation to renoise.
I did a guide to it a while back (link below), hopefully its all correct.
If you become a master at it you can watch someone play guitar and just smack it into renoise perfect first time lol.

https://forum.renoise.com/t/traditional-notation-to-renoise-sequence-conversion-guide/48845

don’t not know if you play guitar
notation and tabs are not 100% compatible, because the same note is several times on the fingerboard.
fingering is partly individual

maybe reggae band midi-files? (have some)

I played for a while. It was awesome but then I moved into a flat so now I cant really practise because its just too loud, but yeah, you can play the same note in several places on the fretboard so tab can be easier, you dont have to make a choice about where you can reach to.

@anon81231982, its sounding great…last few tracks were awesome.

lots of resampling. I thought I heard some cool maybe reversed sounds.

Yeah been using reversed stuff alright, mostly as risers. Lots of pitch shifted reversed drum sounds, foley recordings, reverse reverb glitch noises, anything that just makes a cool texture really.

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