Hiatus

I haven’t posted anything here in a couple weeks and I know I have a few followers, so I figured I would post what’s up. I’m having issues right now with my Keyboard and Kindle Fire, so it is hard to write a blog about something I can’t work with. Unfortunately until I can get some new devices (not happening in the immediate future) I will have to put the project on hiatus. Sorry to everyone that has been following the blog, but I will keep it up until I can get it going again. Thanks y’all.

MF DOOM

Yeah, I don’t plan on normally posting youtube videos of music, but I just discovered this piece of gold. If I could make beats like that I would be pretty happy.

In other news, I sampled the percussion from my keyboard but need to finish editing the sound waves. They’ll be up SOON!

Project Clarification

Hey I just wanted to clarify something for everyone. For the work I am currently doing, I am utilizing the Caustic Android app on two platforms. I am currently using it on Android when I am out of the apartment, but when I am in I am using the ported version for Windows.

Why? Well for some reason the keyboard is not connecting properly to my Kindle Fire. I would love to do it all on my Kindle as the pure Android Caustic build is more stable, but for some reason the two devices just don’t agree. Generally I have to press 2 keys at the same time for the tablet to register any Midi signals. When it does register one key at a time, the notes won’t turn off.

I am hoping this issue will be solved when I get my new tablet, but in the meantime I can’t honestly say if cheap keyboards with cheap Midi adapters work on tablets. Researching the subject I found that Midi keyboards need to have “standard midi interface” meaning they don’t require additional drivers for windows.

I am going to try and make it to a local music shop to try out some “completely compliant” keyboards with my Kindle. Hopefully that will narrow down whether it’s my tablet or the keyboard.

Caustic Update

Cool news for us newbie mobile producers and experienced mobile producers alike! It loos like Caustic 2 is being upgraded to Caustic 3.0! Having a look at the coming updates there are going to be some very major changes. Extra machines for us to learn and utilize, new effects and what I am most excited about, additional machine slots.

Hopefully I will be able to get my hands on an early alpha release so I can learn how to use these new features before launch! Stay tuned in coming weeks for new information. In the meantime visit http://www.singlecellsoftware.com/node/1692?page=1 and keep in mind that all the content is subject to change, as this is still far from release.

In other news I am going to work on getting some more Casio samples up today. I figure it’s about time to get the drums going as I would like to use some of the sounds.

Also here is a sample of an experimental kind of ambient dance track I am working on. I don’t really have any structure for it and like the piano track I posted last week I still don’t have too much vision for it yet.

I am interested in how people that read my blog figure out how to build there music past an intro and verse? It’s like writing a paper and running out of material.

 

Perseverance and Experimentation

On both of my recent experimental tracks I have been fairly stuck. Luckily, tonight I think I have figured out how to subside that issue (at least to a point). For the most part I just start loading samples and presets into the the machines and start hitting keys until I find something that works.

Although, for that track with the piano in it, it’s just been a matter of getting over the laziness to compose the next part. Still haven’t done that, haha. So yeah, heads up, if you’re stuck just try random sounds and eventually you’ll find something to work with.

All text post, but hopefully a little inspiration for others in my situation.

Oscillation

Always seeing Oscillator dials in Virtual Machines I think it’s important to understand just what Oscillation is. This video gives you the big picture. Also I started another track, so I am bouncing between them when I can find the time. I’ll try to have some progress posted within the week.

Subsynth Preset

Took the wife out shopping last night and had some time to mess around with the Subsynth in Caustic 2. I need to go over the tutorials again, but I ended up making a cool wobble that would sound good for a dance song intro. Feel free to download it and have a look.

INTRO_WOBBLE[1].subsynth

Also

Second Track

Started working on another project last night. I’ve given up on chopping track samples for now, but will come back to it eventually. Anyway for those that are interested in the process I took to get the bare bones of what I have now, here it is.

First I decided on a lead instrument. As mentioned I am doing some online piano lessons and decided to use a nice piano PCMSynth preset from the Single Cell Software forums. I then hooked up my Midi Keyboard and started playing random notes and chords in different octaves until I found combinations that sounded interesting. I would then click the triggers to input the notes into Caustic. If a note didn’t sound right I would delete the trigger, then use the keyboard to sound out different notes in it’s place in real time.

Following finding a nice melody, I added a simple beat with beat box just to get a better feel of what I was working with.

Of course this is far from over. Right now it is just the beginning Piano lead and one beat box pattern. Eventually I will add more instrumewnts, FX etc.

I think it already sounds 100% better than the final product of my first track.

First PCMSynth Preset

I said I would have at least a preset up for peeps today, so here it is. The sample I used is from the tone bank on my Casio. I was flipping through it looking for sounds for future projects and thought that this sounded fairly unique. Also the scratching sound from my headphone jack seems to disappear as tones are transmitted, so it came out fairly clean.

To add this to your preset archive copy the .pcmsynth file into the pcmsynth preset folder. You will need a file explorer to do this and I would recommend looking up the app “ES File Explorer” on Google Play. Enjoy.

CASIO VOICE BS.PCMSYNTH

I will also have a new page archiving samples as I make them soon.

Get Midi

Wow… I have to say that the wait for converter cable has been totally worth it. I finally hooked the keyboard up to Caustic 2 today and even without the ability to record live, being able to test different keys out in real time is so nice. Even with the latency on most devices, having the ability to at least sound things out in real time streamlines the production process a LOT!

In other news, i’m going to try to make some presets for Caustic today out of samples from my Casio. Unfortunately there is an ungodly hissing sound coming out of the headphone jack, which is the only sound out. Going to try it anyway, the presets may only be good for super LoFi projects. We’ll see, I should have some up tomorrow.