Bobby Konders, the Burrell Bros, Frankie Bones, Lenny Dee, Masters At Work, N.Y, Housin’ Authority, Aphrodisiac – the list goes on.
Arguably in the conversation with the ultra elite of House music record labels, Nu Groove helped blaze the way for NY labels.
Take a step back in time and find out more in this short video.
“Kenny Dixon Jr., AKA Moodymann, is one of the most enigmatic and charismatic figures in house music. Despite his refusal to give interviews and play the press-and-promo game, Dixon Jr.’s voice has been clearly amongst the loudest when it comes to preserving the rich heritage of Afro-American music while fighting the industry powers that be. Blessed with an immaculate way of sampling, he takes stems from blues and soul and respectfully takes them to the next level. From his dark and dusty deep house tunes on Peacefrog, Planet E and his own KDJ label, to R&B-drenched outings on the Mahogani Music imprint, Moodymann’s fingerprint is unmistakable.”
Did you know that the Novation Zero SL MK2 comes with built-in templates for editing TX81Z preset parameters via MIDI CC?
Neither did I, until I started searching for editors for my recently acquired Yamaha TX81Z synth.
If you’re unfamiliar, it’s a classic FM synth with some classic presets, including the legendary Lately Bass.
Unfortunately, despite it having a great selection of presets, it’s notoriously difficult to edit them. Editing presets requires some serious menu-diving and button pushing, and it’s enough of a hassle to really put a damper on creativity when trying to modify presets. For this reason, despite it being a true Techno and House classic synth, they aren’t pricy.
BUT – if you have a decent way to edit the presets, it becomes a great (cheap) addition to your studio. So – I picked one up and went on a search for a decent editor. There are some software editors that work well and can be quickly found on the web – but I was hoping to find something that would allow me to easily edit patches with a hardware interface via MIDI CC.
It turns out, that I had one sitting in my studio. The Novation Zero SL MK2 comes bundled with a template for the TX81Z that makes tweaking parameters on the synth MUCH easier. Combined with a macro on my Maschine that I have set to select presets (again by MIDI CC), I’ve discovered a great way to make more of this great synth!
Interested? Find out more about it, in this quick video.
“Grass Roots House“ is a project I’ve recently been working on for sample label Niche Audio, creating 15 kits inspired by my love of the classic raw House sound of the early 90s coming out of Chicago & Detroit.
It is out now and available as Maschine and Ableton Live kits, plus additional formats.
For many, the early 90s is considered a golden-era for dance music, paralleling a similar time for Hip Hop. The discussion of WHY music from this era has such long-lasting appeal ultimately comes back to a certain “sound” that fans of the era love and modern producers often try to emulate.
So – what exactly IS behind this sound? I’ve touched on some of these things in previous posts, but to summarize it again here, one of the most popular sounds in dance music has roots in healthy doses of analog noise, and production techniques guided by simplicity and limitation.
An excellent example of this simplicity in the studio setups of the era is Larry Heard’s gear used in the production of the now anthemic “Can You Feel It”. He described his setup in creating the track as follows :
“I used a Roland Juno-60 and a TR-909 drum machine. That’s all the gear used on the song,” he says. “I had two cassette decks—there were no digital recorders or even multi-track recorders—and I did one take, one pass, on one tape, then ran it back to the other one, played some other parts by hand that I wanted to add, and that was pretty much the recording process. It wasn’t exactly the Beatles.”
Of course, not all producers at the time used such limited studios, and, in fact, the photo here (taken circa 1997) shows that Larry Heard did around that time have more gear at his disposal. Nevertheless, it’s sure that most producers at the time would have been operating with relatively limited setups that would be based on the following:
Of course, with limited access to gear, the sampler was a go-to alternative. If you needed a sound, and didn’t have it, you could find it (or something similar) in a record and sample it. The prevalence of vinyl in many homes at the time meant that sampling inspiration from a family or friends’ collection was usually close at hand.
Similarly, if you didn’t have a piece of gear, but a friend did, a few days sampling up their synth could be the answer. Gear trading for this reason, was not uncommon.
One thing worth noting, and an important aspect of the golden era sound, is that samplers of the era had much lower sampling resolution, and often led to noticeable artifacts. The sampler, in this way, colored the sounds and unlike the ultra-clean high-resolution samplers of today never created a facsimile of the material. In addition, very limited sampling time (memory) necessitated unique sampling techniques that further colored the sound.
A bi-product of the heavy use of often crackly vinyl for samples, sampling hardware through noisy mixing desks & FX units powered by often buzzy home power outlets, and lower sampling resolution is that samples of the era were often aliased and DIRTY.
If you then throw in the fact that people often RE-sampled sounds that had originally come from samples themselves, the noise and aliasing are compounded.
In isolation, these sounds are noticeably noisy. However, with creative filtering and EQ and placed with other sounds, the obvious noise is heavily reduced and for many becomes a pleasant character of the era. Truthfully, the 90s sound is DIRTY.
I came up in the golden-era of House & Hip Hop and for many like me all of the above are recipes for true UNDERGROUND music. It’s dirty, not glossy. It’s rough around the edges. It relies on vibe, not complicated or high-end production tools. It’s not for everyone. It bangs.
I started Grass Roots Records back in ’92 with this sound coursing in my veins, and I hope I’ve transferred some of that vibe to the “Grass Roots House” pack. Enjoy!
In creating Grass Roots House the following was used:
RoughNReady” Tracks are just that. Ideas in the studio that I’ve bounced down – no real sequencing, just on the fly mixing, manual fades etc.
Patches on the hardware were not saved, so these are literally one-offs, never to be repeated. These are some of them that I think captured a certain vibe worth sharing.
Download these for free if you like, but please sign up to my mailing list
I’ll use it to let you know of releases. Some of these rough edits may be turned into more developed ideas.
I hope you enjoy the rough n’ ready vibe!
Vintage House Chords | Pads & Stabs
Vintage House Chords is a collection of lush one-shot chords full of unique character and vintage vibes. Each one shot is a combination of minor 9th chords played through a selection of instruments that helped define the classic sound of House & Techno – the Juno 106, TX81Z, Korg M1, MK2 & Nord Lead. For additional authenticity, each combination of chords was then sampled into the Ensoniq ASR-10 for additional crunch and character.
I hope you enjoy this free download and that the one-shot chords bring you plenty of inspiration.
True to the roots of early sampling, the one-shots were sampled as mono files (a technique that is commonplace in classic House, Hip Hop & Techno from the golden era, and a “secret weapon” of many modern producers.) (Tip : pan the mono one-shots hard left and hard right and send both to a stereo reverb for a huge/wide sound with the presence and control that only a mono file brings to your mix!)
To ensure maximum flexibility, the vast majority of these chords have been sampled without heavy use of additional effects. (As these are stacked sounds, even without effects, they are full of character and change subtely as each of the stacked elements evolves.) Care has been taken to give each combination a character that comes to life in YOUR sampler of choice : simply apply your sampler’s modulation effects, alter the ADSR, and/or process with additional effects and you will find a treasure trove of sounds that can be completely YOU.
I love lush pads, but who doesn’t love a great chord stab? For additional flexibility, the majority of the chords in this pack have been layered with a nice percussive element at the beginning of the sample. You’ll find that these chords, therefore, work great as deep pads and ALSO as punchy percussive stabs. (Tip : adjust the attack on each chord to remove the percussive element, if you wish).
With Vintage House Chords, I hope I’ve created a pallette that creative producers will be happy to return to again and again. Each chord will add vintage character to your music as is, but the magic happens when you use this content in your own way. If you’re a lover of labels like Serious Grooves, KMS, Sistrum, M&S, Moods & Grooves, Sound Signature, Balance, Nite Grooves, Trackmode, Soundstream etc, – or simply a fan of proper deep House, Hip Hop or Techno – I think you’ll enjoy these chords!
The rise of “in the box” production has advanced many aspects of music production, and in the process brought the possibility of producing music at a high level to the masses. I’m a big fan of the modern DAW and the amazing software that is currently available to both bedroom producers and pros alike.
That said, I am still a fan of some more “archaic” formats, such as MIDI and Sysex, and I sometimes regret the fact that very new producers will probably never know how powerful a deeper understanding of these technologies can be in a creative context.
One of these vintage tools is the trigger or gate signal. These were generally pre-MIDI and essentially were a voltage signal that could be output from a hardware device. These signals would be sent to other hardware devices as a way of synchronizing playback of the various devices.
An extension of this was that these signals could be used to advance a sequenced set of notes by one note in a sequencer with each trigger that the sequencer received.
The classic Roland drum machines included a trigger out that was associated with the Rim Shot as in the image of the TR-909 here.
So, a technique would be to program in a series of notes on something like the Juno 60 or SH-101 and then program in a rhythm pattern using the Rim Shot on the drum machine. With each trigger from the drum machine, the synth would step to the next note in the sequence, and once it reached the end of the sequence, begin again.
The result is that a producer could create an interesting progression of notes on the synth by simply manipulating the pattern of the Rim Shot trigger notes on the drum machine (these could be muted and still trigger the sequencer, so it was a matter of taste if they were actually heard or not). In fact, it is believed that one of the most famous bass lines in dance music was created this way by Larry Heard when he created “Can You Feel It”. Synthmania have kindly demonstrated how he would have done this with this nice video.
But what about the modern “in the box” producer? I was interested in finding out how a producer without a hardware sequencer or drum machine might be able to replicate this process. Fortunately, someone has kindly developed a great Max4Live plugin for Ableton Live users and it’s free! (I am hopeful that for those of you who aren’t using Ableton you will be able to find a similar type of plugin for your platform).
I’ve done a quick video demonstrating how this great free plugin called Live.Stepper can be used to emulate the classic trigger / gate sequencer technique below. My take – this is a great free plugin and it plugs a gap that exists. Kudos!
I hope some of you enjoy exploring this classic technique and come up with some great patterns!
If you’re using Native Instruments Maschine and Ableton Live, you may have struggled with a common question: what’s the best way to integrate the two?
Or, put another way, how can you make the most of Maschines’ intuitive hands-on hardware, and maximize the sequencing and arrangement features of Live?
I’ve been around the block on this question more than a few times and spent hours testing and revising different scenarios. In the end, I’ve ended up with what I think is the best way to integrate the two, leaving maximum flexibility and accommodating different workflows.
The answer, for me, is a template that routes each of Maschines’ 8 groups to 8 individual tracks in Ableton Live.
For maximum flexibility, the Ableton Live tracks are set up as external instruments, meaning you can not only route & record audio from each Maschine group into the individual Ableton tracks, but you can also record MIDI output from Maschine if you wish.
So, if you like to take advantage of Ableton’s excellent sequencing, mixing and processing features and essentially use Maschine as your sampler, this works well.
OR, if you are one who prefers to do all of your sequencing, mixing & processing work inside of Maschine you can. A nice advantage is that you can still use some of Live’s proprietary effects racks, MIDI effects etc by placing them on the relevant Ableton tracks.
NOTES:
*The first Maschine group in the template is for drums. Utilize Maschines’ dedicated mixer to pan and mix levels, and then bring the audio into Ableton as summed audio.
**When changing the sample on any Maschine pad don’t hit “reset”! It will also clear the routing. Instead, just drag a new sample onto any pad to replace it.
***This template requires Ableton Live 9 or later and Maschine 2.7.8 or later.
****Feel free to update the name of each group in the template if you wish. I’ve just named them in a way that works for me.
Download the Ableton with Maschine Template and enjoy!
These days, most plugins come in both AU and VST format, and Macintosh (at least up to OSX) continues to support both formats.
When installing on a Mac, many users go with the default AU version all the time. But, does it matter? In fact, due to the way AU and VST plugins behave the answer is sometimes yes. Let’s examine why and when it matters.
VST plugins handle MIDI output very differently than AU plugins. More specifically, VST plugins have the capability of sending out MIDI signals (if they are programmed to do so by the plugin designer) and AU plugins do not. (At least that’s my experience)
This is WHY it does make a difference which version you choose.
That is the question! If you can imagine an instance in which you would like to have your plugin act like a traditional external hardware instrument and be able to transmit a signal out, you should choose the VST version. This is WHEN it matters what type of plugin format you choose.
Think about the types of instruments that would traditionally have this capability – drum machines, synths & certain types of effects modules that use MIDI triggers (like arpeggiators or chord generators) quickly come to mind.
So, when installing plugins like this, ask yourself a quick question: do I want to be able to trigger other devices with the output of this plugin? If the answer is yes, and the plugin includes a VST version that is capable of transmitting MIDI, install it.
One prime example of just how much better VST use can be over an AU version is Plugin Boutique’s excellent Scaler plugin. When using the AU version, you are not able to trigger external plugins with it. This means that when you find a selection of chords you like, you have to manually drag the MIDI files into a channel you want to trigger and then manually edit the length of your chords to play a pattern.
With the VST version, you can just set it to trigger an external plugin and whatever you play is recorded, as you played it, into the external plugin track. This video demonstrates the process:
Below are a couple of additional examples I’ve created that demonstrate how useful VST MIDI output can be (using D16 Group’s excellent TR909 and TB303 emulations) Drumazon and Phoscyon.
In the end, it all depends on what you want from a plugin. From my perspective, VST still has some unique advantages.
16-pads | Underground Music Production & Culture. 