Progressive Rock - A Salt of Grain

This forum is for sharing your Reason creations with the rest of the community. If you post a song expecting feedback please take time to leave some for others.
Forum rules
Remember to begin your thread subject with a genre, ie.: (Hiphop) New instrumental
ChulaCoola
Posts: 180
Joined: 25 May 2023
Location: Des Moines, Iowa

Post 21 Oct 2024

I finally finished a new song. The title is a play on a commonly used phrase. :D



I used two instances of Grain, each with a different patch, and a Roland TR303 VST and Subtractor.

This song started out just practicing doing automation on a bunch of synths, and I came up with this. So the original had a lot of automation stuff just to see what I could do, and how to do some new automation things I hadn't done before. So I discarded a lot of that. See if you can identify a few things I did.

Let me know what you think of the volume. I thought it would be louder but once I exported it to audio the volume was reduced some. Not a big deal for me, I just turn it up more.
Music lover/explorer extraordinaire, guitar player fair, and still have my hair at 60.

User avatar
FrankJaeger
Posts: 336
Joined: 17 Jan 2015

Post 23 Oct 2024

I love how good you made something so experimental sound. It just goes to show there are NO RULES in music. If it sounds good, use it.
Also, the volume was fine to me. I didn't need to adjust my playback system or anything. Everything was clear.
Aggro66musiC
My Gear: 2021 Macbook Pro M1/UA Volt 176 Interface/JBL Series 3, 8" Monitors/Nektar Impact LX61+ Keyboard/

ChulaCoola
Posts: 180
Joined: 25 May 2023
Location: Des Moines, Iowa

Post 23 Oct 2024

Thank you FrankJaeger for the comments. I really appreciate it. I put a lot of time into it. And when I thought I had it just right, I inexplicably didn't do anything with it for two days. Then I came back to it, and I found a few mistakes and things I needed to adjust, and when that was done, I uploaded it.
Music lover/explorer extraordinaire, guitar player fair, and still have my hair at 60.

User avatar
WolfZeit
Posts: 180
Joined: 26 Jun 2023

Post 24 Oct 2024

This is cool. The way the sounds come and go feels smooth and organic. The choice of sounds is great. I have yet to really use Grain, were the wavering/tinkling sounds all done via automation in Grain itself? (rather than an outside effect). The David Morales style percussion sits real well with the track.

ChulaCoola
Posts: 180
Joined: 25 May 2023
Location: Des Moines, Iowa

Post 24 Oct 2024

Wolfzeit - Yes, the wavering/tinkling sounds were all in either the Vergon 6 patch or Infinity Cloud using automation. I automated the speed, grain length and cross-fade on the Vergon 6 Grain, and portamento, as well as the oscillator octave. That is the part that sounds like a fog-horn at different octaves. Some of the wavering sound is inherent in the patch/sample.

In fact I used no effects outside those instruments.

The 909 I tried several patches before settling on the first patch. Preset 01 - 001. I made a mistake thinking it was a 303. I selected, and never messed with it afterwards. It was a 909.

Yeah, that wavering sound is pretty cool, but it does make it difficult to put a real melody to it, since you have to predict what it is going to do, which basically, is almost impossible. I might do a 2nd version, a "reprise" of the song so I can put a melody to it. I'll just stop the grain sample while doing a melody, or maybe do some sequencer stuff with it, like maybe in the chorus or something.

When I was first practicing in Grain, I simply hit Automate, and selected a setting, and did that with just about every major setting, and a few minor settings I could find and dumped a bunch of automation tracks in the instruments track sequencer. Then I just automated stuff not to make a song, but to see what I could do.
Music lover/explorer extraordinaire, guitar player fair, and still have my hair at 60.

ChulaCoola
Posts: 180
Joined: 25 May 2023
Location: Des Moines, Iowa

Post 24 Oct 2024

I made a small mistake in my original post: I stated that I used a Roland TR303 VST. It is not a 303 but a Roland 909 VST. Sorry for the misinformation.
ChulaCoola wrote:
21 Oct 2024
I finally finished a new song. The title is a play on a commonly used phrase. :D



I used two instances of Grain, each with a different patch, and a Roland TR303 VST and Subtractor.
Music lover/explorer extraordinaire, guitar player fair, and still have my hair at 60.

User avatar
Last Alternative
Posts: 1372
Joined: 20 Jan 2015
Location: the lost desert

Post 24 Oct 2024

Cool bass line - simple and effective. You’re pretty handy with Grain. You really tricked it out. Cool sounds. There’s plenty going on to keep the listener’s attention. But I wished there was a guitar too 🎸
The outro drums attack got me!
https://lastalternative.bandcamp.com
:reason: 13 | MacBook Pro (16”, 2021), OS Sequoia, M1 Max, 4TB SSD, 64GB RAM | quality instruments & gear

User avatar
WolfZeit
Posts: 180
Joined: 26 Jun 2023

Post 25 Oct 2024

ChulaCoola wrote:
24 Oct 2024
Wolfzeit - Yes, the wavering/tinkling sounds were all in either the Vergon 6 patch or Infinity Cloud using automation. I automated the speed, grain length and cross-fade on the Vergon 6 Grain, and portamento, as well as the oscillator octave. That is the part that sounds like a fog-horn at different octaves. Some of the wavering sound is inherent in the patch/sample.

In fact I used no effects outside those instruments.

The 909 I tried several patches before settling on the first patch. Preset 01 - 001. I made a mistake thinking it was a 303. I selected, and never messed with it afterwards. It was a 909.

Yeah, that wavering sound is pretty cool, but it does make it difficult to put a real melody to it, since you have to predict what it is going to do, which basically, is almost impossible. I might do a 2nd version, a "reprise" of the song so I can put a melody to it. I'll just stop the grain sample while doing a melody, or maybe do some sequencer stuff with it, like maybe in the chorus or something.

When I was first practicing in Grain, I simply hit Automate, and selected a setting, and did that with just about every major setting, and a few minor settings I could find and dumped a bunch of automation tracks in the instruments track sequencer. Then I just automated stuff not to make a song, but to see what I could do.
Cool. What you've done has really worked. You've made me want to dip into Grain. Thanks for the tips to get me started.

ChulaCoola
Posts: 180
Joined: 25 May 2023
Location: Des Moines, Iowa

Post 26 Oct 2024

Last Alternative wrote:
24 Oct 2024
Cool bass line - simple and effective. You’re pretty handy with Grain. You really tricked it out. Cool sounds. There’s plenty going on to keep the listener’s attention. But I wished there was a guitar too 🎸
The outro drums attack got me!
You might get your wish, if I do a reprise of this song. I want to do a melody to this, but the Grain will be done a bit differently, but same sounds.
Music lover/explorer extraordinaire, guitar player fair, and still have my hair at 60.

  • Information
  • Who is online

    Users browsing this forum: CommonCrawl [Bot] and 2 guests