"House Sucks" & "Greatest Composer" Released w/ Notes

FroBot - House Sucks (Original Mix) by FroBot

Hey everyone! I released 2 new tracks today! Awwww yea! The first one is called "House Sucks" and is an ironic electro house track. "I hate house music...I hate techno, I hate house, I hate electronica, whatever the FUCK you call it...it SUCKS". What a great line! I actually scarfed this clip from a youtube video -


 Funny hey! I thought you guys would like to know where I am picking up my samples from...and I thought this guy was just perfect. Thanks youtube...and the "I hate techno guy".

Anyway, from a technical stand point, I was trying to do some different things in this track. I was using a much rounder kick and no real bass line for part of it. Hoping to see if I could create a different feel on the dance floor with that little change. That is why the track is short, because its more of a crowd-switcher-upper. Also, I tried doing some weird things with swing placement and clap placement. At the beginning of the track, the claps are not on the 2 & 4...I was just looking for a different kind of swing. I then switch back to the stand 2 & 4 soon after and it makes the swing really heavy. I also tried really taking things off time during the breakdown...and I just kind of triggered in what I wanted. Also, bringing the vocals and kick back in on the 7th beat instead of 8 worked out nicely with the audio samples.

FroBot & Flirtphonic - Greatest Composer (Original Mix) by FroBot

The 2nd track I am releasing is a collaboration I did with a new friend. This is a really cool story. Living in Osaka, Japan...which is right dead-center between Kyoto, Nara, Kobe (and is the 2nd biggest city in Japan)...there are tons of tourist and backpackers who come through. So, as you might guess, my couchsurfing.org account is pretty active. I dont usually have time to host people...but I leave it up there in case any producers or musicians are rolling through. I always have time to make some music with people...and since I have a nice studio here...its nice to collaborate with international musicians. I can usually throw together a drum circle, or sit around and produce...so I leave my account up there stating just that. Anyway, a guy named Jasper (Flirtphonic) messaged me saying he was a dj/producer in South Korea...and we should make some tunes. So, long story short, he came to my place...and we put together this track. It came together in 2 days. It is actually the same track I talk about in one of my youtube tutorials -


 This was a little bit more of an experimental track with some darker sounds. We also used a lot of Nintendo low-fi glitches all during the 2nd half. We really played around with panning, autopan, and removing record quantization. When you put headphones on, the low-fi glitchy sounds want to bounce through your brain. The vocal samples were from some random youtube video which I have since lost...a guy speaking at a music conference. Sounded nice and the audio was already in a HQ format.

If you want to listen to some of "Flirtphonic's" music, his soundcloud is here - FLIRTPHONIC SOUNDCLOUD.

Also...for those of you who have been reading my blog a while...I tossed 1 extra track up that I am not promoting. Its the first track I ever made...so I thought you guys might get a kick out of it. It has a lot of problems...but at least you can see where I came from. You gotta go to my soundcloud account to get it - FroBot SoundCloud.

Anyway, I hope you guys enjoy! I am still working on new tracks now...and each time getting a little bit technically better than before as I learn all this. I am still learning ableton just like the rest of you...and learning what works well on bigger speakers.

The only real problem I am having recently is with producers GAIN SMASHING their tracks just to sell more online. Some people like to smash or over compress so it sounds louder when compared to other tracks. They do this at a cost of removing dynamics from the tracks. I have asked my mastering engineer to slightly gain smash all my tracks....so I can test them in the club and see which sound better. I dont release there, they are just for testing. Obviously, ruining dynamics of a track is not a good thing, and something I dont really want to do...but, I still want to test how the club speakers feel about them. So, my tracks mastered volume sometimes feels a smidge lower than some other producers tracks right now. But since I am not in a huge hurry to SELL to tons of people at the expense of lower sound quality....for the time being, I will just use Tarekith's Guide to Metering idea where checking the average RMS of a track, and bringing other tracks down to that level...then pumping the master volume on the club mixer up....will keep all my tracks at the same volume. This way, I can still get equal volume on MY tracks, without ruining dynamics. I still have a lot of decisions to make later on about this topic.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy! Comment if you feel it! Thanks!

Peace!

FroBot

Make 100's if Sweeps, Risers, Faller, in Minutes in Ableton Live

Today, I am going to tell you a super useful secret to making HUNDREDS of sweeps, risers, and fallers in minutes. I know we have all been there at some point...cant figure out how to make a nice sweep buildup for a track...so we go to google and start downloading sweep samples...only to hear that same sweep in someone elses track. With this little tutorial, we will make hundreds of unique sweeps in a matter of minutes, and be able to launch them in at any time.

A few things to keep in mind for this tutorial. I always use drum racks to organize my samples because I can launch them in with my launchpad. So in this tutorial, you can put as many samples as you like if you are not using a launchpad for previewing. I use 64 to match the launchpad.

OK lets start.

First, toss in an empty drum rack into a blank midi track.


Now, you are going to want to jump into your samples and search for LONG samples. Use the SIZE tab to organize by size. I was using a lot of drone and pad samples, but you can also use long synth sounds, or anything that is long and constant. Start dragging them into a blank audio track (or 10 blank audio tracks like I was doing today...I made over a 600 risers today). On the right, I change the color of the scenes in groups of 64 to make it easier for dragging and dropping into a drum rack when making many.

Now drag the samples from the audio track (or from the browser if you wanna do it one by one) into your drum rack. Again, I do 64 at a time to match my launchpad.

Now, you are going to want to open any of the simplers within the drum rack (I usually do the first one)
Now, what you are going to want to do is click the little button that says PITCH (it will turn yellow).

Now right click it and select "copy to siblings"

Now you want to go to the ATTACK, DECAY, & SUSTAIN PARAMETERS and put them ALL THE WAY TO THE RIGHT SIDE. Each time, also right click and select "copy to siblings". You must do it EACH time on EACH PARAMETER.
Now, the last thing you will want to do is going down to the little box in the bottom right (diagonal the transpose button) that says ENV. Put it all the way up to +48 and also select "copy to siblings"

Now, if you would want your risers to rise less, use a smaller parameter than +48. If you want it to FALL instead of RISE, go to -48 instead of +48.

Now test out a few of them by touching your keyboard or a midi controller. Now you have risers or fallers in all your drum rack. Save your drum rack for later use. WALAH!

Now, if you want to make your own instead of samples, just start making straight sounds out of a synth, save them as audio files, and drop them instead of samples into your drum track.

If you want more dynamics, you can use the filter envelopes, LFOs, etc too.

Nice huh! Easy too! Who would have thought making build ups could be so easy. I love simpler!

Keep makin tunes everyone!

Peace!

FroBot

VIDEO (4 Part) Making a House Track in Ableton Live Tutorial

I have been getting a few request to make a video detailing how I make a track in ableton live. This is a 4 part youtube video (20 mins) explaining the process. Comment if you have questions. Part 4 shows a little bit of my new track. Sorry for the low video quality. My digital camcorder has been broken for a while so I used an old one.







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