A Drop in the Bucket

I actually worked on music today, how awesome is that? I picked up a nice arpeg in Synth1 and made a simple beat for it. Kick into claps into rolling hats into snares, just basic but building. Then I decided to toss a filter onto the arp and rise it through the intro. It's a nice effect and sounds good so far.

I was listening to some other works on Soundcloud and thought to myself that I should start recording some non-synthetic sounds from my QS. But I was in FL Studio, so I couldn't record from my non-shit soundcard (that's reserved for Ableton!). So I decided to load up my newly acquired E-Mu Proteus VX synth. I had a hell of a time trying to load the presets from that thing, a bad case of read the fucking manual. But once I did get the presets loaded I found another problem. Whenever I press the button to go to the next patch it skips two patches. So it's a complete pain in the ass to audition sounds. I eventually gave up and decided to export the song to Ableton as MIDI. Too bad that didn't work either...

So I got a nice little part going in FL, kinda stuck there at the moment. I went to add a bassline and all my inspiration was apparently gone and it just sounded like ass. I really need to read up on key signitures, harmony and chords. I've heard that dropping a bassline in the key of C sounds like ass when looped over a lead in the key of G or whatever. I'm really not sure what any of that means, even though I have a pretty strong background in music. I was never really taught chords or anything like that in band. Good old monophonic trumpets can't be bothered with that much theory apparently.

So now my task is to read up on music theory. Along with my previous task of organizing my damn sample library. Hopefully I can accomplish something bigger tomorrow. I know I keep saying that, but it's gotta happen one of these days!