Creating Original Sounds

[A DJ]

there are literally thousands of presets out there .. so many, that can be combined in so many infinite combinations ,,,

that nobody - other than the most anal retentive geek locked away in a basement somewhere* .. will ever know or recognize it.

is a guitar or a drumkit or a cello or a flute only good for one song, then we throw it away? no. same instruments, used over and over, to express a song.

only thing that matters is your song, how appropriate the sounds are for that song, and how well they are put together and arranged. how you get them doesnt really matter.

sometimes its the people that spend most of thier time engineering unique sounds from the ground up, that are making the stuff that is the least musical .. imo ...

it was the same thing with guitar players that were obssessed with playing a million notes fast at the expense of any song structure that had any impact. they more were concerned with impressing with technical skill, that they were creating music that worked.

that said - its amazing what you can do with a preset on a synth, a few tweaks on standard controls, some automation, chained through a third party effect (using tweaked presets as well), bounced to audio, then manipulated on the live grid.

you would never know where it came from in a million years and if it fits your song perfectly, thats all that matters ...

*oh wait .. thats most of the Live forum .. er ... ok yeah, start with a square wav, route it through a 6 pole filter and devise a recursive arpeggiated onomicron. and thats just for your hihat
.

hahahahha n1

nicely put

[Timmy Diamond]

I totally agree with what montrealbreaks is saying. I come from a hardware background where a new piece of kit would come along once a year (If I was lucky!). That intensive usage not only teaches you how to create the sound you want straight away but also how to get a whole other palette of sounds.

You know what it's like as you tweak away and something sounds interesting and it takes you off in a different direction from where you want to go. Well, save that sound for a rainy day. If it was interesting enough to distract you from what you were trying to achieve, there's probably something in it that you should explore further.

And once you know how to use one bit of kit, it suggests ways of using new kit. And when you've spent time with that new bit of kit, you can take what you've learnt back to your original. And on and on.

[muthafunka]

getting twatted and pissing around is good too.

Beautifully put sir!

For creating new sounds resampling plus some plugins is your friend. Fire up some synths or loops you have, stack some heinous, random plugins on the end, start resampling and just get stone crazy on those plugs. 10mins to an hour later I guarantee you've got some great new beats to use as loops, hits to use in Impulse and textures to drop and play in Simpler. Pedalling away on some guitar effects ain't a bad idea either!
Funnily enough been doing a lot of this kind of thing myself too recently and REALLY enjoying Live more than ever. Writing 'tracks' is great and all but sometimes I love just freaking myself out with amazing sounds for an hour or two, be they part of a track or not and it's always inspiring the next time you do start on a track.