I like sharing what I use to make these noises because I appreciate when others have shared their VSTi's (Virtual Studio Technology Instruments). These are all free and I've added the links so you can download them yourself - if this is your bag. I used these in making 'Underwater':
I finally was able to finish off two (mainly) electronic tunes this past week. I had started them in May and July 2016 and they had been sitting on my computer unfinished up until now (October 2016).
The tune 'Hopeful' came out sort of accidentally as a by product of me uploading a a few guitar loops for others to use at the site http://www.looperman.com/ . Because I have an uneasy sense of rhythm I depend on drum loops or drum machines heavily, so I have been extracting drum loops from this site for a number of years now. Though sometimes I do program my own beats, more often than not I use loops and layer them.
Anyway, I thought it was about time I paid pack the site with loops that others could use and so I uploaded a small number.
I had a thought that it might be cool then to use some of these guitar loops and make a song out of them.
As usual with me, whatever starts an idea for a tune often gets lost on the way and I ended up using about three loops and the rest was made up by my own playing and a few more audio loops from the fine people on http://www.looperman.com/. Somewhere along the way because I usually listen to dance music when I'm driving the car (mainly from http://fresh927.com.au/) I thought it might be fun to attempt a house-sort-of tune. The end result is 'Hopeful which is more a 1990's dance-ish style':
And here is a blurry video of how I put it together
The tune 'Underwater' really started with playing with an original 1980's Casio MT 70 keyboard that my dad bought brand new back when we were young-er.
It looked like this when it was new:
Somehow I eventually inherited it and it's sat in a few different sheds and houses along the way. I was playing with the very basic sequencer on it - I think it was after listening to Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon album with the use of a basic sequencer on the track 'On the Run'. I get easily inspired and so I programed in a basic pattern on the keyboard and that was beginning of the tune.
The next inspiration was a routine rental house inspection. I always load up my mp3 player with music to keep me going with the preparation. This time around I had collected a few Chemical Brothers albums from a second hand shop, also an earlier work from BT and The Prodigy's Fat of the Land.
I have no idea how they get such fat sounds but with my vintage computer and bits and pieces I tried to make a track with a little more muscle using mostly electronics. I did play live bass on the track because it needed more live grunt.
I have finally placed a lot of my instrumental music on the site 'Bandcamp': you can name your price or download it for free - here are the instructions:
Click on the artist Tim Oestmann and you'll come up with the page "Seabird" if you choose to download all songs (just know there are 57 tunes up there, so it might take a while)then click on"Buy Now" tab - this is for the all the tunes at once:
You still have the choice of donate or free download, it ain't over yet
to "name your price"put a price/donation of your choice in the box and follow the prompts until you get the download. If you have any problems please let me know.
....OR....
To get all of it for free just write a zero (0) in the Name Your Price boxand it should let you downloadall of it. (Please contact me if you have any trouble)
(4)
To download single tracks only (i.e.not all of it), click on the blue name of the track and it will take you to this page where you either "name a price" or put in a Zero (0) for free download:
Let me know if you need further instructions via the links or the "contact" page
"Hipsters Day Off" - well the title is because I couldn't think of a title and I was hanging around 'hipster bars' for my daughters birthday on a long weekend. It was a working title and I couldn't think of anything better and it seemed to fit. So there it is. I actually don't mind hipsters, they remind me of myself when I was a young 'un.
Anyways...if you go to my Yoooooo Tooooob channel, you'll see this.
I first made the song by playing acoustic guitar to a click track of 160 Beats per minute and I based the whole tune around that:
I worked on it on and off in between some very stressful weeks (as we all have in our lives from time to time).
I based it on these instruments:
Mandolin...actually it is a Bandolim...but that is another story...same tuning though...
Geeeeetars...though the Bass guitar.... is the one that gets most of the limelight on this track - the others are very subtle and you can hardly hear the, as I wanted it to mainly acoustic.
Recorder - yes, I originally used a school quality recorder. It sounded as bad as those horrible school recorder concerts we were forced to sit through and be traumatized for life. My dreams of playing a recorder on track were simply dashed on playback. It sounded like a dog howling, a cat in a blender. wolves during mating season. It was horrible. I felt sad. Very sad. So I went back to one of my favourite VSTi's and gladly compromised my art to save your precious ears and used the Meltron flute VSTi instead:
I did however play a real live Harmonica - I wanted it to sound folky with a bit of the old Beatles echo on it, so I stacked on the reverb but harped on in real life, sticking only to the notes that wailed in key. I distorted it a little too to give it more muscle:
My original goal was to restrict myself to a totally acoustic song using acoustic instruments - kind of like the Irish-folksy stuff that was around a few years back. What I found was that:
(a) My sense of timing is still crappy
(b) My acoustic instruments at home are badly out of tune with each other
So I kept working on it until it sounded like a aural form of hugging the ceramic throne after an excessive night out. It sounded horrible and so I left it for a while.
I tried to salvage it by hitting anything I could - including this practice drum pad which I actually kept on the recording in the second half.
If you listen carefully, you can also hear my hand claps - which are vaguely in time but not exactly - here is a picture of just one of my hands clapping in a non-Zen pose:
I also played our out-of-tune piano to try and give it some more 'acoustic' feel and you can hear it in the background.
Though the song sounds simple, I actually reworked it multiple times and here are the three DVD disks full of WAV files full of all the efforts and false starts. If you were one of the five people who listened to my first soundcloud upload of the song - thank you - I took it down again and reworked it until I thought I had better stop before going completely bonkers:
So here are the final tracks - the one called 'filler' is actually a combination of bounced down tracks from the previous efforts. The Drums were an on board loop from Sonar LE. Percussion was all live in my front room with natural reverb.
The clip itself is my usual patchwork style- again it looks quick but some parts took me a long time to layer. These are only just a few of the files:
I like reading how other people write music so I'm showing here how how put this song together...
Origin
I damaged the tendons in my knee
so I sat on the couch reading Peter Garrett's biography with a bag of frozen peas on my knee
and I found that listening to SBS Chill radio station didn't distract me from reading
I'm not a big fan of chill music but it worked for me while reading and sitting on the couch and so I started to get ideas in my head about trying something 'chill' like. So I found a few drum loops on Looperman at 130bpm and put them on one of my computers I use to make music
Around the same time, I'd picked up Prodigy's "Fat of the Land" and it reminded me of the big beat sound I used to like.
So, I thought I'd try and make a chill tune with a bigger sound - so a compromise. I'm not getting paid or commissioned -so why not?!
Making the tune
I put the drum beats through LMMS sequencer and worked on a piano roll pattern that I thought fitted in with the beat. I did each of these notes one by one (with a bit of cut and paste) - so I'm making this picture larger because I put a lot of work into it! It is in A minor 7 ....I think.....
Once I got beat and the pattern going I left it for a day or two.
When I came back I tried different chords on my midi controller keyboard until I found a pattern I liked.
I started to build the background of the song up using drum loops and synth sounds on LMMS
I saved everything as WAV files and transferred to another computer I use into SONAR LE a Digital Audio Workstation and worked on refining it for a whole day
Something wasn't sounding right the whole time until I realized it needed more 'human' instrumentation - and so I wiped a lot of the electronic bass sounds and brought in my own four stringed Suzuki Bass and just played it over driven...it made a difference straight away.
Eventually I double tracked the lead guitar and refined and added an effect or two along the way to bring out the different bits.
Watch the video here - most of the clips were public domain or creative commons - I didn't want it to be too serious. Music is a gift. Enjoy.
Here's some of the computer tools I use to make electronic backing / loops:
I had been using instrument samples and looping them through Cakewalk Studio program for a fair while manually. A few years back I came across the wonderful invention of 'Virtual Instrument Technology' which opened up a world to synths and 'natural' instruments. These gave opportunity for me to find and use sounds I could hear in my head but couldn't frustratingly put down through normal recording. Not only that, many kind people who invented these have given them out for free over the 'net, so being on a strict home budget where feeding the family comes first; I've been very grateful to have access to them.
A few years back an enigmatic software designer from the Netherlands named Bram Bos made a few great pieces of music sequencing software which I have used in much of my music. 'Tunafish' become my favourite because it was so well set out. Here are a few screen shots:
Drum track (photo)
Keyboard tracks (photo) with the option of using samplers or Vstis
So I would work out the chords and song on guitar and then spend hours working with what sort of backing track using this program and Cakewalk/Sonar LE (Digital Audio Workstation).
Bram Bos (maker of Tunafish) vanished off the net a few years ago and
his website went with him (to do more important things, I imagine) but I
have a debt of gratitude for his work in making simple sequencers which
were essential for me as a guitar player to make the backing music.
After getting Sonar LE, I found how to use VSTis fairly quickly and went for it.
Here is a more experimental tune I used guitar, sound samples, drum loops and VSTis to make. I specifically made this particular film clip (just using Microsoft Movie Maker) to show all the different VSTis as an example for a friend. As the clip goes along, I point out what I am using to make a particular sound. The majority of the VSTis are being used through Sonar LE which I used to make the song in this clip:
I also made this clip for a friend showing a more 'orchestrated' use for VSTis:
Some paid many free great sounding instruments at DSK
And there are more of course...
I'm now experimenting with LMMS after not liking it earlier - they have updated it to a better quality free sequencer. More on LMMS later if it turns out as good as it is looking for basic home sequencing.
