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How Fugue Machine Turned Me Into a Composer in Seven Days
Seven days ago I was just a guitarist who had written a few songs over the years: some good ones but nothing of great import. Four days ago I was googling the difference between and violin and a viola. As of today I've fulfilled a lifetime ambition of becoming a composer and anyone can check my soundcloud to hear the evidence.
The Evidence
The Story
It all started back in October when I read about Fugue Machine on here. I immediately downloaded the app and started to attempt to realise my dreams of apeing the giants of Italian Baroque (Correlli FTW). I found that FM works very well when allowed to stay within it's own constraints but when you want to actually compose deliberately, things can get rather difficult.
I bodged together a version of the riff from Last Of The Mohicans (the chords are Dm C F btw: try 'em they are great and actually date back centuries under the name "folia") and found that it couldn't be transposed effectively as the app doesn't rearrange the notes for minimal movement the way a composer would. But when limitation strikes, inspiration fires!
When I messed with the length of the riff I found a more handy groove in 6/8 time which immediately said to me: "MIXOLYD: YOU WILL SERVE ME AND WE WILL MELT FACES TOGETHER". It transposed into a few other (nearby) interval positions rather beautifully and I knew I was onto something: the pact was made.
But there was another problem...
I suffer from a condition that results in killer headaches if I use screens etc for too long and I had to leave the wonderful Fugue Machine alone for a long period (ie weeks) to settle things down again. Don't fear: I wrote my plans down in several pages of immaculate "Standard Notation", as can be seen in the soundcloud pic.
Months Go By
And I had all but forgotten the extravagant plans I'd made with the spirit of a particularly sweet groove as life took its usual toll, until one day I checked this place to see that @Alexandernaut was allowing us proles to take part in a beta test of a Fugue Machine with MULTIPLE PLAYHEADS! This meant that parts could be created separately for later combining: just as Bach or Thomas Tallis might have done on their Macbook.
The Game Is Afoot
So how to go about this? The idea was to use FM as a generator for complex, groovy little snippets based on chords, these could then be assembled in a DAW of some kind into a grand scheme which would eventually apply the requisite heat to faces.
After a few false starts and failures, a successful formula was found:
Fugue Machine>Studiomux>WIndows PC>Ableton Live
This meant that ableton link could be used for the (very few) 4/4 sections. FM and ableton didn't agree at all regarding the tempo of 6/8 but syncing manually then realigning later was a grubby task well worth doing. 120bpm maps to 90 btw.
By shortening the riff and moving the odd note I could get whatever I needed from FM. If I came up with a part on the guitar, or just decided to try X or Y chord progression it was a simple thing to line up the required notes: one triad pattern could be transposed to provide arps for each of the seven diatonic intervals. And they'd all be beautifully varied: I pretty much kept the same playhead setting most of the time, and getting all of my material from essentially the one simple theme meant that everything just seemed to be tonally consistent.
As for chords outside the seven - like the Eb Major and A Major chords in the slightly evil sounding section - could be found easily by just changing the scale type (from aeolian to ionian) and key.
To be honest the whole FM side of things went a treat. The huge, massive, giant sea of work I had to wade through was in actually lining everything up and orchestrating it in ableton. I had intended to use synths but I just could find any soft synth sounds that fit. In retrospect a symphonic or classical treatment was obvious given that the instruments of classical music are developed from the same principles that are at work in FM.
My god orchestrating i.e. arranging, making things sound good is complicated when you've never done it before. But so satisfying.
I'm really, really tired now (it's 7am and I've been up all night working on this, again) so I'm gonna call it quits here.
If you have questions about the technicalities of this project then let me know. Also if you have question about the composition side: my harmonic knowledge is surprisingly good for reasons we can get into another time, so I can explain what's going on throughout the track if you're interested.
@JohnnyGoodyear I told you I'd make a tiny bit of extra effort didn't I?
@alexandernaut You've changed my life: thanks.
Oh yeah , please like/sub my soundcloud if you dig it. I'm totally blown away by this thing that the groove and I have made and I'd love it if lots of other people would love it too.
Comments
@mixolyd - I enjoyed your composition and, perhaps even more so, your story. I'm glad you got to cross this off your list. Will we hear the rest of this symphony in the future. I hope so and I look forward to it.
Great story and track - inspiring indeed
Man, that track sounded wonderful, especially if you have never done something like that before! And thanks for sharing the process too. Color me impressed!
Great back story! Love the arrangement and sounds of the strings but I think the drums could be a tad lower in the mix but very impressive!
Thank you for writing this out. I'm enjoying the piece as I read.
Great piece. Very cinematic. Thanks for sharing your story
Fantastic! Really enjoyed that... Thanks for sharing!
Excellent, just wonderful. Very inspired by your account...
Awesome track and such a wonderful story! Thank you for taking us on your journey!
Fantastic track! As a guitarist myself, I will join you in saying that iOS music has absolutely changed my life. I'm composing and recording things I never thought possible. It's a good time to be alive.
@mixolyd BRAVO!
Good piece, great story, beyond inspiring.
Being a pain in the arse I would also be interested in a variant without drums, but that to one side, I am feeling fully Mohican-ey (technical term) about now...serious congrats, but, inevitably: What's next?
Some nice stuff, but I agree that the drums aren't sitting right in the mix and it would be better if the drums sounded more like they are in the same space as the orchestra. In a real orchestra the percussion section is in the back and should sound more distant. Also, the ending seems to feel unresolved like the final note is missing (to my ear that note/chord should be the tonic), but maybe that was intended.
@MrNezumi @Jose_Bee @philw @dokwok @ecamburn @lukesleepwalker @Vorgon @TGiG @Seangarland
Oh boy, lots of great comments here: thanks very much people! I think there's something very special about the combination of slippery, fugueish arrangement with more modern songwriting (i.e. a bunch of chords) so it's great to hear that other people are enjoying this music and that I'm not mad after all.
@AlterEgo_UK @Lady_App_titude
Yes well spotted, there is indeed an issue or ten with the drums. I had noticed that they were too far forward in the mix (they're just random rock drum samples as I didn't have access to anything more suitable at first) and tried a VST called Proximity which is supposed to emulate distance. I didn't get the desired result (my fault, not the effect) and in doing so I also lost my carefully set levels for the drums and failed to check them later: so the drums are both too far forward and too loud.
@Lady_App_titude
I'm glad that someone has noted the trick ending, though I'm a little miffed that you would think I'd have done so by accident after hearing what went before!
Your ears aren't fooling you: the second last chord is the tonic (Dm) and the held melody note is the third (F sharp). This makes for a "soft" ending, allowing me just enough leeway to pull the rug out from the listener by then shifting the melody note to an outside note before changing the chord to the 5th (and as major no less for extra shock value). This gives a feeling that something is about to happen, or that the story has only just begun...
If you listen again you'll notice that it plays with the relationship between i, V and v throughout: hint listen to the crescendos and where it goes afterward.
@AlterEgo_UK @JohnnyGoodyear
Thanks Johnny! Your encouragement did help me keep the project in mind during its long pause.
I've listened to the project without the drums and I just don't like it: it was written with the drums in place so it loses alot without them there and it also exposes the limitations of the actual strings samples. Maybe with some EQ I could make them stand up better by themselves but I'm new to such things so I'm not at the stage of doing stuff like that yet.
I'm thinking of doing a REDUX version with remixed drums and some eq, once I have the tools and the knowledge of how to use them. I've subscribed to EastWest's Composer Cloud which is like the cloud-based Adobe service but for VST's/samples etc so its just a question of finding the time to download and suss out these things. This piece deserves a better version in sonic terms I think.
What's next?
Well I've learned so much in the last week: the biggest being that I have alot to learn and that I'm woefully underequipped for making music at the level I can see just over the horizon. I did my mixing on a £10 set of discounted 2.1 speakers from ASDA - they really are a bit gash, and I dont have a midi controller so couldn't play bits in do automation by hand. I'm not keen on embarking on another project that will keep me up night after night when I'm still hampered by these things, so I need to sort out monitors and some kind of keyboard soon.
Meanwhile I'm just listening to music, looking for gems of technical wizardry that I can feed to the musical elves in Fugue Machine.
Marcelo's Oboe Concerto in Cm Allegro Moderato has an opening riff that sounds like Heavy Metal: Baroque 'n Roll Baby!
Ain't That Enough by Teenage Fanclub has the only instance I've noticed of a chorus that resolves its melody on the tonic...juuuust a little too late, so the root note of the melody falls on the next chord. Kinda like someone holding their hand out to shake and then taking it away, but more original. It's wonderful trick and wonderful tricks exist to be stolen, knocked about, crushed and made anew in FM!
Same here,
Listen to the track as i read....
Appreciate it very, sir.
Thx
Great tune by Teenage Fanclub! I do believe they borrowed that technique themselves, though... Not a slag, btw. Quite the contrary, they borrow from some of the best. Big Star and the Beach Boys, in this case.
@lukesleepwalker
Oh yeah: they were practically a Big Star tribute band! Someone had to be since Big Star did such a shit job of being Big Star. I've yet to come across another example of that technique though. It's common to deny resolution by resolving to a non-root tone over the root chord in the chorus but to actually head straight for it then miss at the last moment was a new one on me. Good band in terms of melody and harmony but TF were incredibly limited in terms of groove. I think there was one album where 60% of the songs had the same strumming pattern...that would be poor for an amateur outfit!!
@mixolyd, your story made my day! Thanks so much for sharing, and epic track :]
Really beautiful ... Who says you can't make serious music on an iPad?
Hahaha, so true about Big Star. Chilton seemed hell bent on subverting their obvious talents.
I must be missing your point on the resolution in the chorus of that tune. Can you give me a time stamp of the example that you are relating here? Is it the second phrase of the "ain't that enough" refrain?
This song and article kicks ass. Thanks for taking the time to offer so much insight, especially after exhausting yourself with a long compositional process
It's on the "ise" of sunrise at the start of the chorus, repeated on "sky". The rest of the chorus is standard fare.
You can see here the melody making it's way down to the g note while on the pop power-word "sunrise" but the chord changes to Am just in time, meaning that the melody resolves while the harmony does not so you're pulled both ways. I always picture the sun going down when I hear this!
Also this move is made richer by the g note being the 7th of the Am chord it lands on.
And of course the following lyric references this as if saying: "you had both resolutions, just not together isn't that enough for you?"
I tried to link the timecode for 2:27 just before the second chorus where they double the length of the buildup on V: the same move my tune does halfway through when it extends a crescendo on V. This is a super common technique of course but it shows that the songwriter knew that that line "here is a sunrise" was the moneyshot in the song that was going to pay the mortgages of all concerned.
NOTE: pic should say V(D) at the start
Thankyou Sir, that was a great comment!
Got it! Thanks for the explanation; learned something new right there.
@mixolyd S'funny, I started off thinking of you as a (friendly) dilettante, but -especially after looking at your manuscript- I now put you more in the Donald-Pleasance-as-Blythe-in-The-Great-Escape category
[looks around and whispers] You are closer to the truth than you can possibly imagine.
Great job man, I commented on SoundCloud that it is soundtrack ready for a Game Of Thrones type show, a Viking film, etc. So atmospheric yet up front at the same time.
Alex's Fugue Machine is groundbreaking. If there were a hardware version of it released years ago before software VST's and digital everything it would've been huge. It is a credit (and also a sign of our embarrassment of riches) to the iOS music scene that such forward thinking and useful apps are being introduced all the time.
Mixolyd keep doing work brother, very cool story and the music is great....