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Figure
So..... Over the weekend, I started composing a song with Figure. I plan to add some ThumbJam and vocals at some point. I love 80's and 90's techno quite a lot. That is what I am aiming for.
Mostly what I play and record is Rock, acoustic and Metal. So this is a bit of new ground for me. Can I really make a whole electronic song with mostly just Figure? Or is that too much umm......Cheating? Or will it sound too "the same"? Like, only so many sounds you can come up with in Figure? Has someone already done it?
Just wondering, cuz I dig the track I'm working on, reminds me of some old 2Unlimited or AB Logic. But, maybe I need to go about it a different way.
Comments
There are no rules. I've never made a whole track with Figure - but have exported a beat and synth line/bass into GarageBand or Loopy to build up a track.
Same here.
@High5denied Think Bob Marley could? Bob Dylan? Bob Weir? Bob Geldof? Bob Seger? Bob Wills? Bob Bryar? Bob Gaudio? Bob Darrin? Bob Robertson? Bob Smyth? The Big Bobber? Bob-Bob-Bob-Boboboran? And these are only the Bobs I can think of here on the last three minutes of my lunchbreak.
Go for it.
EDIT: Especially Bob Gaudio. Holy shit. I didn't realize he wrote so much, you know, stuff: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Gaudio
@JohnnyGoodyear May God have mercy on your soul (and little green apples) if the Mighty Bobby Goldsboro finds out he didn't make the Awesome Bobs list
Regarding the OP, interesting question for me. My 13 year old son recently declared his intention to make an album using Launchpad w/their soundpacks. Stubborn songwriter Dad tried to explain he'd be using canned sounds that everyone else has, and it would be better if he used custom sounds. He shrugged and said he doesn't care, he thinks his songs are awesome.
Now I'm thinking, why shouldn't I support that? He's getting experience arranging compositions and learning about grooves and hooks.
With Figure, seems to me you have a lot more options to tweak and mix the factory sounds, especially augmented with FX via Audiobus. I say if it feels good, go for it!
(Now I'll have to sit down with my son for the ol' "Sorry buddy, Dad's a fogie from another era ... Of course I support you making music however you want" talk. Maybe if I follow it up with pizza we can sweep the whole affair under the rug.)
Thanks for your post @High5denied, it really gave me a welcome pause for thought
Thanks everyone for the thoughts and posts! I appreciate the replies. That's what makes this board so freakin great. Lot's of different ideas, an elaborate group of musicians, and any question I've asked have been answered, even if it's something you'd think I should know.
@eustressor BAD DAD! Or, no, NORMAL DAD! Good thought on your part, actually. Got to sneak the love in wherever you find it
The Boy here (only 12 and a half) will play Thumbjam against the same beat (over and over and over) and I had all kinds of SHIT DAD things to say until I realized it was just a loud metronome and why the hell not? I've also realized that a good amount of misplaced control comes from a deep-seated resentment that if only I'd had an iPad when I was 12..... etc etc. Usual rubbish.
@High5denied Happy if my little ramble was at all helpful. Here at the house the fambly eyes collectively roll once I exceed my one sentence limit
Haha, these words he speaks are true!
A very wise man once told me that children are like fine crystal. It's inevitable, as you handle them over the years, that they'll get scratched and chipped. That's OK. The important thing is not to shatter them. FWIW.
And pizza is a mighty bridge over (mildly) troubled water when you're 13!
Good thread. On being a dad, and on Figure.
Figure is an interesting one. Good question re sameness / recognisability.
I think:
if you overuse the 16 figure rhythms it gives you then you'll sound the same as a lot of stuff made in Figure
particularly if you just hold your finger down and move notes
taping and just holding for a half beat or less etc can mean you create your own rhythms, but quantised, so that will be more interesting - or just switching the rhythm wheel off
everything you do will be perfectly quantised whether you like it or not
at the end of the day, figure set to the full keyboard with the rhythm wheel off is just a synth plus a drum machine. So not cheating at all. If you use it like this a fair bit you'll be just as original as any thing else
patch wise, I think you need to be creative with the effects pages. The sounds will get quite limited unless you really explore what you can do with some of the extremes of the messing with the effects. Then you can really transform a lot of the sounds quite radically. The 'DIY synth' one lets you really jump between completely different patches across the X axis. Also try messing with the vertical parameters on the keys of some of the patches. And of course automate a lot.
you could try and break out of the four to the floor thing with the drum machine too! Maybe slow the tempo right down and place beats in interesting places.
It's an interesting project and I'd really be interested in hearing the results.
What are you using to put all the chunks together? And how are you dealing with not having the effect tails cut off?
By the way, I'm working on a kind of Figure emulator patch for TC Data because I love the Figure way of jamming. It's pretty nearly done.
Sorry, I wrote the above thinking you were talking about a Figure album (would be a cool project) - not a single song. Think you could certainly make an original sounding track no question if you got a bit creative.
After all you're tapping into the mighty Thor synth which has, I'm sure, made some killer tracks in its time.
Pro Figure tips right there, Matt.
Other than the physicality of it, your son's notion isn't all that different from the gajillions of people who play a I-IV-V 12-bar blues in E and sing about a lover who did them wrong. "Hey! Sky rhymes with eye!"
Now that Launchpad supports importing user samples, might I suggest a family collaboration inspired by this thread? Dad: makes a set of cool loops in Figure; son: arranges loops into awesomeness in Launchpad.
Perfect advice.
Ah, thank you for that, but there's the rub ... Ambitious Dad recorded 60+ original loops covering all of the boy's favorite soundpack BPMs (95, 120, 128, etc.) after he saved up to buy a used Launchhpad Mini with his iPad. I didn't have Figure at the time, but made out OK between Alchemy and Oscilab ... Vetted them with my son every dozen samples or so to make sure he liked them. So that was part of my frustration. He gave them the once over, said "that's cool" and simply doesn't use them. Guess I can shelf that "Sound Designer of the Year" acceptance speech I was working on.
But we did have the "Dad fogie" talk and pizza tonight, so I just need to find that rug
Hmmm. Maybe I could show him Figure and see if that sets off any creative sparks ...
There is no "cheating", because music has no rules. Thats the beauty of it!
Relating to constraints and canned sounds:
https://makingmusic.ableton.com/presets-as-starting-points
https://makingmusic.ableton.com/arbitrary-constraints
Inspired by this thread I played a bit with Figure again this evening. (Used it loads about a year ago for doodles and sort of helping me to decode basic music theory).
It is an amazing piece of user friendly design - no question. It's also extremely witty and playful (the tweak parameter names especially).
It might be a bit of a challenge to make something that wasn't some form of synthy dance music. A lot of the patches are quite in your face and loud (I couldn't find many with slow attacks). However you can get some interesting modular / modulated type noises from really tweaking some. Eg Noisy mess, Catherdral etc.
One day I might try making an entire track with Figure that trys very hard not to sound like Figure. That would be quite fun.
BTW I realise also that if are simply recording out of figure live into Audiobus then my comment about everything having to be quantized is wrong.
@Matt_Fletcher_2000
"What are you using to put all the chunks together? And how are you dealing with not having the effect tails cut off?"
I've been copying the chunks/patterns into Auria, turning on the grid to event. I'm not exactly sure what you mean by effect tails cut off, but I'm pretty sure I haven't made it that far in my process yet, to where I need to worry about that. Still laying out the order of the chunks, arranging them.
Thanks again to the new posts, very fun read, informative, and encouraging.
The rub indeed! Please tell him I said "horseshit" and "respect your father" and "college is really expensive" in whichever order and with however much color you deem appropriate.
Good old man giggle at the @syrupcore solution. Hey, works for me.
Alternately @eustressor, maybe, and in the spirit of anything's worth a go, I recently had a thing with The Boy wherein he wanted to play a certain game during the school week. Caught between the hard place of his bitter anguish and the rock of his mother's I should think not! We don't send him to Montessori for him to play Dota 2 on school nights! I drew up a contract (with Latinate font, the whole nine yards) where, in return for exactly 60 minutes of 'play' time, he would fulfill a number of specific and typical chores/responsibilities. The kicker was that he also had to give me precisely 30 minutes of his labor for any task I might reasonably name.
Believe me the contract was very parent-weighted but he of course signed it without hesitation. All has worked well, but the best of it has been the task. It's sometimes taken a bit of hands-on parenting (no!) on my part, not to say a little imagination, but he goes along (because of the termination clause that says any task/chore not completed without reminder will lead to the end of the contract and two weeks suspension of all Alienware use/activities
.
Yeah, we've done the usual fishing litter out of the stream, washing the car and bagging up leaves etc etc but have also gotten into him reading aloud into the mike for my sampling pleasure from weird User Interface design manuals, watching documentaries on tunnel engineering (yawn), making pie crust, writing short stories to the titles of my choosing and playing racquetball.
However hokey it is for me to say, it's been a good thing. For both of us.
This has turned into one of my favourite threads.
I love running Figure from my iPhone/iPad into the Audio In of my electribe2 and effecting and gating it using several parts. Standalone it's never gotten boring for me. If anything it makes me want to expand past what I make on it passing time during the day. I do think they can improve it but it's also fine where it's at if I continue to go back to it like I do.
until i got my casio, i had to use my touchtone phone to make electronic music. i so wish i had this when i was 12!
Thanks to this thread, I'm going to make a track using Figure, interested to see how far I can push it.
Mine too, I have enjoyed eustressor's "dad" comments as well. My kids are a bit too little to be composing music, but they enjoy the virtual midi with Sound Prisim Electro, or thumbin around with thumbjam.
I'll be interested too.
Don't forget the "kid delay" I have a son who will start to implement something we had talked about 2 months earlier so it does stick in the head somewhere.
Ha, this had me laughing out loud! Well played ... I spent many hours on those loops. (He actually got a variant of this after his last report card featured a .8 GPA drop
@JohnnyGoodyear I enjoyed finding out that within the scope of your Latinate contracts, "any reasonable request" includes having your The Boy read whatever flotsam and jetsam you select into your mic for sampling ... Now that is how you play a 12 and a half year old.
Sadly, we've already been down the contract and negotiations road many times. Kid still can't even chew with his mouth closed. Now I've adopted the "we don't negotiate with terrorists" hardline approach. Expectations are discussed, set, and then sanctions ensue if they are not met.
But I'm learning to slowly let go. Lighten up. 13 is such a crazy age. What he needs now, and what this thread and member feedback has helped me realize, is as much affirmation and support as possible for his creative interests. I mean, I sure don't want him to start following in my teenage footsteps (shudder). So, following our The Talk and Pizza last night, this morning my The Boy cheerfully bounded down the steps to play three versions of the same Launchpad song he'd just created for me to help him select the best one. Since I was working, my initial response was the all-too-frequent "not now, kid" brush off, but then I thought about this thread and said, "wait, just give me 5 and I'll be right there, buddy." I then dutifully listened to all three and shared my vote and discussed it with him, then reminded him how proud I am that he's so creative.
I think all concerned feel better and it came at a time when I really need to start backing off into the inevitable supporting role predestined for Fathers of Irish Descent since time immemorial.
I can definitely relate to that. So many dinner conversations start with "Dad, you remember when you told me _______?" and quickly end with, "Uh, no." because it was over a month ago. Plus he's actually got ADD. I'm sure many can relate to the thrill of seeing them stick with something and see it through to completion, or develop interests that endure for more than a day. Another reason to move more toward open support than imposition of The Dad's worldview. If that boat hasn't sailed, it's at least hoisting anchor.
BTW, retention/delay issues are why I haven't introduced Figure to him ... yet. Mustn't distract the flighty little critter with more options when he's actually on a roll with Launchpad.
And to the OP and everyone on this thread, thank you for letting me meander off-topic a bit there. Inevitable punch line to the rescue:
Kids. Go Figure.
ducks, sneaks off stage Blues Brothers style
This is the mark of a professional.
Look at how many iterations of this self portrait there are:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Prints_by_Rembrandt_in_the_Rijksmuseum_Amsterdam
Looking left, looking right, front-facing, side-facing, with a hat on, no hat, making a duck face, smiling politely... etc, etc.