Making witch house

Production, hardware & technical - tips and tricks.
ANPervere
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Joined: May 23rd, 2011, 9:47 pm

Re: Making witch house

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Generally, trying to sound like X or Y is a bad idea. Simply put, just think about the core elements of your favourite artist´s work in an abstract way. Don´t think it a witch house, but as haunting, maybe ritualistic electronic music and make this the basic of your decision regarding the equipment. Never fear the experiment and don´t care about labelling the result, the path is the goal. Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law. Free your mind and your ass will follow.

To me, a physical connection between artist and sound makes the result sound more natural, organic - living and contributes to further to the listener´s immersion. Therefore I prefer using hardware. Well, it IS nice to work with software, but "nice" cannot sincerely compete with "awesome".

With hardware I mean two classic polyphonic analogue synthesizers with integrated sequencers (good for haunting melodies) and a digital configuration panel for the VCOs as well as a cheap drum pc (I think ZOOM rhytm track), half-broken amps and lots of scrap metal as well as home utilities (electric tooth brushes can sound quite haunting if pressed against the mic ;)). Recording is mostly done via PC or a hard disc recorder. But we started with a tape recorder and its integrated mic put in the middle of our rehearsal room - it worked for three years ;)

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DCΞL
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Joined: April 20th, 2011, 2:27 am

Re: Making witch house

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^ re: Not trying to imitate your favorites and all that -

I think of it this way: nobody worth a shit ever sat down and said "I'm gonna write THE opera/rock song/ballad/whatever to end all operas/rock songs/ballads/whatevers!" Mozart didn't sit at his bench and say, "I'm going to write the most hardcore concerto ever!" Debussy didn't ponder chromaticism while wondering if it was cool enough to use it or how other people would take it. Satchmo didn't set out to write the most archetypal jazz of all jazzness.

Categorizations come after the fact - and trying to write music to fit a perceived category is the cart leading the horse.

Granted that there are exceptions to almost every rule of this sort... I've found this to be more true than not - of all music - in my old age. 8-)
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re: Pitch -

One of the reasons I think Reaper is perfect for people exploring this sound - hell, I'd even say it's like the Witch-House secret weapon in Reaper - is the fact that it has a universal playback pitch control like tape-based recorders of yesteryear. It's the Rate fader and it's found beneath the main track space and usually on the same bar as the shuttle controls (play/FF/etc, BPM, that stuff.)

Its seems so obvious [to me] that this feature was just made to screw shit, yet... nobody's mentioned it yet.

Take any song, throw it in a track in Reaper, and play with it!
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j∆ckr∆bbi†
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Joined: January 31st, 2011, 2:08 am

Re: Making witch house

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I've got a few questions to anyone who feels like answering:


1) In regards to software, I haven't messed with production software since Sony's ACID 4.0 and even then I was just a lazy teenager making obnoxious techno-ish music with very little sense of what I was doing. Where is a good place to start? I see Reaper getting mentioned fairly frequently and it seems to be loop-based like ACID, but I'm sure I'm probably just oversimplifying. Is it fairly user-friendly in your experience and about how long did it take you to figure the software out?

2) Within the next year or so I'm going to invest a bit more money into my budget for music making equipment and an Akai MPC 500 is on my radar for right now. Does anyone have one or another MPC? If so, which one and what would you consider the pros and cons?


[My apologies and thanks in advance if some of these questions are just plain stupid, I'm not very musically oriented but I'd like to learn more. I'm planning on majoring in music production but this was a recent change and I'm still finishing my Intercultural Studies degree before taking music classes.]
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ƧƆỴ†ɧЄ
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Re: Making witch house

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Try Ableton's free 30-day trial; get a feel for that DAW. But Cubase is probably the top in terms of capabilities. Never used Reaper myself.

Regarding MIDI equipment (especially for mapping to Live), I'm a fan of Novation - a combo of the Launchpad and one of the SL MkIIs is a good starting point.

For virtual instruments, it's extremely hard to beat the Komplete 7 bundle.

Good luck!
DCΞL
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Joined: April 20th, 2011, 2:27 am

Re: Making witch house

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j∆ckr∆bbi† wrote:I've got a few questions to anyone who feels like answering:

1) In regards to software, I haven't messed with production software since Sony's ACID 4.0 and even then I was just a lazy teenager making obnoxious techno-ish music with very little sense of what I was doing. Where is a good place to start? I see Reaper getting mentioned fairly frequently and it seems to be loop-based like ACID, but I'm sure I'm probably just oversimplifying. Is it fairly user-friendly in your experience and about how long did it take you to figure the software out?
Ironically, Reaper was created because a software designer was playing with Acid & Vegas and he got so frustrated that he decided to take the same basic approach but make it better.

I used Acid from version 1.0 all the way up to 6.0 and never realized how much I was compromising - how many wonky workarounds I had come up with to make basic things just... work. That plus the fact that Acid is up to like a 700 MB install, vs. Reaper's 5 MB install (!)

Finally, Reaper's routing capabilities are on par with or better than many of the cream of the crop. If you like to fiddle with send/receive signal chain hooliganism then it's ideal.

Oh, and Reaper costs a fraction of what Sony's charging for Acid. It all sounds too good to be true, but... it's all true.

Once you get used to the workflow in Reaper, it's much more fluid & intuitive [at least to me.] Learning curve takes just a little bit longer than Acid to get up and running making beats and shit, but not that much longer.

Plus you can configure it to make it look any way you want, the 3rd party development is FUCKING AWESOME and the big boys could learn a lot from opening up the phone lines between the users and developers instead of locking the latter in a closed room. There are still teensy little things that should be fixed/addressed in Reaper - as with most DAWs - but the democritization of development means that if it's a real bug, it'll get addressed... instead of some idiot corporate project manager deciding what to fix in time for the third quarter stockholder meeting or what have you.


So basically, Reaper makes me want to kick Sony in the balls for wasting so much of my musical time. :lol:
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j∆ckr∆bbi†
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Joined: January 31st, 2011, 2:08 am

Re: Making witch house

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Thank you guys so much. The first question I had originally posted before editing was regarding recording directly from a Kaossilator Pro into a Mac Book Pro which I figured out last night. Within the next few weeks I should have something to actually contribute here. :)

I'm leaning towards Reaper especially for that price-tag, but I'll probably be pretty slow in actually buying that since I've figured out how to record live synth sessions using just audacity.

[Edit: Just started messing around on the Reaper trial. Definitely getting it. This is exactly what I was looking for. :D
Here's one of the first experiments: http://arborbarbatus.bandcamp.com/ ]
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0hPeee
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Location: naarm.melb.aust.

Re: Making witch house

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j∆ckr∆bbi† wrote: 2) Within the next year or so I'm going to invest a bit more money into my budget for music making equipment and an Akai MPC 500 is on my radar for right now. Does anyone have one or another MPC? If so, which one and what would you consider the pros and cons?
i have an mpc500... i'm still figuring out how to use it best in a live sense, but i use it to program drums and some other samples for production... i'm not sure what the pro's are specifically.. i mean it's an mpc and it basically does what it's supposed to do. one thing with using it is that i tend to write different kinds of drum patterns, i guess because of the physical side of tapping pads as oppose to clicking and dragging stuff in whatever computer program. it feels good to use. natural. i've heard the pads are a bit stiff on the 500 compared to other models but it's never been an issue for me.
pro's specifically for the 500 are: it's nice and small and easy to move around (tho size may be a con to some?). you can make .wav's on the computer and drag them into the mpc via USB, which is easier than trying to sample straight into the machine. you can ALSO use the 500 as a midi controller, which i haven't done, but if you intend to use Ableton Live or something like that, it can trigger loops and stuff from that.

cons: i dunno. the main con is that i don't really know how to use it to its full potential. the instruction book isn't that helpful. youtube tutorials are good though. oh, and it's got 4 banks of sample pads, but i've never been able to use them all at once because it runs out of memory. not sure what that's about.

it's a lot of fun to play with though. and you can get them pretty cheap second hand from ebay etc. i like it a lot.

hope that helps. it probably doesn't. ha.
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j∆ckr∆bbi†
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Joined: January 31st, 2011, 2:08 am

Re: Making witch house

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that definitely helps, i just wanted to hear from someone who has had some hands on experience with the 500 specifically. i've got a friend who has a 1000 and he loves it, but he's looking to upgrade to the 2000xl soon, so i'm hoping to snag that at a friendly price. however, if that falls through, i'm still down to try and get a 500, which i like because of the easy transport factor. i wish i could take my kaossilator on the go, but unfortunately the pro model requires it to be plugged in, unlike the little one, but it's a small price to pay for a lot more function.
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0hPeee
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Re: Making witch house

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j∆ckr∆bbi† wrote:that definitely helps
cool!
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TakeshiAndTheKid
Posts: 16
Joined: June 22nd, 2011, 2:29 am

Re: Making witch house

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I think there can be an issue here with people jumping on a bandwagon, but if nobody continues to make "Witch House" a lot of ideas end up going explored; sooner or later you're going to get someone who takes the textures and beats associated with Witch House and either turn it on it's head or do something spectacular with them.

A lot of WH tracks just have these awesome huge synths and I think "Holy fuck, if I could do that, I could finally make that track I was thinking of way better" and such. There's a kind of atmosphere to them that's hard to recreate.

Though really I'm mostly just interested in doing gothy electronica with nasty synths. And a bit of a video game vibe, since people won't let me go on that one.
teacake
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Joined: July 24th, 2011, 4:08 am
Location: Seattle, WA.

Re: Making witch house

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I build my synths in Reason 4, and do my sequencing in Ableton 7. For percs I recorded a kit from a friend's 808 and 909.
Lupus
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Joined: July 5th, 2011, 11:22 am

Re: Making witch house

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I do not understand.
What is a polyphonic analogue synthesizer? And what is a midi controller? You mean like a Casio?
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Nova Sol
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Joined: June 26th, 2011, 5:26 am

Re: Making witch house

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Lupus wrote:I do not understand.
What is a polyphonic analogue synthesizer? And what is a midi controller? You mean like a Casio?
a polyphonic analogue synthesizer is a non-digital (does not make its sounds with zeros and ones) synthesizer that can play two or more tones simultaneously. a MIDI controller is a device (usually a keyboard) that uses a computer's MIDI device for its output.
Lupus
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Joined: July 5th, 2011, 11:22 am

Re: Making witch house

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Thank you. I understand better now.
If you know, may you please tell me how much money on average these things will cost me?
ratbones+witchcraft
Posts: 18
Joined: August 18th, 2011, 1:44 am

Re: Making witch house

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On this subject kind of, I'm look for some good appregiator VSTs the kind that maybe Peachblack or White Ring use?
It's not something I use often especially as it's hard to find any that are any good but obviously the above have.
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