june gloom on 15/5/2011 at 06:07
Okay, so years and years back a couple friends of mine started a 'band' called Zombie Sneak Attack. Producing the smash hit "Smugglin' Plums" which was the number one grindcore song on mp3.com for about 15 minutes, they were basically 2 guys from the old AOL metal forums back when AOL was still relevant. Sam disappeared and Scottica didn't really do much after a while, but as ZSA's probably only remaining fan I collected basically all the songs I had and put them into a compilation album, which can be heard (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCHxsbixBqs) here and (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcEjUvpzATQ) here.
A word of warning to the snobs: This is terrible, awful, unlistenable garbage, and that's the point. It's completely fucking ridiculous and probably not something you'd be blasting out your car window going past a church or something, unless you're me.
Anyway. Scottica's a big ol' meth head and he's basically useless and also completely full of shit; as such I've resurrected ZSA from whatever ashes Scottica hasn't snorted yet, and have already begun work on a new album; tracks 1 and 3 have music by Scottica that he never used, track 2 is my first attempt to use fruityloops. I'm not very good at it though, and hence this thread.
Can someone give me pointers on how to create the kind of insane bullshit present in the videos I linked? Fruity Loops is way complex and I've no clue what I'm doing.
demagogue on 15/5/2011 at 07:19
Audacity is a good general purpose sound editor, for chopping stuff, stretching & squeezing it, moving it around.
And Fruity Loops isn't as complicated as you might think. I mean you can still click the "Song" button around the top (as opposed to loop), open the tracks view, and drag & drop all your samples directly in track by track (maybe you have to import them first; sorry I don't have it right in front of me now), including a beat-loop, and that will get it done without any bells and whistles. Pick your BPM and push play.
It's hard to imagine what could do it much better, because if you want multiple samples you really need something that can mange the tracks. I mean you can do the stretching and distorting samples in Audacity, save them, then open FL and drag all the tracks in & make a quick beat, to actually make the song.
Koki on 15/5/2011 at 07:24
Half-deaf people make music now?
Well that explains a lot.
Martin Karne on 15/5/2011 at 07:44
Use "Kristal" if you do multi-tracks.
Muzman on 16/5/2011 at 19:34
Pointers eh? I think you'll have to be more specific to get anything really useful, sadly. Fruityloops studio is kinda weird in production software because it grew all of these more proper audio production and engineering features out of the step sequencer. Everything is kinda adjunct to that. (unless the newer versions are completely different and I no longer have any idea what I'm talking about. In which case, I'm screwed)
So even though that's not the first thing you see when you start from scratch, it's really the heart of the program. (to get really rudimentary, you bring it up with one of the big buttons on the top right. The info bar over on the left, under the file menu etc, will tell you what everything is when you hover over it).
You add tracks to it with the Channel menu. What tracks you can add depends on what you have installed. If you want to sequence other audio files you're obviously going with the Sampler. But you can make some pretty horrible noises with the synths too.
Sequencer patterns are stored in pages. You can have loads but the first nine are accessible by that little number pad in the middle up the top (it's laid out a bit like a hardware sequencer you see).
Once you've made a few patterns and want to play them back in a certain order (or all at once, depending on hardware limitations) you go to your Playlist. With the program in Song mode (like demagogue was talking about) it will play back each of these patterns where ever you tell it to. Using the little pencil or brush tool you can spray trigger points all over the place and as the cursor plays over it the sequencer patterns are played.
A pattern can be just a single sample of screaming noise or whatever set to play at the start of the bar. The sample itself can be way longer than the bar and the program will just play it out by default. Trigger the pattern multiple times in succession on the play list and they will stack up as they play (doing destructive and occasionally interesting things to the output). As you get more advanced you could do amusing things like add automation adjustments to the tempo so they compress like crazy or something. For instance, that is.
Effects are probably going to be important. You add them over on the mixer board. For a simple example: Say you want to add...ooh I dunno...distortion to a drum sequence or voice sample or something. In your step sequencer you click on the Channel name to bring up the Channel options. In the top right there's that box with FX underneath it. That's the FX Bus that it's currently assigned to (by default there's nothing, so it's going out to the Master clean. You can put FX on the Master mix too, but don't start out that way). Set that to 1. Now whatever in on that Sequencer Channel goes out to FX 1, even if you change the sample or whatever else it is doing.
Over on the mixer board select the FX1 page and note the slots 1 thru 8 down below. If you pull down the little arrow and go to Select you'll get a list of the installed FX available. Say we pick something like Fruit Fast Dist for the hell of it, and so it goes. Set your sequence playing (looping ideally) and mess around with the knobs in the distortion box and you should hear that particular Channel being distorted.
I dunno if all that's too basic, or not basic enough (I haven't even got into the piano roll yet). Given how variable this stuff is you're trying to do, I think FL will only get you so far. But that would be true of anything. There's some structural and cut-up stuff I could hear, and it's good for there. But I think after a certain point you'll want to render some bits and pieces out and cut it together in a multitrack editor of some sort. When it comes to this sort of highly variable experimental mess music, the more techniques and tools you employ the better, usually.
Syndy/3 on 16/5/2011 at 20:16
Personally I hope the Rolling Stones sue you, make you eat Charlie Watt's drum set and then run you over with their tour trucks several times. But you'd probably just make a "song" about it. So maybe not.
june gloom on 16/5/2011 at 22:19
hahahaha don't even try, kid
if you like the stones there's no helping you at all ever
Muzman, thanks for the tips. I've figured some of it out myself, but these will prove useful when I pick the thing up again.
Al_B on 16/5/2011 at 23:09
Well, done, dethtoll - those were fantastic and after listening to them I can't tell whether my tears are from joy or simply appreciating the effort you've put into creating them.
