Sound-A-Day 14.02.2011

So, another week, another post.

This ones something a bit different, and a nice thing to try. I've found on of the most fun ways of learning your way round a piece of kit or software is to make a track using nothing else. It's an excellent method of discovering each things strengths and weaknesses.

A while back I got myself a copy of the Arturia ARP2600 emulation, and although I've used it a few times, and really enjoyed it, I haven't really had the time to get deep into it, which is certainly something it deserves. So this evening I figured I'd see what I could get out of it.

One of the really nice things about it is the built in sequencer, means that you can open it up in standalone and get a nice riff looping. And of course, because it's software, you can open more that one instance at a time. So I thought rather than loading it into a host program, why not just open it a load of times in standalone mode?

I managed to built a pretty cool looping pattern of drums and bass line, although it did take a fair few efforts to get everything really tightly synced. Once it was all running nicely though it was brilliant fun to jam about.

Once I'd got all the parts ticking along nicely, I recorded each part and arranged them into a structure in Logic. There's very little else going on, all sounds are from the ARP, with only an additional reverb on the high melody part, and a touch of overall compression.

ARTURIA-ACID by Noisy Neighbour Sound

So hopefully the mix isn't too terrible, still having to rely exclusively on headphones!

I really like this plugin, it has an awesome sound, and really fun to use, relatively CPU light to boot. One thing I think would make a great addition would be, rather than each instance opening separately, that they open within the same program. You would then be able to patch between multiple ARPs, which to be honest, would be amazing!!!

Incidentally, if anyone is interested in remixing the parts, or just fancies playing with the patches, let me know and I will bundle up the patch files for download. Alternatively, if you don't have this particular plugin, I can make a folder of the individual parts in WAV format.