I am sleepy and the Zoom is out of batteries. Doctor Synth told me today that Animoog has gone on sale for 90% off, so Jill snagged me that. Here’s Animoog line-out to Audacity on the MacBook, WobblePlayground preset

I’ll link these tutorials all together later.

Work is going well. I’m integrating socially. One of my new peoples teaches music synthesis and he’s been giving me a leg up on dubstep production. The best way to learn is to teach, so I figured I’d blog my prog through to a full track, starting from the rock-bottom basics.

First, the tools. You’ll need a drum sequencer, a monophonic synth, and something like Audacity. Protip: get an aux cable, like you’d use to connect your mp3 player to a stereo, hook that into the jack of whatever you’re using to make sound, and then record straight into Audacity. There you go: home recording for $10.

I mention that because a favorite trick of free audio apps is to make save and export pay features. That said, here’s my rig: my iPod Touch running EasyBeats and Mobeats, the first an excellent free drum machine and the second an excellent free software synth, and the iPod goes aux-out to line-in on a Zoom H4N pro audio recorder.

Using the Zoom is “cheating” — it’s far too baller — but that’s where someone more cost-conscious could use Audacity to record their efforts. Or just buy the apps — they’re awesome (my synth-prof-friend recommends the Animoog synth app, which is $1), but you’ll still need something to mix with.

Okay, now, let’s take a look at the end goal. Here’s a famous Dubba Johnny track about dubstep production:

Today we’ll do the first bit, about the drums:

Typically a tempo of 140 beats per minute is selected. First, we begin with a simple kick-and-snare pattern, like so. Next it’s time to add some hi-hats and cymbals to fill those spaces.

I want to pull that apart, because it’s actually a pretty complicated statement: it’s time for some music theory. “Dub” is an early electronic form which evolved from reggae. It’s about creating soundscapes to facilitate mixes and tripping BALLS. One of my favorites is Bob Marley’s One Dub, which is a dub of One Drop. Listen to both to see what’s happening:

If you want to get deep into inner space eat a nice sativa brownie and loop that with ear goggles and eye plugs. In the mean time: dubs are fundamentally remixes. Moving on.

Rhythm comes from the beating of the human heart, which has a dominant and a less-dominant beat. A straight-forward rhythm in four beats (“four-on-the-floor”) would be something like: boom-tick-boom-tick. Reggae, though, is syncopated and so, for example, shifts everything one beat: tick-boom-tick-boom. Dubstep inherits this syncopation and we’re going to be magnifying it to create our drum loops.

One of the ways we’re going to be syncopating is by intentionally missing beats — the notes we choose not to play are a large part of how the loops will be textured, and we’re going to be skipping around half of them.

Remember how dubs are remixes? Well we’re going to be adding in samples later. I have a theory that a good dubstep BPM is twice the rate of the samples, but I still have to test that. We’re going to be using 140 bpm and essentially faking 70 bpm with syncopation, while picking notes to play that tease the listener: “we could be playing faster, but aren’t.” I suppose I can expand what I mean by syncopation here: we’re going to be pointedly and quickly skipping beats. Part of dubstep’s feel comes from the tension between rhythmic expectation and delivery.

Now for some music. I am going to go record myself building a simple two-bar drum loop and then figure out a way to share it with you [SoundCloud]. I’m going to start with a “simple kick and snare pattern” and then “add some hi-hats and cymbals to fill those spaces” — see? Part of dubstep is creating and filling spaces creatively.

So that loop might still be a bit busy — it feels like there might not be enough space — but there’s the process. The next step is to individually record each instrument to mix and master later with something like ProTools. You essentially just have to solo each instrument out to your recorder, and that’s left as an exercise for the reader. When I’m satisfied with a loop to continue with I’ll post it chopped up that way — part two will probably be about loop structure and evolution, so a chopped track is necessary for that anyway.

Fok julle Interscope. Zef siiiiide. Via bb.

[Update from comments: my math is for shit. The costume still stands though.]

Drunk driving limit: 0.08 BAC.
Considered fatal: 3.5 BAC.
Winehouse: 4.16 BAC.

When she died, her blood was stronger than most (all?) American beers. This gives me an idea for a Halloween costume: the vampire that found Amy Winehouse. Basically you dress as a vampire and then get shitfaced.

This week on Colbert Black Star debuted a new song after performing for Occupy Wallstreet earlier.

Jill is in New York this weekend. I miss her. I just realized I should have gone with — I have an airline credit I could have used to be part of the occupation.

Here’s the web-exclusive encore of a Black Star oldie.

The Problem with dubstep.fm is that occasionally, like now, the DJs get high off their tits and just babble into the mic for hours. The guy on now is actually making wubbly bass noises with his mouth along with the music — which is a sound that is only appropriate for telling a dubstep joke.

Daz knows this and the new version of the Bass Buttons has a workaround (another dubstep station), but to tide me over until then pointed me to this mix:

My buddy Daz and his buddy Dorian made The Bass Buttons, a Chrome extension under Daz’s Serious Business brand.

It’s made for desk jockeys who dig their disco as much as they dig Chrome (or maybe more).

Sometimes I feel very close to awakened mindfulness, and sometimes I feel very far away.

This morning, over waffles and wonderful coffee — from Lunenburg: The Laughing Whale; slightly fish-scented, the coffee, not the waffles — I was having some difficult feelings and I complained:

I don’t get what’s so great about being in the moment. I’ve been in the moment plenty of times: when I had a headache, a hangover. Have you ever had a breakup or a depression so bad that minutes passed like hours? It doesn’t feel good — it’s not like I was experiencing the moment, it’s more like I was trapped in it.

Jill:

Mindfulness isn’t about feeling good. Expecting it to be something in particular is another trap keeping us in saṃsāra. If you feel pain, sit with it and let it wash over you.

Last night I was watching the “live” coverage of this year’s World Series of Poker (and finished top 0.5% in a small tourney of my own). “Live”, in quotes, because not only is the coverage delayed a half-hour for gameplay reasons, but also because I’ve timeshifted the heck out of it. Anyway.

At one point one of the announcers made a comment that reminded me of the wheel of dharma. A player had just busted and Lon McEachern said:

And the great wheel of poker turns. Hello, welcome to the game, goodbye, thanks for playing.

This, in turn, reminded me of Amy Winehouse with echoes of Heath Ledger. I’ve been vaguely happy for her since I heard of her death, for a reason I can’t quite put my finger on — “fullness” — but anyway, suddenly I was quite sad at the turning of that wheel. It’s exacerbated by the media, but it seems like the death-moment is so fragile and temporary and permanent. One minute here, one gone forever, and the wheel rolls on.

But time is an illusion, another of those saṃsāric traps. I’m beginning to get a better handle on that, the existence of only one, knife-edge moment.

If you never paid attention to Winehouse grab her albums now. I did, they’re fantastic, she was worth the media attention, and her karmic contributions to The Great Mandala are percolating.

☸ Anyway, peace. Love you all. ☸

I once said that one of the keys of good hip hop is its intertextuality. Elmatic is a mixtape from (unsigned?) Elzhi out of Detroit; is a remake(-ish) of Nas’ Illmatic, itself a classic; and also talks about “coming up in the game” in the shadow of Eminem.

The album is good, but the more of that intertextuality you get the better it is.

Click through the image to the XXL Magazine download page.

I wonder what hip hop film looks like? Spike Lee meters light differently from other directors — light meters are typically calibrated to white skin so almost every time you see a film or photograph you’re supporting a racist standard — but that’s political, not about a hip hop cultural aesthetic. It would have to be more pomo, probably involving appropriated footage (though maybe that’s too literal).