8th
Here’s my fourth assignment. The requirements: use five loops from recycle to create a 1 minute composition in Reason in either the trip-hop or jungle genres. I chose trip-hop.
I started by finding a record to set the mood. Snoman’s Dance Music Manual claims that many trip-hop songs sample old jazz records, so I decided to grab a recording of Billy Holiday singing ‘Stormy Weather’. The opening of the song became my first loop. I used her vocals in redrum.
I then needed to fill out my drum machine. I found a great drum opening in Al Green’s ‘I’m Glad You’re Mine’, spliced it in recycle, and used it in redrum to get my beat. I altered the pitch of one of the patches to give it a harsher snare sound.
I added the bass from Miles Davis’s ‘Blue in Green’, to dirty the sound; make it more menancing. I also took multiple trumpet pieces from my davis loop, and played them on a sampler to introduce the piece.
To go with ‘Stormy Weather’, I got rain and thunder noises from The Cure’s ‘Same Deep Water As You’. These were added to the intro, then thunder and rain returns for the end. A sampler and redrum were used.
Finally, I got a loop of ‘Gymnopedie No. 1’ in Recycle. I put that in Dr. Rex, and used pitch bend (another favorite of trip-hopists) for the first cycle of the loop. Halfway through the second loop, I drop the bending as the thunder strikes.
