We recently met up with former student Will Bokan aka Ninja Bokan for a quick chat about his recent success, signing, release, experience at Off Centre and all around Ninja lifestyle! OC1. So, what's it like being a ninja!? NB1. Being a full time Ninja is the best thing I could ever imagine in my life. Ever since I was as young as I could remember I just wanted to be the Green Power Ranger when I grew up. Backflip kicks and other insane martial arts stunts were life necessities to me in late highschool and on into university. OC2. Does your active lifestyle have an influence on your style of music or vice versa? NB2. For me it is everything. Electronic music alone inspires all of my movement. I started gaining interest in learning how to make my own music for my martial arts. The interesting thing about this was once I started learning and becoming involved in production, it very quickly became all about the music. I’m way too obsessed with learning more about production and even just having great new music to listen to while I do Ninja activities or any activities in my life really. OC3. What kind of music do you listen to (when you're not fighting Luigi!)? Mario's Street Challenge Are there any specific music influences that you can site? NB3. Haha, this is a tricky one. I love all genres of music (except country). If it is good music I do like it. Typically I listen to the music suitable for the mood.When I am doing office work or monotonous tasks on the computer I like to listen to chill out music like Pretty Lights and Griz. I’m really falling in love with Shaun Frank’s new Deep House also. Deadmau5 is the best for so many things. Every now and then I love listening to Headhunterz and hardstyle. But once it is something that requires movement, high energy, or I’m feeling upbeat, I’m all over the Electro House. Dylan Francis, Nom De Strip, stuff like that.Actually right now at the very moment Nom De Strip makes me have a mental meltdown, definitely my favourite artist for today. OC4. Congrats on your recently released a track "The Crew from 602" on BugEyed Records. Tell us a little about how all that went down. How did you find them or them find you? Any future plans with that label? NB4. Well, The Crew from 602 was actually kind of an accident experiment track. Design wise it was inspired a little from hardstyle and at the time I was listening to some of Headhunterz new Big Room/hardstyle experimental tracks. So I figured “meh” I’ll fool around with that in mind, and then a track popped out. The overall inspiration for the track came from my stunt crew that hung out at after practices at this terrible junky house numbered 602. Everyone had the best time. I’m glad the house sucked, because it made it an amazing place to hang out with the right people for the right reasons. I sent my demo over to BugEyed, they said they’d love to sign it after listening. It was that simple really. I’d love to provide them with more tracks. I have some beauties in the hopper right now that I am super excited about. My current track is coming along a little slower than I'd like, but the quality is just epic for my expectations. I'v very happy with the results so far, I cannot wait to finish this gem, and I can't wait to send your way to have a listen when it comes out. Maybe this track could also possibly end up on another label or maybe it stays with BugEyed? I can’t predict these things. I like to be a leaf in the wind; whatever works out best for everyone makes me really happy. OC5. Is there anything in particular that sticks out in your experiences at Off Centre that has helped with your music (or just in general)? NB5. Well, everything haha. I’m sure it is different for everyone, but for me specifically Off Centre was the turn key enabler that opened the opportunity for me to start and understand how to make electronic music. Before I started at off centre I knew I wanted to start making music but I had no idea how. Taking a look at ableton on my own wasn’t all that intuitive. I took the offcentre course, everything started making sense and I learned how to make a track from beginning to end with confidence. I learned all the necessary tools and more to get a producer going on their own. Not only that, the environment and the positivity from the instructors was so inspiring and unreal. I really felt like they believed in me and enjoyed teaching me because they wanted to. A whole new world opened for me. The way I heard songs and the audio pallet that opened up for me was insane. Probably one of the coolest milestones in my life; truly discovering what music really was. Thank you so much Off Centre. OC6. In a short time your beats have really developed and evolved nicely into some high quality production. Is there any advice you could give to producers and beat makers that are in the early stages? NB6. Oh man so much advice. I could write a massive report at this point, and still have limited knowledge as I am just “starting” my journey. The most important to me is to keep learning new things. I know it sounds really obvious but really focus on growth and new production tactics that lead to a “cleaner” track. Every time I finish a track I am already disappointed with it due to new things I have learned to make the next track better. It’s okay to have high standards and put pressure on yourself as long as you are having fun. The 4 actual production points I found the most important right away after I finished Off Centre are the following: 1) Sidechain Compression. I now use Nicky Romero’s Kickstart. Highly recommend. Sidechain Compression is the most important part to getting that rock solid clean kick and overall mix out there. Make sure you never miss getting this right. 2) Layers. Layer your snares, layer your synths, layer everything that needs to be layered. You get way more control over your sounds. You pick the parts you like form them, remove the parts you don’t and then glue them together. Really separate your bass and your mids and highs. 3) Pick a professional track to compare yours to. Listen back and forth. See where yours is missing pieces and sounds that the other track has locked down. Are your samples just too weak? Is your mixing levels off? It could be many things, a reference track similar to yours is great. 4) Take breaks. For me, I found once I started going too long that my ears would start becoming too used to the track and unable to be effective in focusing on making the right changes. If they are getting tired, just take a break for half an hour and then come back. You’ll be surprised at how “fresh” the track and canvas sounds to work with again. -------------------------- To find out more about will and his evolving body of work, checkout: soundcloud.com/ninjabokan facebook.com/ninjabokan In the last post we talked about taking away existing elements to make variations and sounds less repetitive. While that method proves to be effective in a busy or full-sounding track, it can not fill up a less busy or thinner track. So this post will dig into the melodic modifications that can help fill up those empty spaces or enrich the harmonics of thinner chord progressions (in many cases this would be the first step of making loop variations, followed by rhythmical changes, and finished with tonal adjustments). One of the easiest ways of achieving a richer/fuller sound is to add a 7th note to your basic triad chords, to form 7th chords. In the past, 7th chords were almost exclusive to genres like blues and jazz for their unique harmony and potential to create more complex chords through inversions (will be covered in pt.2 of this topic) and add-ons (9th, 13th, etc). In today's music scene, 7th chords, along with other complex chords are ubiquitous -- from R&B to HipHop, Folk music to EDM. Let's say you're working on a loop with 2 chords (e.g. A minor -> F major) as the main chord progression of the track (or it could be just for a specific part of the track). All you have to do is find the 7th note of the corresponding scales, A minor and F major scales in our example, which happen to be G and E, respectively, and add them on top of our triad chords, A minor (A-C-E) and F major (F-A-C). As a result, we end up with an A minor 7th chord (A-C-E-G), and a F major 7th chord (F-A-C-E). If you feel that it is still not full enough, try adding an additional 9th note of the scale (which also happens to be the 2nd note since the 8th note is the same as the root note, just an octave higher) and you will get even richer and fuller sounding chords than before. Note: Be careful when you play with big chords a lot, as it takes up more space frequency wise. One easy and creative way to avoid having too many notes with one instrument is to select some of the notes from the chords and let another instrument play those notes and delete them from the original instrument. It will give you the full depth of the harmony while creating interesting layers of textures. Also, while the extra harmony opens up the potential for the use of new melodic lines, it may collide with certain notes (or take away its effectiveness) that used to work in the old melody before modifying the chords. Stay tuned for part 2 of this topic, as it will cover how you can take these new chords and create close to infinite amount of variations. Covering all the essential components of music creation from the perspective of the musician, DJ and Producer, the Music Fundamentals class starts from the basics and assumes no previous musical training. With a hands on learning approach this is a lab style course designed to fill the gaps in any artists theoretical understanding of how electronic music is made. Using Ableton Live 9 and Midi keyboards we will show you how to have fun with melodies and harmonies by focusing on foundation skills and concepts that will give you the confidence to create meaningful changes and progression in your tracks. Our primary focus here is to teach the language of music without the tedium of traditional music theory by directly translating your ideas into sound. See More... There are many ways to make variations for repetitive sections in your tracks (introducing new instruments, adding more melodies, etc.,) but one of the most effective and underlooked method is to take away some of the existing notes or shifting the timing of percussive instruments very slightly. For example you can take away every other chord or bass notes instead of trying to add new ones, and you can also let the snare hit slightly early (or late) instead of adding more hits. You can do all this through volume automation or warping (in audio tracks), and taking out/shifting the midi note (in midi tracks). So next time you're in need of variations, think of what you can do with what you already have before trying to add new things, it will keep the track from sounding too busy and consequently you'll have more space for other things at the same time - if you need more that is. For more tips and tricks, check out our Music Fundamentals course!
If you ever run out of ideas for melodies, you can always break down your chords into single notes (arpeggio)
and play around with the spacing for a simple in-key melody/harmony. For a little more variation and originality, you can add any notes from the appropriate major/minor scale (according to what type of chord you just broke down) between the original notes from the arpeggio. Refrain from adding too many notes though, more notes could mean less space to play around with creative rhythm. If you have no clue what any of this means, come check out our music fundamentals course!
Steely Chan is the impressive and ambitious remix project of brothers Trevor and Matt Chan who are also both instructors at Off Centre. They're originally from Vancouver but make music in Toronto with the current mandate of posting a new remix every week for free download. They produce, dj, arrange & perform with laptops, turntables & controllers. Drawing from their hip hop background they create anywhere from funk, afrobeat and disco backbeats layered cleverly with a variety of hand picked and manicured vocal selections. Recent mashups include Jurassic 5 & Shawn Lee - World of Lagos, Adele and John Legend - Rolling in the Deep, and of course the remix featured in the above video Cee Lo Green - F*%k You B - Murray Mix. At one remix per week, there's obviously a lot more where this came from. Check the variety of flavours and/or download at your leisure to get some fresh remixes for your next gig http://soundcloud.com/steelychan.
Upcoming Ableton Classes at Off Centre... This instructional Ableton video (from the Ableton library) breaks down the ever elusive art of drum sampling, programming, and building your drum library using Live. Most people agree that successful production is about developing your creativity and expanding your artistic imagination, but your beat making potential is very much tied into the platform that your using. As seen in the video, Ableton makes it quick and easy to throw down ideas and change them up as you go. The program also allows for on the fly parameter tweaking including velocity control which is a key ingredient in giving your beats a natural feel. As with all electronic music production, the grid lines can be used to keep your beat perfectly on time. But once you get your foundation rhythm going, try turning snapping off and get a little looser with your kicks, snares and percussion details to add more character to your beat.
The delay between getting an idea out of your head and onto the canvas can be a painfully long process. Sometimes the idea dissapears before you have a chance to actually record it. The beauty with this program is that it allows you to keep an intuitive flow as you create which enables you to add more layers and edit your patterns with ease. Ableton Foundation Course - April 30th - June 4th // Sat, 1 - 2:30pm // (6 weeks) Our Ableton Live Foundation course focuses on all the basics that will enable you to release your production potential. In our 6 week program you'll start making your own beats and get comfortable navigating Live's unique interface. From triggering multiple tracks on the fly to building your own drum library, we'll break down all the technical aspects and offer production tips so that you can focus on what's important...being creative. At the end of the Foundation session you'll walk away with your 1st of many production pieces. |