Making of Slippery Friction (Behind the scenes) Pt. 1
Lorenzo's Music single "Slippery friction" is available now.
The song Slippery friction started out as just a loop idea that turned into several variations on the same idea. That original loop idea expanded into a song.
This documentary explains how that happened and how we came up with a new method of remote song collaboration. A method using only open-source software like Ubuntu Studio, Ardour DAW, and GitHub to collaborate remotely on the song.
This is part 1 of the series
Open-Source Tools we use:
Ubuntu Studio (A Linux production suite for Musicians) https://ubuntustudio.org
Ardour (Digital Audio Workstation) https://ardour.org
Kdenlive (Video editor) https://kdenlive.org/en/
OBS Studio (Video recording and streaming) https://obsproject.com
How the song Slippery friction began
So during the pandemic, we came up with a way to collaborate on songs online. We found a method where we were actually able to record and release six songs during the shutdown.
We ended up doing that using open-source tools like Ardour, Ubuntu Studio as our operating system, and GitHub to share and collaborate on the files.
Songwriting over video chat
As we recorded over video chat we were even able to talk while the other person was recording.
The video chat actually became kind of like the booth that the person would be in recording in a studio. We would be on one side listening and they would be doing their take on the other side.
We would comment on what we liked or what they could do differently and then they could re-record it if they needed to.
Documenting songs on a Wiki
We had these all cataloged on our own sort of Wiki page that we created using Google Pages.
We had so many song ideas that were just snippets. Ideas of songs that we could work on later. We called them "Diddy's".
We thought, what if we turned them into like a loop library to share online. That's really how it all started.
Song inspiration
I had listened to the soundtrack "Night on Earth" that Tom Waits did for the Jim Jarmusch movie. And he does different variations on the same two song ideas.
I thought, let's do the same thing with one of the ideas from the "Diddy's". Make different mood versions from this single loop idea.
So I started doing that and in one night I created two different songs.
Started doing live stream songwriting sessions
When the global shutdown ended and we were able to get back together in the same room at our studio we kept the live streaming format as part of our songwriting process.
The fact that even though nobody's watching we know it's being recorded and put out there. So we kind of had to be on our best try and come up with something.
So we thought it might be cool to try and do some live songwriting on our Twitch Channel.
The original setup we had was really just a rough setup. It was a single webcam attached to the laptop that was connected to our sound card, which at the time was only a two-channel sound card.
Created different song ideas
After one of the live sessions, I laid down a keyboard track we did and backed it up on our GitHub so we could all kind of work with it on our own at home.
The first thing that happened was Cliff wrote a bass line for it.
I started taking different sections of that recording session and turning it into a couple of different loops.
Now we had four variations of the one main diddy idea. It needed a title so we called it "Slippery friction". It was a name that Rob our drummer came up with.
This is just the beginning...
And we continued to do the live streams of our songwriting sessions on our Twitch Channel.
But what started out as loops began expanding into something more.
