Part 2: Making of Slippery friction (Behind the scenes)
Lorenzo's Music single "Slippery friction" is available now!
This is part 2 of the making of our song Slippery friction.
The song originally started out as just a loop 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.
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
In the previous video
In a previous video, I mentioned that this song started out as part of a library of Loops that we were creating.
So we used these loops to test out a method that we had for sharing and collaborating on music remotely and that involved Ubuntu Studio which was our production suite and our DAW Ardour.
How we came up with the idea to use GitHub for music collaboration
We would share the actual sessions from the Ardour files that we recorded using a service called GitHub.
GitHub is actually a Version Control System. It's a service that's mainly meant for using code. Developers use it to collaborate on websites or software development.
It occurred to me when we were doing our recording sessions that the main Adour file if I right-clicked on that just to see what was inside I noticed it really was just code. And I thought - maybe we could share these files along with the full folders that had the audio in them to GitHub and the band would have the exact same setup effects recording sessions and things like that for all of us on both ends.
So over this time, we collaborated on these loop libraries using this method.
We even started to turn some of these into longer songs more than a loop Library. Building off of them and creating something else.
Experimenting with guitar lines
I began arranging a particular loop called Slippery friction into more of a song structure.
But it just kind of sounded like backing tracks, it didn't sound like a song, it needed something more.
So I played what I had so far for Rob (drummer) and Cliff (Bassist) and as they were sitting down listening to it both of them were holding onto guitars and they were just kind of noodling and playing along as they listened.
As the song played I heard something from both parts of what they were doing. I had them record and create kind of what they had done.
And even as we were listening back Rob still played along as we listened to the tracks. I heard him do something that was yet another line that might be kind of cool to add to the song. So I hit record again and we laid down this new idea.
We still wanted to do more with the song. So the next time we got together Eric (guitarist) was listening to the song and we had him just record ideas for it. We weren't sure what to do, we didn't really have an idea of what he should do. So we just had him play along with it, play anything, just play whatever came to mind and we recorded the entire time.
We would just listen for things that he would do from here to there and point out anything that sounded interesting. It didn't matter where in the song he was playing it it was the ideas that we were trying to capture on the recording and would edit it later.
Chopping up recordings into riffs
One of the things that we really enjoyed while we were working on these songs remotely over the past few years was experimenting with the recordings that we had. Playing and recording anything, cutting them up, and putting them in different places in the song.
That was kind of what we were looking for while Eric was trying out these different guitar parts. We would just cut up different parts of the riffs even sometimes just notes and place them in different places to see what it would be. And then we would actually arrange these into new lines that weren't even played.
The song began to take shape
As we went through this whole process it was starting to come together as a song. It was starting to form into something. Now it had sort of a lead melody guitar.
But at this point, the song still had the original programmed drums that were from the original loop idea. We wanted the song to have something more Dynamic and that's when we decided to turn on the cameras and actually test it out on a live stream with Rob playing drums.
And during this particular session, Rob did something that really opened up the song. He had a whole new section that he did with a drum line.
But the problem was is we still were waiting on a multi-track sound card to record his drums on these tracks.
Making of Slippery friction part 3 coming soon...
