Part 3: Making of Slippery friction (Behind the scenes)
Lorenzo's Music single "Slippery friction" is available now!
This is part 3 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 the last video, we practiced our song Slippery friction during a live stream and Rob came up with a drum part that we thought would make a great chorus for the song.
But we couldn't record the new drum part yet because we were waiting for a multi-channel sound card to arrive.
Setting up our new sound card in the studio
The sound card did arrive so we were able to actually hook that up and multirack the new drum part for the song.
Soundcards we use in our studio setup:
- Behringer U-PHORIA UMC1820 - https://amzn.to/3RKfPwe
- Behringer ADA8200 Microphone Preamp - https://amzn.to/46tGGRq
Rob also created a custom rack for us to use with the new dual multi-track soundcard setup.
Part of it was just a box left over from a high school woodshop class and the bottom is part of an office chair. The pipe running from that up to the rack just happens to fit perfectly. And then we can swing around on that to get at the back.
Recording drums
We recorded the new drum idea that Rob had for the chorus. But now with this new chorus the drums that we had during the verses made the whole thing seem too rock.
It lost its original Groove.
A few days later I was driving in my car and I just had my music on shuffle and one of the songs that popped up was the song "The shiznet" by Snoop Dogg. I thought a groove like this might actually work well in the song.
So I shared that with Rob and told him to see if he could do something along those lines.
Sharing music recording sessions on GitHub
Rob downloaded the session from our GitHub files and recorded something at home on his electronic drum kit that he has.
Rob was able to record these drum lines to the actual recording session that we had at home because of a method that we came up with to share and collaborate on our recording sessions using open-source tools like GitHub, Ardour, and Ubuntu Studio.
This method of recording remotely we created was something that no other band was doing.
We were invited to Europe to talk about how we use open-source tools for music
We were actually asked by the people who make the operating system we use Ubuntu Studio to talk about our recording method at a summit in Prague.
The band not only got to play at this Summit in Prague but we were actually asked to explain this method for recording remotely that we use.
And the whole experience was just because we're open-source musicians. Because we use only free and open source software.
And during our time in Prague, we actually got to hang out with the people that created Ardour, the recording DAW that we use.
Recording vocals
At this point, the song still had no lyrics. So I sat down and wrote out the lyrics and came up with a melody part.
The chorus part was still pretty heavy so I decided to record a vocal line that kind of went with that.
Recording a baritone sax part
Even with the vocals finished the song still needed something more.
So what we did is we had our friend Bryan who has played with the band before come out and just write a sax part for the song.
And we didn't really give him any direction we just kind of played the song and had him just record anything that came to mind. He just tried out different stuff and we would just pick what we liked and arrange it in the DAW with the song.
It all started with just a simple loop idea
This whole song just started out as one of the loops in a library of ideas that we were creating.
Something that we did during the pandemic.
Something that turned into a method that we created that got us flown to Europe to explain how we came up with it.
Then it turned into a song.
But...
But recently we just got a message while working on this song and these loop ideas that we've been working on were actually going to come in handy for something more.
