Each week for the next few months, we’ll be writing about London music college Point Blank’s ‘Introduction To Logic Pro’ course, giving a complete rundown of the course.
Like it or not, sampling is one of the cornerstones of dance music in all its shapes and forms. Whether it be in the foundations of hip-hop music, in subtle, unrecognisable ways as a smaller element of a track, or lifted wholesale and used as the centrepiece of a “new” track, it’s an omnipresent technique.
Before we even touch a sample, our tutor talks to us about the legal issues of sampling. If you use a sample from someone else’s track, then you are legally required to pay a percentage to the publisher of the recording, as well as giving performance royalties to EVERYONE who played on the track in question. Not only that, but you are required to seek their permission to use the sample in the first place. If you adhere to these rules, you will see a big fat percentage of your royalties slip through your fingers.
The attitude we’re told to take is essentially shoot first, ask questions later. We are encouraged to use samples for inspiration, and then to pursue the legal side of things if our track gets signed and looks like it’s going to blow up. A low profile track which only makes a small amount of money will never face litigation – so it’s effectively possible to “get away with it”. Make what you will of the morality of that statement – but that’s how it is.
However, there is a way round loosing money through paying performance royalties. Either you replay the sample yourself (if it’s something simple) or if it’s something complex, involving several musicians, you can actually pay a company to reproduce the sample for you. A well-known company is www.replayheaven.com, and for a flat fee they will recreate any sample you can throw at them. So skilled are they at doing so that they’ve been used by the likes of Eric Prydz (Call On Me – the whole sample), Dizzee Rascal, Don Diablo, Steve Angello, Lethal Bizzle and Supermode (Tell Me Why).
Where to start with teaching someone about sampling? Funky Drummer of course. The ubiquitous drum solo sample from James Brown’s 1969 jam is one of the backbones of hip-hop, then breakbeat rave, jungle and drum & bass thereafter – and is still used extensively today. And how funny – as I write this I’m listening to Breakage’s remix of Massive Attack’s Paradise Circus – and what drops in towards the end? A rejigged version of that very break.
We’re shown how to edit samples in Logic from any source, how to timestretch them to fit the tempo of our track, how to fine tune them and smooth them out. Then we’re shown an industry-standard alternative: ReCycle. This programme works like a slightly more sophisticated version of Logic’s Strip Silence function, allowing you to chop a loop up into individual ‘hits’ or ‘slices’ – generally used for dissembling the different percussive sounds within a drum loop. Once you’ve done this, you can rearrange them in Logic to your heart’s content.
The other side of sampling in Logic is demonstrated with the use of the EXS24 sampler instrument – which allows you to build your own instrument using the individual parts of a drum loop, or by just mapping one sound or loop across the keyboard (allowing you to trigger it at different pitches and speeds). It’s a versatile piece of kit, which can be applied to many different uses within tracks – and it’s also what software companies produce ‘patches’ for in their sample packs. This means that you can extend its library of sounds infinitely. We’re also shown how to make our own instruments in Logic’s drum machine Ultrabeat using its Drag & Drop Samples setting – and find that it’s a surprisingly powerful beast that can be used as a step sequencer to create all manner of weird little loops from any sound.
The structure of the course begins to dissolve a little as we cover the prescribed topics in a lesser time than anticipated – allowing our tutor to show us some things that might have been useful to have touched on earlier on. The course structure is a double-edged sword: it gives you the chance to practise and focus on the different elements of making music without overwhelming you, but a little flexibility is needed. Henceforth we get a bit of info on mixing – good habits to have when in the arranging stage of your project, how to fatten sounds up with Limiters and Compressors, how to create Sidechain Compression and how to use Buses to process groups of sounds together (i.e. filtering all your drum sounds at the same time without having to set up a filter on each of their respective channels). These are all crucial details in giving our tracks that phat, professional-sounding edge – and it’s a relief to finally learn a bit about them.
It can be a bit frustrating at times that all of us in the class are using Logic 9 at home, whereas the college computers are still running 8 – when we ask our tutor how to do something or where to locate something and we find out when we get home that it’s not in the same place or it’s been renamed, it can be a bit of a ballache. But with a little exploration, persistence and use of the extensive Logic manual, it’s not so much of a problem. The guys at Point Blank also told us that: "Just to clarify the situation with Logic 8 / 9. Because we are an Apple Approved Training Centre our tutors have to take Apple’s Certified Trainer program in order to teach on the software. Unfortunately Apple have only just introduced the new training program so not everyone is certified yet. If you are having issues with the differences between 8 and 9 then please don’t hesitate to ask your tutor for help. The tutors should be well versed in both versions."
Once I’m back at my set-up, I go about giving my track that extra pump that limiting and compression given. It’s starting to take shape very nicely…
www.pointblankonline.net/142.html
to check out their courses.
www.apple.com/uk for info on Logic.