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Constraints & Creativity

Posted on May 18, 2022May 18, 2022 by Jordan Dougan

Something we often seem to forget is the benefit of having constraints. Consider time. You probably feel, all too frequently, like you’re running short on it. It seems like we never have enough to get everything done, both on a day-to-day basis and the scale of a lifetime. But with a little contemplation, you may realize that without time (or the limit of it) you wouldn’t get anything done. If you had forever to do something, you could put off doing it forever. It seems that the constraint of time pushes you not only to get things done, but also to choose what things you really prioritize doing. The same can be said for many other constraints we face.

One personal example of constraints stimulating progress was my own original experience with music production in junior high. I started my musical journey playing trombone in the 6th grade band. My interest was piqued and soon I was religiously practicing guitar chords on my dad’s Yamaha acoustic. My interest in making music then spiraled into a full-fledged romance and I began searching for a way to compose full songs on my own. With a little research I discovered that you could make music in your own home using just a computer. However, all I had for a computer was my parents’ chromebook, good for little more than browsing the web and unable to run any sizable software. But to my joy I discovered a website which had not only a virtual studio that ran entirely online with no software, but also a community in which people posted, reposted, and commented on each others’ tracks. There were groups dedicated to giving feedback, and all of this was with the purpose of becoming better producers. It was called Soundation.

So I delved into the world of music production and soon became intimately drawn to the wide world of electronic music. I fell in love with the intricate soundscapes and unique timbres that could be created by means of electronics. My love for electronic music has always remained since, in large part due to its ability to synthesize unique emotions. As my skills in making songs progressed, I gained more recognition on the website and got more positive feedback, and soon my skills were rocketing upwards as if I were a light beam shooting up a chimney of mirrors. However, a problem arose; as my songs got better and more intricate, the computing power of the chromebook did not. My songs were now fairly regularly utilizing 20 – 30 “channels”, each attached to a different virtual instrument and set of notes or chords. The chromebook did not like this at all, and it would only allow me to listen to two or three channels at a time before freezing up, leaving me unable to hear anything. Creating and refining tracks now became a process of working on a couple channels then privately exporting the track, listening and deleting, making a couple more adjustments, and then repeating.

Although this sounds like a nightmare of inefficiencies, I have since realized that back then it worked to my advantage. The effect of the tedious process was that I was forced to find my style quickly. At the same time, having to pour so much focus into the process of making music was so engaging that I was constantly in and out of flow-states where it felt like I was delivering creative juice to my tracks straight from the source. Way more attention had to be poured into the details which paid off in uniqueness, and fellow producers increasingly noted the creativity expressed in my songs. This I believe directly resulted from my computer situation; the constraint stimulated creativity.

Before my sophomore year in high school, I had somewhat mastered the Soundation studio and had amassed a solid web of friends and followers on the website. I had finally saved up enough money from birthdays and doing yard work for my grandma to buy a competent laptop and a fresh copy of FL Studio. I was ready to move onto the next new challenge. When I opened FL on my new computer I was excited to discover that I could play 30+ tracks with ease and the dazzling variety of new virtual synthesizers inspired me to dive into a sea of new timbres. Once I jumped over most of the hurdles that come with learning a new software, I started producing tracks that were much more refined than my Soundation days. However, I found that the tracks I was producing lacked a little of the creative glimmer of my old ones. I realized then that the frustrations of making music with the chromebook had naturally extracted much more creativity out of me. By and by I have learned to combine my new skills and technology with my style and uniqueness, and I use the relative freedom of FL studio to my full advantage. But I also recognize that without the limitations of my earlier days, I would never have gotten to the place I am today.

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A Brief History of Dubstep

Posted on December 3, 2020December 3, 2020 by Julian Walker

Dubstep is a genre of electronic dance music. The most basic characterization of what Dubstep is, is heavy bass reliant synthesis with build ups and drops, all centered around a 2-step drum pattern of hard-hitting kicks and powerful snares. All of this happens at a tempo of 130-150 beats per minute (in most cases).

Some sub genres of Dubstep include Drumstep, Chillstep, Deathstep, Riddim, and more. In some cases, all it takes is a change of tempo and drum pattern for songs with relatively similar sound design styles to be considered entirely different genres. For example, changing a Dubstep track’s BPM to 128 and giving it a 4-to-the-floor drum pattern, would classify it as Electro House and/or Bass House instead of any Dubstep subgenres (even though it is safe to assume that derivatives like this all originate from Dubstep). All of this classifies as Modern Dubstep (or what some may refer to as Brostep).

Modern Dubstep and Classic Dubstep are very different from one another. Modern Dubstep is much more aggressive and intense, and in most cases, it can be argued that the main purpose of these tracks is for producers to show off their sound design skills. Classic Dubstep is much more laid back with emphasis on the sub bass to set the mood, and more closely resembles traditional UK EDM genres of the prior era (primarily 2-step Garage music). One can explore further back past Classic Dubstep to the genres that initially lead to all forms of Dubstep.

Starting with Garage music, which was a variation of older House music that became popular in the 1990s. The difference between Garage and House was that Garage producers aimed to create House styled music without the generic 4-to-the-floor drum patterns and broke away from other rhythmic stereotypes. But even before this, Dub emerged in the 1960s. This was an electronic subgenre of reggae. The remixing style of Dub had a lot of influence on the UK culture that originally pioneered Garage music.

Above is An Example of Dub Music

Above is An Example of Garage Music

Eventually, producers began experimenting with making the bassline the core focus of their Garage. The combination of 2-step drum patterns and the first dark/grimy bass progressions, wobbles, and wubs, led to the earliest form of Classic Dubstep.

Above is An Example of Early Classic Dubstep

In the 2010s, Dubstep began to adopt more aggressive tones. Mixing elements of Classic Dubstep with elements of Punk and Metal. Lead basslines were designed in ways that resembled a distorted electric guitar. This was around the time that the term ‘Brostep’ and other subgenre titles became prevalent in order to classify this new style of Dubstep, because it was becoming very different from its roots. However, today the term ‘Classic Dubstep’ can be re-applied to the tracks of this time, as Modern Dubstep has evolved even further past this point.

Above is An Example of 2010 Dubstep

Skrillex is often miscredited as the inventor of Dubstep. He is surely one of the most popular and innovative Dubstep artists. He is largely responsible for the genre’s breakout into mainstream media.

The early 2010s were the highest point of popularity in Dubstep’s lifespan. However, shortly after its peak, it began to decline. This did not stop it from evolving though. As production quality improved and the importance of experimentation with sound design stayed relevant (which it always will), Dubstep today (at the time of this article’s publication), while still resembling its roots, sounds pretty different than it did almost ten years ago. Hear for yourself:

Above is An Example of Riddim Dubstep

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5wbV2opwBg

Above is An Example of Melodic Dubstep

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Soundation: A Review

Posted on November 6, 2020November 6, 2020 by Julian Walker

Soundation is a web-based, digital audio workstation. It was created in 2009 for the purposes of giving anyone with an internet connection the ability to make music online. Over the years, it has amassed almost 4 million registered accounts and a thriving community. It is surprisingly powerful for a web-based DAW and is the reason a lot of people have gotten into music production, including many signed Cryptic Coast artists (artists that have released with the label, artists scheduled for release, and artists that are supported by Cryptic Coast in general) and followers.

Soundation’s tools, instruments/synthesizers, and effects are relatively good quality. Some being better than others, these appliances provide a music maker with all the necessary ingredients to put a decent sounding track together. Most of the tools serve as the basic building blocks for production (most DAWs would include similar instruments and effects as stock plugins to provide the user with the bare necessities), such as a standard GM-2, essential effects (reverb, compression, delay, etc) and a synthesizer that is literally named ‘Simple Synth’ with four oscillators and standard attack/decay/sustain/release variability.

However, the studio has spawned some notable features that are very powerful, especially for a web-based DAW. One of which is the Parametric EQ, which is an 8-band equalizer that is available to premium users. It works incredibly well and sports 4 analyzer modes of the frequency spectrum.

Another amazing feature of the Soundation studio is the ‘Wub Machine’. This is an LFO focused synthesizer that is primarily used for creating filthy/grimy wubs found in dubstep and other bass genres. This instrument is iconic to Soundation and is easily one of the most fun to use, and one of the most recognizable within the community.

Despite the studio’s overall positive attributes, it is not immune to certain criticisms. For example, there are many features that Soundation would benefit from implementing that would increase the professionalism and creative capabilities of the software. Things like a sampler, real sidechaining capabilities (as opposed to the mock sidechaining tool known as the ‘fakie’), higher resolution exporting abilities, and much more. These features are things that the Soundation community has been wanting for years, but the developers have yet to deliver. The overall gripe that is holding Soundation back is the overall difficulty that persists when one is trying to create a professional sounding finished product. Not to say that it cannot be done, as is evident by multiple Cryptic Coast releases, but it is definitely more difficult to do in comparison to other DAWs. This is the reason why many talented artists within the community eventually move on from Soundation to more “mature” DAWs like FL studio and Abelton. In many cases, Soundation is considered a learning tool by its experienced users and can be described with the analogy of riding a bike with training wheels. Soundation’s team has embraced this analogy by offering premium packages to schools and learning programs related to music production.

Over the years Soundation has become increasingly more professional and powerful as a DAW, but what would really drive the nail into its legitimacy as a music production tool would be third-party plugin support. Soundation is nearly flawless and would be completely flawless if users could use it as a vessel for tools obtained from elsewhere. It is not fair to judge a DAWs capability solely based on its stock plugins. However, Soundation being a web-based DAW means that third-party plugin support would be very hard to implement. The best Soundation can do is hard code third party plugins into the software, which is not ideal because it takes a long time to fully implement and also eliminates some element of choice for producers (narrowing the endless amounts of plugins out there to use, to a select few), but it is definitely a step up from not having any third-party support whatsoever. This process of hard-coding has already begun with the ‘Europa’ synth.

Europa is a wavetable synthesizer created by Reason Studios and is now available for use as a Soundation instrument. It is a very good quality synthesizer and definitely earns the title as one of Soundation’s best features.

Much of Soundation’s success as a platform can be attributed to its thriving community. The community is easily one of the best things about the platform as a whole. Built into the website is a community tab that functions as a smaller scale version of Soundcloud. Many users have made a name for themselves as artists by using this medium and more engagement/activity is sparked every day by the trending system (top tracks based on community member likes), as well as the feature system (hand-picked favorites by the Soundation team, based on submissions to various groups within the community). It is safe to say that many producers would not be where they are today without the support they have gained from the Soundation community.

Here is a statement from overdoze (also known as Jérémy Giroux), a long-time Soundation user, and a Cryptic Coast artist (with releases like The Third One with SLOCM3Z, and paracosm):

“I knew nothing about music production when I created my account on Soundation. All I wanted to do was to create music. Three years after my first track, I got a feature on the website. I was self-taught. I learned everything from either messing around in the studio or collaborating with artists such as Oozie454, MONOXIDE and Dutchy. Now, I own FL Studio and I am learning Ableton. Without Soundation, I would never have gotten into music production. As a DAW (sorry Kal), Soundation is shit. But its on a web browser, the limitations are expected. I forgive it for this reason. My goal is to push its limits and go beyond.”

Another Cryptic Coast artist with several releases, known as mondaze, also has something to say about his experience with Soundation:

“Soundation is a great platform to target new musicians who want to learn a simplistic DAW without the hassle of technical learning curves, and also without having to download any software. It can be seen as a gateway to electronic music production as a whole. It’s the whole reason why I, as an electronic musician, have the experience that I do. I’m very glad Soundation existed when I first came around the scene. It helped me shape who I am as an artist.”

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