The Null Device Blog

Random musings, rumblings, and what-have-you from an indie electronic band.

A Little Bit of Swing.

Posted on | November 10, 2008 | No Comments

I’d been working on a track for a while – it was sort of a Pendulum-ish drum-n-bass song, with my usual indian influences.

It wasn’t gelling, though.  It sounded a bit pedestrian and derivative, and the army-of-dhols in the intro and fill didn’t match the 2-step beat well.

Sort of by random poking I re-quantized the drum lines with a heavy swung 8th-note groove – nearly an 8th-triplet swing.  The end result is almost show-tune-ish.

This worked surprisingly well.  The track had groove and the dhols matched the beat nearly perfectly, too.  The track was radically different, though – it didn’t have the frentic energy of the original 2-step beat, but I think the tradeoff was worthwhile. 

A few tweaks are still needed – some of the sounds don’t quite match up yet and the vocal processing isn’t quite right – but it’s certainly gone from a predictable track to one that’s got a little more originality.

This makes me happy.

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