Subway Series: Erhu Man

This week, I am honoring a well-known performer in the Boston area, Zhi Zhou, the Erhu player. I captured a piece of his performance and imported it into Lumit to explore his musical themes and let them inspire this uplifting dance track.

~ Inspired Song, Mastered by Mica Jaric

~ Raw Audio   BASIC CHALLENGES

Making Composition Material

I made seven unique "phrases" out of the raw recording. This process is like those puzzles where you see how many words you can make from one long term. Listen for the little licks that speak to you and cut them out - give them their track. 

 

Choosing a Tempo

Once I cropped out the phrases I would use, I found one that sounded like a pick-up to the start of a bar. I tapped along to the sample to determine the tempo in my mind - 127 BPM. Do not change the tempo in the session where you are making your samples. Start a new project, change the tempo, then import them - so they don't get warped.

~ The snippet that started it all  

Conforming the Material to My Musical Clock

        

The snapping stretch points proved to be a very efficient method for this. In my head, I broke some phrases into smaller segments and thought about the closest rhythm that agreed with my tempo and meter. Here is the basic process to conform my samples to my BPM.

1. Snap the start of your sample to the beginning of a bar.
2. Loop it and listen to it against the click.
3. Imagine a similar rhythm that could work (imagine what will work in your song).
4. Segment the sample into manageable "cells" using stretch points in the editor with the draw tool.
5. Snap the cells into subdivisions of the grid to make your rhythm. This may take some background knowledge on composition.
6. Cut, stretch, shorten, and crossfade the "cells" as desired.

~ Melodic phrases against a click  

Tuning

Be sure to listen very carefully to the tone of your samples against the song's key. When you sample a live instrument, there is a good chance its intonation will not be excellent or that the tonal center of the performance will be "between keys." The tonic of my samples sat between G and G#, so I ended up shifting most of my samples down by 10 cents and choosing G minor as the key. I suggest taking a day to step back from it all and listen again later. For me, breaks like these often reveal tonality issues. If you're unsure, try using a free tuning plugin from this list by Bedroom Producers Blog.

Re-Sampling

I used iZotope Iris 2 to re-sample a static note of the instrument across the keyboard to play the melody you hear in the "B" section. I used Lumit's EQ unit to drop the low shelf by about 15 dB and added a generous amount of reverb from Valhalla Room.

~ Static Note

~ Re-sampled Melody