Music with GregePorter

Bottom line: Use Suspended chords (aka sus) like Sus2 and Sus4 to add a bit of tension before releasing to a major or minor chord. So you've got a number of ways to play chords in Sonic Pi. You could use any of the following (I'm adding the sleeps in there so you can copy/paste into your Sonic Pi window) play_chord([60,62,67]) # provide the number which correspond notes (where middle C == 60) sleep 1 play chord(:C3, :major) # provide chord name sleep 1 play_chord([:C, :D, :G]) # provide the names of the notes you want to use  sleep 1  play 60 # play the notes individually without sleeps between them play 62 play 67 For the purposes of the rest of this post, I'll use the second form cause it's compact and we can see the numbers. ------------------------------------------------ Now, we've got major chords, and the music theory the notation is 1-3-5 (ie Base Note + 3 + 5). Similarly, we've got minor chords with the notations 1-2-5. In Sonic Pi l...

Lemme start off by saying I love reggaeton. If you aren't familiar, it's a genre of music that originated in Puerto Rico. It evolved from dancehall and hip-hop. Daddy Yankee ( Con Calma  was a recent-ish hit of his, at the time of writing, it has 2.2 billion  views) and Bad Bunny ( Mia , for example) are some major figures in the genre. I could go on about reggaeton all day but I'll save that for a future post.  Now, reggaeton has a really distinctive drum beat and it pervades the genre. It comes from a dancehall beat (or "riddim") called  Dem Bow  by Shabba Ranks. When I'm listening to the one radio station in my area that plays a lot of reggaeton, I can't help but laugh: the songs might have different drum sounds and tempos, but they  always  have the same core drum beat. Just the same, I never get tired of it. I've always wanted to figure out how to program that into my drum machines and I never could. I don't know why; I could just never quite...

Welcome, readers! I learned a neat trick for spicing up a high hat and a kick loop. Consider the following: live_loop :cymbal do     sample :drum_cymbal_closed, amp: amp_level     sleep 0.25 end    It's your standard loop. Now try modifying the velocity or amp of that cymbal: live_loop :cymbal do     amp_level = (ring 0.5, 1).tick     sample :drum_cymbal_closed, amp: amp_level     sleep 0.25 end  It's subtle but it gives a rolling feel to the sound. It's a really quick way to add some more flavor to the beat. Based on a conversation I had in the Sonic Pi forms , this is a way to streamline this too:  live_loop :cymbal do       sample :drum_cymbal_closed, amp: (ring 0.5, 1).tick       sleep 0.25 end You can put the ring inside the sample line. I'll explore rings more in a future post too so stay tuned! Thanks for reading! Let me know in the comments what you think and what you've been work...

Ok, in my last post , I touched on how I'm frustrated by my lack of rhythm and my struggles with that 16th note exercise. For those who missed that post, I've been trying to follow this music theory course. It's great but some of the exercises are kinda miserable. The one in question was that I had to identify the pattern of quick 16th notes. The idea is that it teaches your ear to pick out the notes and teach you a sense of how the music feels.  That sounds awesome, right? Wellllll, it was a wall. You have to be perfect to progress and, for the life of me, I was consistently missing a single note. Alright, well, then I've just got to practice. That's kinda where I left the last post. But after hours of trying, I kinda took a step back. Is hitting these 16th notes worth it? Do I have to learn how to hear that to make music? No.  Granted, it might be really useful but I don't have to do that right now.  So I stopped. I skipped that challenge and moved right along...

I'm trying to learn Music Theory. I've always wanted to learn Music Theory.  I'm having a really hard time with it. I like to sing and dance and all that but there seems to be a disconnect, at least, at the moment with the beat. It seems to me that my sense of rhythm needs a lot of work. Like a lot a lot. I've been working through this tutorial called Audible Genius. I highly recommend it and its Synthesizer counterpart. One of the things that makes it so helpful is that you have to identify a beat or notes by ear. It's hard if you've never had to do that before and, well, I've never had to do that before. The lesson I'm currently struggling with is focusing on 16th notes. So we have a bass drum, a kick drum, and a high hat. The high hat is where we are using the 16th notes. They play a sequence of 16th notes and you've got to replicate it. They give the suggestion, "just feel it out; tap it out to memorize it" and, if necessary, count it o...

I think I'll make a more extended post about how I made this in the future but, for the time being, have a listen; I'm pretty excited about it.