Benjamin Santiago's AKA$HIC RECORDINGS

beat of the week no.22. (F)LOWBEE

The name of this track is just a (dumb) play on words. In an effort to play guitar parts in a lower register without getting a baritone, 7 or 8 String guitar, I just tune the low E string down to B. This creates a fortuitous situation if you are playing in a B-related key (In this case B Minor…I guess relative to D, but there isn’t much else going on so it doesn’t really matter). Another thing I have been doing is randomizing several parts to create more dynamic sequences out of simpler sets of parts. Here I basically take a relatively simple drum track, duplicate and freeze it and then use the resulting audio file to warp it and create a bunch fills/noise. These are randomly launched and gives the feeling like there is much more going on.

This beat was created with Ableton Live and Native Instruments’ Guitar Rig.

beat of the week no.017. Battle Squadron

Wanted to do some more guitar-centric beats this week, and work with that weird god-like voice sample I had last week. I like how it loops at different times depending on the pitch. Used the Harmonic Synthesizer in Guitar Rig to do that heavy bass sound in this. 

The title of this beat comes from the Sega Genesis game of the same name. Something about the voice sample I am using reminded me of the sounds used for one of the weapons in that game.

beat of the week no.006, Hard Body

Pretty happy with this one. Originally wanted to do a more static Kraftwerk-style thing, but ended up with something that sounded like a really bad, newer NIN song. Didn’t really think about where it came from too much, just kind of let it happen.

This beat was made with Ableton Live with samples and synths internal to it. The guitar sounds were made with Native Instruments Guitar Rig.

beat of the week no.005, Winmark

Not much to say about where I got the idea for this one. I was just walking and got the idea for the guitar part that ends the song and built the rest around it. Not really too enthused about the distortion level on the main melody, but like the rhythm of it. There’s also something to be desired about all the “let one thing play by itself and then go into a new part” things I did. 

This was done in Abelton Live using synths internal to Abelton Live, Tapeworm, and Guitar Rig.

beat of the week no.003, Recontextual Eyes.

Not much to talk about here. I just wanted to use the way you can randomize clip playback in Ableton Live. It ended up coming out a bit Dan Deacon-y. I’ll probably play with it again. 

This beat was made with Ableton Live. You’ll need Guitar Rig for the guitar sounds. The rest is just audio I recorded and synths native to Ableton.