Hello folks! I recently put together my first track (woooo!) and gave it out to my friends. The responses were generally very positive. Any criticism was only little things like "You should turn up the sub-bass track" or "The cymbals get a bit lost at that middle part." etc etc. The most common comment/compliment I was getting was that "It sounds very French-House." I'm a fan of some French-House, so i think i'd be happy to go down that route. But don't worry, I'm not here to claim to be the next Daft Punk. I don't even have a helmet with lights in it So as I'm still quite new to this whole making-music thing, I'd like to have a go at doing the classic French House thing of making samples from old school disco and then blending it in with some new electro type sounds to get some sort of awesome tune. Here's the problem though, where do I start looking for disco tracks to get samples out of!? I was born in 1987, so I'm outside the realm of being a 70's/80's disco kid. So this begs the question, WHAT DO!? Any help, even a starting point, would be much appreciated. Twicx
There's a French house tutorial on sonic academy though it is going to cost you money. They also have a disco tutorial, it's pretty nifty basically your making your own disco loops then using them in your tracks, they give you an example and samples, basically guitars funky bass drums few hits,it's a good starting point. You could have a few of them and save them as loops then add them to a house track and you could get a lot of funky sounding stuff, what I'm thinking though not got round to it yet though there's definitely potential!
Get a cheap audio software (or freeware). I started with Garage Band on my Mac, since it was free. There are also a lot of loops already in there to give you an idea. If I wanted to make a loop from a track or captured stuff through a mike etc. I simple drag the mp3 into Garage Band and start cutting around on it. You can also search for some easy tutorials on youtube search for "editing songs in garage band" to get the basic idea. Hope that helps, if you have further questions along the road, feel free to ask. Also tell us where you ended up (I play currently with Ableton... but not the easiest software to begin with...)
@Broomptish I saw the SA tutorials, but as far as i can remeber, one was for Logic and the other was possibly ProTools or maybe FLStudio. I'm on ableton, but even still, that's not the main problem. Both tutorial sets on SA don't deal with samples. I'm guessing it's possibly down to copyright or something. @Terry_42 As i mentioned there, I'm on ableton. I've an idea of how the French House guys do it, in chopping out tiny bits of 70s/80s disco tracks and then making them into samples, but I'm more looking for techniques on how to go about finding good 70s/80s disco tracks. And, if there's anything else I should look out for along the way, like with timing or pitch. FWIW, the first track I did is on SC. my friendface is www.facebook.com/twixmusic and the soundcloud is www.soundcloud.com/twicx . It doesn't have samples in it, and was thrown together in about 3 hours. But the effort is there EDIT: Oh.....
I feel obliged to say here that I'm an avid hater of Mac, but ya know, haters gonna hate. Ravers gonna rave etc etc. I'll find a way of checking it out. I'm going to be heading over to my buddy's house later, and his dad has a monsterous vinyl collection. He's also supercool about letting us flick through it, so I might have a bit of a rummage.
Yes just checked the French house is for reason and cubase the disco loops is ableton though, one of the most useful ones so far I've found on it. Though tbh not done many yet, though I have done the drum and bass for logic and applied it to ableton no problem, most daws are very similar. Except those trackers they are so alien lol
Just watched the intro to disco loops. THIS x 1000000000! That's exactly what I'm looking for!! And a fellow Ableton fan to give the info only makes it sweeter. So from what I gather, a french-disco-house type song breaks down roughly to this: 1. Disco Loop (or multiple disco loops) 2. Emphasised Bass Line 3. Overlaid banging drum track 4. Add modernism where necessary 5. ????? 6. PROFIT!!! Or something along those lines? I'm looking forward to giving this a go. Unfortunately, the dog needs a walk first.
My best advice is to start buying disco records! Thats where all the good stuff is. Much of which hasn't been made digitally available. You will find much more exciting hidden loops if you check the album tracks rather than the singles. If you don't think you can do that, then starting looking at compilations. I'm not going to tell you which ones, but I will point you to some labels that do them really well. Strut Records BBE PPU/Superior Elevation Numero Sessions Z Records Prelude West End Street Sounds P&P Claremont 56 Also, make sure you listen to a lot of french house, nu disco, Detroit and Chicago house as well as hip hop to see what has already been sampled. Of course you can sample it again, but you should try and do it a different way with a different part of the song or whatever
Cool! That's a big help. I'll be in town tomorrow, and there's 3 or 4 vintage vinyl shops that do some great deals like 3 for €10 etc. I'm sure I'll pick up a few. As Jack White said, your turntable's not dead.
i would also look at samples on loopmasters.com they have an extensive bank of samples. For acapellas you may want to check out acapellas4U....I dont know if you could find alot of french house acapellas there however it is a create place to get vocal samples!
