How a blind producer creates music - with Andre Louis

Hello there, André Louis

with

Fracture Sounds and today I'm going to show you a few ways that I as a blind producer record using NKS and Fracture Sounds products. So we're going to start off using Electric Keys, Blueprint Electric Keys which is the first Blueprint library that I ever played and I love it. I've even used it on stage at gigs and I've actually used it on a commercial release on Spotify too. It's very exciting. So

I'm

using Logic Pro here on a Mac

and

I use VoiceOver. Now VoiceOver is the built-in screen reader on Macs. Windows has Narrator

and

a bunch of other third-party screen readers as well. Now

if

you are a Mac user you can bring up VoiceOver by doing Command and the F5 key on your keyboard or Command and triple-clicking the power button on your Mac.

Now I

have no site at all so I have to use the keyboard for all interactions.

So

that means I don't use the mouse in any way, shape or form other than to accidentally graze it sometimes and send it flying across the screen.

So

here I am in the plugin window for complete control and I brought that up using a hotkey.

Now

I've got a whole bunch of different hotkeys for my Logic here

that

just enabled me to fly around Logic a lot faster than without them. So as I've already loaded electric keys on this you will not see it but on the next window I'm going to show you how I do that directly from Native Instruments hardware. And Native Instruments has really given me the musical start that I have in my life at the moment

because

without it I wouldn't be able to use libraries like these because a lot of these interfaces are not natively accessible.

So

basically my plan today is to put down perhaps like an 8 bar or 16 bar loop and show you how I go about that because that's how I base a lot of my pieces. I tend to start in a very loopy fashion and then I'll build it out later.

I

want an idea. I think I want to do something in A flat major.

Now

this is just one of the most warm roads I've ever played. It's just so beautiful. I haven't changed any of the settings yet. It's just it lives. It's just here. And any chord I strum on it almost like a guitar just comes out warm and good. Yeah. Okay great.

I

have an idea. So I'm going to go and set the tempo briefly. So I need to switch windows. We'll be back

in

a moment.

So

what I've just done is use something called Item Chooser which allows me to type

what

I want to reach quickly on the screen in this case tempo and now I can set that.

I'm

going to check using the metronome.

Yeah

that'll do. 90 BPM. All right. Okay. Let's go back into this plug-in window so you can see as I record.

Right.

Let's go for this. Take

one

bar counting.

That

will do nicely. Simple but effective. All right. Let's set up a cycle mode because it's quick and easy. So I'll turn on cycle with C.

I'll

go to nine bars and set the end of the locator

like

that. Go back a bar. Check it's working. There we go. Very nice. So now we're going to use the complete browser and I'm not going to use the computer keyboard or the mouse to load the product I want. So I hit the browser on the keyboard. I'll turn the vendor knob till I reach fracture sounds.

Here

it is. Turn the

dials till I reach

Homestead Piano. Press Select.

Here. What

a beautiful piano. So this is just going to be like chords to help the roads out. It's going to be sort of pseudo lo-fi I suppose.

Right.

So here we go. I'm going to kind of strum my way into this. Good. I made a mistake. So you get to see me redo it again but that's okay. That happens. I actually like that.

I've used

the undo key on the keyboard and I'll replay that because I failed epically. There we go.

Right.

Let's go and change this humanized value because it's a bit too tight for me. The quantize isn't very nice. So

let's

do that. Jumping into the inspector table.

Go

down

the bottom here.

I

like

75% humanized because it

gives

a bit more realism. Let's play it solo. Let's turn the metronome off as well. Have a bit of a listen.

And

you can hear some of the mechanics of the piano. It gives it that real feel. I really, really like that already. All

right.

So time for a little drums. We're going to use drum kit, of course. Drum kit. All right. Same again.

Window. Let's

browse for drum kit.

This

time

I want to...

There we go. Here we go.

Click. So

drum kit is now loaded.

Now

this is kind of the wrong feel for this. I need to make some adjustments. So this is good because you get to see me do that here.

So

if you saw the walkthrough video I did for drum kit, you'll know that I can adjust all the mics and things like this. I need to taint the room down.

I

want a nice close sound here.

Oh, 75%. 70%. 58%. 58%.

56%.

48%. 50%.

So

I've got the overheads to 50%. Yeah. This is going to be all right, I think. I'm going to do a test play, not even a record. Just

see how it

feels.

Yeah.

This can work. Here we go.

Notice my

symbols

are a little

quiet. And that's because my O is only 50.

I'm

going to turn that up slightly.

There

we go. Got a bit of a crash there. Also, the end of my track, I'm going

to go

to the end of the window.

Notice

that open hi-hat just keeps on ringing back through to bar one. So what I'm going to do is hit record and then just hit the closed hi-hat here on the C sharp as it comes

back around

like

this.

That

should do.

And have

a listen again. Simple but effective there. Also, I'll humanize the drums a bit. Otherwise, it's very mechanical.

There we go. How about that?

Let's have a listen. Okay. Don't like that hi-hat.

It

comes in late. So let's go into the MIDI editor. Command and 7.

There

it

is.

And

it comes in

1, 175. So I'm just going to put it at 1, 1, 1. So it comes in right on bar

1,

beat 1.

Like

that.

Have

a listen

here. Okay.

So I'm going to pick gentle strings next. Hotspots allow me to get around logic super quickly. So when I set up a new project, and particularly this one, because the window is not how I have it at home exactly, hotspots get lost. And it's a voiceover problem, not anything else. So I have

the

hotspot to go to the tempo bar, as we used earlier.

This one

that goes to the track header that I use all the time.

The

one that

would go to

the mixer that doesn't right now. This one to go to the inspector table. So when I'm working with people, or even myself, you know, I have to be very efficient in the studio, just as you do. And since I can't use the mouse, I do use the keyboard in all these different ways

that

enable me to be extremely quick. So I'm

going to

put

back the mixer hotspot that allows me to be

useful.

There

we go.

So now I have one to go to the mixer, one to go to the track header,

one

to go to the inspector,

one

to go to the

tempo

up

there.

So that enables me to get to really key parts of logic super, super quickly.

See,

it's just hidden underneath everything. You're not really supposed to hear it more, feel it. And I like things like that. But

it's

like one of those things where when you make a cake, if you didn't have either the sugar or the salt or the egg even,

it

would be not the same kind of cake. It's all in there. It's all blended. And if it was missing, you'd feel it.

So

I like things like that.

Yeah.

So we have our strings, we have our drums. Let's hear it without the metronome now, just to

get

a feel of if it worked.

I'm

going to mute Homestead and see how that feels. Just roads and strings.

With

these four tracks, this could now turn into something I could, for example, put the piano and strings at

the

beginning and then move the roads into bar nine. That kind of thing. You know, move it all around and turn it into something meaningful. But

this

is how I start to write things. I put everything together as a palette and then sometimes I'll move things around. And sometimes I'll even come up with a middle eight. Not all the

time, though.

There are days when I just save that much. My hard drive is full, absolutely chock full, of loop ideas like this that I can never extend.

But

there are days when you just have a great idea and then you can. I hope this quick and dirty demo gives you a little bit of an insight into how I, as a blind person, work. I promise I do better work than this. But it is at least an idea and you can take all these blueprint libraries yourself and do

similar

things.

Maybe

better things. Very definitely better things. If you haven't already, please do subscribe to Fracture Sounds. Check out the fracturesounds.com website. And if you feel so inclined, you can come over to my YouTube channel, which is linked in the video description as well.

Thanks

for watching.