On Sunday last week a friend was over and wanted to pull something up on YouTube. I opened up a fresh browser with no history, and the first video was this: Hey mom.....5 generations...Ages 3,21,42,72,92 - YouTube
Like myself, my friend has just got back into music, and mentioned another mutual friend who has done the same (I’d love to see some figures for synth and controller sales since COVID, I’d imagine seeing a heavy increase?) and seeing this very random video inspired me to challenge them to use it as a sample in a song.
There were no rules really. We said 2+ minutes, use the sample as you see fit, and we’ve got seven days. No other requirements. The primary objective was not to use this sample in any particular way, but just to stop fscking around picking samples or fine tuning kicks till your ears bleed and just get something that resembled a song finished in a reasonable amount of time.
I had a few fairly decent song ideas developed around the samples, but an unfortunate update mishap on the Zynth disappeared much of the work as the weekend approached. This is more convenient excuse than actual loss, I’m just softening the blow for you so you’re not expecting musical genius from this post.
So this morning I took the soundfont I’d made and some of the ideas and produced this:
Other than the kick which is a modified NoiseMaker preset, this is 100% samples from the YouTube clip. The bass line is a zero point cycle I captured and filtered. Everything else, including the snare and percussion, is literally just pitched slices from the sample, with either echo or reverb or filter.
It’s pretty minimal, but it was my entry to the challenge. Needs better mixing and a few fixes, and I still wanna include the sample more. I may keep working on it, we’ll see what happens.
On the off chance it isn’t obvious, aside from the chops which were done on my computer with Audacity, and the soundfont that was done on my computer with Polyphone, this was created mixed and recorded entirely on the Zynth. Right now I have a friends MPD32 plugged in, which along with @riban’s new ZynSeq updates turns the Zynthian into an MPC! This track was made before the update, but using ZynSeq to arrange everything in the pattern editor. Thanks to the upates the next track will come together much quicker!
Anyway, please consider putting something together using the same sample, and sharing your work!
P.S - I don’t own the original video, it was just a truly random video, that made the whole exercise a bit more fun. Many thanks to the original uploader.
Edit: I haven’t heard my friends contributions yet, they aren’t due till tomorrow. I can share them if there is interest and they allow me to, but neither are using a Zynth.
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