That "Flying Lotus" sound

[bandshell]

yeah I agree, whenever anyone asks how to make a sound soemone else has they tend to get a certain amount of abuse for it, its all part of learning, you dissect other peoples sounds and learn how to do everythign you can.

but i disagree with the genre comment, genre is just a marketing tool.

[magma]

but i disagree with the genre comment, genre is just a marketing tool.

Generally, I agree... I don't like generalisation that much... but the "Dubstep" approach to making music has spawned a community spirit and places like this... people getting together to make similar styles of music can actually be a fairly positive tool if harnessed correctly....

[bandshell]

yeah definitely

[magma]

Generally, I agree... I don't like generalisation that much...

I'm such a fucking douche. Contradiction in terms anyone?

[bandshell]

ahahahaha smooooth

[scooterjack]

Yeah, but there's nothing wrong with learning from and being inspired by others... that's why we have "genres" and not just a 2 billion unrelated musicians.

the reason we have 'genres' is for the record labels to make money of the 'new sound' and for artists to feel special....


all musicians are related, genres or not, simply because they are musicians

[bandshell]

but i disagree with the genre comment, genre is just a marketing tool.

[cosmic revenge]

here's what he told me

in steps

1. get high as shit
2. drum on your drum pad and don't quantize it
3. sample some vinyl
4. bounce to disk
5. release to public
6. repeat

[thetaco]

Intense compression/limiting going on there. He brings his pads and atmospheres to the forefront rather than the background! Compress the shit out of reverb on your snares etc...I also find a lot of times that his samples are quite dirty, but his synths clear as fuck. Hope this helps.

[spek lives]

umm im taking a wild guess here but I think its safe to say all you have to do is layer your percussion and just use the groove to shuffle and slide each layer from left to right. as for his sound? you just gotta sharpen up your EQ skills.

[condra]

I think the dude is a great musician, beat maker, and producer. Like many of the best producers out there, he has a lot of soul, rhythm, experience, and a great ear. I suggest anyone who claims the FlyLo sound is easy to replicate should post an example of their best effort. I don't think there is anything wrong with people trying to copy his sound, especially when they add their own flavour.

Anyway, here's my take on it.

For samples, he obviously uses a lot of soul/jazz vinyl, "ethnic" percussion, modular synth fx. Lots of compression, and sidechaining. Fairly standard hip-hop kicks, claps and tambourines instead of, or as well as snares. Not too many hats, but some ride cymbals for that laid back vibe.

There is usually some dusty noise in the background. Some people seem to be against using vinyl noise samples. I personally think a subtle vinyl noise sample can do wonders for a track. Stick an autofilter on it for that crispy burning vibe. He also uses subtle ambience in the background like tropical birds, tape hiss, flowing harps, chants, looped reverb tails, reversed melodic sounds, etc.

Some of his synths sound more like they're coming from a sampler rather than a traditional synth. Ableton Sampler is great for turning samples into freaky instruments.

For chops, the slice to midi function is great for creating a drum rack out of a vinyl loop. You can always repitch one of the sounds, then "copy to siblings". The same can be done to mess with velocity, spread, etc.

Even though a lot of his beats sound like they are simply played in without quantization, I doubt this is the case, especially if he's using a trigger finger, Ableton Lives midi recording is never really 100 timing accurate. Far from it. Still, you can use Live to add *some* quantize to your beats, basically tighten them up.

At the same time, the suggestion to jam out some beats and keep the best bits is an interesting one, but might work better in Live by recording and using the audio, rather than the midi. A lot of his tracks do sound like he is jamming and having fun, nothing is ever too stagnant or repetitive, even when he is apparently using loops on top.

He often seems to use simple percussion loops, but they sound lazy and come in and out of time. One nice way of getting this effect is to warp a percussion loop in Live, but make some of the hits a bit late (hold down shift and move the audio via the warp marker). For less predictability, loop the sample on 3 or 5 beats.

I think some of his drum/percussion parts are on a triplet grid, while others are on a standard grid.

Listen to "Fall In Love" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwAa6I0dmA0)
That second kick, before the clap, is way late by most peoples standards. The kick itself is fairly compressed/limited, and there is a ton of "air" in the background. Throughout the track, that kick cuts right through the mix..

[karmacazee]

I love those dirty distorted drums he uses. Anyone know hoe he gets them to sound distorted, but not 'heavy and aggressive? It's just right.

A good way of getting some nice "out of time" samples is to record yourself using a mic hitting all kinds of percussive things over the top of a nice simple loop. Kitchen is a great place to find new percussion! Just record a bunch of 4 or 8 bar loops all with different grooves and that. Unless you're the world's best drummer you'll naturally be a bit out of time. I know it's probably not how Floylo does it but it's a nice technique, and saves faffing about with MIDI all day!

[rbnc]

Wtf are some of you on about?

His tunes sound like he is just jamming with a controller/pads with quantize turned off for some drums.

No need to get all technical about.

Why are you such a turd?

[86.]

I'd never try and replicate his sound, but getting experimental with sound has helped me greatly in recent months.

Here's a quote I like from FlyLo:

“I'm not one of these guys who likes to have his samples too clean. That sample's not going to tell me what to do. I'll tell it what to do,” he says.

so basically I could be listening to a track-in-progress. I think of some sort of melody I'd like to come in at some point. with 'FlyLo mentality' (which really is common sense if anything) I can grab any sample that sounds good to my ears and warp it into any sound in my head. I'm recently getting the hang of this more. Instead of chopping various samples and saying "it aint gonna work" out of partial laziness/unwillingness to go one-on-one with the sound for fear of it kicking my ass, I transform anything into anything else. saves time going through 50 sounds to find one that's almost the way I would like it to end up.

[JFK]

I'd never try and replicate his sound, but getting experimental with sound has helped me greatly in recent months.

Here's a quote I like from FlyLo:

“I'm not one of these guys who likes to have his samples too clean. That sample's not going to tell me what to do. I'll tell it what to do,” he says.

so basically I could be listening to a track-in-progress. I think of some sort of melody I'd like to come in at some point. with 'FlyLo mentality' (which really is common sense if anything) I can grab any sample that sounds good to my ears and warp it into any sound in my head. I'm recently getting the hang of this more. Instead of chopping various samples and saying "it aint gonna work" out of partial laziness/unwillingness to go one-on-one with the sound for fear of it kicking my ass, I transform anything into anything else. saves time going through 50 sounds to find one that's almost the way I would like it to end up.

Interesting..... Have you finished much using this method?

[86.]

I'd never try and replicate his sound, but getting experimental with sound has helped me greatly in recent months.

Here's a quote I like from FlyLo:

“I'm not one of these guys who likes to have his samples too clean. That sample's not going to tell me what to do. I'll tell it what to do,” he says.

so basically I could be listening to a track-in-progress. I think of some sort of melody I'd like to come in at some point. with 'FlyLo mentality' (which really is common sense if anything) I can grab any sample that sounds good to my ears and warp it into any sound in my head. I'm recently getting the hang of this more. Instead of chopping various samples and saying "it aint gonna work" out of partial laziness/unwillingness to go one-on-one with the sound for fear of it kicking my ass, I transform anything into anything else. saves time going through 50 sounds to find one that's almost the way I would like it to end up.

Interesting..... Have you finished much using this method?

let's say I have less uncompleted shit now. and I'm going back to unfinished tunes and finishing them - where the 'blocks' are whatever you wanna call them used to be, they no longer are.

so I guess the answer is yes. and another fun part of it is getting to re-use samples, not out of laziness but the exact opposite - it doesn't matter if you've used a certain sound/sample 3 times in 3 different tunes. play with it enough it won't sound anything alike.

slightly in the same vein: at least 2 years ago Peanut Butter Wolf mentioned that Madlib was going to drop an album made entirely of ONE Roy Ayers song. I thought that was crazy. it hasnt dropped, but had that info not been revealed guaranteed most heads wouldn't have had a fuckin clue (pure speculation tbh, but I'd like to think so..)

[ianks]

the vinyl crackle he uses in the background create a great environment for the laid back vibe he works in a lot of his tracks. good reverb + nice vinyl crackle with some subtle filtering goes a long way.

what i take from flylo is a lot less specific. there are no rules in art. create and discover.

[nowaysj]

wat he say, "don't shoot the screen!" in that video. Why would he say that? Some simple shit going on in there?

[morro_e]

multiple sidechains

thats what i do. i also switch off quantization and forget about how many bpms i have just write the bars that i feel. and sidechain hats to synths, synths to kicks, kicks to snares and everyhting else.

[mrbeatnick]

i don't think flylo has ever used an mpc. if you listen carefully it doesn't hit in that way.

i'm pretty sure that all the old stuff was done with a cheapo maudio midi pad thing and reason

that's why some of those older beats bang in the way they do with lots of snappy hits -but if you listen on big speakers, you'll notice they don't have any real weight. that's because reason uses a kind of mp3 compression in the background. you hear the attacks but they don't have any real bottom end.

that sound relies on lots of bus compression, sidechaining and mix bus compression, which means it bangs hard at low volumes. at loud volumes the lack of dynamic range becomes very apparent. that's the problem with heavily sidechained stuff - it doesn't breath. so i wouldn't recommend overusing that trick if your making sound for big speakers

ultimately it's great to work out how someone makes their sound but only to help you find your own path.