For this month’s challenge I ask you to consider the sound of the organ.
So few instruments can range up to the size of a large building. Or if you want, fit in your coat pocket. So few instruments rival the organ for power, humanity, and earthiness.
So as March marches us into spring, this month’s battle is about harnessing the power and versatility of the organ. Electric or pneumatic. Analog or digital. Divine or demoniac. St. Stephen’s Cathedral or Steamboat Willy’s Calliope. It’s up to you. But your track must focus on—and ideally reimagine—the sound and role of the organ, whether it’s a bubbly skank, the doink of a DX7, or a screaming Farfisa.
Otherwise, your only limitations are your own creativity, track length and (extremely porous) genre conventions.
THE RULES:
—Create a Drum & Bass or Jungle track; use any gear you want
—Your track MUST BE BUILT AROUND AN ORGAN SAMPLE, LOOP, or ORGAN-STYLE SYNTH PATCH (presets are fine)
—Keep it under 6 minutes!
—Post inspiration tracks in the thread!
—Send me a WAV/AIFF/FLAC by End of Day SUNDAY, March 22nd!!!
As @Symian has suggested, you could check out Stranjah’s YouTube channel. He has a bunch of tutorials on common drum patterns in various microgenres that could help you make the bones of a DnB song to fill out.
I saw dj shadow live and the venue had a huge cathedral organ and he went back stage and played it live over the top of his track. It was messy in places but it was pretty special
…Nothing, I just want to thank you for the inspiration. I don’t think I’ll enter the contest because I’m not experienced enough, but I just played a couple of minutes of DNB after a long time, and for the first time I used an organ plugin on my MPC, which finally came in handy. It was fun, DNB is always fun, and this forum is always so helpful in a thousand different ways, thanks everyone
Just out of curiosity, trying to understand the spirit of the rules (rather than the actual exact implementation) - how much of the track should be organ?
As in, could I use, say, an organ kind of like a pad, or maybe a loop that comes up at different times during the track? Or does it need to be like the main lead / melody or along those lines?
I think that since it’s a genre that’s so defined by using contrast to create atmosphere, you can probably get away with being pretty minimal with the organ elements.
Like if you have say a call-and-response structure, you wouldn’t need both call and response to be organ. Just one would suffice. Or if your A section prominently features an organ, I don’t think the B section needs to as well.
Specific to this question, I think that as long as you feel like that particular pad sound or loop is key to the sound or atmosphere of the track, then it fulfills the mission.
