Visuals and Techno

Hey all!

Last week, I had a conversation with an old friend of mine. We talked a bit about music and I shared one of the beats I made a long time ago. He mentioned techno. The only style I listen to is the dark, deep, and industrial type of techno. You know, dirty-ass soulless stuff. Stuff you probably listen to when you want to have a good trip. Luckily for me, I don't need or do drugs to get a good trip on soulless dark techno.

I mostly listen to it when I feel like I need a reset from the music I mainly listen to.

If you're into techno, I would love to get some feedback, or hear your opinion about it. If you're not, you can always check out the visuals and skip the music :P.

Getting inspired

The conversation got me inspired again, and I felt like creating techno. So, last night, I started working on a project where I wanted to create something as dark and soulless as I could. Techno is not the type of music that brings joy and color to a party, instead, to me, it puts me in a trance where I slowly get sucked into, waiting for me to wake up when the beat finally stops. It's all about the journey and the thought-process while listening to it, it's never the same. And as I mentioned before, it gives me that reset so I can hear the same music differently once again.

Creating Music

I've been playing around in fruity loops when I was a little kid and was still very active with breakdance. Making breakbeat loops. I never got the hang out of it, but all the practice I did when I was young, surely helps me to create something today.

The first thing I usually do when I create something that I can put a finger on, is doing research. Checking out various beats, listen to the type of sounds, and figuring out how I could make those type of sounds myself.

Still, instead of copy/pasting (which is pretty awesome if you can pull that off), which I suck at, I also think it's important to make something that has your own signature. I apply that rule to anything that I create. Make it your own. Fail, inspire, succeed. I've created 100s of beats that suck and I pray they would never make it to the internet :D.

When I finished the beat, I realized its length, I was like; wtf. 7 minutes already? Which is a good sign, at least to me. I tried to play around with the frequency focus and I believe both drops/transitions worked out pretty good.

Creating Visuals

At last, a techno track that I am content with. To spice things up, and study more about motion graphics, I decided to create unique visuals that move on the lower frequencies (kick) and mid/higher frequencies (hi-hats/part of the tunes).

I ended up with a moving blob, that looks kinda like liquid or a beating heart, or a moving face. All that I know is the longer I look at it, the more I don't know what I'm looking at.

To export these visuals to something that I can actually show, I have to run a renderer that converts the software to a video file. The rendering alone took about 8.5 hours to finish.

The flow of creativity

While both creations are made in a flow of creativity, it's always nice to create something with a blank state of mind, to end up finishing with something that catches the atmosphere.

The visuals took quite some time. After the first test-render, it was much easier to see the result and spot any changes that may be needed. The test-render alone took a little over 2 hours, the last two renders took 8.5 and 9.5 hours. Luckily, I have a beast of a machine that does the job without me not being able to continue to work. I made changes, switched from 25 fps to 60fps, and noticed there was a slight movement that annoyed the shit out of me. I just adjusted the movement speed and it seemed to fix the annoying spikes. Currently, I'm rendering out the final render, I thought it would be cool to add a subtle touch of the depth of field, so the blob wasn't as sharp. In the end, I decided to make one slight background color adjustment and some other minor changes. It will take about 9 hours to complete the video.

I hope you like it :)

Cheers,
Ruben