Inspiration with ease

1 Idea source

For starters, we‘re looking for a melodic template for our new song. This template can theoretically be anything: a whole track, a sample or maybe even a vocal recording. The important thing is that the melodic mood appeals to you. In our case, we liked the loop DC2_100_Am_Intimate Piano_05.wav (see mag data).

2 The chord track

We are not so much interested in the piano sound, but in the harmonies. In order to use them in our own song, we load the sample onto a new track and fade in the chord track (see picture). Then we drag the sample onto the chord track. Studio One analyzes the sound and automatically enters the found chords.

3 Different choices

We can now mute the sample. From here on, there are two possibilities: Either you play in a bassline and a chord you like, for example, and activate the Chord Track for these tracks (be sure to set the bass line mode for the bass), or you keep looking for samples you like. We‘ll do the latter for now ...

4 Customize samples

... and find DC2_90_Gm_Rising_Simple_Synth.wav and PIC_80_Gm_Elec_Guitar_03.wav and load them both on their own tracks. From the guitar we cut only the bars 3-4 and put them four times in a row. In both cases we activate the Follow Chords function in the track inspector - select Universal mode from the dropdown menu.

5 Playback 1

Now we set the guitar sample to reverse playback and drag the room reverb onto it. The result is a completely new and harmonious playback in which nothing of the original sample can be heard. But it works similarly without samples: For this, we play in a bass line at a constant pitch and only one chord with a second synth.

6 Playback 2

Let‘s copy the chord, similar to the guitar sample before. Unlike the samples, we set the bass line‘s Follow Chords mode to Bass and the chord‘s to Parallel or Narrow. Both modes differ mostly only marginally. Here, trial and error is the order of the day. This is the second inspired playback without any remnants of the original idea.