ROMO - Hitchhiking Funk: Produced using Soundsnap sounds
For my last song, I decided to challenge myself and create a song based fully and exclusively on samples taken from my Soundsnap account.
Soundsnap is a platform where you can find original loops and sound effects created by its users and buy them legally. The website has something like 200,000 sounds and loops at your disposal. That’s pretty big!
Finding the right loops for my new song was easy. I just had to type in my search terms, and Soundsnap gave me exactly what I was looking for.
I wanted to create a song focused on bass so first thing I looked for was a great funky, super slappy bass. As soon as I discovered the one I liked, I started playing with it. I created two copies of the same loop and cut frequencies using the ReaEQ available in Cockos Reaper: My DAW. I like this EQ. it’s really good, and it does the job pretty well. That’s one of the great things I like about Reaper. It’s full of free audio plugins ready to use. I wanted the bass to be “in your face,” so it had to be powerful and groovy.
I then found a cool synth and shaped it with EQ and Blue Tubes Tempo Delay 3D’s plugin, automating the envelope and using it as the song intro. After working on this introduction I went “back to the bass” and focused on the techno side of the song after finding a big sounding kick drum, a closed hi-hat and few more sounds. I didn’t want this song to be pompous; I was trying to keep it simple.
Everything in the song changes around the 1’10” mark, when I created a two-step beat. So I started looking for a snare drum and few other sounds. After one more minute of this two-step beat and me playing with bass sample, the song evolves into something different again. The bass is still the same, but I added a lot of variations to it.
After finishing the third part of the tune, I went back to the website looking for some more sounds and stumbled upon some car samples, suddenly deciding to tell a story with samples. Again, Soundsnap helped me a lot here. I got some inspiration just by searching for some audio files, and picked up few good loops for my story.
So I pictured it. This guy is hitchhiking—destination nowhere—and he’s listening to some music. I imagined him getting more frustrated as time goes by, as no cars are stopping for him. So at the very end of the song you can hear a car pulling over and a male voice saying, “Yeah.” The hitchhiker runs to the car with his skateboard, and a woman opens him the door, saying, “Hi.” A Bossa Nova song can be heard coming out of the car. He says hello back to her, and they go.
Making this song was a whole lotta fun. You should definitely try Soundsnap for your music!
You can listen to the song here:
Sample list used in the song – 15 sounds in total:
