Melodic Examples with Tidal?

I made some music with math functions and perlin noise, based in the code of a fellow coder from argentina. I upload it but with hydra visuals so the code is unable, if it interest you i could search it or something.

4 Likes

This sounds amazing! Can I look at the code or a snippet?

Hey thanks!
I did a screen recording as well, there's a link in the soundcloud comment too:

Hope you find something useful there :slight_smile:

...and please excuse the part where I forgot I was recording for 4 extra minutes of silence :stuck_out_tongue:

6 Likes

This is really nice--- thanks for sharing!

1 Like

Hi Dan nice example. I've tryed to copy it in my atom, but I can't understand the sintax you are using and it doesn't run in my Tidal...
for exemple
d1 $ s (e "<3 7 5 2>" 8 "superchip") --number 8 seems not be correct (but it works for you!! so, obviously it's correct!!) What are you doing???
Thanx and congratulations.

Hey thank you!

And hmm good question... to be honest it was a while ago and now that looks quite confusing indeed :joy:

Looks like I was playing with Euclidean rhythms though.
I guess the syntax have changed now (making it easier).

You should be able to rewrite the original code

d1 $ s (e "<3 7 5 2>" 8 "superchip")

with

d1 $ s "superchip(<3 7 5 2>, 8)"

There's a video about Euclidean rhythms here

I hope it helps!

Ahh ok! It's old syntax. Thank you and good luck.

Yes it's still there but e got renamed to euclid in version 1.0.

Shameless plug but my last album Thanks for Watching was sequenced entirely with Tidal and I think it's pretty melodic.

I used MIDI to program hardware synths (Waldorf Rocket, Roland MGS 64, Kawai PHm, Boss DR-202) - everything was recorded in three long jams (probs like 15 hours total) and then edited down.

The code was pretty simple - I just uploaded my file here if you want to take a look. Obviously I was changing stuff as I went so this isn't absolutely everything, but should give you an idea of the kind of structures I was using.

5 Likes

Also I don't know anything about music theory so I got my boyfriend to write me some cheat sheets :grinning:

10 Likes

Have you tried using toScale ? Works wonders, is super intuitive and flexible.

For instance, to have a C Maj scale :

d1 $ n (toScale [0,2,4,5,7,9,10] "0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7") # s "midi" # midichan 1

You can collide the melodic pattern with a rhythmic pattern using struct (and it's so fun !) :

d1 $ struct "t([5 6],16,<0 [0 2]>)"$ n (toScale [0,2,4,5,7,9,10] "0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7") # s "midi" # midichan 1"

If I want to transpose it to D Maj, |+2 will transpose the sequence 2 semitones up :

d1 $ struct "t([5 6],16,<0 [0 2]>)"$ n (toScale [0,2,4,5,7,9,10] "0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7") |+2 # s "midi" # midichan 1

Now what's immensely convinient is that you can swap values in the interval array (the bit after toScale and create your own scales as well, or simply different scales (here, C Phrygian) :

d1 $ struct "t([5 6],16,<0 [0 2]>)"$ n (toScale [0,1,3,5,7,8,10] "0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7") # s "midi" # midichan 1

Say you want to directly play the sequence in E Phrygian, rather than adding 4 st (|+4), you can start from 4 (as you already know, an E) rather than 0 (C) :

d1 $ struct "t([5 6],16,<0 [0 2]>)"$ n (toScale [4,5,7,9,11,12,14] "0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7") # s "midi" # midichan 1

6 Likes

Yes this is nice! I have to confess I just haven't really spent the time to learn much about the melodic features in Tidal. They changed some time ago and I never really caught up :slight_smile:

I am also quite lazy and find it easier sometimes to have a list of midinotes I can use rather than to define anything :see_no_evil:

It's really worth the learning curve :wink:

tidal cycles now has scale function
d1 $ n (scale "minor" "0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ") # s "midi"
It has support for many scales as well
A full list of scales currently supported is here:

5 Likes

Thanks ! What I enjoy though with toScale is that one can visualize and alter the intervals easily, making further experimentation super fun.

1 Like

Listening to it right now, very cool stuff!! :+1:

I'd be interested in knowing a bit more about the workflow you used... E.g. you mentioned you used hardware synths, was that in conjunction with SuperDirt or was that done completely in hardware?

Also I imagine you had to record separate tracks e.g. one for the drums, one for guitar, one for vocal etc...? How did you set that up? How many separate channels did you record?

1 Like

Well, that depends what you want to do.. I think it's good to focus on whatever aspects of music bring you joy, and a large section of the electronic music world disregards tonality entirely. Sometimes it worries me that (as far as I understand) I only really do stuff in c major, have never got into microtonal stuff etc.. But c major is a huge world of possibilities, and in truth I'm more interested in patterns of time and timbre than notes.. I find those constraints more interesting

5 Likes

Thanks :blush:

So if I remember rightly it's like 95% hardware synths and drum machine, all controlled via midi (sent via superdirt). Theres a few samples being triggered by superdirt too, but I dont think i used any superdirt synths in the end. That was all recorded live with a separate track for each bit of hardware. (I did this at a studio - Tye Die Tapes - they ran each bit of gear into the desk for some EQ, then through outboard compression, gating and more EQ and then into Reaper). Nothing was prepared in advance of the session, I recorded many hours of improvisation and then I worked with the engineer to edit it down into more or less the final form.

Something I like about working this way with MIDI is that it's easy to set up patterns and then tweak all your sounds while they're running to get it all sounding perfect.

Vocals were overdubbed in another session onto the edited tracks. I've got a roland VT4 for the vocal processing. The guitar was also overdubbed (not by me, I'm horrible on guitar) using Waves GTR VST amp for the tone - I asked for "cheesy shred tone" and I think he nailed it.

I do send MIDI to the VT4 for the vocoder sometimes, but didnt in this instance.

Then it all went for final mixing (which was minor due to the use of outboard gear) and mastering. The whole thing took a few weeks, and was very much a collaborative effort between me and the engineer, I found it super helpful to have an outside person helping me with the sound and editing, it gave a perspective I really struggle with on my own.

2 Likes

If you want yet another example of melodic music in Tidal, my latest EP, Wilderness, pretty much fits the bill (maybe even too much, in the sense that I stuck too much to the classical music theory I know and did not experiment with other possibilities).

1 Like

Interesting, thanks!!

I was wondering, when you say

do you mean tweaking the sounds using the controls on the hardware synth (buttons knobs etc.)? Or can you control the external synth's parameters directly from a tidal pattern?

Also would something like that work with software synthesisers too? I'd really like to experiment with this stuff but I don't have any hardware synth (but I have some very cool VSTs I'd like to use!!)

I know we'll look at this in the next few weeks.. Just being curious here. Is there any material/tutorial I can start looking at in the meanwhile?