I had finally finished a project made in Ardour (this time version 6), and I’d love to share it with you.
This is an old composition I made many years ago and had later decided to arrange in a “samba-jazz” fashion, in the vein of brazilian musicians like Toninho Horta and Nelson Angelo.
Production-wise I recorded the guitars with my Yamaha acoustic nylon-string. I’m playing only with my fingers, not using a pick. I thought it was more appropriate. Had to do a a few more takes on the solo, though
The drums were made with the x42 Drumkit plugin, which I used for the first time and had absolutely loved. Fantastic sound, very simple to use and nice GUI.
There’s a little synth made with ZynSubFx (something like that) plugin, which I had also used for the first time. I used General MIDI a lot in my past projects, and still like it, but Zyn has a great interface and I decided to take my first steps with it.
It was quite a challenge to make the drum parts, since I had never made a samba-beat before, let alone with a computer. I had to checkout some reference in YouTube and hear again some tunes I didn’t hear in a long time. I’ve ended up using a very basic kit with a shaker I played and recorded myself.
And this is it. I hope you like the tune, and if so, I’d suggest to checkout Toninho Horta or Nelson Angelo records, since they’re both artists who had adapted the jazz language to brazilian music in a very particular and beautiful way.
Very well done, great playing, production, and mixing! Glad to hear you’ve used the AVL Drumkits, I’m going to be working on version 2.0 as soon as the winter weather drives me indoors…
Such an honour to talk to the Drumkit creator I wasn’t aware of the connection between the x42 plugin and AVL Drumkit, so thanks for clarifying that too. Anyway, as I said, I liked the sound very much and I’m experimenting with Drumkits in Linux since a while ago. Great great work.
Great ! Great !
I love it…beautiful harmony (and melody)…make me sometime think to Metheny.
Love the work on drums…great work on it…i suppose it’s hard to do this kind of samba with a machine…i’m going to try x42 drumkit today !
Nice mix also…
Thank you guys, for hearing and taking time to share your thoughts!
@polo30, this song has indeed a lot to do with Metheny. But I think the main inspiration here is Toninho Horta, who has collaborated with Pat Metheny and is one of the creators of this form of playing Samba.
I don’t know if you remember but we talked about this song in an older thread. I sent you a demo version, with only guitars. I was then thinking about doing a new version with some arrangement. Percussion, bass, etc. So, here it is! Even if I think there’s a lot of room for improvement.
Yes I do remember discussing this song with you! It was one of my favorite
tracks on your soundcloud… You have developed it quite well. I love this
new version a lot.
I wasn’t aware of the connection between the x42 plugin and AVL Drumkit, so thanks for clarifying that too. Anyway, as I said, I liked the sound very much and I’m experimenting with Drumkits in Linux since a while ago. Great great work.