RL3: More Ramsey Lewis drums and working another riff

tracker
m8
ableton
composition
notes to self
Author

Matt Crump

Published

September 12, 2025

Ramsey Lewis album cover

Notes on working another riff.

  1. Sampled “Do What You Wanna” from the Ramsey Lewis Trio’s Another Voyage, used Ableton’s stem extraction to get this beat:

  1. Used the m8 to slice the beat and shuffle it up a bit, used this version as the base to jam over.

  2. Added some simple piano chords, bass line and piano lead melody. All recorded with the m8. The melody was a long jam, which was reviewed and then a small 8 bar selection was chosen to be “the melody” (it’s repeated twice at the front of the next clip.

I had some larger goals for the next steps, but haven’t completed them all for this riff. One larger goal was to extend beyond this 8 bar melody to something like a 12 or 16 or bar first section, followed by a different middle section, that links back into the first section.

I didn’t get that far. Instead, after establishing some backing tracks for the main melody, I just jammed over them on piano playing new melody style lead line variations. I was going to use these variations to explore additional chord changes throughout the middle, but haven’t got there yet. But, jamming out the variations was lots of fun.

  1. I imported the piano lead line variations into Ableton and converted them to midi. Then, added some synth horn layering in the clip below.

  2. Fiddled around a bit with levels and mixing. Converted the drum beat to midi, did a bit of variation on the drums, but not enough.

  3. The result is a 2 minute bouncy major thing. I like the direction of the melody lines. The drums are too repetitive and get a bit cludgy with the bass line. Once I’ve locked in the actual song structure, will need to re-record the backing tracks as full-length tracks so they are “live” rather than loops that keep repeating and get old. Bouncing everything out as I go and listening to it on different headphones and speakers makes me think I’ll never get the mix right, but it’s fun to try.


9/14/25

Some edits were made.

  1. Got rid of several of the repetitive loop aspects

  2. Added new piano chords and bass line throughout the middle section

  3. Added some op-xy finger drumming throughout, mixed this in and out of the sampled beat. Some heavier FX on the drums to bring it together

  4. Added a guitar part over some of the melody

  5. Took more time to attempt to balance volume levels throughout and then get a final mix that sounds decent across headphone/speaker variations. This always takes forever. Something is probably too loud or not loud enough.

When adding new parts, used ableton take a lanes a whole lot, worked incrementally through 4 to 8 bar sections.