RL3: More Ramsey Lewis drums and working another riff
Ramsey Lewis album cover
Notes on working another riff.
- Sampled “Do What You Wanna” from the Ramsey Lewis Trio’s Another Voyage, used Ableton’s stem extraction to get this beat:
Used the m8 to slice the beat and shuffle it up a bit, used this version as the base to jam over.
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.
I imported the piano lead line variations into Ableton and converted them to midi. Then, added some synth horn layering in the clip below.
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.
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.
Got rid of several of the repetitive loop aspects
Added new piano chords and bass line throughout the middle section
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
Added a guitar part over some of the melody
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.