A Single Violin Pluck Did All This... "What The Pluck?!"

In this video I demonstrate how with just one Violin pluck, a few effects and a free drum machine, you can create a whole piece of music in practically no time at all!

How I build a track from one sample

When you only have one sound to work with, the danger is using the same hit over and over until it loses all its impact. I hear it in student tracks all the time. The trick is to keep changing the sound as the track moves on.

I start by chopping. I rarely use a whole sample. I’ll take a section, trim it, and put a tiny fade in and fade out on every region so nothing clicks. Then I play with pitch. A few copies of the same sound at different pitches, a reversed copy leading into the original, and a little delay to spread it across the stereo field, and you already have a call and response between two versions of one sound.

Next, I automate. Volume is the obvious one people forget: keep the sound quieter early on so that by the final climax you have somewhere to go. EQ automation is my favourite. Rolling off the top end makes a sound feel distant, because lower frequencies travel further, so opening the filter up over a section makes it feel as though it’s moving closer and growing in size. I do the same with reverb and echo, automating the wet and dry balance so a sound moves from far away and spacious to close and intimate. Saturation and distortion can creep in gradually for extra intensity.

Recording at a higher sample rate helps too. With more samples in the file, you can drop a sound down a few octaves and it sounds like a huge new instrument rather than a glitchy version of the old one.

Laying a few one-shots out on the timeline like this is also a quick way to sketch a structure. It shows you the shape of the track and takes the stress out of getting started.

For more in this vein, Writing A Piece Of Music In 25 Minutes With Only One Sample And One Kit is a similar challenge, and in TMCP 016: Creative Audio Production Using Simple Samples I turn single drum samples into scary trailer percussion. Bored of the Same Old Samples? does the same kind of thing with a recording of a tumble dryer.

Happy composing!Rich