We’re going to create short compositions out of just tracks of Vital Synth. To start the composition we’ll come up with one measure of material that will be looped and start as the basis for the rest of the composition.

Day 1⌗

Find a preset that you like, or create your own. Create a 1 bar MIDI clip and then open it. Make sure key snapping is on, so that whatever notes you add in match to a key. A good scale to start off with is the pentatonic scale, though you can use other scales if you wish.

Now add in notes until you come up with something that you like when it’s looped. I often just randomly insert notes, then listen to the result and edit from there. One thing you can also do is take parts of the pattern and play them at different rates with different notes. If you drag while the cmd key is pressed you will copy the notes. You can shorten or lengthen the notes by with the option key, the same way as you can with audio media items.

Now that you’ve come up with a melody or pattern that you like loop it several times.

We will now create variations of the original idea on new tracks with different Vital Synth sounds. Duplicate your track and change the preset of Vital to a setting that contrasts to the first one. If the first sound is a lead, maybe now try a bass sound. Remove notes from the MIDI clip you copied. Also, you can try changing the length of the MIDI clip so instead of it taking 1 measure it might take three. Remember you can do this by holding the option key and dragging from the right side of the item.

Tip: click T in your MIDI editor to transpose notes to different octaves or scales.

Create a few more tracks with the same method to build up your project. As you add new tracks move the MIDI notes to different octaves to experiment with frequency ranges.

Cmd + down/up arrow moves MIDI notes down or up one semitone. CMD + left/right arrow moves notes left or right by the grid size.

As you build up layers pay attention to how their frequencies are interacting. You may need to add a an EQ or two to make sure the layers aren’t getting into each others way too much.

At this point you should only have loops. The project won’t be that interesting, but we will add move variations during the next session.