We’re lucky enough to have enough to have a guest post today from pianist, composer, and producer Frank Villafañe. After spending many years of his life emmersed in the live performance of Latin Jazz and salsa, Villafañe applied his compositional skills to a solo project that incorporated the use of virtual Latin Jazz. He has produced two fantastic albums using this process - South Beach and Punto De Vista. Villafañe walks us through the process of creating a piece of virtual Latin Jazz here - enjoy!

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Virtual Setting
Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, defines Virtual Reality as “a technology which allows a user to interact with a computer-simulated environment, be it a real or imagined one”. By extension, then, virtual latin jazz would be defined as latin jazz that is “simulated on a computer” – i.e. computer-generated latin jazz, played by real or virtual musicians.

In one of my recent compositions, “Esperando (Waiting),” I had a need for a good latin percussionist, but none was available. Rather than postpone or cancel my project, I decided to employ virtual latin jazz and use a virtual percussionist instead. Since the song used the Afro-Cuban cha-cha rhythm, I needed to find a good library of usable loops in that format.

In order to pick an appropriate percussion library, familiarity with the native cha-cha rhythm is necessary (I’ve been playing cha-cha professionally for about 30 years, so that should qualify). The song itself would use somewhat simple instrumentation: piano, bass and percussion, but the percussion would have to include all the standard components of the typical cha-cha: congas, bongos, timbales, guiro, campana and clave. While a detailed analysis of the cha-cha is beyond the scope of this article, a brief discussion of the highlights will provide some insight (for an in-depth tutorial on the cha-cha, and all Afro-Cuban rhythms, please refer to Rebeca Mauleon’s excellent reference The Salsa Guidebook.

Virtual Tools
At a minimum, some combination of any or all the six percussive elements (mentioned above) would be incorporated into the song. I needed the percussion library to include both a set of ensemble and individual loops; in other words, one set of loops that included all the individual elements playing in an ensemble setting, and then “exploded” into each individual part as a separate loop (i.e. a “construction kit”). This method offered the most flexibility when crafting a credible cha-cha percussion track (or tracks). I decided on three main percussion libraries to do the job: Luis Conte’s LuisPack I for DrumCore from Submersible; Latin Groove Factory from Q-Up Arts; and ezDrummer’s Latin Percussion EZX from Toontrack. I did use other loops and samples for highlighting, which I’ll discuss later, but these three were my main bread-and-butter percussion tools and proved to be more than adequate for the job.

Besides the afore-mentioned percussive elements, other instrumentation would be simple: piano and bass. Since these are melodic instruments, playing their respective parts shouldn’t pose any undue problems, so all that remained was to find some very good sounding virtual instruments, or VSTi’s. For piano, I settled on Synthogy’s very highly rated Ivory, an excellent virtual grand piano instrument that includes libraries (over 4000 samples) for three of the best sounding pianos available today: Steinway D Concert Grand, Yamaha C7 Concert Grand and the Bösendorfer Imperial Grand (I went with the Yamaha C7). For the bass, I chose Spectrasonics’ outstanding Trilogy – Total Bass Module, utilizing the Acoustic Bass samples.

Virtual Disclaimer
Before we proceed any further, something needs to be made clear: at no time do I advocate replacing real musicians (i.e. pianists, bassists, congueros, etc.) with virtual simulations. Latin jazz is an extremely dynamic genre, and is almost completely dependent on an ensemble setting; certain nuances simply cannot be duplicated, no matter how effective the technology. That said, much can still be accomplished with today’s musical software tools – so let’s get on with it!

For Openers
To begin with, the opening 8 bars of “Esperando (Waiting)” had to have a bold intro, with the piano building up tension until the first break when the melody is first stated. To me, nothing is bolder than a well-placed timbal albanico, so that is what I used. In the past, I attempted to create my own via MIDI, but they sounded weak and anemic compared to the real thing. So this time I used the next best thing: a virtual timbalero executing a perfectly-timed albanico in the form of a 1-bar audio percussion loop. This is where I used a specific tool, Latigo (now sold by M-Audio. The loop I used is a 1-bar audio slice, with 3 beats of silence and 1 beat where the timbal plays the albanico on the 4th beat (as a pick-up). During the remainder of the intro, I incorporated Luis Conte’s cha-cha rhythms with the only percussive elements being timbal and guiro, providing a backdrop for the climbing chromatic piano chord clusters - simulating impatience - climaxing in a percussive break.

Listen to the Intro HERE.

Once the intro ends, the full cha-cha ensemble is unleashed, with conga, bongo, timbales, guiro, clave, campana and of course, piano and bass.

Listen to the full ensemble HERE.

Solo Acts
The song progresses fairly conventionally, with few if any changes, until the solos. The bass solos first. During the solo, all percussion drops out with the exception of the guiro, while the piano plays quiet counterpoint to the bass’ melodic solo. As the bass culminates its solo, the timbal comes in on a break and brings in the percussion for the next solo – conga.

Listen to the bass solo HERE.

During the conga solo, the piano and bass provide a classic cha-cha foundation, while the timbal, campana and guiro keep time. The conga solo is actually programmed, and I used the ezDrummer tool to provide most of the basic riffs. Toontrack’s tool has an excellent library of conga, timbales, bongo riffs, etc. that can be programmed (i.e. modified) to suit your tastes. It is work, involving a lot of trial-and-error, but the results are certainly worth the effort.

Listen to the conga solo HERE.

The piano is the final solo, and I chose to play in the classic Peruchin style. Pedro Peruchin Justiz was probably the greatest known Afro-Cuban pianist of my father’s era, and certainly one of my influences growing up. The Cuban-born virtuoso was (in my opinion) ahead of his time (just listen to The Incendiary Piano of Peruchin and you will understand) and an influence to virtually every great latin pianist to follow (check out Rebeca Mauleon’s “Peruchineando” on her Descarga en California CD). To finalize, I chose to do a simile (not an actual quote) of another great influence of mine – Chick Corea – by playing a tag ala “Armando’s Rhumba” from My Spanish Heart.

Listen to the piano solo HERE.

Final Thoughts
One of the difficulties in composing this type of music on a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) is the lack of dynamic interaction with other musicians. Frequently during live ensemble playing soloists will key off each other, and there is tangible excitement as each musician interacts with each other, especially percussionists. This is difficult to emulate credibly in a sterile environment such as a software studio; nevertheless, that is exactly what is necessary to make this music “come alive”.

Judicious use of the percussion tools mentioned earlier will definitely help to bring about this elusive “vibe”; and come to think of it, who wants to play to boring MIDI drum tracks when a virtual percussionist is available? Since most of these tools include a wealth of native rhythms in a “construction kit” format, one can “slice and dice” at will to produce exactly what one wants.

Finally, as technology improves, more and more professionals are producing these percussion libraries with their own unique touch. As a result, it is now possible to have world-class percussionists/drummers of renown on YOUR tracks, playing YOUR songs.

Like what you hear on “Esperando (Waiting)”? Hear more of my CD, Punto De Vista (ViewPoint), at my website; it’s also available at CD Baby (and please feel free to purchase a copy or two while you’re visiting!). Until next time…happy composing!

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Check Out These Related Posts:
5 Tips For Musicians Making Their First Steps Into Latin Jazz
Son Clave: Your Key To Success
4 Steps To Fine Tuning Your Clave Clock
Building Melodic Ideas Around The Clave

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