MacAvity I. Dig. This. My fiancee can't get over this song either :) It MUST have been MacAvity. There's no one like MacAvity ;p The vocals just fit, the little blippy synth makes me blush, just great all around. Perfect opener for the EP.
Frank's Pretty Colours This girl is smooth. It's a warm summer day, going for a drive down by the beach. A sense a slight retro 60's vibe. Then those funky, funky keys drop in like molasses. Real syrupy, they staple that tempo down, cement the beat.
Dewdrop What a fitting name. I want to say the intro reminds me of being in a cave, watching stalagtites drip onto the floor. This is a groovy little funker. That little blippy synth line just makes it (again). This one rolls off your tongue at the end.
Söppelfunk It is funky - takes me back to the mid-90's. Smooth and buttery, great vibe.
Woodnote's got himself an amazing piece of work here. I can see myself putting this on constant rotation in my playlist, in fact I already have. Swaying my head side to side.
There's no point in having a blog if I never use it. Why discover new tricks and techniques and not discuss them - even if I'm the only one to read this? Repitition fosters learning, plus I can look up information I may lose in a torrent of bookmarks. My lastest sources for music techniques have been Nhomas' Guide To Mixing, RavenSpiral's Guide To Music Theory, and Sound On Sound's Synth Secrets. I've been pouring over all three of them and devouring the content inside.
Nhomas is a member of IDM forums and released a guide to mixing a few months ago. There's a wealth of knowledge in there. A lot of it I'll read but won't necessarily understand what to do with it until I see it in action at a later date.
Today I stumbled upon this post talking about Rob Babicz's (aka Rob Acid) mastering process [video link] and some of his techniques. Apart from using one hell of a spring reverb he uses chains of compressors to develop his sound. One technique he talked about was something I had read earlier in the mixing guide but didn't grasp, parallel compression.
Parallel compression [video link] is pretty much just what it sounds like. You have a dry signal going to your master bus, but also to a send with a compressor on it. This compressor can be anything from a short attack/decay with massive gain and threashold for drums (so called 'New York Compression'), to a long attack, short decay and wicked compression for a pumping/throbbing sound. I tried both of these, putting my drum send to the NY Compression send and my bass to the 'throbbing' send. The bass really stood out in the mix and the drums had a nice decay once sent through the compressor. The beauty is being able to mix in the results to your taste. Most of the applications I found in parallel compression call for a low mix of compression with a high mix of dry signal, and it's a solid technique - one I think everyone should at least experiment with.
Sound on Sound's Synth Secrets is just that - a guide to getting the most out of synthesis. I'm only on part 10 (out of, what, 40?) and I've only touched the basics. I already knew a great deal about synthesis, but these are great articles with amazing information. It's very easy to read and I've already picked up a bunch of tips I wouldn't have discovered otherwise.
As for RavelSpiral's Guide To Music Theory, well, I have none of that. It's 93 pages of scales, chords, modes, etc. Most of the things you'd expect to find in a guide like this. The great thing? It's easy to read, free, and focused on electronic music. You'll learn that the blues scale is great for jazz bass (a given for the name, but something I never even knew about) and with the wholetone scale you can easily write fantastic acid lines. Not to mention it's full of wit and humor directed at the electronic scene (Drum & Bass jokes abound!).
So that's what I've been up to. I also have a new track I'm working on that I'm going to enter into GAME 5. The last few tracks have fallen short, but this one is turning into something special. I know I've said that before, but I really, truly dig this track. Once this track is completed I think my music will take me someplace more serene. I've been hit hard with inspiration via Boards Of Canada, and I can't wait to tackle a nice warm, silky, crackly, BoC-type track soon. I already have a vocal snippet I plan to eradicate for this project.
Irresolution (Solution) Guitars bouncing back and forth backed by a dirty industrial complex. A very relaxing piece. Silky smooth reverberations that pulse and evolve yet stop just sort of a fantastic breakdown.
Bird Rib Lots of crackling, bleeps and blops fly around the sound-field. Beautiful acoustic guitars combine with broken fax machines and stutter to a close.
If I Had A Hi-Fi More upbeat from the start. Stuttering beats and rhythms breath life into the track. The guitar scratches away from the silence in the middle of the song adding a subtle layer that isn't noticeable at first but adds a warmth to the soul of the song.
Mr. Owl A piece most ethereal - speaking of wise old age and patience. Everything is smooth and soft yet glitchy and noisy. A very soothing piece, reminiscent of Boards of Canada. Fine craftsmanship polished into an imperfect perfection. My favorite piece in the EP.
Overall this EP is simply put, brilliant - excellent. It has a cohesiveness that is hard to find and brings the whole album together into a netting of warmth. I can't help but compare it to BoC - dirty, warm, soft, silky, bubbly, and glitchy.
I've been working (mostly) on the song that I started on the 19th. I've gotten a nice progression so far. Along with what I had, I've switched up the bassline with a few breaks, and added a couple extra instruments.
I've changed a few things since this upload. Mainly lowering the cutoff on the bassline (it was a little too rezzy) and upped the last synth line an octave.
Along with this song I came up with two other loops. One's an arpeggiated Cynthia VST line with some drums and the other is a house-y riff with some simple drums. I'm keeping those on the backburner until I finish this song - just adding to them when I get an idea in my head.
I also got some graph paper out today to map out song structures. I was stumpted as to how to advance on my tunes - they tend to end up too repetitve. So I went after 'Got Glint?' by The Chemical Brothers. I love how their songs are simple in structure, yet have so much going on. They're masters at tossing about little effects and sounds. I'm going after that in my current work - hopefully I can come somewhat close.
After being lax on music for the last month I'm back in the groove. I went to revisit WiP 7 (out of 8) but ended up, as usual, starting a whole new track. It's really smooth and groovy - tastes like wine.
I was reading up on techniques, namely Breakbeats via Wikipedia. I knew the fundamentals thanks to The Chems, so I took a hand at creating a polyrhythm with a dash of syncopation for good measure. I came out with a funky little drum line. I planted a bassline on top of that and added some wispy pads on top. The result is a groovy little funker that I really dig. I only have 4 bars so far, but it's coming along nicely.
I also stumbled upon GOLD tonight. A persona by the name Kutiman takes youtube music clips and edits them together into entirely new songs. His project is called ThruYou and it's simply amazing. Not only is the music astounding, but the video editing is fascinating as well. At least listen to 'This is what I became' and 'Babylon Band', his style ranges from Jazz, to Hip-Hop, to Drum-and-Bass. It's just amazing the talent this man posseess. Great stuff, and very inspiring.
A couple days ago I scored a new set of headphones. Granted, they're $20 Sony MDR-V150's, but I was using a shotty $5 pair of Coby headphones with ripped wires that emitted a constant buzz. Once I get the funds I'll be upgrading to a pair of AKG K240's, along with a new soundcard (did I mention my current one crackles constantly and has the latency of a dying elephant?).
Today I uploaded a set of works in progress to Soundcloud (embedded below) to try and get a feel of where I should be heading. GAME 5.0 is coming up (releasing in June) and Project 168 kicks off on Monday, April 13. I would like to have 2 songs for GAME 5, and another 3-4 songs, comprising an EP, for P-168. I've been slacking on music lately, so I'm going to have to kick it into high gear to churn out 6 unique songs in April.
Give these WiPs a listen and let me know which you'd like to hear turned into a choon. I'm thinking of making an Acid-House track along with a complimentary ambient/chill tune for my set of GAME 5 songs. The theme is Summer, so it shouldn't be too hard to get into the vibe.
GAME 3.1 will be released shortly, from what I understand. We're currently working on the theme for GAME 5, which will probably end up being a summer party themed album. We're looking at a June release date.
Not really though. I haven't been making much music lately, took a little hiatus. Although I did manage a work around on that MIDI CC issue in FL Studio. Seems FL Studio has a bunch of MIDI channels that it doesn't respond to. I re-mapped my nanoKontrol around most of them. Some of them still pop up from time to time but it's not a huge deal anymore.
As such I want to work on a couple songs. I just remembered the IDMF compilation, I really have to bust my ass to get in on that. And it seems GAME 4.0 is finished, it just needs to be packaged and uploaded. Hopefully the people working on it can finish it by the end of the week. Regardless I'll post links up here when it's finished.
So today in FL Studio I revisited an older project I was working on. It's a tight little acid line written on the TS 404. I wonder, is that v2 of the original stand-alone TS404 application? I wonder if Fruity bought them out? Anyways, I added a patch I had made in Synth1 called Ressosaurous. It's pretty acidic and thought it would mend well with my track.
So I go to set the arpeg gate to knob 9, scene 2 on my nanoKontrol (those black units look mighty fine) but I turn the knob a little too fast. Now, these knobs aren't the best in the world and are a tad flimsy. So when I do that FL totally bugs out and stops responding to that knob. At first I thought I broke the pot, but that knob worked fine on all other scenes. So I hop over to Ableton and that knob works fine on ALL scenes.
So here I'm stumped. I go into the Kontrol Editor and change the CC# on that knob/scene from 66 to 67 and viola! FL now recognizes that knob. So I turn on my Alesis QS6.1 and set slider D to CC 66 and guess what? Nothin' doin'. FL totally freaked out and now won't accept any form of CC 66. Not even after a reboot. I really don't want to reinstall FL yet again damnit.
So my music was cut short because I didn't feel like messing around with one less knob. It just totally ruined my workflow for the day. Hopefully I can find a solution, if not, here I come reinstall...
Today wasn't very productive. I caught a piano riff during work and quickly recorded it. It was just a simple major chord that I played along to Boards of Canada's 'The Beach at Redpoint'. I had some trouble nailing down the tempo so I aborted to a later time. Then I messed about with some stock Impulse banks and came up with a couple groovy little drum lines.
Over at IDMF someone asked how to get the Vangelis arpeggiation in the intro to Blade Runner. I poked around youtube for a bit and found a nice demo on how to get the strings for the intro, but nothing on the arpeggiation. Then I found a video of some guy going to town on the outro theme with his Korg Radias, Trinity and Moog Little Phatty. So I grabbed the chords from the video and recorded the outro into FL Studio using my newly created VangelisRunner patch. I might elaborate on it later and try and pull off the entire outro. Once I figure out the intro arp I'll record that as well. This time I'm doing the entire song though, none of that half-assed 'oh I got the chords down time to quit' shit I did with Underworld yesterday.
