Day 435: Source it Out

Playing with rock and electronics and strings and more.

Day 434: elec

Tribal styled percussion mixed with electronic mixed with modern instruments.

I thought it came out pretty neat.

Day 433: Getting Better

This lyrics should be self explanatory (though not wholly true).

Lyrics:
close your eyes, 
close your mouth, 
listen to me.  

close your ears, 
open your hands, 
listen to me.

I got my voice back today.

hold your breath, 
there are moments left, 
listen to me.  

hold your words, 
hold what's said, 
listen to me.

I got my voice back today.

Pay attention, 
to what's said, 
listen to me.  

This could impact you, 
Everything you do, 
listen to me.

I got my voice back today.

Day 432: Don't Dance

Still sick, but getting better.  Finally going back to work today.  Was playing with Malstrom a bit on this one, along with some other sounds I haven't used in awhile.  Felt like it came off all right.  I probably could've added a good 30 second intro and easily had something that was pop song length.  Oh well, this is what we got.

Day 431: Great Sounds

I have several very high quality instruments now.  Sampled at unbelievably high levels, they sound better than the real thing in many cases.  I frequently find myself leaving in mistakes to make sure they sound more "human".  Funny how far we've come.

Today's track features Harmonium from the Abbey Roads Refill, drums from the RDK 2.0 Refill, Bass from the Electric Bass Refill (all by Propellerheads so far), acoustic guitar from the iStrum Refill (which is just awesome), and Dombra from Impact Soundworks.

Day 430: A Little Bit of Noise Goes a Long Way

I promise, when I started this I really meant to make something very minimal.  In my head I was thinking of a Pan Sonic vibe with very little going on, the synth being the center of attention.  Somehow, somewhere it went off the rails and I ended up filling up the entire spectrum with sound.

Don't get me wrong, I like it, it's just hard to focus sometimes.  I guess it's worth mentioning that I did this at about 2 a.m.  I woke up as my meds wore off (I have the flu) and I started coughing uncontrollably.  I went and took my meds, then sat down and started creating this, waiting for them to take effect.  45 minutes later this was almost done.  Finished it this morning.

Day 429: In the Jungle again... the wood jungle... I mean, the real jungle... aww hell

Still exploring those oh so awesome Refills from New Atlantis Audio.

This track started as a goof around, but turned into something that I quite like.

Day 428: NYC

Using several kong's from the Krush Refill from New Atlantis Audio.  They are each named after a NYC borough and they all have a very unique character.  Subtle, but unique.  It made me instantly feel like I was in New York.

The piano is from the Abbey Road Refill.  It's the "Mrs. Mills" piano from Abbey Road studios.

Day 427: Welcome to Atlantis

Playing with new toys here, with a little assistance from Henry.  He was kind of randomly hitting keys while I was trying to record.  It added a nice texture and a bit of unexpected beauty, so I kept it.

Day 426: A minute

So, it's been a minute since I've been able to actually type anything here.  Mostly it's been because I've been quite busy with the children and family/home life and making music daily, let alone blogging about it, has just been impossible.  There have been many days where I was holding a baby with one hand and typing with the other.  Even a few sentences in those cases was difficult, let alone a full paragraph or six.

Right now, I've gotten a cold and lost my voice, so that video I was going to do on a day when I was at home alone (like right now) isn't going to happen because I can't talk.... sigh....

One thing that is happening is more music on iTunes!  An artist by the name of Abe Wantland painted a few water colors for me that will be the album covers for six albums that I have ready to upload to iTunes.  The albums are compilations of the first 400 days of music.  I tried to limit each album to 25 songs and got pretty close.  I originally wanted to only do four, but all the genres weren't really covered by only 4, so it got bumped to six.

The first album, Ambient, Like You, is already up there.  Here's the link.

There's more, but I need to go do house work and I'm getting dizzy again.

Day 425: sick saick sick

I'm sick today, but I still made the musics!

All malstroms here.

Day 424: For the fame

I'm a big fan of New Atlantis Audio's Refills, so when they came out with the MD16 Refill I bought it immediately.

Here's something I did to try and land on their home page.

Day 423: In the blood

Maybe something original.  We  don't know what our story is.

Lyrics:
You've got drive, but you spend it all the time.  
Why don't you just give up?
You've got love in your heart, 
but there's a chance you're just full of shit.
Wipe the blood off your mouth.
Clean your teeth. 
We're going out now.
And you're not who you think you are.

Day 422: sdkfjghsldkjfghsdrrdd

Celluloid Beats, Chronologists, FGL's patches, noise.  Fuck it.

Day 421: 8 more bits to freedom

A quaint electro piece with 8 bit influences.

Day 420: Not about weed

A delightful little piece that needs to be in a cartoon or something like that.

Day 419: One Minus One

Playing with the subtractor.  I have a lot of patches now.  I should probably organize then and put them out in the world.

Day 418: Dream is a lie, just like the cake

As promised, today is a return to weird shit.

Lyrics:
Our dream is to be one of you.  
Our dream is to be a lie.  
Our wish is to be on the inside.
Where you won't let us see.

Day 417: Shhhhh....

A simple, quiet piece.  A brief moment of clarity without interruption, yelling, diapers, juice, fevers, tickling, tears, or television.  Nothing real complex going on here, just nice.

Tomorrow I'll return to noise and glitchy confusion.

Day 416: Back and forth

Struggled with this one.

Not sure why. Feels like I painted myself into a corner.

Tomorrow is another day, and another piece.

Day 415: Stay stay stay

I don't know why I'm doing this sometimes.

Just stay the course, stay the course, stay the course.

Day 414: Sick Boy

I have a sick little boy to take care of, so no time for explanations.

Lyrics:
This is my wish,
This is my dream,
This is who I want to be.

Don't tread on my dreams,
Don't tread on who I want to be, 
Don't tread on my dreams,
I don't think you even know who I am,

Day 413: Short and Sweat

A really short malfunction due to limited time.

Day 412: C-Celebrate G-good times

FGL uploaded his refill to Audiobombs.com so I'm celebrating with a piece using several of his sounds
and loops.

Day 411: Making friends

Sometimes you make friends with someone that can be a connection.  Here's to hoping.

Sometimes you just talk to someone for awhile and there's nothing there other than business.

Day 410: So Much Stress

Since not much of anyone reads this and it appears that it only gets crawled by bots for the most part I figured I can just say whatever the hell I feel like.

Today is really tough.  We are trying to get our three-year old to eat something different and we thought he wouldn't be able to hold out for more than a day.  This is the fourth day and he is only drinking juice.  I've taken away all his rewards and distractions in an effort to make something happen.  He almost immediately closed his eyes and went to sleep after throwing a fit.  I know he's tired and hungry, but it's a war of attrition that I feel like we are both losing.

After today he wins or we take him to a professional.

Day 409: Cause

Here's an experiment I've had sitting on my phone for awhile.  I wanted to flesh it out, add some length, and get a little more creative, but honestly it felt like it didn't need it.

I decided to stick with the stripped down version straight from my iPhone. I did end up doing a little bit of mastering in Reason and adding just a touch of reverb to soften it a little.

Hope you like.

Even if you don't it's a quick listen.

Day 408: Dip Your Wick

Started off going in one direction.  Was basically able to stay in said direction for the entire time.  I'll call that a win.

In addition, I didn't give a whole lot of thought to the sounds that were chosen.  I mostly tried to go with "the first thing you land on" approach.  Sometimes I find it's the only way I'll use some sounds, they just don't seem to fit in my world view of acceptable sounds.  That doesn't really make much sense, since I like noise so much, but for whatever reason I have to force myself to go for certain types of sounds.  It usually works out fine, but sometimes they are problem children.  Maybe it's just intuition?