Day 266: Electronic Swirling Madness

Still beta-testing tritone and trying to find places it fits nicely.  I'm making combinators using it and trying to make patches... lots and lots of patches.

Lyrics:
You've got your foot stuck in the grate.
Your time is finally up.

Day 226: On Being Under Surveillance

Today is another installment in the Disquiet Junto project on Soundcloud.  It's an exploration of a redacted document recently released from the NSA.

The document itself is pretty laughable, but the first thing I thought after looking at it was to turn it on its side and recreate the small mountain range of black lines to control pitch, frequency modulation, volume, and a few other things.

When looking at it this way, in my eyes, it immediately becomes a "musical" document.  After creating a few tracks and putting them thru several permutations based on the document I added a "B" section in which the "A" section gets totally scrambled, last I added a vocal at the end with the words "Are you listening?" For good measure, I ran the vocal thru a "glitch" patch so as to scramble it appropriately.  Wouldn't want anyone to understand it now, would we?

The piece itself is firmly in the "experimental electronic" genre, but I felt like some musicality emerged from it.

Day 224: Singing

Singing to Henry.  More production this time.

Day 223: Quietly

We listen to the sound of bells,
No one can hear them,
No one can tell,
You wait with ears strained, patient to see,
Is anyone listening to you or to me?

Day 220: Drugs are Bad

Song about drug addicts.  Excuse to play with Now and Truth.

Lyrics:
Why'd you have to be such a liar?  
Why did you call me your friend?
Why did you have to be such a liar? 
Why couldn't you walk away instead of forcing this end?

Got a call last week from your mother. 
She was just calling to check in.
It's been a long time since you called and she's a little worried about your drug habit.

Day 218: Serving Two Masters

Michael was really enjoying himself.  He had scored some really good speed from Tony, he had gotten into the party for free, he had xanax in his pocket for the after party, his mother thought he was at a church retreat for the weekend, and the DJ was excellent.  He had been on the dance floor for what he thought was about an hour and was just going to take a break when he tripped and fell on his face.

He tried to get up, but his legs wouldn't work.  People on the dance floor were all standing around staring at him.  He tried to ask for help, but his mouth wouldn't work.  Someone put their face right next to his and said something, but it sounded really far away.  Everything started to get dark.  The last thing he saw was that they turned the house lights on.

Awww man. Party over... way to go, Mike, he thought to himself as he drifted off.

Instead of waking up in a hospital emergency room like he had in the past he felt like he was starting to float away.

They lifted me up to carry me through the crowd.  What a good group, he smiled to himself, but then realized he was looking at his own body from above.  His mouth had foam running from it and he looked really pale.  Hmmm.... that's not normal.

A few seconds later he was surrounded by white light and he heard the sounds of his sister singing to him when he was a baby, back in India.  There were birds singing and soft rain in the background.  A figure stood in front of him that he quickly realized was his grandfather, Raj.

He's been dead 10 years, Michael thought, puzzled.

"Yes, Michael.  You won't be going back to the party." his grandfather said.

Day 217: Workin' Stuff Out

There's been much more drama in my daily life than I care to experience here in the last 6 months or so.  I'm frequently using my "music time" to work out some of my personal issues.  This is one of those instances.

The piece is maybe just a throwaway, as it was a basis for experimentation with Now and Later by the Chronologists.

Here are the lyrics:

You set an unrealistic expectation of where you want your life to go.
You tell yourself that you can make it happen.  
When it all starts to fall apart you are decimated.
You'd be elated if you could do more.

That's what's going to happen.  
And that's what's going to keep happening.

You wouldn't wish this fate on your enemy, but you bestow it on me.
You wouldn't dare to push someone else like this, but you do it to me.

Day 209: Don't be afraid

Sounds by Frank Lucas and Simon Janvier.  Dark synths awash in reverb.

Lyrics:
You said "This party's about to start," 
As you loaded your gun "who wants to take part?"
"Put your hands up in the air if you do."
"Why don't you come along?" 
From me to you.

You said you haven't done this before,
I said "Here, let me show you the door."
"Why don't you come along?"
From me to you.
You said "Which way is out?"
I said "You don't have to shout."
"Come on," 
From me to you.

This is not a gift at all, 
This is a way to fall.

Day 146: Waiting for the Reverb to End

I can't really remember what my initial plan was when I started this track.  I think I wanted to do something with long reverb and maybe I was going to add guitars?  The intention might have been a slow-core song.  Whatever the case, that's long passed.  It ended up being what you hear today.

Lyrics:
Now, we wait.
How long do you have?

Day 119: Frequency Modulation Synthesis - Post-Rock Style

Another piece using Simon Janvier's FM Synth Refill.  For some reason I keep going to post rock when using his patches.  Not really sure why.


Lyrics:
You gave me your greatest gift.
I said thank you.
Won't even hold my hand.

Behind the house you gave your greatest gift.
In the grass, you gave it to me.

Behind the house you gave it to me.

Day 113: Beautiful Noise

The WBL5515 is a nifty little noise maker that the developer was nice enough to give away for free.  It makes a neat little noise or two, but is a little challenging to make into something musical (or has been for me).  Today's piece is an attempt that started out as a little noise art and turned into a kind of sweet-ish ambient work.  There's still some noise and dissonance there, but nothing like what it started out as.  Added some drums from Nine Volt Audio to keep a pulse going and it kind of turned the thing into something normal-ish (gasp!).

Day 60: Don't Forget the Little People

Something that I've always enjoyed is using a "complete" set of sounds to create a piece.  Usually people will put together 50 - 100 sounds in one package (A.K.A. a Refill for Reason users) and so you might spend a year going thru all of them.  In today's case the opposite is true.  Simon Janvier has a new blog that he posts various things on, including tutorials and this batch of Malstrom patches.

I've chosen this batch of patches to create a work from.  One of them, cleverly named Sigur Oz, was the inspiration for everything that followed.  It drove me to create a kind of post-rock Sigur Ros-like ambient odyssey.  Up to and including wordless vocals that mean nothing... or everything.

The drums are from the Jason McGerr drum Refill, one of the best investments I ever made in drum sounds.

I hope you enjoy today's work and be sure to go grab Simon's bundle of Malstrom patches.

Day 55: Valentine's Day is not a Competition

I don't do this kind of thing too often, but I'd love to win this drawing.  If you can listen to today's track between 5 and 50 times it would help me greatly.  Every "listen" is an entry.  Most entries = most likely to win.

Happy Valentine's Day, you rock.