Another post that falls under the auspices of "Random Creativity!" Imagine that!
I think I've mentioned a few times that I really enjoy playing music. Primarily, the instrument I play is guitar. I'm not great at it, but I enjoy it. I played with a lot of different bands when I was growing up, but as everyone got older, priorities obviously changed - band members got married, had children, etc etc.
I've been fooling around here and there with a drummer. It's been a few months since we have gotten together - I really should reach out to him again - he has a pretty extensive home recording studio and I think every February he cuts an album. This time around perhaps I will join him (and if I do I will post results).
When I was playing very regularly in the 90's, studio time and/or equipment was prohibitively expensive for most aspiring musicians. The model back then was that studios would let you book time by the hour, and you could go in and use their gear. I cut a number of things in a 24-track ADAT studio; that technology was considered cutting edge at the time, and I think an hour of studio time went for something like 250 - 300 bucks.
Anyway, about ten years ago, starved for the chance to play, I realized that many companies just GIVE you software and capabilities that would have gone for 200+ an hour in the 90's. I became interested in what I could do with what I had. I fooled around a bit with GarageBand (which is an incredibly sophisticated program for something that the makers just give away), and I got into kind of a minimalist approach where I wanted to see what I could do with just my phone and nothing else. It turns out quite a lot!
I had a bit of a drive the other day and revisited some of this and was like "oh! that's not half bad!" so I wanted to share a few of the tracks I composed. I would call this stuff EDM, or probably more accurately just electronica. I like electronic music (along with every other kind) but I came up playing punk rock more than anything else, so all of this was a learning experience for me - the type of music, the instruments used, and the recording / engineering part of things. I realize this is extremely unlikely to be everyone's cup of tea, but I figured what the hell, so I am sharing a few tracks from that project that got the most plays.
The first four of these were done using Nanostudio and its expansion to 16 tracks (a grand total of I think about 20 bucks) on an iPhone 3 and absolutely nothing else. The last two were created using GarageBand on an old iMac. I am not displeased with the results, and I hope anyone who takes the time to listen will enjoy it. I believe I set all of these up so that they can be downloaded, and there's a bunch more of this stuff on Soundcloud, but if anyone has trouble and wants one of these, let me know. A couple of the files are really big - I didn't use any compression on them when I didn't have to, so I think one of these is like 150 MB or something - not huge but big for a digitized song. At the time, Soundcloud limited how much space any one user could have, so there are two different accounts associated with these pieces - Silica Animus and Bloodthirsty. Unfortunately, I've lost the passwords to basically ALL the accounts involved - including the email addresses associated with them! At some point maybe I'll work up the chutzpah to make someone at Soundcloud help me retrieve everything. At the moment, it's immaterial. I've included some notes just for fun.
Silica Animus · Wolf On The Radar (FENRIS MIX)
0:00 Simple kickoff, one synth, a couple other instruments join and build.0:36 backwards sample from Hellraiser
0:48 main theme established
1:36 I like this bit! alternates between super staccato and legato for a drunken master style guitar lead. It staggers around like it wants to fight something but can't see
2:24 one of the basslines takes over the guitar part
2:48 slight variation on main theme
4:00 70's Prog rock vibe!
4:24 From here out building to climax. 0:00 I wanted to try something in a minor key. This is probably one of the more complicated progressions I have done working with synths - I know exactly jack shit when it comes to playing keyboards
1:27 Intensity UP a notch, I like the Wah / Woh sounds out of this synth. There's a Hammond B-3 type sound in here too.
2:17 introduction of a descending scale. There's actually some kind of sneaky fast things going on with the hi-hats here
2:27 drums doubletime
2:32 descending scale doubletimes, then deepens, then doubletimes again, resulting eventually into a kind of harp sweep
2:54 takeoff!
3:38 main theme reprised, this time in a major key
4:22 As it begins so it ends 0:00 An attempt to blend electronica, blues, and punk rock
0:47 I have always, always wanted to wield a theremin like a sorcerer on stage. This is probably as close as I will get.
2:13 A little change up
3:27 There's a bit from the theremin right here that I wish I had stuck on a little more, I find it kind of haunting
3:33 This is just a straight up punk rock rile-up. 0:00 ok the "drop" for this takes a while to get to, but I think it's worth it. Very simple drum and bass beginning.
0:21 I like the big square bass in this
0:42 and onward, this is a a very long build
1:37 more build, introduction of some higher, kind of ethereal bits
2:40 very quiet bit panned left that sounds like someone plucking a guitar's strings up at the headstock
3:01 FINALLY SWEET RELEASE! Things finally start kickin' - drums and bass both go doubletime. I think the payoff is worth it, happy with how this turned out.
4:05 A little bridge, playing around with a ride cymbal
4:58 Heavier bits fade out. It's quiet but you can hear the bass and drums slow back to normal time if you listen carefully.
5:09 and on, I wanted to go for something that was ethereal and kind of glittering, but also ghostly, trying to capture the infinite light of Ohr Ein Sof
0:00 OK, this one wasn't made with the iPhone. This is an earlier thing that I used GarageBand for, and I had some guitar help from a guy I've played with a lot named Rick, who had at that point evolved into a more skillful and complete guitarist than me. Also, I really wanted to work with a female vocalist. Almost all the music I have played since about 1997 - 98 has been instrumental. I cut a few tracks with Raiye Rosado, the singer on this. She has a wonderful voice. I didn't write the lyrics; her husband did.
0:48 a touch of autotune and bitcruncher on the vocal sample here
1:33 I like the bass sound in this, it's a nasty counterpoint to the clean vocals and piano. Also, I am a sucker for divebombs.
0:00 This is one other thing made with GarageBand, and again Rick helped me out, as did a bass player I have worked with named Scott. I fucking love Rick's guitar swells at the beginning of this. It gives it a really lonesome feel, full of longing. At least for me.
0:57 Synth bass kicks in. I like how this turned out, it's SO low. If you have it up loud enough you can almost feel it more than you can hear it.
1:55 Drop. This piece follows the conventions for EDM more than a lot of the others. I got a wobble bass out of GarageBand but I forget how, only that it was a fucking challenge. I really like the keyboard sound here too, the tone reminds me a little of something maybe Bernie Worrell would use.
3:24 This is the bass player. There's some rhythm guitar as well, but the "solo" you are hearing is a bass.
Again, I hope very much you enjoy this stuff. If you do, let me know - there is plenty more where this came from, though little of it is of the same quality in terms of the sound. But if there is interest (and maybe even if there isn't) I'll post some old jams!
I gave these all a listen and this is good stuff! Could totally see myself getting into the zone and doing some coding or writing while listening to these. It's cool that you have all these different creative pursuits, whether you actively engage with all of them or not, obviously that's something I value as well.
ReplyDeleteYou are the fuckin best, man! You have no idea how much "I gave all these a listen and liked them" made my day. Feel free to download them if you want (or not if you don't) but either way, it gives me a huge amount of satisfaction to hear this!
DeleteOn the creative pursuits - yeah, I almost HAVE to do this stuff. If I don't have something to sublimate into I go off the rails. But it's interesting, I find that practice in one art usually teaches me something about other arts. I'm reminded a little of a quote from the Book of Five Rings - "From one thing, know ten thousand things." I find this to be true; achieving some kind of understanding in one area of a skill or art almost always has applications to other areas.
Thank you so much for listening!
I did subscribe to both of your accounts lol. I don't really listen to local music files anymore, unless me downloading it boosts the page in some way in which case I can download them just to boost you haha, but ya I've got you on soundcloud now at least.
DeleteThat argument about practicing in one pursuit benefiting others is something I strongly believe in. I tend to think of it in terms of statistical interaction, or a product. Sometimes people act like being a specialist vs. a generalist is a linear and finite process, like as if there's a 1:1 ratio such that a one unit increase in one pursuit is one unit you couldn't have spent in other pursuits. But the reality is that these pursuits often have logarithmic or exponential "spikes" in ease or difficulty anyway, but more importantly, the product of getting a little better at one thing and a little better at another can lead to non-linear gains in both, or in something altogether new and different. The effect of gain in one pursuit as a function of another can be greater than just spending effort on a single pursuit.
It's like how fiction authors often talk about the importance of reading non-fiction. Or for me, why I always encourage people interested in humanities, philosophy, arts, literature, etc., to learn science, technology, engineering, and math.
I think we'd have both a better and also more interesting world if more people experienced these interactions.
Nice! Yeah, I don't think downloads boost the pages or anything, and even if it did, I'm not that worried about it. At some point maybe I'll get a little more serious about retrieving the passwords and consolidating everything to one account, lol.
DeleteThe statistical take you have is interesting and rings true to me about the "non-linear gains in both." I think about Patrick Stuart reading about caving for Veins of the Earth, as well as some of his other reading material generally, books about color and fire etc. I think back to a semester where I had these two classes - astronomy (which I didn't think would be a great class, just needed the credit) vs. a class that was focused on MLK and Malcom X as authors that I thought would be awesome.
I found the astronomy class incredibly challenging because at some point in high school I had stopped paying attention in math class. Still, understanding the concepts in layman's terms and being introduced to tons of new ideas, I really enjoyed it. I worked my ass off and wound up with a C.
In the MLK / Malcom X class, meanwhile, seven weeks in we were still discussing whether these people were authors or author-systems as defined by some French critic. We hadn't discussed the substantive content of either author's writings in any real or meaningful way. It felt like intellectual masturbation and bored me to tears. Not the texts themselves, mind you - those were awesome - but the way the class was taught. I don't recall turning in a single piece of work for the class, and I stopped going around week eight. I wound up with a C.
Looking back on it, they were interesting counterpoints to each other. The astronomy class reignited my interest in STEM studies, and the literature class convinced me I could never participate in literary academia the way it would be expected had I stayed on the track I was on.
Anyway, this is all just to say, I hardily agree - it's really good for people focused on the humanities to get outside their subject of expertise and delve into science and mathematics, and vice versa!
you are so cool
ReplyDeleteYou are so incredibly kind to say that. It makes me happy to think you have enjoyed some of this stuff! Thank you!
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