5 Songs - Is it an EP?

I've got a show coming up Saturday, so last night I sat down to practice. I haven't played solo in a while (other than the previously posted EBow track), so I wasn't expecting much. I just knew I needed to get myself back in the "solo" mindset.

I've had this idea in my head for a couple months of building a series of chords from sustained notes placed in individual loops, one note per loop. I wanted to fade in the note, then only grab the "meat" of the note in the loop so it would create an static drone until I overwrote that particular loop. As I continued to add single note loops, the harmony would slowly change, because my current Ableton setup only allows 4 simultaneous loops. Example:

Loop 1: C
Loop 2: E
Loop 3: G
Loop 4: B
Loop 1 (overwriting previous Loop 1): D
Loop 2 (overwriting previous Loop 2): F
etc.

In this example, I moved from Cmaj7 => Em7 => G7 just by changing one note at a time. The plan was to have a very glacial chord progression: slow, definite and forceful. Unfortunately, this plan didn't work so well. For some reason, I kept overloading my delays and causing crazy apartment-shaking feedback. I'm sure my sister appreciated that while watching TV. I did get a couple good tracks in that style (tracks 1 and 2), but on the whole, it was a disappointment. I think the results I did get are okay, but they weren't what was I hearing in my head.

After screwing around with that idea I decided to just free form and see what happened. Tracks 3 and 4 are what happened. Nothing too special. In fact, I trimmed the tracks quite a bit to get something I was happy with.

Then came the extended technique section. I laid my guitar flat on my lap and just made noises. Some pick scraping, some fretting directly on pickups, some EBow on the neck behind my fretting hand instead of over the pickups, and a little input jack abuse. I think the results were pretty okay! It was definitely the most fun track out of the five.

Here's the final product:
Surrent - 20080107

Cranberry Kingdom (RBRMX)

Just a few minutes ago, I was listening to my tracks from yesterday while I visited my girlfriend's MySpace page. She has my track "Cranberry Kingdom" set as her profile song.
It happened to start exactly as Rock Band Ambient v2 began. They're both in the key of C with a heavy reliance on Cmaj7. Surprisingly, they sounded very interesting. I threw them both into Audacity and played around with levels a bit. Interesting, but missing something... I added Rock Band Ambient v3. Here's the result:

Cranberry Kingdom (RBRMX)

Using a Rock Band drum controller to make ambient music.

I picked up Rock Band last week. The game totally kicks ass. As soon as I saw the peripherals included, I thought the drum controller would make a super cheap simple MIDI drum controller. Currently I use an M-Audio Trigger Finger to trigger drum samples as well as start and stop loops and control filters and such while playing solo. In my band context, my sis uses it to provide drum parts. Unfortunately, it's not very easy to play. So I waited and waited for the announcement that someone had figured out how to use the drum controller in music programs on the Mac. (Windows users figured it out a few weeks earlier.)

Yesterday at work I randomly googled "rock band midi controller" and got this link. Bingo! I have a Mac and I use GarageBand, so I was all set. I read a bit deeper and realized that all this hack does is make the drums send keystrokes just like pressing the computer keyboard. These keystrokes are read by GarageBand's onscreen keyboard to trigger drum sounds. You can also use the built in directional pad and buttons to send keypresses as well. What else uses the keyboard to trigger drum sounds? Ableton Live! Sweeeeet.

I downloaded the required software and spent about 10 minutes getting it all set up. I loaded up Live and loaded a preset kit. I hit the pads and lo and behold, drum sounds! I played around for a while with the drum sounds, but I'm not a drummer. I loaded up a pitched instrument and began tapping out weird little sounds. It's very odd to play a piano by hitting pads.

After playing around with that for a bit, I realized that I could hold the kick pedal down to sustain notes and could also hold the buttons on the built in game controller to do the same. I was also able to use the d-pad to mute/unmute myself and turn on and off effects. A few minutes later, I was recording.

Here's what I came up with. The first track is exactly as I recorded it. Tracks 2-4 are the same MIDI material as the first track, but I changed the instrument used and tweaked the EQ and effects. In version 4, I also slowed the tempo down to one-quarter of the original speed. I think the fourth is the most interesting.

Note: I'm having issues with uploading to MediaFire for some reason, so currently only versions 1 and 4 are operational. This should change soon, I suppose.

Note 2: MediaFire hates v2 and v3 so I removed them. You can hear them in my next entry: Cranberry Kingdom (RBRMX).

Rock Band Ambient v1
Rock Band Ambient v4

First post of the new era.

Hello and welcome to my first post. I hope you enjoy your stay...

There are a few reasons for starting this blog (my third or fourth in the last 10 years not including my still-in-use MySpace blog), but mostly it's because I recently stumbled across a blog that I really enjoy called Of Sound Mind. The proprietor posts snippets of things he's recorded recently as well as found sounds and albums that he enjoys. I'm going to blatantly steal his idea and occasionally post things that I've made or have found. Hopefully someone will find it interesting. I may also post out of print/rare records like my friends over at Beulahland but that will be a rarity. I may even post life related things like my girlfriend, but that's what I use MySpace for.

Here's a link to a ~2 hour improv session between myself, Steven Guerrero and A Useful Idiot (Dustin). I have collaborated with Steve a few times in the past, including a set at Mickey Finn's a couple months ago, but I had only met Dustin in real life about 30 minutes to the beginning of this recording. We played with very little pre-meditation. Pretty much the only thing we decided was who would start first. From there, it was a crap shoot.

I am using a Telecaster into a Hot Rod Deluxe with Ableton Live providing effects and looping capabilities. Dustin is using a Les Paul clone with a plethora of Boss stomp boxes and a RC-20 into a Marshall amp to start. He later switches to my Roland keyboard amp when his amp starts cutting out. Steven plays both upright 4-string and 6-string electric bass through a PodXT Live, a DL4, a ToneWorks effects unit, and a RC-20 into an SWR Workingman.

This was recorded in my living room using my MacBook microphone, so unfortunately the sound gets a bit messy in bits, but I think it's interesting enough to post. I hope to get together with these guys again very soon to make more sound. This time, I'll actually have a decent mic available to record with. This is a complete uncut recording so you get to hear our mostly lame and very nerdy conversations in between tracks. I do apologize for the chaff, but I'm too lazy to clean it up!

128kbps version
320kbps version - Very Large!

If you enjoy this, I also have 3 prior recordings of just Steve and I. I also have recordings of my band Luma and Chroma practicing which may be interesting to you. Please leave a comment or two if you'd like to hear more of the same.