MeFi Music: Recent Episodes
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At best, it's such a fetching mess. Think I dialed in the punk correctly against the jazz. Maybe just smashed the console.
Don't mean to double dip this month, but I think this one has been worked over enough that I can't add anything. If the last one had weedy bass, this one wags the dog. As always, constructive mixing notes are welcome.I've got a quarter for the psychopomp and the smoke is pouring out of my pockets. I better get my shit into the shop and leave it with the coping mechanic. This tedious emergency! You put in for a 6 month tour. Try and show some urgency. Everyone is keeping score.At its best, it's such a fetching mess, I know. Don't forget how very dangerous it its.You've got the things you always wanted by the throat. That's not to say you've got a chance, but that's not to say you don't.This calvary of salty sweet tooths do the job but don't take no credit. Do the work but hide the math. Always say that a wizard did it.Now, I'm not saying that it's malignant. But it ain't exactly benign. You know, I really shouldn't talk shit. I'm doing aggressively fine.when iat best...I'm sorry to tell you kid.Now it's all down to you. Not that you haven't got a chance, but that's not to say you do..
A 7-string solo guitar arrangement of a badass harp tune by Joanna Newsom
This one is at least six years in the making, and even longer in imagining doing it. I almost got the arrangement to work in two other tunings before finding that I could play all the notes in AEADF#AE, albeit with some of them taken down an octave.Shout out to my pal Bolo for the expert mix.
Bashy garage rock inspired by a microscopic image of butterfly wings and "This Is How You Lose the Time War," by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. And romantic frustration, obviously.oh. All the guitars were recorded on an acoustic and then treated digitally because of circumstances. And I think they came out pretty damn good.
Because I 'm not supposed to want you and I'm not supposed to call. No, I'm supposed to love myself first but I don't feel so at all.When I'm hiding in your seams where you bleed denim and cream and it isn't quite so stitched up as it seems. I'll be nesting in your eaves and I'll drink denim and cream and I'll lick these old wounds clean and scrub the scene.Because I'm not supposed to want you but I'm gonna anyway. Because it's all day and every day.I'll be hiding in your seams when you bleed denim and cream and I'll pick your bones white clean. A crow's got needs. I'll be nesting in your eaves and we'll drink denim and cream. And I'll meet you, fox, downstream. Red, blue, and green.
Dreampop demo. Put your shades on, hon.
Going from a page in a notebook to a real song in three hours is magical, isn't it? I wrote the lyrics and suggested chord progressions and synth patches for this, but make no mistake, the performer (currently going by Cy Reign) is the songwriter.
In honor of the late Sonny Rollins, here are a few choruses of saxophone improvisation over the chord changes to one of his most famous tunes.Bass provided by https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrkRWMvaoi0 (MrSunnybass)
Sonny Rollins is one of my musical role models and finding out this morning about his recent passing hit me harder than I expected this sort of thing ever would. I ended up devoting most of my playing time today to his pieces and this is the result
Johnny Kidd meets Underworld north of watford junction
i heard Johnny Kidd and the Pirates , Casting my Spell - and the vocals reminded me of carl hyde / underworld, so for fun ... born piratey lol
For Shakespeare's birthday, a song from A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Lyrics: probably ShakespeareArrangement, vocals and a small amount of dodgy piano: meYe spotted snakes with double tongue, Thorny hedgehogs, be not seen, Newts and blindworms, do no wrong, Come not near our Fairy Queen. Philomel, with melody Sing in our sweet lullaby. Lulla, lulla, lullaby. Weaving spiders, come not here: Hence, you long-legged spinners, hence! Beetles black, approach not near; Worm nor snail, do no offence. Philomel, with melody Sing in our sweet lullaby. Lulla, lulla, lullaby, lulla, lulla, lullaby. Neither harm Nor spell nor charm Come our lovely lady nigh. So good night, with lullaby.
been working on this all day. short and sweet banger/soother combination like a taco bell/cookout. y'all ever see one of those? ACTUALLY unholy. have a great night
This is a cover of the classic Sammy Fain tune done in a sort of synth bossa nova style with saxophone handling the melody
This came about kind of by accident:I am currently working on a tune using the Alice In Wonderland chords changes and I had it up on my computer while I was practicing my saxophone so I decided to just record a chorus of the standard melody over my WIP track because why not?Made with Renoise using u-he Diva synth, a few drum samples from some jazz/bossa records, and an alto saxophoneJust sort of ends...
the post about Joy Division Transmission on the blue reminded me i made this a year or so ago .. neither a cover or interpolation - i just stole the line and made some vibey noise around it ... :) 70's crowd concert soundtrack version (YouTube link)
For my 75th song, I picked one I wrote like 20 years ago. Psycho-folk song about rejecting mass media and embracing local community. Seems more relevant now than ever, and certainly a bit of a love song to this particular community, which has never gone the way of algorithmic walled-garden nor AIslop. Inspired by the title Cobain originally gave Radio Friendly Unit Shifter. Lyrics in fold.
Thought this was a good choice, because it's got fake drums, folk, punk, apocalyptic themes, was a Big Ghost song, and ends on a major 7th chord. All my usual schtick. Some drums from my little bro.It blew out the department store speakers. No voice from above to explain. We all just tried to be good shoppers. The clerks had all fled from the scene. And bereft of Top40 to cover the screech of the clotheshanger's scraping, we made our escape. Bottle-necked at the exits until the crowd picked up steam, to erupt like a geyser out into the street.In the windows the TVs were humming, a deafening monotone din. The color-test was held like a badge as if to say, "We ain't broke down but nothing's coming in." So it's rocks thru the windows of RadioShaq and the tabloid fires burning red, orange, and black. Then the sports bar came under attack. They got 15 flat panel screens. You can hear'em now, going CRASH! CRASH! CRASH!Now it's been 15 weeks since the riot. The telephones lay in mass graves. The radio only sings static. The local paper's down to one page every other day. No news from the surrounding cities or towns. We only assume their wires are down, too. We'll send a search party but we just ain't got around to it. Cuz, in the meantime, we got enough to go around here. Yes we do.
My arrangement of the tracks Let X = X and It Tango from Laurie Anderson's 1982 album Big Science.
Meandering electronics
Modular explorations bringing together three instruments: a mannequins Eurorack synth on lead, a Make Noise Strega on pads, and a Serge modular for intermittent percussive sounds.
This is a data sonification of the amount of energy absorbed by the world's oceans between 1980 and 1989. For a given three-month period, if more energy was absorbed, the chord being played is denser and sparser if less was absorbed. The pitches are selected from the 11-limit tonality diamond.
There's more about it in the "Info" section on the web piece, which plays 1970-2025, and on the Bandcamp page.
It's like a movie soundtrack or something to listen to while meditating.
- I had a deep need to make something sweet and innocent.2. I wanted it to sound something like what Mark Mothersbaugh did in Life Aquatic.3. In my imagination, it's two little space traveling beep boop robots encountering the mystery of life on Earth.Enjoy!
song made in ableton, credit for primary audio goes to LPC
I was working on this song and accidentally imported the mp3 I had downloaded of Backyard Lasers lol. Ended up really liking the flow of the conversation over the music so I chopped it up. I hope it makes you laugh as much as I did while making it.Do you have anything with more of a reel action?
a medley of doom to finish off the album
desolation in the middle of the freewaydesolation in tombs of commercedesolation in the womb every weekdaydesolation an addictive cursedesolation desolationin my world and on my streetdesolation desolationin my bread and in my meatdesolation desolationthe strong beg carriage from the weakdesolation desolationthe neon ship has sprung a leakdesolation in the mind of the leadersdesolation in the factory tombstonesdesolation in the fortune readersdesolation in the telephonesdesolation desolationin my mouth and in my eyedesolation desolationin the broken pane of the skydesolation desolationin the dust and in the winddesolation desolationthe web of the spider is unspinnedyusha why is the sky raining fireyusha why are the clouds screaming painyusha you have despair for your swaddlingyusha oh, it's time to do it againyusha why can't we all get along?yusha the colors of the sunset are wrongyusha this world's a colorful graveyardyusha for you this hopeless song
as opposed to a one dollar general town, which might not be a town at all
i live in a trailer in a two dollar general townand i guess i play loose in a two dollar general townand drink too damn much in a two dollar general townwell i'll live and die in a two dollar general townwell the preacher keeps driving his cadillacand the sheriff keeps having his heart attackbut there's cheap beer, and cheap weed and i'm doing goodjust waiting in line for the grave like i shouldwell, you can't get hired in a two dollar general townand you can't drive too far from a two dollar general townyou create your own escape from in a two dollar general townthere's not much life in a two dollar general townwell, i should have left a long time agobut i just couldn't clear the mental snowif i feel like freezing, i'll call it winter and stayi guess i'm tired and just want it that waywell here i am in a two dollar general townjust whoopie do in a two dollar general townyippie skippy for a two dollar general towni got no grace in a two dollar general town
Just fucking around a while back under the influence of Tequila. That first part is a bit of a Minutemen song.
Be sure to check out my vid.I didn't really stick the landing but it doesn't suck. Cheers!
In honor of the Tour de France, which starts this weekend, here's a little techno track i made featuring samples from race commentators Phil Liggett and Bob Roll. Good workout music.
A song about a time when I felt incapacitated by my own anxiety, but like, make it fun, kinda.
Lyrics:DefenselessStripped of every habit that protects meSexyIf you like neurosis and fear of closenessPrecociousQuick to fall apart thanks to a big headstartRed heartBut what it pumps through me isMatte beige and unvivaciousAfraid that I'm contagiousAfraid to turn the pagesAnd see what happens nowBut it'll happen anyhowDistractedTrapped in autopilot, blankly smilingBeguilingIf you like 'em vacant-eyed and pacingErasingEverything but that which found me haplessCat pissSoaking all my idle time and I'm atWit's end and feeling half-wittyI don't want to want it but I need your pityIf I don't get it I'll make do with my ownAnd my head in a coneMy life's completely blownI spent it all just dealing
Synth Brass over more synth pings and wubs
An Ambient Office installation with a little actual keyboard playing. Patch notes: Just Friends and Operat on pings and bass, with Mangrove put through Beads for the brassy notes. Teletype as sequencer.
I loved the song dangorma as played by Malian kora player Sanjally Jobarteh, so I arranged it for nylon-string guitar.
For the guitar version, I use the dadf#be tuning that South African guitarist Derek Gripper figured out works well for most kora tunes.I really like sections where a steady repeating pulse ends up sounding syncopated because of what is going on under it, and this tune has two of those. There is also a muting thing I have never done before that is basically like playing a 0 fret harmonic.
The repeating bassline is either stolen from or inspired by a performance by Wet Ink Ensemble that I was watching last night (thus the name). It got stuck in my head so hard that I had to stop the livestream and start working on this instead.
Post-rock instrumental.
Guitars, bass, logic drummer. 110 BPM in D. Recorded through a Tonex One.
Kind of a lowkey ORGANic cover of the Depeche Mode tune.
Video of me in different sweaters recording it.
is a song inspired by a trip to the high desert.
Last year we traveled around the US looking for a place to settle down. The best place was Sedona, AZ. When we got back, I put this together on my Maschine. I worked a vocal sample from Sia that was part of a Native Instruments community pack (so there are no barriers to using it this way) into a short song that preserved for me the feeling of sitting on the mesa, connecting with everything. I lost my fear of heights there, lost my fear of flying, too.For now, we've given up on our dreams of moving, but we'll always have this song, and I will never be afraid of falling.
This is another chiptune song played on the Sega Master System. I made a little music video for this one. The song title wasn't intended to be "Never Leave the House," but I liked the way the words looked in the title scene in the video, so that's what it's called now.
A little art rock jam inspired by the posts on the Blue by chariot pulled by cassowaries.
Experimenting with Logic Pro's stem splitter tool and Flex Pitch tool led to this unlikely mashup that I heard in my head this morning and then decided to see if I was right.
Something a bit different, working on recording stuff and developing material with a friend. So instruments pre-recorded and I jump on vox only.
No signal blue = digital no connection. New job in theatre. Ambivalence.
umbuzinho and I gave ourselves a 45 minute limit from coming up with the idea, to recording this vaguely goat simulator-y ditty. It was as good a way as any to pass the time during his Spring break from 7th grade. Until he told me, I had no idea that possums and opossums were different animals.
For May Day, a medieval song; the manuscript source dates from the 1260s. The original earworm. Extremely twee. There is a tambourine.
I kept it in the original key which, at modern pitch, is probably honestly a bit too high for me-- apologies. Percussion is me thumping the piano lid. The tambourine once belonged to the Mediaeval Baebes, if you remember them.
Something we recorded a bit more properly than we usually manage in the rehearsal room at the start of the year
Happy to be back. We've been playing a long time. Have been playing with a drummer for the past year or so, which makes such a difference rather than drum machines. This is heavy pop, confessional mode. Something to do with the police, Hasidic traditions, and a kid who, tragically drowned.
I woke up this morning and weighed my options. Should I do some work, or record a Yanni-style version of the Fugazi classic Waiting Room? I chose the latter.
No regerts
Back with some new modular action - pretty simple patch with a delay as a sound source.
Reorganized my case around Mannequins modules - this song is using the BBD delay in the Silhouette module as a main feature. Enjoy
A weird shambolic mess of a song about so-called real life intruding on my attempts to appreciate the miracle of existence, the wonder and improbability of life including my own, the majestic splendor of the natural world, blah blah blah
Finally got my recording setup isolated enough to where I can do irresponsible things with my vocal tracks without worrying that one of my condo neighbors will call 911.Lyrics:I know that what makes me me has been recycled a billion timesAnd I know it's only separated by a dotted lineAnd when I smell the lavender as I walk byIt should remind me that there's really no such thing as IBut it's kinda hard to believe itAs long as there's a me to perceive itYeah it's not enough to make it realI mean who else is gonna pay these billsI know that every time I breathe it's a miracleIt takes a billion little engines in tandem to keep me aliveAnd when I see a sparrow or a new green stemIt should remind me that the very same is true of themBut it'll never amaze meIt's just that work has been so crazyI feed the crows and it bothers the neighborsCan't even live without selling my laborI traded wonder for comfort and it feels like the deal was raw sometimesAnd every morning I sit on a rock and I talk to a treeReal low so no one approach and notice meDesperately clawing back what I can from every crack in the unnatural grindI hope there's still something to find
Little bit of angry background folk punk. Quick and dirty. Double feature, today. Mostly recorded while lying down and being sad. Lyrics in fold.
From the redlines to the green mines, I think I've had enough of your kind. For all the merit that you'd find, needles hang with hungry eyes. The camels are swinging high.I want the end of the world. No, I don't want no one to get hurt. But, I want the last to be first like it says in the bible.Failing this, it would suffice for either the dead or the oceans to rise, the stars all to fall, the bombs all to drop, or whatever.Oh i want the end of the world. It's true. Yeah, don't you?
My a cappella cover of a 1949 folk song ("Tomorrow Is A Highway" -- words by Lee Hays, music by Pete Seeger) that I love.
In 2017 I wrote about this song:
I've been listening over and over to "Tomorrow Is A Highway". It's got some lovely stark lines, like "leave this evil year behind." Time and space have unified; it doesn't say that we'll walk into the future, but rather, that the future is this journey, and there are only two time durations in this song, days and years -- tomorrow is a highway upon which we'll travel to a better year. And it's sort of a mix of prescriptive and descriptive, prophetically defining us as the people who are making this tomorrow. This song does not explicitly say "this might happen" or "we should hope for this to happen"; instead it combines "this will happen" and "let's make it happen". It's less a song of hope, and more a song of faith and promise and invitation.It can be hard to let go of hope, and it can be hard to let go of dread.....I can't seem to find my copy of Ursula K. Le Guin's The Dispossessed at the moment -- did I lend it to you? In it, Shevek thinks a few times about how our conception of time and promises and intentions work together -- a coherent future doesn't just happen, it's intentional human actions that make a "road" and breaking promises denies and breaks that "road" connecting past, present, and future.I have been feeling as though nothing is solid under my feet..... for the sake of my own forward motion I shall work as though the next stretch of the road exists too -- perhaps every step is in some measure a leap of faith.
The lyrics:
Tomorrow is a highway broad and fair,And we are the many who'll travel there.Tomorrow is a highway broad and fair,And we are the workers who'll build it there;And we will build it there.Come, let us build a way for all mankind,A way to leave this evil year behind,To travel onward to a better yearWhere love is, and there will be no fear,Where love is and no fear.Now is the shadowed year when evil men,When men of evil thunder war again.Shall tyrants once again be free to tread,Above our most brave and honored dead?Our brave and honored dead.O, comrades, come and travel on with me,We'll go to our new year of liberty.Come, walk upright, along the people's way,From darkness, unto the people's day.From dark, to sunlit day.Tomorrow is a highway broad and fairAnd hate and greed shall never travel thereBut only they who've learned the peaceful wayOf brotherhood, to greet the coming day.We hail the coming day.
(I seriously was not thinking of the "What's the one subsite you've never posted to?" MetaTalk when I first decided this morning to record and post this, but in retrospect, now I have collected the set!)
I am so sad, angry and confused by the recent US election result that I created this: a fitting fanfare from the people of the rest of the world. It is puerile and disgusting.
This is a ~30 second excerpt from the full work, which is almost two minutes long. It was compiled entirely using the command line tool sox, including the stereo spatial effects.Yes, it's farts. Lots of farts. It shows the appropriate level of respect.
https://youtu.be/iTw4VJBx5BU Above is a lyric video we put together last week. This is a song from an album I recorded this summer that was supposed to be a solo project but then turned into a band.
a sea shanty from the New Hampshire Fiddlers' Union
the reverb: friend of mine had an empty room. wood floors, nothing at all in it to obstruct the sound. someday i will live in a house that has just an empty room like this. today is not that day.
The last piece from 12 Minute Travelogues, an ambient music collection of twelve twelve-minute pieces about travel, being elsewhere, and daydreaming.
12 Minute Travelogues started out in 2008 as an ambient podcast of music made on the road, in hotel rooms, cabins in the woods, laundromats, and while roaming or reflecting on trips taken. There are twelve pieces, each twelve minutes long, miniatures as in "minute," taken from longer improvisations, but edited mainly for time and dialing in the right sound, to assemble a little collection of moments that happened on the roadside, to be released under my ambient monicker, Kantoendrato (Esperanto for "a song in a wire").I was in a funk yesterday, so called out of work sick, sat out in the yard, and plugged in a synth and a looper to make something as a counter to all the tsunami of unmaking that's coming. I assembled all my various pieces, did some mixing and remastering, put it all together, got it all set up on Bandcamp, and wrapped up what I started back in 2008. I think it stands up as a good work. With the last piece, "Jaunt 12 - Miles To Go," I've covered 144 minutes of slow listening territory between 2008-2024, and there are miles to go before I sleep.
My "new" band The Coffee Sergeants. The first single off our new album, Racing Shadows.
So whew, it's been a while! I have been busy with gigs, and stuff, and Carbon 7 is no more, and -- I joined this already-existing band (longtime good friends) 2.5 years ago, and it took us a year to put together enough songs for an album, then another year to get it recorded, mixed and pressed. It's at all the usual online outlets.I borrowed a Rickenbacker 4001 for this song because it just seemed to need it. Yes, it's all the notes all the time. Most of our stuff isn't this frenetic, as you'll see in coming weeks.Carey writes and sings, but he lets the rest of us do our things, so the arrangements are collaborative. Guitars, bass & drums are live & unedited, take two. Keys and vox overdubbed because of bleed.
the melonhead goes to the big town - more ambient, chaotic stuff for the other half of the album
this is a long, chaotic, dissonant track that just goes and goes into space
supposedly this is some kind of creature that lurks around southern ottawa county and likes to stalk windmills and howl a lot - or is it northern allegan county? sagautuck? macatawa, where in the early 20th century, mr baum took dictation of their legends to create the oz series?they're out therefortunately, i'm only close enough to transcribe their radio transmissions
Continuing my ambition of actually finishing and posting projects, here's a little love letter to the early 90s. Still has spooky themes! The drums are fine. Could have spent another year doing them properly. Lyrics in the fold.
"In this city (filled with pretty grad students and endless reasons to get out of bed today), you better find something to love. You better have something to say. No one wants to hear about some famous shit you gave!" she said. "Play guns," she said. "Play house," she said. She said, "Play guns!" She said...Haunted houses, holidays, and hired mouths made me this way."When you lose your mind, you'll be the last to know. All these tough-love black and blues and [pep-rally] scars just teach you that the dizziest of heights ain't worth the lowest lows," she said. "Play guns! Play guns," she said. "Play hearts," she said. "Play guns," she said. She said...
Little loop with some programmed drums, playing with waveshape
Quantized random sequence, teletype as drum machine, serge voice with a high/low pass split going to different fx
A short, somewhat creepy guitar-arpeggio-centric near-instrumental.
This one had a very long gestation time. According to my records the germ of it is from Dec 2020, but I think it took me some time to come up with the B section and I waffled about what to do with it lyrically for a very long time. Before today I had a notion about a longer lyric that would occupy more of the track, but I never liked it so when I came up with a little line today I realized I could just let this be mostly an instrumental and finally call it done. I always liked the instrumental and was never quite sure it needed lyrics at all, but this seemed like an ok balance.
Quick and dirty lofi folk song. I think it has enough spooky themes to work for October. Lyrics in the fold. Kinda like the lyrics.
There's things I've done for money, for hunger, and for love.Things I've done for some or none or all of the above. Things I've done in fear: 'crimes of passion' goes the plea. Plead insanity and claim it's all temporary. Please believe me, judge and jury. Please, believe me.The hawk patrols all morning, suspended on the breeze. He circles round the park and lands upon the highest tree, considering a kingdom which he could take or leave. When all the world's your prey it's all indiscriminately. Please come swiftly or ignore me. Please believe me.Now truth comes at us crooked. They say it always did. Great truths must first wear hockey masks and stalk the the campfire kids. A hamster in a shoebox or an old man on the roof. How our parents loved us! Funny how they hid the proof. Still, I'm grateful for their stories. Please believe me.See, I've been superstitious all my life. Call it bad luck. I don't believe in ghosts or god but i'm haunted as fuck. If something looms above me or something yawns below, please don't put a face to it because I don't want to know. I'd prefer a little mystery. Please believe me.So wake me in the morning. Shake me from these dreams. Send me to the salt mines so that I might earn my keep. Hold me every morning and as I go to sleep. In between, may I deserve a fraction of the peace that you give me in your glory. Please believe me. That y'all give me, in your glory.
Still messing around with the updated rig but trying to get more involved with melodies and overall arrangement. The DX7 and the Korg Monologue are both deadly for leads/melodies and FL Studio's famous Sytrus VST came in handy to provide a last-minute pad before exporting the final mix.
I wanted to participate in the 666th Disquiet Junto, so took by first idea and first takes to get this song done. It's built around "six" in reverse sounding like "skisk".
Transposed melodies
Two quantized LFOs summed to create the melody - one run thru a wave folder.
This song, Caterpillar, is the first single from "Apocalypse Pickin' Party" by The Great Disappointment. I think the central theme/metaphor is pretty obvious.We have also released a lyric video here.CONTENT WARNING: there is no graphic violence shown but it sure is implied.
I asked for assignments or suggestions and for this one I chose the assignment "hrose".
Every year I try to do the looptober challenge, creating a short music loop every day in October. Day 1's track was made in jummbox, an eccentric online music tool. I probably won't try to post on mefi music very day because of the strict 24 hour waiting period, but I will post everything on mastodon and maybe also instagram (both linked from my profile).
Been trying to post more, because I have a lot of unfinished tracks and bringing semi-finished stuff to mefimu has always served me well. Please criticize. One more dirge in Em while I'm working on something more chipper. Would welcome notes on the (lyrics in description)
Don't actually know how to mix At the Drive in style emo vox. Even with limiters, they get too loud or too soft. Tips please!This is pretty much the call and response thing I wrote from trolling the purplepilldebate subreddit. Not a joke: they kicked me out for misrepresenting myself as a man. In that spirit, criticize the lyrics, too. Which are: Painted on every surface, it's everywhere all the time. How can we be of service? Give up, go numb, or go blind? Sure they don't mean to hurt us. Ain't trying to be unkind. My monkeys and my circus. My freaks so long as it's mine.And out on the horizon, some hero of the beach! Set us so straight and so clean. If only I'd have never listened to anyone, I wouldn't feel so obscene.And just below the surface, it's everywhere all the time. And does it make us nervous, when they say, "I'll take what's mine!" Somehow they mean to hurt us, and they say that they got the right. And don't we just deserve this? We're so aggressively fine.Way out on the horizon...the heat is gone and still we sink: brinksmanship shipping man slash brink. The bar's in hell yet still we sink, brinksmanship ships man/brink.And never have I ever felt so fucking unseen, dripping with these kings and queens. If only I'd have never listened to anything...
Generating melody and rhythm out of a linear pattern.
Patch notes: Turing Machine LSR feeding into a pinged filter, with different ANDed bit triggers going to ring modulation, gated noise, and a kick ping. Eurorack on drums, Serge on melody. Quantized by crow.
Thick pad from the JX-8P makes a warm analog bed for vocoder vox and swirling delay-soaked arpeggios above...
Raucous, shoegaze-y thing from Sredni Vashtar.
Our latest single, available on all the usual streamy places (but downloadable for the good people of MeFi music).
Triggering all hardware synths using FL Studio now... couple tracks from today with the new & improved setup
A short, conflicted song somewhat in the style of my (much older) Headphones. This one's about having too much of things.
It's been a while since I finished my last album (the one about Blaseball) and I haven't been resting on my laurels but I have a whole bunch of like 15-40% done songs that I need to figure out how to finish (and sift out the good stuff from). This is just me getting into the swing of actually finishing and sharing things again. It's ambitiously titled because I'm hoping there will be a counterpart "Outside Problems" song that I wrote a verse or two of before realizing its melody is quite similar to this one. Through the magic of nomenclature it is now intentional!!!
This is a song I just completed. It's about being converted into an octopus and moving into the ocean.I played all the things on this: drums, guitars, keys, vocals, bass.Hope you dig it.
About 10 years in the writing, here's a lazy folky summer thing for you. Might add some sfx/synth. Notes always welcome. Lyrics inside.
Cookie-crumb crook caught: hand in the jar. Pause for laughter and applause. Mugging and shrugging for cameras lined up like a firing squad.It's an old bit, but it kills so keep killing it. Kicked sole's worn thin. If it fits, well shit: it's just the type you're cast in. So do it again.Free-form magician, all smoke and mirrors, making it all disappear. Cold-call turned long-con. Everyone cheers. Hey, what's that behind your ear?It's an old bit, kicked souls: worn thin.City of bummers. It ain't a joke. Not when you ain't got a smoke. "Tell us another!" Fuck it. I'm broke. Come on now. Who's got a smoke?
Modular composition with a generative sequence, some tuned noise, and filter feedback.
I haven't posted in a while because I've been spending too much time building equipment and not enough time playing it - hope to remedy that soon!
Here's an original I'm working on for my new album. I play all the parts and try to sing.
Haven't posted anything in more than 5 years. Figured I should try and get back in the habit. Been workshopping this demo with the band. Suggestions very welcome.
Sounds of the rude world heard in the day might sooth me better than the moonlight, dear. Throw the water out because the kid's been dead for ages. We're saving nothing, here. You'll find me hanging out on this limb. Catch me coming down, or don't kid. I'll be hanging out; I'll die on this limb. Catch me coming down. It don't mean a thing.Take your glasses off. I'll look better fuzzy, baby. It's a long way down. Time enough to have funny thoughts start creeping in like: hey, maybe he'll bounce.Or don't, kid.
this was done with a bunch of softsynths being loaded and played through a frippertronics like effect - totally improvised and i didn't know what kind of sound was up next - done in 2003
It's the melody to an old Welsh song that I'm particularly fond of. Haven't been able to lose my fascination with it for thirty years.
Dedicated to tomorrow's solar eclipse.
It's looking like it will be cloudy along much of the path of totality tomorrow, but here is another piece from my Solar Eclipse album, the last one being 2017's Overture. I am hoping to make the rest of the songs available for streaming on my RN site before the big event. This simple piece is mostly in 3/4 and around 3:!0 you will hear the whole tone scale.
My friend* is way better at side-scrolling beat 'em ups than I am.
There have been many attempts to come up with a worthy second verse over the past 12 or 13 years, but it never came to pass, so this one comes in at just under a minute.* friend does not exist
Starting in my teens, I had a series of dreams about living in the ruins of a subterranean post-apocalyptic society. In one of these dreams, a friend convinced me that we should take over the old broken robot factory to see if we could get it up and running again. It has never been clear if this was a broken factory that made robots or a factory that made broken robots.
I've had this kicking around for some time -- probably close to 10 years at this point. The drums are provided by a Korg DDD1 modded by my old friend reklus.
I took Mary Poppins' classic "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" and mixed it with Andy Rehfeldt's metal version. The original song was downtuned a few semitones; and a few snips were made for the sync to be maintained. And I added a slight channel separation so it wasn't a flat mash of noise.
this is the last song of the album - which is my 50th album here
didn't get a gold watch, i didn't get a cakeall i got was a tired feeling that i'd had all i could takei felt like i was watching myself walking through that daythen i put my card through the time clock and walked awayi used to be a runner cause i thought there was a place to runso many places i could go under the graying sunbut one year plays out another, and places seem the sameand freedom's just desire i haven't learned to tamewell, a young man would do something like head to the setting sunand a young man would do anything to keep strong on that runand a young man would have dreams, and a young man would have heartand an old man winds up with all of that except another start
shadows are interesting
i am just a little shadow and i don't run to catch up with you whatever you don't want is mine and i'm never what you doi tried to call it love, you said it's an arrangement that you likei can't go back where i was and the end is out of sighthow do you feel when you know i have the shadow bluesthe sun's gonna go down one day and you're gonna lose your fuse
Flying along the Cloud Cascade Skyway, approaching the Aerial Fortress.
All the synth-ing is the MEGAfm. Recorded on a Tascam DP-006. I'm really enjoying recording with this portable 6-track. Having to bounce tracks helps keep the process moving forward: if I want to record more instruments, I've got to finalize the current tracks -- there's no going back.
i'm still trying to figure out what the deal was with the buffalo bills thing - it really did seem to be a burden to him
oh, i didn't eat right and i didn't drink right and i smoked just like a smokestackand now life is so slow i don't know where to go i don't know what score i'm supposed to racki think this is where i say something crass and self-pityingi think this is where i make up a song to singi got the not quite over with bluesit's like my feet won't accept my shoesit's like i'm always looking for bad newsi got the not quite over with bluesi saw a man in toledo, you know, he had a buffalo bills shirt onand a big plastic sign with the buffalo bills buffalo oni think he'd found his purpose for his lifei don't want to bear a buffalo or a cross in life
sometimes people think it's great right before it isn't
there's not going to be any troublemy portfolio's going to doubleice is melting, water's upmove in shore and turn the a/c up i've got to make a witches' wishon a half filled petri dishit used to be cold here now it's coolbut there's no playing me for a fooleverything's going to be a-okget a ticket and take your tray
i think about 146
approach the day with a smilethey'll spot you if you're not willinggo through life with a spot on your backfor all the time that you're killinghow many tons do i have to slog through today how many tons, how many tonsthere's a great hallucinationthey tell you to work it throughand it's your fault for showing upcause you didn't have anything else to dohow many tons do i have to slog through todayhow many tons, how many tonsand when the king commanded a towerand the lord confused all their talkthey still understood one questionhow many tons do i have to slog through todayhow many tons, how many tons
A riff that's been kicking around on my hard drive for many years, flinally fleshed out for FAWM.
The first four chords came to me in a dream, so I decided to try to make something with them. It's no "Yesterday," but I had fun.
Miss Gordon of Gight on amp with a modern lead katana preset.
I'm not sold at all but folk at open mic keep telling me that I should try it out Getting to this involved updating firmware on the amp, and, like, I am cool with firmware updates but for gosh sakes I'm a classically trained violinist and this is a whole different animal
song 5 - that guy in the graduate wasn't kidding about the future
looked around and i got plastic in my headlooked around and i got plastic in my heartlooked around and i got plastic in my bonesoh, that damned old plastic won't leave me alone
Stumbled into a Sonic-the-Hedgehog-esque bassline and cobbled this together over a few hours. (The song as a whole doesn't really sound like Sonic music -- it's just the bass in the chorus that's kinda Sonic-y.)
Recorded on a Tascam DP-006 I've had for the past couple years but never used. It's a digital 6-track that runs on batteries, and it was simple and straightforward to use, which was nice.
song 4 - i think this is a translation of a secret language
a perfect day, lapping reflect on stonethere will be no children if we go it alonecopper and sawdust, the packages ofamerica speak of mediated lovecome feed the narrow rock of the harborthe chill blue gray waterthe wires that sing to the perpetual cicada withinthe bugs darken with greasethe copper tarnishes, the arteries obeytrees turn yellow in summer, snow turns graythe windows get a subtle filmcars like pacman ghostsin their liberty of wanttake us to our suffering of mostthe wires that sing to the perpetual cicada within
Just because the thunder rolls doesn't mean the party has to end.
Finally finished something that had been hanging around needing a few hours work for years.
I originally composed it in Ableton Live for a "Produce This" competition on the dearly departed MetaPop. The chords and drums are chopped up samples from the pack Native Instruments sponsored as part of the competition. I added a pad and couple more layers of keys. I programmed the bass, including a chance for an accented note up an octave. I let it play rather than resample it, so whenever it goes up, it goes up. The bells are out of Pigments. The lead part is a NI Hybrid Keys patch I monkeyed with a little.
I created a music video using Hitfilm Express. I've refined my process and I feel like I've got that figured out now. So I've got that going for me. Which is nice.
A lo-fi remix of the Excellentes' version of the tune off of the album Top Hits Made Famous By Herb Alpert And The Tijuana Brass
For an installation at Moogfest in 2016, I put a bunch of sensors in a beehive and used the data to generate drone music. The sensors included air temperature and air pressure and some touch and light sensors to sense when bees were entering and exiting the hive. This is a six minute excerpt from an 8 hour recording which is available at Bandcamp (it's free!)
I have no idea what Scandinavian dances sound like, but I thought this riff sounded vaguely like Elegy-era Amorphis and what I remember of Romanian Folk Dances by Bartok.
thought this sounded interesting, so I recorded it on my phone, then recorded backing chords. I thought maybe I'd develop and use the riff later.
Arbitrarily, though, I decided I should keep some things spontaneous and picked this to fill that spontaneity quota! So, instead, I retrofitted a drum beat to it, and here it is.
I made a solo 7-string guitar arrangement of the melancholy jangle pop tune Darling by the band Real Estate.
A fast, upbeat back-and-forth between piano and synths - the piano gets a little moody but the choruses are simple uplifting fun. It's track 4/5 on the All Her Angels EP.
A short piece on C Dorian, focusing on the tones C, F, and Bb. Recorded in Supercollider.
the new album is called sirius kibble, because that's what star dogs eat - it's also an instrumental album as i can't write lyrics to song titles like this
once upon a time at work at the lunch area out back, my friend came across a todo list - on it was such things as "grocery shopping, dentist appt, carpets"
"car pets?" she said "what are car pets?"
you could tell from the way she was saying it that she thought it was two words and couldn't for the life of her figure out what car pets might be
but they are here and they are watching us
It's track 3/5 on the All Her Angels EP and you can watch a play-through of it as a BeatSaber level too! Has some very pretty piano if I say so myself.
Was it a dream or was it Memorex?
Recorded using Ableton Suite 11 and Push 2. Everything except the guitar was played in on the Push 2. The trickiest part was the run on the koto, which I eventually had to give up and draw in. Naturally, and as usual, my timing can most charitably be described as "rubato," but I feel like it hangs together pretty good regardless.
The fiddle is an electric violin with a reverb pedal. My housemate says I ought to be ashamed of myself.
A kind of a lo-fi jazz thing that ponders why one might feel some type of way. Banged out in an afternoon in Ableton Live 11 Suite and a Push 2 for drums, bass, and keys, with guitar parts played on a Yamaha Revstar Element DIed into a Tascam Model 12.
I started out in Session view and played the parts in as clips. That's great for bass and drum loops, but it didn't work all that great for guitar. Still, I enjoyed the process and it turned out Not Terrible™, so that's better than scrolling for hours.
"It sounds like two forest spirits having a duet" – and it is track 2/5 on the All Her Angels EP.
Sredni Vashtar's upcoming single, soon to be on all the usual streaming places. As close to a dancefloor filler as we get, this is a fun one to play live.
Last song of my dungeon synth journey. Gonna put it all on bandcamp soon, will post to projects when I do so.
Credit to John Dowland (c1563-1626), lol
Toasts with ghosts. I think it's dungeon synth in spirit, though it does have a beat.
I started it around Christmas of last year or earlier, and came up with most of it in a a day. Then, I got stuck around January trying lots of solos.
I've been stuck on two other pieces for a while, so I came back to this yesterday and edited the solo a little, and I thought it was good that way. But again, it's probably mostly my perception changing over time.
Getting this up here before the month ends: the latest from our killed-by-death styled punk band Franky and the Slight Incline. It's over quick. Here it is on bandcamp, with the lyrics (and there's our other releases)
It's track 5/5 on the Hellish EP, and the highest tempo by a good measure, at a brisk 175bpm with it's own kind of groove.
just... three. You probably get its simplicity, but it sure does sound like the spiraling path to hell. Probably also appropriate as the next recurring pattern in which you get stuck in my "sleep paralysis" series.
In the event of encountering wild foxes be encountered in the mountains (see yt vid), my repertoire now includes a tune for them.
Where did you think those cultists were going anyway? To awaken the edifice, silly! track 5/6. My goal was to have this on bandcamp by May, but I think end of June isn't too bad, as it goes.
the fourth track in my dungeon synth saga, huzzah I wanted a dance at this part in the 'narrative' and for some reason this song held me up for a looooooong time. I've had track 5 done for ages, and I will be posting it shortly.
this is the other half of the album - unlike 465, this track actually ends i think someone should do a movie where in some kind of post-collapse world people are playing some kind of mad max roller derby thing on 465 around and around the ruins of indy
or maybe one could have a super solar powered rv with door dash throwing meals through the window with 4 people who took turns driving as they look for the end of the freeway, but there is no end ...
they really should forget about the 500 and use 465 ...
Entirely electronic. Daughter's girlfriend says it sounds like Stellaris music - a multiply barbed compliment if ever there was one. (Feedback sample from Nosebleed Cinema, boat on water sample from LXX.70, both from freesound.org)
A new version of A Small Kind of Triumph Spanish guitar with electronics. Feedback samples courtesy of user Nosebleed Cinema on freesound.org
A dance track that goes pretty hard! Your enjoyment might be enhanced by a very basic but very cute animation loop. This is Track 4/5 on the EP. Be a hero! Go where few dare to go! Post a comment on Music!
High-energy synths and percussion with intertwining, anthemic melodies. (My love of Rush probably shows but it's a pretty straightforward tune.)
This was a fun one to make. Basically one improvised take on a MIDI keyboard which is hooked up to 3 synths and drum machine, with a pad from a 4rd synth going on in the background. Piano and noise-wave crashes were added afterwards. Using the JX-8P as a bass synth for the first time and gotta say....not too shabby!!!!!! I am using an Arturia Keystep to trigger my dad's old JX-8P via MIDI, as well my Korg Monologue using the CV outs on the KeyStep. The Monologue is in turn triggering my old Roland SoundCanvas which is set to the classic harp sample as always. Meanwhile the Keystep is being controlled by my Korg S3 Drum Machine. I programmed a disco bassline on the sequencer of the KeyStep, and using the key trigger mode allowed me improvise a bassline on the JX-8P while keeping it synced to the drums and the arpeggiator part on the Monologue/SC-88. Using CV to sync the KeyStep and the Monologue resulted in some cool syncopations. Background pad is from the JD-XA which I had set to a key hold while I played the other synths. Thanks for listening!!!!
Electronics with some guitars that really need to be re-recorded but this had already taken too much time. Apologies for the length. In a radical break with tradition this one isn't in Em. It's in Dm.Probably best on ear buds/phones.
Just mucking about with Audacity, playing with sliders and buttons and numbers. This is a 3-minute slow-motion loop of the Gap Band, Dif Juz, and PJ Harvey, all noodled up and sludged out and ready for your next terrifying bout of sleep paralysis.
Some chiptune dnb played on an sms and an snes, both midi controlled. * drum and bass sega master system*** super nintendo entertainment systemThe dirtywave m8 handled sequencing and effects. The snes midi adapter is a Super MIDI Pak and the sms midi adapter (which I just put together last night! yay!) is this one from Little-Scale.
Slowly mutating chords and voice More literal take on the "ambient office" genre. Patch notes - Strega used with granular processing (Beads) to get the pads, Brenso lead through an LPG. Just Friends pinging multiple filters to get all the clicks and pops, also with some granular processing (morphagene). Chord progressions played manually, sequenced by teletype.
All-analog synthpop song with live bass/drums/vox You came up by the countAnd you looked at me with time to knowSo take me to the filmI cannot fade into the night, my homeLet's try it on your video phone We're in your video domeAnd we're telling friends to leaveYou came from the northwest tellingYour kind of move; just this for nowCause I look for her nowI can't imagine the fighters and the fairytalesFlat against the wall, so, for nowAnd my roof's all around us and the sadness and the madness when we go
"but they didn't do their repetoire for long" - that's the last song for now - thanks for listening
A pretty simple dance tune. I borrowed (well, adapted) a melody, I admit - but it was a 4/4 melody crying out to be in 3/4, and I wanted to set it right. This is track 2/5 on the Hellish EP.
Got an Arturia Keystep which means I can now program sequences on the JX-8P and baby it is a game changer!!!!!! Marimba sounds are from the Roland SC-88 which is MIDI'd up to the JX-8P as well.
2 analogs synth looping together. Experimenting with CV connectivity to create syncopation.
A granular synth piece fed by a crunchy field recording. This was made using a two-second sample I recorded at a forest preserve last weekend, along with a version of my graph-controlled granular synth tool that I added a delay feedback loop to. (This is what that ugly character looks like.) This is my response to the Junto prompt to use a field recording and feedback.
the golden hole is in the median of hall rd, between utica and sterling heights, which is a horrendously busy section of northern detroit suburbia - locals are more specific about what kind of hole it is but i will refrain from crudeness - i would really hate to deliver stuff around there, which i think this song is about
Found sound from Weegee with gentle synth accompaniment Patch notes - another attempt to learn performance with Kria. Just friends as main voice through Beads, Brenso as bass and fm whistles thru Strega. Morphagene for the audio (Weegee interview from the 50's about photographing a tenement fire, he has an amazing voice).
i wrote this when i was 16 or 17 - funny how things haven't changed - it's the 1st of 8 songs - the album's name is crickets tell the temperature
Upbeat melodic Euro-trance style tune with big hooks - should get you to put your hands up and/or your foot down. Check out the video here. This is track 1/5 on the new EP.
Excerpt from the extended Drone Poem, Heavy Storyteller Suite. Just an excerpt from a longer piece I recently recorded. Apocalyptic Ambience. The whole thing can be found here
A noisy piece derived from a vibraphone sample. I wrote a crude granular synthesizer (a thing that plays piece of samples, usually fast enough that it doesn't sound like the sample anymore). It lets you draw graphs that control how many pitches to play, where in the sample it should start, how much of the sample should be played, and how long each event should last. So, all of these things change over time in the piece.It's a response to the "surf" "music" Junto prompt. I originally tried to use water drop samples to see if I could make something that sounded like the surf. (It usually sounded like peeing.)
way more fantasy/forest synth than dungeon synth this time for sure, but the story continues. might have hit the idea of a lullaby too hard on the nose. I have three more tracks planned, it's a whole little narrative. when I've completed all 6 I'm gonna put in on bandcamp. huzzah!Previously: track 1 - an entrance (into the dark forest), track 2 - the beckoning light on the marsh
The latest Junto prompt asks you to do something out of tune, so I put my phone next to my amp and started recording myself playing these two riffs and detuning the A string every so often.
This is a piece for (synth) strings, trumpet, and drums. The solo was put together partly via guitar and via this script. I think it turned out fairly heavy for a string piece! (Heavier than expected; it's not that string pieces can't be heavy).
Trying out a new piece of gear, the Roland AD-10 which I used on the acoustic guitar and double bass Headed to a new town; what would you do?I'm so sad, it's all such strange newsAnd I'm still in some moneySometimes I wonder who will tell And I don't talk about sadnessStill sad what's up aheadSilicaStill can't forget at allAnd here we areDeliver us back,Deliver us backDeliver us
Downtempo electronic patterns I'm learning a new performance sequencer (Kria on Norns) and as such wanted to see how far i could get building a sequence using a simple set of voices - in this case 4 Plaits instances, two synth voices and 2 drum. I'm going to take this to the modular soon, really enjoying how it combines wider macro control with individual track looping and pushing.
another from the breakbeat archives an update rather than downbeat version of this recently-uploaded track. faster, different intstrumentation, new synth line, more focus.
Got inspired by hearing the Los Lobos cover of the song on KUVO and liked it so much I cut a demo. I tracked everything into Ableton Live, guitar and voice through a Tascam Model 12. No quantization.I started with rhythm guitar, DIed from a Catalyst 60. I only did one good take. I would usually double it, but just didn't.Next was vocals. I did five takes, got a couple of decent ones. Comped them into the main vocal, then duped the good takes and panned them left and right with a bit of delay. Then through all three into a group and put a glue compressor on them.Played in the drums on the Push, the old reliable Brush Sizzle kit. Laid down kick and snare first, then went back over it for cymbals. Didn't have to edit the MIDI at all. I guess it's kind of a New Orleans beat? I set the metronome to 132, but tapping it out on all8 just now, it comes up as 133. Practice with a metronome instead of playing by ear for decades, kids. Had a hard time finding a bass sound that I liked, but settled on the Tension preset "Catgut Bass." Played around with the line a little bit, but eventually got what I was looking for. Only a couple of mistakes needed to be fixed in the MIDI. Panned left a little.I left room in the arrangement for a lead part because after 35 years of rhythm playing, I finally started learning about leads. Set it all up to do multiple takes, but the first one, entirely improvised, was only marginally terrible, so I decided to just keep it. I used the bridge pickup on my Yamaha Revstar Element with the Dry switch on and the "Clean" preset on the Catalyst. Panned right a little. I wanted something else, so I pulled up a Bandoneon Kontakt instrument and played in some fifths. Panned it right some.Didn't really mess with the EQs, even though my default tracks have an EQ8 on them. I did run the bass shelf all the way down on the bass track. Left the rest at 100Hz which is my default.I did throw Blyss on the master and used the "Classic for a reason" preset.I also made an MP4 by taking the WAV and running it through my Hit Film Express process to create a spectrum visualization over some stock video, mostly to try and maintain the memory of how to do that.I guess I spent about 4 hours tracking, a couple hours comping and editing, then another hour or so making a video. I ran out of steam, or I would have printed to WAV and put it through Ozone first. Regardless, this was a much better use of a Sunday than doomscrolling.
No guitars. Clumsy and doomy EDM. Vaguely inspired by listening to too much Floating Points.Now that's out of my system, back to guitars next time.
Mmm the smell of a warm plastic tube slide. I loved it under there. little simple track about my nostalgia for the feeling of my little autistic child-self happily sitting in the shadows under the play structures, in my own little world, at the park at the end of my street. I don't know what genre you'd call this. I'm afraid I may have made a lofi hip hop beat to relax/study lol
Piece composed with a genetic algorithm for this Junto challenge about evolution. Here's the web app I built to generate it. (Source.)It is a fork of another project of mine, hacked up to 1) make a stack of five riffs with random choices from a 15-limit tonality diamond and play them twice 2) see how close any of the resulting dyads are to ratios in the 5-limit tonality diamond (which generally sounds more consonant) 3) cull the notes that aren't close "enough" 4) play the resulting stack of riffs twice 5) fill in the holes in the riffs with random choices from the 11-limit diamond. Then, it repeats 2-5 as many times as you like.I never got it sound the way I hoped it would. The problem is a core of pitches that fit the 5-limit diamond gets established and very rarely gets displaced. So, every 12 bars a bunch of random notes shows up and mostly get bounced. Which is more or less how evolution works, but I hoped it would sound more exciting.
homage to the mega drive/genesis game uses just the first few bars of the main theme. another from the depths of the archives.
Wrote this for a competition in January. Sort of... I only discovered I like making music a little over a year ago after a lifetime of being the guy who might know all the lyrics to a song without knowing what it's called or who the artist is. So I'm still pretty new to all this. There are any number of things wrong with this song and it wasn't going to win any prizes (which wasn't the point for me anyway) so I didn't actually enter it in the competition, more just used the competition as an excuse to write something start to finish within a given timeline. It's far from perfect but I'm actually pretty happy with it all things considered hence my very first (and possibly last) MeFi Music post!
more noughties breakbeat juvenilia but one of my better efforts, relatively speaking, i think
Nothing complicated, just synths and echoes Playing around with different FM ratios, a sister piece to the previous one. Patch notes - teletype on main sequencer duty, bass being handled by a Frap Tools Brenso which I'm bringing in as a more complex voice.
ambient/drone another more recent recording. i made this small collection of ambient tracks in the first uk covid lockdown in spring of 2021.
Dungeon/fantasy/forest synth again. You shouldn't follow the light! Asked my wife for an image from a dark fantasy forest and she said a marshy place and just beyond the foliage you see a strange glow... so I did that. It went somewhere.
Here is some Sunday comfysynth for you. I imagine it playing in an RPG shop run by a rabbit that cycles through 2-3 bits of dialogue.
If you listen closely the five tones from Close Encounters of the Third Kind are almost in there.
ambient / drone taking a break from the trip down memory lane to share something much more recent
Very pleased with how the key change at 1:30ish, just before the synthflute comes in, worked out
idm, with a nod to mssrs turner and handley as with recent uploads, from back in the day. a few more, then will have newer/different things to share
It's the summer you left home, and you're thinking about it thirty-ish years later. Thinking of what that summer seemed to promise: a little bit of the shine is still on it, some of it got worn away by vicissitudes and whatnot, and some of it did what it ought to and got used up making a life for yourself.
This is one of my partner's songs, on which I played some of the instruments. It's full of wordplay. She recently uploaded her demo album, Nothing New, to Bandcamp. She's a smart and witty lyricist and a great guitarist (and ukulelist). And she plays reed instruments, which are a complete mystery to me.
some experimental noodling with virtual drums and discordant synths recorded one still afternoon some summer ago
"That One Last Rose" is an original, traditional honky-tonk country song, in the style of Buck Owens, Ray Price, Dwight Yoakam. Playing on it (and on the album it comes from, Last Rose) are some incredible, truly legendary musicians. Byron Berline, Dan Dugmore, and, on other songs on the album, Jason Carter, and Kristin Scott Benson. See my website for more information. HONKY-TONK COUNTRY SINGLE "THAT ONE LAST ROSE"from LAST ROSE albumhttps://tedsilar.com/new-honky-tonk-country-music-album-last-rose/by Ted Silar, with Byron Berline, Dan DugmorePRESS RELEASERIYL: Classic Country, Americana, Honky-Tonk, Old Crow Medicine Show, Billy Strings, Mumford and Sons, The Country Side of Harmonica Sam, Dwight Yoakam, Buck Owens, Ray Price"That One Last Rose," from the upcoming album, Last Rose (release date: Dec. 30, 2022), was inspired by great Honky-Tonk Country Music artists like Ray Price, Buck Owens and Dwight Yoakam.What luck, when technology advanced far enough to enable me to enlist some of the greatest guest musicians in the land. First and foremost, renowned fiddler, Byron Berline https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/12/arts/music/byron-berline-dead.htmlhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byron_Berline, famous for playing with all the greats, Bill Monroe, The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Gram Parsons, Vince Gill, to name but a few. Also, pedal steelist Dan Dugmore https://dandugmore.com/aboutdan.htmlveteran of Linda Ronstadt's and James Taylor's great bands.About Ted SilarI've been around for 70 years and writing songs for 60. I've played rock 'n' roll at high school hops, blues in Texas roadhouses, country in rural fire halls, jazz piano in smoky cocktail lounges, sung Bach in Saxony and twelve-tone music a cappella. I don't expect to be a rock star, Never did. But I would like to find a small following who like my kind of music. I think maybe that's possible. In my time, I've written country, rock 'n' roll, classical, jazz, rhythm and blues (see: https://www.youtube.com/user/TedSilar) "That One Last Rose" is in a Honky-Tonk Country style. Strictly Retro. I like that kind of music from the 40s, 50s, 60s. And so I'm doing it. Kind of like Tony Bennett. He didn't pay attention to trends."For more stories about the making of "That One Last Rose," and the album, Last Rose, see: https://tedsilar.com/new-honky-tonk-country-music-album-last-rose-the-story-of-the-songs/ Single Release Date – Friday, December 9, 2022 Album Release Date – Friday, December 30, 2022Streaming:Soundcloud: https://on.soundcloud.com/K4DniBandcamp: https://tedsilar.bandcamp.com/track/that-one-last-rose-2
I get no sunlight at all in the winter, at my job, so the day when 5pm includes ANY sunlight at all is a big day for me.
short/minimal arrangement of a handful of acoustic samples apparently also my 50th MeFi Music post
fairly-intense breakbeaty darkish post-rave mooch made in Reason 2.0 only years later did i realise this is effectively a slightly offset inadvertant instrumental cover of aphex's windowlicker (albeit with un-aphex beats and "instrumentation")
more scattershot electro. a deliberate "track 1". an invocation, if you will. a clarion call. a laying down of a gauntlet. an opening. a statement. you get the idea...
rave-y dnb-lite crudely cobbled together in an early edition of hip hop ejay of all things a drag and drop sample-pack affair, but by layering samples, ending them early, and turning off snapping you could do semi-interesting things as i recall. couple of decades old, at least, this
Instrumental score about discovery, evaluation, and conflict. Patch notes - this song is centered around a 4 channel drum sequencer i put together with Teletype and Grid. Clipped sine wave drones and a melodic sequence are the other "characters" in this song.
While the punchy percussion and funky synth imply action, the final chord in this short instrumental evokes the final shot of the theme song for a procedural drama. If you've got an action procedural series missing a theme song, I may have found it over here. This song features an electric tenor guitar made by a friend I haven't spoken with in too long. The Monotribe brings the bass/solo synth and some of the drums, and the Volca Sample brings the chiptune chords and the rest of the percussion.
December's release from Sredni Vashtar, staying with the slow, epic, moody sound for the time being.
optimistic down-tempo instrumental hip hop beats and synth-strings positively oozing naivety
At the beginning of 2019, one of my then-bands Buzzie began to record an album with Robert Harrison of Cotton Mather in the production chair. We had a membership crisis, then a pandemic, and the band still exists in name only. John MacElhenny, the singer/songwriter eventually finished the album in late 2021, but has not released it. This is an almost-final mix of one of the stronger tracks. John is playing acoustic, Robert is playing everything else but drums and bass, and I'm on bass. I don't know the drummer's name - I never met him. I learned this on a Thursday night, & recorded it along with a couple other songs, on that Saturday, in 3 or 4 takes. Robert pieced a comp of those takes together, which is literally me figuring out what works on the fly. My Thunderbird bass is yet again proving how marvelous and wonderful it is. After this session, he told me to just stop even bringing the Fenders.
Third in my series of sequencer experiments - here two voices are sharing some notes and trading off singing to each other. Just friends for voice one, 0 Coast for the other. Think i might have fried an i2c connection repatching after this recording so this might be the last of this series...
A short instrumental. A dream-like reverb envelops an evocative melody and its accompanying synthy chords. This one's another DAW-less track from the past couple years. If I remember correctly, it's the Modal Skulpt accompanied by the Volcas Sample and Beats. I've tried to dial in that reverb again since and failed. But I know it's in the pedals somewhere.
Mild intensity (?) intro-ish piece. Parts of it were originally made for a client, but they found it to be too intense for their needs. Since it no longer needs to be a chill podcast intro, I have added a couple of middle sections and made it a touch more intense.
More sequencer experimentation - playing with changing the note assignment and loop points on a longer sequence. Sequencer using grids and a 16n with Teletype to provide detailed control over notes and length; some delay/granular effect to double things up and add stereo width
optimistic disposable electo-ditty with some ill-judged volume levelling in the middle - moderate volume recommended
It was a mind working against me. This is another DAW-less track from the past couple years. This one features the Modal Skulpt handling the synthy chords and the Volca Beats and Korg-DDD1 on drums (which lost track of which output the cymbals were supposed to go to, and sent them all to stereo left -- the DDD1 is getting up there in years, and it's been circuit bent a bit, so it isn't the most stable of the bunch). A PO-33 handled the sampling, vocoded by the Monotribe (through an E-H Iron Lung pedal). The music itself was noodled together on the uke about 20 years ago. It's one of my default ukulele songs.
A quick sketch to start off a series of 3 songs based around some creative sequencing techniques. Have been attempting to learn some more advanced methods on my Teletype sequencing module, interfacing with a monome grid and 16n Faderbank to make some sequencers that let me distribute, share and edit notes between a few instruments. This is one of my proof of concept sketches - liked the melody enough to upload. Voices are Just Friends with a little Strega, gated noise and pinged filters to add some percussion.
breakbeat/drum n bass remix of a sports-themed rap featuring Chuck D, MC Lyte, Phife Dawg and Aerosmith crikey - i forgot about this. weird story behind this. short version: one upon a time i sort of knew Chuck D a little bit and I made a few tunes for his experimental Slam Jamz web label. that's experimental more in terms of business model than music output. but it was a lovely, exciting thing to be involved with even if it didn't lead anywhere. but at that time i was asked to do a remix of this track, created to promote the ESPY awards. i had no idea what they were, but Chuck D was asking this excited kid in a bedroom in semi-rural Hertfordshire for a remix, so what else am i going to say? apparently the original track also had Busta Rhymes on it - not sure where that verse went. pretty sure my remix was never used - with good reason, so here it is as a backwater oddity. quite pleased with the moment around 1'30" when MC Lyte's verse drops, though. RIP Phife Dawg.
A cheesy little synth funk tune that I made about a decade ago to accompany a presentation or something.I re-discovered it this morning while cleaning up old files in a google drive.
ming's theme listening back, to my ears this is one of my better efforts, but i'm not sure others hear what i hear lolololololol
It's time for more robo-jams! This song is procedurally generated and has eleven key changes. I wanted to do the recent Junto challenge, so I broke out an old midi-generating program and modified it to work with a main riff and the required number of key changes. Then, I rendered "direct input"-esque audio and sent that through an amp modeler.
Clunky bluesy picking on a Spanish guitar for the first minute and then it opens up a lot.
Can you get nostalgia from a license plate? My memories of being an oblivious and happy kid in early 70s Ontario which to me was about big new ideas, the concrete open-concept public school I went to and TVOntario and the Science Centre and accessible healthcare (although I didn't know it at the time) and music and fun and being cool to each other and also cool cars and radios and shiny new plastic technology. Video!
more synth-laden breakbeat - quite fruity in places a more elecronic-y (nearly-as-old) remix of the very first thing i uploaded to mefi music in 2006. still prefer the original though.
downtempo pseudo-ambient breakbeaty instrumental another from the archives - not sure what i had in mind with this title, but quite like aspects of it.
Not had time for much recording lately - it's been a brutal couple of months. Here's another part of the soundtrack for a straight to video cyberpunk movie from the nineties. (apologies to the fellow mefite who I'm supposed to be doing a collab with - I'll be in touch I promise!)
Novelty remix I did of a jingle/answerphone message the original Flickr team recorded when Flickr was very new.
A peppy major chord synth tune for the upcoming break. Studio was out of commish for a bit. Made this ditty just to make sure all systems are go and to try out some drum loops.
breakbeat electro-funk can't track down the year but this was early doors for me. - possibly 2002/3. think i'd just graduated from purely drag and drop tools like the early hip hop ejays to, i'm guessing, fruityloops. think i must have thought i was making something rather epic here with the long intro that, by 2:30, is frankly taking the p****. quite like where it gets bit ravey for a short while at 3:30. much too long. 4/10.
(3/~65 revising estimate down a bit)
pleasantly surprised by this one. clocks in at a punchy 1 minute long ... ... and not a total f***-up. 7/10 (on a scale of my personal worst to best efforts, not, like - all music everywhere, obviously). made with reason 2.x i think. one and only use of lycanenida monicker. kicks lack heft. nice bit o' bass though.
(2/70)
extremely lazy bit of looping with an inexplicable minute of silence at the end. 1/70
vague recollection of this. extremely lazy bit of looping with an inexplicable minute of silence at the end. did crack a grin at around 1:25 once i'd made sense of what was going on. utter mess. 2/10.
==================================== i used to make bad electronic music. my mate paul very kindly, very thoroughly archived these efforts. recently he sent me the archive of almost 100 audio files of which i reckon about 90 are music files from around 15 to 20 years ago. some i already uploaded to metafilter music back in the day. but. i reckon i've got enough left over to upload a track a day to metafilter music for the next 70 or so days. i think one or two might be accidentally quite good, but it's slim pickings, i'm telling you. i've made a small contribution to the coffers so as far as i'm concerned it's more than fair to share the pain. onwards!
"Twitter Blue will verify users for $8 a month, Musk says", newspaper said; so I wrote this little blues for Twitter and for Elon. Lyrics, Guitar and Vocals: Tomer Lichtash Mix: Nir Yaniv
An Eye for Breathing and Stopping Theory [Q-Tip vs. Michael Nyman]
it's just Breathe and Stop versus An Eye for Optical Theory like that's the whole thing
I was able to get back to Looptober at the last minute! I'm pretty sure that this is in some part derived from Ninja Gaiden, which is hard-lodged into my brain. You can listen to it if you are a ninja that has some hard decisions ahead of them of if you just want to think about a ninja in that situation.
Someday in the future, we'll be space pirates together. I've been working with a DAWless setup for a couple years now. This is the second version of this song I've assembled on my current setup and the fourth in total (version one). It probably won't be the last.
I kinda just chugged and then arranged some chaotic drums for this Looptober loop, which goes three times here.
Today's Looptober loop is blatantly Metroid-inspired. It's an ambient one, and I didn't have time to listen to it a lot, so I don't know if it works for a really long time. I think it does work for four reps, though.
Short loop repeated 3 times, which may be several times too many. I think I really captured the essence of the original song here.
For looptober I'm taking inspiration and/or stealing from one Björk single each day, as randomly selected for me by google. It's a short loop so it plays twice here, and could loop forever. Made with pixitracker, my favorite little bleep bloop app on my phone and tablet.
recorded on my living room rug in an afternoon a song about nothing with some lyrics swiped whole cloth from Leonard Cohen because I couldn't be bothered to write a second verse. Played this onstage back in March saying I never played it live, never finished writing it, and never titled it, and for the first time ever had a guy follow me backstage to tell me it was his favorite and to keep playing it. So he may never know but this is for him.
This is for Looptober! It's three 3.5 second loops repeated 25 times. There's two dryer parts and one bass part. It's one of those attempts to make the irregular seem regular through repetition.
I am just learning, piano is my second instrument. I like to record one take improvised pieces if that first track goes ok then I might improvise another track or two. That is my process, I don't want to get into long edited and mixed work for now. However, if anyone wants music I'm willing to work a lot more and polish things up.
the last of the mohicans theme song written by Dougie MacLean from his 1990 album called "The Search"
An ambient office tune that built slowly this week, adding one part per day. Patch notes - started with some percussion using an envelope generator going directly into a resonator / VCA pulling noise from an old FM radio; then added chords generated by a wavetable oscillator and a timed delay; finally, a little synth sequence on top to add a repeating melody.
a song of resignation, i guess - it's the last song, anyway, for now jack and jill climbed up the fountain acted like they went up a mountain trip and sail trip and sail all i wanted to do was trip and sail
get a shopping cart went down capital hill got to goguac before i had a spill
if i could stand on the rock that moses stood i do declare i'd cuss this world good
doctor said no and god said no gather up my bundle, i'm just gonna go i'm gonna just sit here i got nothin to do getting older by the minute waiting for something new
i don't think napoleon was ever satisfied getting older by the minute and i'm fit to be tied
tried to learn about computers but they just hiss at me getting older by the minute and i'm not getting free
The latest release from our band. A sort of woozy, after hours lament for something lost.
song 6 of 7 the baron is all set to cry because the world is not clean the baron is living a lie trying to set up the perfect scene tear down the walls on red saturday shout down the halls on red saturday yell to the sky on red saturday don't question why, it's red saturday
the baron keeps life in a box he's crazy like a rabid fox his thumb keeps the manners down his blood is bleeding through the town
the baron has ordered red saturday
This may help you if you are ascending platforms while beating up foes. This is one of those songs whose first 70% comes together in couple hours, then the rest comes together in three weeks.
song 5 of wren songs couldn't find my way into someone else's skin couldn't find a scapegoat for the shape i'm in some man's sitting and saying you get older or you don't says he's going to quit drinking that bottle but he won't and the chimes outside remind me of silver rain and i guess i'll have to brave the world again
couldn't say no enough but i really couldn't say yes found myself with broken thoughts every time i tried to guess don't know if i'm hanging on don't think i'm letting go what the hell am i doing then? - i don't know
song 4 of 7 - come winter, the little bits of salt work their way into my shoes and that's a pain been feeling like i'm gonna stumble been feeling like i'm gonna fall every day i'm feeling more humble every day just seems like last call i got some salt in my shoe, gonna work it out
people say i got to keep going they say i don't really have another way i feel like a ball that i'm throwing a long long distance down the roadway
song 3 of wren songs on the edge of town, a crow makes like a siren it's a warning for the world he knows it's like heaven's just ran out of clothes and the abandoned concrete shows can't perch and rest on a rusted steel fence it feels just like my blundering soul and the horizon seems to be a hole i want to dig deep like a worn out mole now there's colors in the sinking sun and through the sky they want to run i get more heavy and heavy day after day i don't understand why it has to be that way
we're running out of places for our graves and that is why we have to go go go move around like the clowns in a show try to tell that wicked ticking clock no can't perch and rest on a razor thin road there's something wrong with the feel of the street the sky is yellowish white like wheat and i have metal shavings on my feet
It's a graptolites thing. Lots of guitars. Lots of effects. Some keys. All the rules broken.
Animals on the railway ... earlier today. This was what invaded my head when I was introduced to the ScotRail Announcements thread, and I've been working on it on and off ever since. I could do more, but I want to stop before I lose my mind completely.
I'm fairly sure these animals are riding on the railway, rather than standing on the tracks.
song 2 of wren songs i don't wanna look backwards cause i've already been there people and their golden years when they lost the church key for their beer pick up on the sun you know it's one direction only i wonder who they're talking to - it's only the lonely pick up and walk down to where you thought you'd get right through
i'm going to get poisoned with all your red pills from the past nothing's going to stop being changed, nothing's going to last stand in the middle of the world and show your finger to the sky you're not asking anything unless you're asking why
vampire deer is back for now - with 7 wren songs the little bird had a pretty pretty song no one would care if he sang it wrong on the back of an eagle taking the air he was out of line but he just didn't care when the eagle tired to his highest flight the wren took off and strove with all his might almost touched the sun, almost became light had to get back down for st stephen's night had to get back down, had to get back down
here come the hunt boys to pull him from the sky here come the woodsmen to explain to us why here comes the saint in his living cairn and here is the year, god bless it be a fair one
Another little guitar and cello song about dashed romantic babymoon plans. we were supposed to meet here more than ten years ago something got in the way something kinda biblical
drive down the west coast to the red woods take a ferry to victoria well maybe another year it's a babymoon to minnesota it's a babymoon to minnesota
Apologies for this acapella note!
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Broke my own rule and drenched this one in effects and keys. Very New Age. Not sure I approve of it.
Optimistic little song using Just Intonation Patch notes - teletype playing with just intonation ratios to feed just friends and Strega; plaits on drums.
I'm not dead, you're dead. Hey everybody! Hey! There's a body. Sex Creates Monsters. Track two off of the in Out's new EP, "Half-Vaxxed". It's my first appearance on an in Out record since 1998, and it's about the weirdest thing Todd's ever helmed over his legendary crew of outsiders in Boston. Six songs. All outmastered with an iron fist in a marshmallow. All six inner planets tilted way out of axial alignment. Alert local civil authorities e.g. college radio stations. Thank you for your support. We're the in Out. We still exist.
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Noodle-y jam over some modular drums. Playing with grid keyboard layouts; this one is driving a Rhodes piano sample that is processed through a whole heap of loopers and delays.
A cover of the opening track from Karate's album In Place of Real Insight. All parts played, sung, recorded, and mixed at home by me. A few things led to me making this cover song (original for reference).
1) I've finally gotten my basement recording setup to a good place, and recently purchased a new guitar, so I figured I'd give both a trial run. I don't play drums, but my wife does, and a 54bpm song should be easy enough to muddle my way through on her kit, right? So I set about learning all the guitar, bass, and drum parts. Turns out unpredictable time signature changes are tricky even at 54bpm. There's a lot of drum nuance that I missed, but I think this is a passable interpretation. Also, turns out I need to sing the vocals an octave lower than the original, since there's one note I can't quite hit.
2) Karate's been a favorite band of mine since the late 90s. It's been great seeing people discover or re-discover them following the recent vinyl reissues and the reunion tour, which I never thought would happen! Unfortunately, I had to make the hard decision to skip the Seattle date due to the timing of rising Covid rates. So putting together this cover over the last couple of weeks has been a little consolation.
I recorded my friends Lucas and John in a borrowed church with great acoustics, and then added a National hawaiian steel guitar and electric piano. This is the first track of John Siqveland's album of original songs From St Clem, which we just released last week.
Dense chord piece that was accidentally made when I messed up an app that I'm writing so that I can write a very different dense chord piece. I feel like this is a "free" song for me, almost found music. It's a little glitchier than I'd like, but I was pleased with the feel overall.
My ambient office project for July, overlapping synth and piano harmonies. Patch notes- sequenced from Norns using the "plonky" script which uses a grid keyboard. Sampled piano, 0-Coast bass, Strega lead, Just Friends on percussion duties.
page 1/4 of Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber's Passacaglia One of the oldest surviving solo violin works.
I recorded my friends playing acoustic guitar and upright bass in a beautiful sounding old church. What started as a demo has grown to be a full-on album of songs by John Siqveland (pronounced 'sick villain') called From St Clem, and this is the first mastered track. The whole record will be released on July 15th.
I rented some nice mics*, and recorded John on guitar and vocals, and Lucas Alm on upright bass. Then I added a gogama, an instrument like a bassier mbira with small hacksaw blades as metal tongues to pluck. With the theme of mining and work, it ended up sounding to me a bit like the tick tock of a clock, and the picking of a pickaxe. Brian Tester added some subtle synths and brushes to the track, and mixed and mastered it. I'm very excited about this project!
*good lord, royers and neumann's are amazing
In an attempt to introduce themselves to their interstellar neighbors, the denizens of the human planet launch a series of long-ranged probes broadcasting information about their cultures, histories, technologies, and sciences. I wrote and recorded most of the music for Thanks for the Introduction about eight years ago. Feeling it needed something more, I stuck a short song I had made about four years prior to the beginning of it. I wasn't sure how I felt about this combination for several hours. Later that evening, while washing dishes, I shook my head and said to myself, "Wow, that's pretty ridiculous. Thanks for that introduction." The lyrics followed shortly thereafter. The introduction stayed.
Since then, the song has been sitting around waiting for some drum tracks. The Dirtywave M8 I'd ordered at the beginning of the year arrived about a month ago, and I thought adding drums to this song might be a good project for getting used to its workflows. And so I could be done with the song. For now. I do still hope to record live drums for it someday.
Acoustic demo of a song that's supposed to be a lot louder and noisier and uhh drummier. Written last night, recorded in my living room this morning. Take your meds, loves
Yep, I'm still making songs about Blaseball players. This one's about a player who lived on the moon, until she and all the rest of the Kansas City Breath Mints died. This one was interesting — I didn't think I was going to do a song about "Twooney," as we affectionately call her, but then I had the idea of doing something really sparse and emphasizing her isolation from the rest of the team. Then it came together in about three days, shockingly quickly for me.
As a fathers' day challenge made a new song with the sequences from my last, with the aim of getting something new but with recognizable DNA. Same lead sequence and rhythm programming but treated in a very different way, in particular pulling out some random notes and sending them to a counterpoint. Darker and spacier than the previous song.
Ambient Office returns with another modular jam. Harmonic rhythms with some melodies over the top. HO doing rhythm duty here driven by Just Friends with the 0-Coast/Strega lead being fed notes by a CV looper. Little bit of drums on top
Half of my family is ill and time seems to be slowing down, recorded this simple little synth pattern to remind myself to breathe and get to the next day. Patch notes: harmonic oscillator driven by just friends for the bubbles, with lead duties split by filter sines (Blades) and the usual 0-Coast. Blades sounds lovely but tends to drift out of tune, hopefully doesn't bug folks too much
A bad omens country song with my lowest drawly early morning vocals ever and a cool slippery guitar riff in the chorus. I don't usually write country songs, but I like this one. I've been noodling this mix for like a year, and it's so close, but I just keep making it sound different kinds of the same amount of good.
If you've heard any of my other songs and vocals, you'll know how far out this is for me. The only other time I've tried to get low like this was for my cover of Road Movie to Berlin for the TMBG Flood tribute album. I think this is more successful, but it's definitely not in my usual register. Let me know what you think!
We had our first ultrasound where the baby really looks like a baby, and I of course had to write a song. Guitar is tuned way down (low string is an A). babe before i saw you thought that i had seen every shade of blue ultrasound waves bounce off you and reveal that wasn't true
and though you're not here now and the size of an avocado i see you and maybe you can hear me sing to you
Built in the excellent 1BitDragon sequencer, with a few extra bits added in a DAW. Part of my JPL side project.
I came out as trans to my partner of 20 years and she ended our marriage and I'm a wreck of a human being and anyway here's a song
slightly wistful outtro-style synth jam... you know what, this one goes out to Cortex!!!! Thanks so much for all you've done for us on here over the years and hope we'll still see some sick Cortex action on the black every now and again!!!
Straight-ahead robot rocker? Started with a little strat loop And palm-muted jazz bass, cuz it records so well.
Sent it to Ein to see what she thought.
And then it ate the last two weeks trying to do it justice.
lyrics:
Empty halls Displeased with The cat calls alliegence Go on keep Your secret
These scuffles One misstep Repeated When it bled You tasted What it meant
I'm not going through this again x 4
All hours Staying in for some air Circuits blowing That cannot be repaired As if you forgot to mention it Did you think it was irrelevant
Phone dying It was so badly planned Someone's joking And its at my expense As if it was something menancin' Did you think that I was delicate
Why don't you Say something Say something Say something Say something Say something Say something x2
Our quicksand This one room Your mission Your God too You're awful I'll love you
No one knows That won't do In ribbons I'll hold you This program's Control move
I'm not going through this again x4
All hours Staying in for some air Circuits blowing That cannot be repaired As if you forgot to mention it Did you think it wasn't relevant
Phone dying It was so badly planned Someone's joking And its at my expense As if it was something menancin' Did you think that I was delicate
Why don't you Say something Say something Say something Say something Say something Say something x2
Companion piece to below, with vocoder. Playing around with a new vocal harmonizer / vocoder / pitch shifter, with some piano loops slowed to a crawl. End of the weekend music.
Me on twelve string acoustic. Bit ragged and recorded on my phone but short and hopefully amusing.
A little dream-pop number about being transfeminine. Written with my usual collaboratrix. sorry I'm too masculine for you I tasted your scorn on my lips children don't speak unless spoken to so I bit out my tongue for the kids
They all seemed distressed when you walk in the room wearing that dress if you caught them looking just think of what they might do
they're all swinging Dicks Toms Harrys and Barbies with perfectly smoothed-over parts
the rest of them looking for a tall man to save them as they sneak from their wives in the dark
They all sound annoyed when you have your moment the girls and the boys who won't say your real name no matter how many times you told them
Yeah you can look at me I get it, I get it
Yeah you can look at me I get it, I get it
Looped and sliced piano, drifting in and out of phase. I built a Norns Shield and used my newfound portability and scriptability to make a little granular looper accompaniment device to bring downstairs for some piano improvisation. Recorded in a few takes with only an approximate idea of timing, so the parts drift in and out of tempo. The creaks and clicks of the bench add some mellow percussion.
stole some chords and rhythms from the beatles in honor of the lunar love i feel e'ryday
I wrote and recorded a dance song. I started working on this after the dirge I recorded a few weeks ago when I was majorly bummed about Ukraine and every awful thing.
Attempt at higher bpm (~140) electronic dance music. Decided to go with album title Snowsquall. A brief mix of the rest of the Snowsquall Album can be found here.
Using the same sequencing definition as a previous post but with different key changes and tempo; some buzzy interjections. Patch notes: Teletype sequencing Just Friends; lead is 0-Coast / Strega, sequenced by Norns/crow, a little spring reverb to taste.
black farmer who been black farming for over two years and it seemed about time to pen some new negro spirituals harmonizing with me, myself, and I; background field recording is burying a new goat kid disemboweled by a mystery predator overnight
Low fi chicken Chicken Addendum Chicken Addendum
Burning out for all time The Alfredo sauce is mine
A little low fi rock thing about mortality and chicken Alfredo
One of my favorite vocal samples (mid century Henry Miller interview found on Archive.org) with some little pings and big booms Another Ambient Office jam. Really enjoyed this one. Patch notes: Teletype driving JF (lead notes) through a variable digital delay that is randomly sped, slowed and reversed. Vocals randomly pulled and slowed a touch by Morphagene. Some modulation assistance by Maths and Marbles. Bass is a 0-Coast/Strega duo. Spring reverb, eq and ring mod to taste.
A somber tale of aquatic horrors. Made with my friend Gordon Gauchat, in one night.
Lyrics:
He comes in the water He comes in the water He comes in the water
For you
Fishman!
Another song about a "famous" Blaseball player: Winnie Hess, one of the most feared pitchers in the league. The first song I had to re-export as a lower-quality mp3 to hit the file size limit. It's 9.4 minutes long in honor of Winnie's 9.4 pitching stars (that's a lot — in fact, 5 was a lot) when she and the rest of the Kansas City Breath Mints were incinerated in season 24. Almost all those stars were from the mechanic known as "partying" which gave random stat boosts to players on teams that were mathematically eliminated from the playoffs. Winnie partied a LOT, but this song takes place before all of that.
Lyrics: When I first came to The Meadow, I was terrified. I couldn't hide my fear of the toothy smile of the manager, and the round thing with the spear. The team made no sense to me at all: an angel with a skeleton wife, a vampire and a dentist and a baker and a guy whose head was a knife. But they were nice to me when they didn't have to be. I could barely hold a ball, and I couldn't really pitch at all. But I decided then and there that I would get us a ring. And I knew, deep in my glue, that I would do anything. I'd do anything. But how do you get better at this game? It's not from practice! From the very start, I think the Breath Mints understood this. And I got used to their ways, but when I was new, my goodness, the Mints' approach to training sometimes seemed a little tactless. That skeleton, Leach Ingram, would show up two hours late and just blow kisses from the mound down to her husband at the plate. And Hewitt Best kept handing out these pamphlets at first base, and Marquez Clark the vampire always called my fastball "extreme pace?" I asked Boyfriend Monreal just why the Mints did things this way, and they said... "You wonderful horse, we'd like to win, of course, and if winning's what you want, I know that you'll be a star. But besides the umps and the gods — who we don't trust — there's only us, so what's important to the Breath Mints is to be who we are." I stopped by Izzie's bakery and said "I think I'm in love." And she said, "Honey, welcome to the club." I thought about what Boyfriend said for months. I realized I didn't know who I was supposed to be. But you only ever really have a crisis like that once, and soon I learned the type of lesson that you never learn for free: The umps killed Whit, the knife guy who I'd since learned was a father. And just a few weeks later they killed Leach's Eddie too. And just as some of us were starting to recover, we had to watch our Boyfriend burn before anyone was ready to. So amid the smoking remnants of their body — and our playoff run — I finally came to grips with what I really want when the day is done, and the next could be my last if I should play in an eclipse. I want to win. I just want to win! I want to embrace my friends in triumph! I want to send the other team home in shame! I want it so bad, it's even in my name! I want to win! I want to pitch a single perfect game! Then if any given day I should die in flame, at least I'd go out happy. And something weird happened in season 8. We were bottom of the league, but I felt great. And Leach started wilding out in the bullpen like she was on her motorcycle with Eddie again. Yeah, she was having the time of her life, but she was off in a world of her own. But I wanted to go there! I wanted to know what she saw! 'Cause when she came to, something had changed inside her. She was kind of serene, with more control of her slider. And I begged her to tell me how she did it. She pulled out a joint, and she lit it, and she said, "Iunno." So I guessed I'd have to figure it out on my own. I took a Honeycrisp and got my hair dyed roan. I tried meditation until I lost my patience, and I tried imagining my team's congratulations, and I felt something. I pictured a standing ovation, and I felt something. I thought of my friends, and the smiles on their faces, and I saw... "...but, one run against Winnie Hess is sometimes as hard as ten..." "...and, Winnie Hess, over at the Breath Mints..." "Winnie Hess." "...absolute monsters this year!" "It's a massive horse. It's a really big horse." "...I'm not sure if it's going to be a high scoring game! 'Cause Winnie Hess is going to lock down whoever they're pitching aginst..." "...and Winnie Hess closes out a perfect game in game one..." "...but personally, I feel like the champion for season 22 was Breath Mints pitcher Winnie Hess..." "...and it is the Breath Mints who win, to become the season 22 champions. So... Breath Mints good?..." "...the Kansas City Breath Mints, you have won your first Internet Series championship, here in season 22. Wow!..." And when I came to, everyone was standing around me. Their smiles were just like I remembered. I guess that Leach had told them how bad I wanted this, and so they came and found me. I guess they'll always come and find me when I get lost inside my head. And when we're losing, and I'm chasing down those visions, I know they'll be behind me. So maybe someday I will pitch a perfect game. And maybe someday I can get us a ring. And maybe someday I'll be killed in an inferno. But I'll always be a Breath Mint, all the same.
The goal was too blend... ... digital and analog sounds, instruments, voices. The digital sounds - the percussion - were all made using Reason. Everything else is a real live human playing a real live instrument. I'm the guitar player, and for those of you of the nerd persuasion, I played a 1961 Epiphone Casino as the rhythm guitar and a Danocaster Singe Cut for the leads. Amplifier = 1964 Fender Deluxe Reverb.
I recorded this in fits and starts over the last few years, putting the finishing touches on during sessions for a forthcoming record that will be released imminently. The record, like this song, is all instrumental music which definitely isn't jazz.
I wanted to share this on Mefi as a way to contribute to such a wonderful community. That said, I'm also an independent artist looking to make my way, so if you are so inclined, pop on over to my profile, find me on socials, and give a brother a follow!
Sort of a low-fi midwestern rock thing. Why stop making questionable tunes once february is over?
Kind of a slightly twee sadgirl pop song, of the very trans variety. Made with my usual collaborator Grandbrother. They provided lyrics, new wave guitar, and structure. I brought the groove, palm muted fender bass, and possibly my vocal a-game. Kinda proud of this one
Lyrics:
Xanax Paychecks Clap backs You Xanax Paychecks Clap backs You
Girlfriends wondering where you are Make up running like a foreign car Tuesday mornings in the dark alone Keep Forgetting where I left my phone Staring out of a Volvo window. Wishing I was somewhere else Holding onto a certain angle Just so I can see myself
When I'm running around Cool shades on I got no regrets All day long When I'm running around Cool shades on I got no regrets It don't last long
Fuckin up my room again Fuckin up my head Fall asleep on the floor again God I miss my bed Fuckin up my room again Fuckin up my head Ill never sleep at your house again Dont wanna miss your bed
Xanax Paychecks Clap backs You Xanax Paychecks Clap backs You
Shower speaker playing way too loud Neighbors mad I need to turn it down Checking my messages for something sweet Gonna have to move next week Pack up my shit and hold my breath I'm Glad it hasn't hit me yet. Closet full of vintage dresses Brave face on, I'm such a mess.
When I'm running around Cool shades on I got no regrets All day long When I'm running around Cool shades on I got no regrets It don't last long
For the "minimally viable music" Disquiet Junto prompt, I made a piece built entirely from a recording I made of popcorn popping.
Ambient Office project that features some just intonation intervals and granular noise. Built off of the "Independence Day" JT tutorial, enjoyed what it was doing so much I decided to build it up a little further by providing some additional tonal variation, tweaking the envelopes and adding a little percussion. Patch notes: main voice is Just Friends in sound/sustain with some noise FM; percussion is dust noise (Plaits) and FM pings from 0-Coast with some granular tails added.
Pretty Hate Machine style b a n g e r. I might have blown my entire FAWM making this
Worth it. Reason 10, Fender Jazz, my shitty Yamaha Pacifica and my trusty plywood Alvarez dreadnought all doing their thing here with some synths for flavor. No guitar amps were used - this is all modeling. (Except for the 15 watt Crate guitar amp I'm using for the bass.)
This took me five days to make and I've been agonizing over it. It did not want to exist, and I really had to yank on it to get it past the threshold.
This is easily the best thing I've ever made.
Lyrics:
I tried to trust you But fangs are for incisions I think you know I'm programmed for bad decisions
Am I awake I feel I must be dreaming Are you real Or simple simply scheming
You turn on and off and on a million times a minute What you haven't noticed is my patience has a limit
(it's time for you to disconnect me)
Take me offline Bad time sunshine
I am the fly Caught up in your machinery I see you smile And disappear into the scenery
You've got me pinned Now it's clear what you're intending A sparkly void where the pain is neverending
You turn on and off and on a million times a minute What you haven't noticed is my patience has a limit
You're content to watch me dance around at your insistence I invite you all to watch my act of last resistance
(Its time for you to disconnect me)
Take me offline Bad time sunshine
Please listen to it while looking at the sky, While making incredible plans, While thinking about the past, the future, or both.
Please listen to it while working, While calculating equations too complex for me, While speculating, while hoping.
I heard a vocal sample and imagined three little frogs were singing it and so I had a little fun. I normally don't use as many samples, but I like the result. Things are little unbalanced and I think the bass gets totally lost? oh well!
Another AO jam - this time using a cellular algorithm to derive a melody and a few drum triggers that I mess with and layer under some drones. Patch notes - Teletype sequencing a piano sample, Serge subtractive voice, bass drum and gated noise; some drum fills from Marbles > Plaits and a nice Strega bass drone.
This is a generated guitar piece. I wrote it via this script, which picks progressions, then modes, and fills them out with riffs and lead phrases that fit those modes. More "making of" details here, if you're interested.
Wrote this in the morning, made it into a quick TikTok, recorded the demo this afternoon. Figuring out this whole magical "pre-chorus" thingie
A short one that fell in my lap while warming up.
Yeah, it's Bob Pollard length. You know I stole this chord progression I hope you don't mind Were you looking for an outside connection To waste all your time
Forget about hearts and states of the art you can have some of mine anytime
3 song for FAWM 2022. Tip of the hat to Exiting The Vampire Castle for inspiring the title. This one's about cancellation, and the toxicity of the queer community. Thankfully for all of us, neither of those things exist. there's blood in the water
in flyover country
a vampire castle a figure of eight
I knew you were lying I know what you're thinking
I tried not to scare you it's prob'ly too late
the knives are all sharpened it probably happened
who cares if she's bleeding complicit in fate
the marys are bloody in hangover country
the stakes have been sharpened a figure of hate
the murky seas churning the kraken awakens
the tidewater ripples now throw in the bait
This is the second of my FAWM 2022 pieces. Kind of a doom/prog/folk thing. Witch rock. Momcore. Had the basic riff come to me a few years ago on guitar, but translating it to Rhodes made the whole song gel. Lyrics courtesy of a close collaboration between me and my dear fiend and spiritual advisor: the Bishop of Bantercurry
(friends call them "That Bish")
Lyrics:
The prominent tree holds no mystery to me And I live in the inverted woods The shackles and chains of the last vernal rains Rub my nose in the dry summer soot
The rusty tire iron has broken my spine And I crawled a malevolent mile I have vomited roads and squashed forest toads And nearly choked on my bile
This is the season where we hamstring reason And Fly
The crescent is crimson alongside Her rims And Her center a sickening white Her power will swell but you never can tell Whether She yearns to kiss or to smite
This is the season where we hamstring reason And Fly
My journey of writing pop punk songs from thirty years ago continues apace. This one started as a TikTok and then I banged out this demo in my living room today. I'm trying to get better at writing choruses and actually using my voice.
Basically, I wrote a tool to graph this into midi. Fun fact: It does not actually slow down.
My second Synthruary song is Message from Afar. It's another low song. I made a simple instrument that shifted the pitch by amount depending on the note in the sequence. It also delayed by an amount based on its position in the sequence. So, it was quite chaotic, though I didn't feel it was completely unrelated to what I was playing on the guitar. I did want a more complex sound than some offset sinusoids, but I had enough trouble as it was.
Here's a cover based on a song by The Church that I recorded in Logic Pro. Drum track is from apple loops. This is a pour-a-glass-of-wine or pack-a-bowl and kick back kind of song.
I'm doing February Album Writing Month, or FAWM.
My music career has been mostly as a bassist and engineer. I play a ton of instruments. But I never really wrote songs. Once in a blue moon when inspired.
But I wrote one in six hours tonight. Tracking vocals and guitar feedback tomorrow. But here's the instrumental version, because I'm too excited not to post it anywhere.
Is it a masterpiece? No. Is it good? No. But I had zero inspiration and dug in anyway. And I made something!
So go me.
This is a piece that I recorded by triple-tracking myself playing an FM synthesis patch (the "twist" being that it has an extra cosine applied to the modulated signal) written in Pure Data. I need a push to reactivate the music writing after having to spend all of my time on other things, so I'm doing this as part of #synthruary, one of those things where you wear yourself out trying to do a thing every day of the month.
Another pop song Someone told me about the lies that you had said and That I got pro bono You came between it; it already was said and Already done before
It might have happened when you told me what you think and It wasn't unnnoticed I can't abide it, and I know that you're a friend, and I won't be there for you
And I don't like you there And you know it's not fair You cannot talk me out of this now And I don't want you there And the time is drawing near when Nobody's left for you
And I don't want you there You know it's not fair Doesn't matter what the other ones have said and if you want this dead I'll only turn around and I ain't lost for long
Now you're convinced that you see figures in the cosmos You could be vulnerable and take a chance And you could drive out into the country but Nobody lasts there for long
And I don't recognize you anyway now and I don't know where you went to cover up But I know you will find the answer Follow the route to the door
Another Ambient Office Project, this one involving a custom 4-voice sequencer that involves the generation of melodies and then handing them off between each voice, in and out of sync to produce polyrhythms. Inspired by listening to a lot of "In C", if you can tell. Patch notes - Teletype triggering a wave table synth, with some BBD delay (Strega) and some weird formant bwomps coming from the Serge.
Using my friend's old Roland SoundCanvas to get the mellotron-esque string sounds and the Yamaha SLG-100 for the acoustic vibes. It records remarkably well, though definitely not the same as the real thing.
Little bit of fretless bass action on here as well!! There was a time and a room there there was a chance for a life beside you and you were one in a million you were the one that I could sacrifice for
I put my change into an ashtray and now we live inside our cages alone I thought I could be the best for you and all along the things I thought I would know, I am just someone that I thought I knew.
You can stay a little later do a ten to twelve and sleep on the floor you can tell it was made then it wasn't like this before
and you can keep it in the basement and you can leave the key beneath your front door there's nothing else that I can take away it doesn't matter; this is all I can come here for
another lil uke song for to practice my spanish while i'm out here herding goats in the desert I swear that, in actuality, I can pronounce "aunque". :( Also I was prompted to post because I so agree with this comment:
I really like the spirit of amateurism (which I think is more important than professionalism) on Projects and MeFi Music...
from the recent MeTa inviting folks to introduce themselves. I have so enjoyed making amateur art over the past couple of years* and am so dang happy to have a place like this to share. Until the world allows it again, this remains my favorite open mic stage.
[*But also I should add some of y'all are real impressive and professional! I am delighted by the amateur and very much non-amateur talent alike.]
Trying out some new recording equipment I am renting a Yamaha silent guitar which I used for the acoustic part of this track. It sounds ok, but I'm absolutely in love with it from a practical point of view. Recording acoustic guitar parts at my place is a usually huge pain, especially in the winter as my studio room is right next to the furnace room of my building and it's impossible to get a steady 3 or 4 minutes where the furnace isn't on and/or there's someone stomping around upstairs.
I also recently bought a pair of Audix A152 headphones; this is the first demo I've mixed with them. Slowly but surely getting my recording situation more dialed in!
you know what I know you say what I say it looks like you're numb it looks like you're ok
to choose on my own and deliver a song they said it might be you they came in lost, wrapped up Gin Diana
he can be us he can ask us he'll get a landfall he can ask us
gin on my nose and you remember my name you think it was you you think that you're saved and you looked in my hand and you looked at your face
and if you miss my hand, it's over
it's out of my hand
I sort of learned how to fade out a song on LogicPro. Still very slowly learning Logic Pro (what can I say, I'm slow, it takes me awhile). Bass and drums are apple loops; I played the guitar patch on a midi keyboard. I sort of learned how to fade out a song. It took me forever.
Cover of a Postal Service song. I'm pretty sure the song is ~actually~ about nuclear war, but the lyrics are weirdly appropriate for the pandemic. (I also learned from listening to too much Song Exploder that doubled vocals are a Cool Effect. So, some of that, too, since D isn't my usual key of choice.)
Little song my wife and I recorded this morning on an iPhone. Guitar and cello When I wake up it's another day. And I won't feel the way I used to.
A walk through the depths of feedback noise A strolling bass line, brought through 10 minutes of pitch-shifted wave folder feedback. The pitch and wave folder settings, along with the pitch shifting feedback and reverb, are slowly morphed over time. I love finding crazy sounds buried in what sounds like straight up noise; a stronger person wouldn't have tempered this with a melody but i am what i am.
This is 2022-01-01, both the song and today's date. We thought this phrase was catchy in our house, so I developed it a bit, but only slightly.
I took the Linn drum set in Live, slowed the samples down and played with it; vaporwave came out. I followed that to a conclusion of sorts. Instruments used: Ableton Live Drum Rack, Native Instruments Massive, u-he Hive, Roland JV-1080 (software emulation)
I bought an old Steinway upright recently, on which I've been making pieces like this, which I call "naturelles."
Three more naturelles on Bandcamp, here: https://raygull.bandcamp.com/album/naturelles-1-4 Happy new year!
Doing sort of a Deadmau5-style beat using an old drum machine (Korg S3). I used the noise wave on my Korg Monologue to create the little cymbal swells every couple bars (classic Deadmau5 trick which I have been trying to copy for a while using different methods). The pulsing synth riff is also kind of a Deadmau5 thing. It's weird - I'm not even that much of a fan of the guy but the handful songs of his that I've liked have clearly influenced me a lot.