Two NI Razor synths running.

Having fun after upgrading Guitar Rig 4. 80% of the noises were done with a guitar.

An old 2005 project that I just released as a free album from Free Music Archive.

Here’s the link for accessing it.

At that time I used a lot o compositional parts re-assembled into new songs in combination with strange plug-ins such as CamelSpace. There are actually only eight tracks or so in the Ableton Live project panel so I just re-used various settings to see what happened.

Otherwise it was an exercise in writing ambient music with a twist. All I had to do to re-vitalize this project was to remaster it with VintageWarmer and Ozone 4 to make it sound a little bit more spacious.

Anyway, download it, listen, upload it, spread it around.

I produced this track and did 70-80% of so of the instruments. Sam sang and did an excellent job with the rhythm guitar tracks and some of the keyboards. Should be released in a couple of weeks’ time on the PlanetoidPop sub-label. I’m hoping to produce/release 5-10 pop singles this year.

Also over at Free Music Archive. Maybe easier as you could download the whole album there with one single download. Kind of positively surprised how many downloads have happened at Free Music Archive within less than 16 hours.

This album will also go out through iTunes/eMusic et rest shortly as well.

Background: Long time ago I took part in an Ableton remix context and instead of remixing songs I thought what about making 10-11 songs as the remix. Recently I found the project inside my huge music project hard disk and I went in and did some tweaking here and there and broke the songs in to 10 songs as a separate album.

As for the concept: It was just fun trying to put together a techno band that is interesting in mental states rather then chrome, dark city skies and comics, or something like that.

This release has a special license: You are encouraged to re-distribute this material as much as possible.

As for music, the audience could quickly register if a particular presentation lacks the quality aspect. Let’s say a badly tuned guitar, or the musicians not playing in sync, or each one playing a different take or odd scale. Or the drummer not keeping the pace. There are exceptions like the early day punk movement even if I do think they masked their shortcomings by playing loud and fast so such cases were not recognized. And even if you think Deerhof is a bad band, they are actually doing pretty amazing music by using banality as the key to their success.

For me, I could tolerate a lot, but hearing copycat versions of euro-trans songs one after another — like at a jazzercise class — is where it hits a nerve on me. Well played but super-boring, so the quality aspect is there. I could stand a badly playing band if they sound interesting, but I have a hard time listening to something that is banal and super-commercial to the point so it’s like sugar on top of sugar.

Maybe the closest other art form where quality is apparent is literature, someone who can’t write will seldom  become a successful writer. Those who know that hire ghostwriters.

Going back to music, at jams there are different tolerance levels for quality. Some don’t like the sloppiness of musicians that can’t play a song or can’t play together. Others ignore this as long as the presentation is interesting. I could tolerate it but I’m less inclined to listen to a really boring presentation of yet-another-blues cliche song. So we are all different. As for mixes, a really badly mixed version is not fun listening, the quickest way to turn away a consumer from your music is not spending enough time doing a properly mixed (and mastered) version. This is where the amateurs are separated from the professionals.

• Joe Bonamassa – A New Day Yesterday.
  • I like his earlier more rock-centric style of blues.
• The Very Best of Ravel
  • Always worth listening to Maurice Ravel’s orchestration tricks.
• Jaco Pastorius -Invitation (Live)
  • Mandatory listening for bass players, 2-3 Jaco albums each year.
• Orb – Pomme Fritz
  • Maybe the most misunderstood Orb album out there.
• Roger Powell – Air P0cket
  • Clever synth pop with synth drums from the time when there was no MIDI.
• T. Rex – Electric Warrior
  • Bar/pub three-chord rock that works.

I’m trying to invent a new format. Don’t know a good name or it  but let’s call it Mixle.

It’s a short piece of music, max 3 minutes, so it’s like a single. But it is open-ended, anyone could take the parts and mix it together with something else, or just use one part, or the middle, or the end, or everything with whatever they fancy. So it’s a mix thingie. Hence I call it Mixle.

Unless someone else invents a better name.

The reason something like this might take off is that people nowadays have all kinds of mixing tools, Traktor, Ableton Live, other things. It is easy to place warp points and selections to play parts. Or copy/paste things. No need to always make a 6-minute mix epos — let the DJ be the ultimate creator.

First take is here at SoundCloud . Or you could find it on the right column on this page with the SoundCloud music listed, called “What Am I Really Doing.” Maybe the name is an indication of what is happening.

Download it, do whatever you want with it. If I’m inspired I will upload more samples along the way this week.

Still. You could easily get into the rut of constant blues playing, pentatonic scales, stuck to blues formula. At the extreme here in the San Francisco South Bay we have all these blues bands with elderly good musicians that crank out the same music evening after evening. Nobody is exactly enjoying it.

What I suspect happening is that when you get really well-versed in a style, you want to stay there and enjoy the woodshedding results. Instead of growing as a musician and try other styles and expand your mind.

There are other similar cases like all the DeadMau5 wanna-bes in bedrooms who crank out techno track after techno track with the same formula. Recently I’ve noticed that even in genres like tech house, things have become very stagnated and boring. You learn how to program the tech house drums and bass lines and you are stuck there…

There’s really a simple solution. Just do something totally different. If nothing else, think of the poor audience that really wants to enjoy new music and will get the same dessert evening after evening.

Personally I like artists and bands that surprise me year after year. Even if there’s sometimes a hit-and-miss case, just the effort to try something and expand is what counts.

• Unkle – Heaven — How ambient voices should be produced.
• Stevie Wonder – Don’t You Worry ‘Bout A Thing — Take complex chord progressions and turn it into a pop hit.
• Metric – Help I’m Alive — Good pop song, good arrangements, what else do you want…
• Boards of Canada – I Saw Drones – Ambient could be short, too.
• Howard Jones – Another Chance – You could do pop songs with arpeggiators.
• Steve Vai – Aching Hunger — Wish I had that kind of vibrato technique.

Which is good. And also bad.

What happens with such reconstruction jobs is that without really knowing how compositions work someone ends up with a very bland productions. Things come and go but there’s really no dynamic content, or thinking behind it, or even much inspirational parts. The closest I could think of this is doing microwaved food for a four-star restaurant.

Well, you could always learn and improve. My suggestions is to either look at classical composers such as Debussy and Stravinsky, see how their minds tick when they compose larger bodies of work, how themes come and go, how various parts play unexpected roles here and there.

A couple of modern day bands/artists that have a similar know-how, I suspect based on hours and hours perfecting this, is The Orb or System 7. Actually there’s even  a cross-over such as the Art of Noise album where they re-interpret Debussy — highly recommend this one to get a feeling how to compose music with any sample you have around.

Here’s an example of a quick hack I did in one hour: Download audio file (SyntheticRaga.mp3)