Managed to uncover some novelty tonight, pushed Crucifixion Doll in another direction entirely but one that made me much happier. This is the song I have found entirely unyielding to manipulation lately … I have spent the last 4 sessions, several hours each, really trying to wrench this out of the sonic hole it was in. Terribly frustrated, but then a breakthrough or two tonight. I just couldn’t leave it alone. Then, because success breeds success, happened across 9soundware, which looks/sounds quite promising… an answer to my recent conceptual dilemma: do I dig in and spend some serious time synthesizing/creatively editing and make myself a library of sound and noise? Of course, if I had the time, this would be my preference; but I feel the pressure of trying to get this first EP done, and there is still some significant song-writing to be done. Finding some interesting/powerful sounds/sampler instruments to use as a base would be a definite boon, letting me concentrate on the song while still having something sonically worthy as a base. Eventually, I will have to gather my thoughts on sound-design/song-writing … since I am watching myself work and I am seeing that I find it hard to separate these things — that is, the timbre of a given instrument will indicate a musical direction … change the timbre, change the direction, change the melodies, change the song.
Then, I dug into some old PD patches and got them working, and heard an array of implications go skittering through the soundscape and on into the clouds of implication. I got excited. Which is why I am up later than I promised I would be. Which is why, as usual, work will be a spine-grinding chore tomorrow- my brain will be only half-there.
So it is understandable that I must now say – goodnight. Goodnight.
Published on October 18, 2009 10:39 pm.
Filed under: music, recording
….research has gone well, in retrospect. There were some frustrations, and I wasn’t ultimately happy with the two major “creative” attempts today (one attempt at grainy, scream-esque vocals that just fell painfully short but left me with a ragged throat, and one attempt to insert a motif-expanding break into a driving song– the result was actually sort of interesting, but it dropped the energy of the song way below an acceptable limit, so it must be (a) scratched, or (b) slivered into the end portion of the song, where I am already doing some discordant/chromatic stuff), but overall, advances were made. Played around with Logic’s wild and woolly ES2 in search of a mean and fat analog bass, something way overdriven with that warm analog detuning …. didn’t get it, but found some fine settings along the way. Also, downloaded some weird mellotron voice samples for the EXS24 and drew some faux-middle-eastern modal lines over the end of snakeskins, which I am re-working for about the 100th time.
I am sipping some Theraflu, trying to nurse the final stages of the weekend illness that gave my family a microbial uppercut, and poking through images of old modular synthesizers. The weekend just went and dissipated into the blurry atmosphere, and it’s difficult to turn one’s mind back to work already. So it goes. So no clever turn of phrase to end this post, just one last sip of medicine-flavored lemon drink and then it’s off to tuck my head into a pillow of sleep. Or something that resembles sleep, which is just about where things are at, at night, in this hilltop aerie.
Published on September 20, 2009 10:44 pm.
Filed under: music, recording Tags: analog, bass, es2, exs24, logic, mellotron, recording, research, snakeskins, sound, synthesizer
Going along with the idea that “if you build it, the ideas will come”, I have created homes for my recent audio work. Guitar/Synth/Band format stuff I believe will become Engine Ares {working band name, based off an old song from my former band and one that hit me with the force of epiphany this morning on the walk around Avocado Lane}; experimental synth/noise work will probably go to The Invisible Noise Experience, a name that’s better than the ones that kept circling through my head about quiet noise, though that’s the way I think about a lot of my sound work – quiet noise. Invisible Noise opens up the world to paranormal audio, methinks.
In honor of the truth, the picture above is not my audio set up — but oh, how I wish. No, it is an image from an MIT Media Lab veteran who has been building this thing incrementally, for years, or so I just read today. Here are some audio works from the owner’s webpage.
Posting the “cart” before the “horse” is an attempt to trick myself into disciplined action – now that I’ve put it out there, I need to fulfill it properly or know myself as truly, deeply “lame”.
Published on September 19, 2009 10:56 am.
Filed under: music, recording Tags: analog, bands, discipline, Media Lab, MIT, music, noise, synthesizer