A lot of people have wondered why Yale has a dark, magical curse on it. Some people say that it has a curse because some students poured radioactive waste into the New Haven River, but closer skepticism puts this theory in doubt. The most popular estimate is that Elihu Yale stole land from an indigenous Game Show in order to found his modern-thinking University.

But how can he do that, you may ask. He did it in the past, and now we have to deal with the consequences: This is the grave answer that exists. For example, every time a police officer stops you, do you wonder why they might throw a question your way? “Have you been drinking?” maybe they say that, or “What do you think you are doing with a bat?” is another. The curse has gotten to you again: the Game Shows curse. If you remember, questions were part of Game Show culture ever since the earliest years, and now we are retired to hear them from the police every day.

Or what about last time when you were at Durfee’s? Don’t deny that you purchased something, something that required a contract where you lost money to get an item. Again, the curse struck you. One popular tribe of Game Show, known as “TakeAChance,” sometimes gave its hallowed guests money only to have them lose it on another spin. Most experts agree that this is accurate, citing diaries.

In conclusion, don’t feel bad when someone says your name and you answer or when you have to stand behind a podium. It’s not your fault. The angry Game Show spirits haunt all of us, even if we dress really nice to try and pacify them. They cannot be pacified by anything except giving them back their land, and no one in the Yale administration will agree to that. They want us students to suffer. But in reality it is everyone who suffers.

This is a movie my suitemate made for his film class last semester. I’m in it and I also did the music for it. It’s called “64 Colors”

This is my final project. It is called “I Saw It In a Movie.”

I knew I wanted to do a song instead of some kind of dance track or soundscape or something. I guess there were some elements of a soundscape in the song, but I wanted a definite melody and lyrics that I could then add to and play around with. I had written a kind of outline for this song over winter break, but most of the lyrics hadn’t been written- I only knew what I wanted the song to be about, more or less, and I had the majority of the melody sketched out (including the movie phrase, obviously). It took a while to get the lyrics finished, and once they were done I got my friend Raphael Shapiro to play the guitar for me. It’s an electric acoustic, so I was able to record it directly into Logic.

We recorded with a metronome, but the tempo didn’t exactly lock in, which was understandable because he was playing 3 over 2. Initially, I had written the song in 4/4, but it was tough to find a satisfying guitar song that filled up the space well enough, so I ended up keeping most of the instrumentation constant and simply putting the guitar and drums in 3. Because the tempo didn’t exactly match up, I couldn’t quantize the drums and other instruments like I would have normally done. I synthesized most of the instruments in Logic alone, but I used Reason as a Rewire slave for a couple of them. I applied a lot of effects in Logic, including reverb and filters.

In terms of structure, there’s basically only two parts: the kind of intro section of G to Am7 and then the main verse. If the intro is A and the verse is B, the form is A B B B A B. I thought it’d be interesting to start with more instrumentation on the first B then the second- normally, the first repeat of the verse adds some more instruments or grows musically. I thought it’d be cool to have it shrink, and then build in the third B. I’m not sure how effectively the third be works, however, because the vocal transition is a little rough. I put the vocals for the third B on two tracks, and then heavily filtered one of the tracks so that it ended up wavering, resonating, and panning back and forth underneath the normal vocal track. I’m not sure it works very well initially. My levels are also slightly off, so things get too loud and abrasive at points, but I’m not entirely sure the best way to smooth everything out- I’m not good enough with Logic yet. The second A kind of adds a break, and its instrumentation bleeds into the final B, which ideally means the momentum keeps up until the end. I like the second A and final B the best, I think… the vocals fade in and out so you can’t entirely here the full words at points. I like that.

My biggest influence in terms of genre, I guess, was pretty clearly ambient music. The guitar is slightly too loud and harsh for it to sound exactly how I want, but the limitations of recording just the electric output of an acoustic electric guitar necessarily means some of that softness is taken away. I want to create a space for the lyrics to kind of inhabit, a soundscape to frame them in. It should be a forward-moving song, and I think it is a pretty clear-cut song, but there’s a kind of swirling background to it that hopefully makes it wander a little bit. Had I longer than 4 minutes, I would have added more space to it. I considered getting rid of a B section to add the space in this version, but I decided against it ultimately. Not sure why. Ideally, I’d add a little bit more time before the lyrics come in, and more space in general. There’s a fair amount of space as it stands, I guess, with the extended chords at the end of the phrases, but I probably would have done some more instrumental stuff.

I’m taking a look at The Knife’s “Is It Medicine”:

This song begins with a punchy synth jumping the octave. A drum machine enters fairly quickly, some kind of techno kit because of the laser-like bass drum and the crisp snare. It’s a disco sort of beat, the bass and snare alternating with a high hat. This establishes the basic beat of the song- there are no other instruments, in fact, underneath the voice. The vocals enter with an initial phrase that comes in directly over the established pattern. The octave note changes when the phrase is repeated, but the phrase is repeated exactly. The vocal phrase is repeated four times identically, with the instrumental phrase repeating twice (two vocal phrases to each instrumental phrase, as the note changes on the repeat of the vocal phrase). This entire thing is then exactly repeated again, but the high hat now plays on every sixteenth note instead of just the offbeats. Then, the 4 vocal phrases and the drum beat stays constant, but the synth changes rhythm (although the harmony is still the same). Once this final phrase of 4 vocal phrases ends, we return to the sixteenth-note synth and claps are introduced for the first time. It prepares us for the next part of the song, in which the synth and drum beat stay the same but the vocal line becomes a kind of chant on “is it medicine, is it medicine, is it medicine or social skill.” Another synth enters the picture as well, providing counterpoint to the chant. Later, voices take the place of this synth, sighing and moaning in the same place as the synth did. Finally, with the music remaining unchanged except for claps again, the song ends with various grunts and moans from the vocalists.

This song demonstrates The Knife’s ability to take simple musical ideas (in this case, a single vocal phrase and then a vocal chant) and still keep a song interesting. They repeat the same phrase 12 times, but the changing instrumentation keeps the listener engaged- sometimes the drums become more active, sometimes the synth becomes less active, etc. The complexity comes from the ways in which they change the music, however, and not from added instruments because there are only really two instruments in the entire piece: the synth and the drum kit. By establishing a strong beat, however, and then shifting that beat, the artists can still surprise the listener and keep us waiting to hear what will happen next.

The song structure is sort of unusual, in the sense that there isn’t really a traditional chorus, verse pattern set up even though the song seems primed to do so. The “verse” phrase at the beginning doesn’t return later in the song, we simply turn to what could be a “chorus” phrase with the chant. The song has simply two parts, related through instrumentation and beat, but not recurring in the larger scheme of the piece. The Knife simply repeats a phrase several times in a row, then moves on to something else.

For my project I’m going to produce an original song. I’m not sure exactly which one I’m going to do, but it will most likely  be an acoustic guitar in an ambient electronic atmosphere kind of thing. Effected voice, etc. Along the lines of “How to Disappear Completely” by Radiohead (a video I posted earlier). I’ll do the vast majority of it in Logic, I’m sure, but I’ll probably use Reason as a rewire slave and then maybe use Frequency or something to get my third program in there.

This assignment was to create a 2 minute track in some sort of genre. I started out with the goal of making a house song, but I veered more and more towards trance as I went along. I think I ended up with a hybrid of the two, but probably more on the trance side because of the melody line and the more song-like structure with a chorus kind of thing. I dunno. Here it is. It’s called “It’s Only Music,” and as with most stuff it sounds much better on headphones.

I made the whole thing in Logic using Reason as a rewire slave for some of it. I had some trouble figuring out what I wanted to do with the vocals, but I couldn’t get them to sound right when I applied heavy effects (even though I wanted really heavy effects, I couldn’t figure out the right ones), so I just let them more or less be except for some filtering and reverb.

My band The Fortune Five just played another concert last night, which went pretty well I think. Yalemusicscene.org is this pretty cool website/group of students who help put on shows and open mics every week, so they got a concert together for us (as they did in our previous performance, although we were an opener then). We had a decent turnout, and we played 9 songs more or less how we wanted to play them, excluding a few tempo and technical difficulties.

In somewhat belated response to Santana’s comment on my other post, the division of labor, for the most part, is that I write the songs, or at least the basic idea, and then we all kind of tweak with it until we can play it as a band. In terms of electronics, we aren’t really doing anything spectacular except for using different sounds- synthesizers on my keyboard and then distortion/effects on Will’s (our guitar player) guitar. I’ve been messing around with sending my keyboard through my computer, which I can do pretty easily, but so far it hasn’t been necessary- all the sounds and effects I need are on the keyboard currently. But it’s good to know I have the resources of Logic and Reason at my disposal should I want them in the future.

YaleMusicScene also posted a video and some photos of the concert on their website today. There may be more to come- I don’t know.

I decided to review Nick’s Reason assignment because I liked it. Maybe that isn’t a great way to pick the kinds of things you review, but whatever. It’s my blog.

The initial texture of the piece comes from the swirling synth pads with a metallic, droplet sort of synth playing over that background. It has a pretty straightforward House beat, but the random feeling of that ping-y synth combined with a lack of any real melodic material makes the beat seem less driving- we’re not moving forward, we’re just creating a kind of atmosphere to hang out and dance in for a while. The fact that Nick chose not to add some kind of catchy synth hook or melody is why I really like it- making a hook is, in many ways, sort of easy and feels a little cheap. This is a complex song that holds your attention because of the slight ways it varies the soundscapes and rhythms it establishes on the way through.

The first shift occurs with a swell of more fuzzy synths that are actually framing chords- they stab in and out in the higher registers and build the momentum as we fade out of the first established environment and into the next one. By gradually increasing the volume of the lower, more drill-like buzzy synth while fading down the most distinguishing part of the beginning section (that metallic, random synth), Nick makes the transition very smoothly, aided by the kind of masking/distraction effect of the higher chordal synths. We are left with this lower synth and the background pads for a while, and then the lower synth fades out, leaving only the pads and a few chords to take us through the ending. This final section, before the synth leaves, still makes reference to that beginning part because Nick brings back that metallic synth, although this time it plays more recognizably melodic stuff, so it’s not just a repeat of earlier. All of this sounds awesome, especially when compounded with Nick’s liberal use of panning that helps not only add variety but also make it feel as though you are constantly moving through the music that surrounds you.

I guess I pretty conspicuously haven’t made reference to the voice over the track that says, at various times, any one of the words in “Introduction to Electronic Music Juraj Kojs.” This was my least favorite part- I thought it detracted from the music, and at the very least sounded more amateur. It didn’t blend very well and I didn’t see much reason for the inclusion of voice. It didn’t really establish a pattern or add a new angle to the otherwise really solid soundscape. The fact that Nick put a lot of focus on the voice towards the end makes me kind of wish the track had ended around 2:15. I understand the effect he was going for (we’ve all heard that echoey, detached voice in ambient tracks), but something didn’t quite click. Maybe it was just a filter or effects thing. I’m not sure.

At any rate. I thought the song was more than great overall. I really enjoyed it. Wooooooo.

This assignment had us use Reason to create a minute-long track with five effects. No other requirements, so I had a lot of freedom with this one.

I didn’t really do anything crazy in terms of effects or really innovative/insane musical stuff. Pretty much just took a couple of ideas that worked together and stuck them together, pulled them apart, then put them back together again. I used eight instruments and five devices (to create the effects). It’s called January because part of it I made up in January as part of something else that never happened.

I’ve pretty much been neglecting this blog, but since I finally have something semi-legitimate to blog about I guess I’ll do it.

The webcomic I write with Cole, Quiet Glen Mind Police, has been doing pretty well thanks to sites like Reddit and now Digg. We had two comics on the front page of Reddit last week and also kept the top two spots of the Comics subsection for most of the day. We ended up getting almost 40,000 hits last Thursday, and various trickles around that. Our previous record before the influx of Reddit links was about 1400. Today, we’ve been on the front page of Digg for about 9 hours and currently hold the number one spot. The guy who submitted it submitted a mirror instead of an actual site link (to prevent the site from crashing), so we haven’t gotten huge amounts of traffic, but it’s a cool thing.

And that’s all.