Fun with Reason

So, currently we’re learning how to do stuff with Reason in Electronic Music. It’s a pretty awesome program where you can more or less synthesize any instrument or sound you want- you set up racks with the different synthesizers and then sequence everything. This past week, instead of studying for my midterms, I decided to play around with it and try to work out an instrumentation for a song that had been in my head for a while. I layered on some piano, drums, and synth, running things through reverb and distortion machines until I had something that came out like this:

I kind of scrapped up the lyrics together as I went, and got lazy and repeated the first verse instead of writing a new one. But sometimes famous people do that too and no one gets angry at them. I tried to create a sense of dark space in the track, which I think the reverb helped with a bit. I wanted this feeling of expansive desperation as opposed to a more claustrophobic one- I’m not sure how well I did at that because I’m certainly no expert at this program (about a week and a half or so since I first touched it). Also, Reason just allows you to do a lot with sound that other, normal sequencers don’t. You can kind of get an idea for that when you compare it to my initial kind of sketch, which I did on Logic instead of Reason (shorter):

It sounds flatter to me, as if the sounds are pressed up against a wall. It might also stem from the fact that I spent more time, clearly, in Reason than I did in Logic. Ultimately I did all of the vocals and final mixing of the Reason version in Logic (because, as far as I know, you can’t record vocals directly into Reason), but the sound of the backup track was all Reason.

Also, on an unrelated note, my band performed live on Yale radio yesterday and it went pretty well…at least well enough to get the host of the show to extend an offer for us to go and record something at his studio. It was all acoustic, so it meant changing up some of our arrangements pretty drastically, but I think they all turned out ok.

Click Dance

For this assignment, we were given a track of 4 clicks and, using a program called radiaL, we needed to create 3 dance loops. radiaL is kind of a live DJing computer program- you load the loops onto circular “discs,” and then you control/add effects to the loops to create different sounds and rhythms. So, I loaded the click track into four different channels and messed around with pitch, tones, filters, etc. The toughest part about radiaL, which I guess is also a cool part, is that it isn’t a sequencer software like Logic where you can splice up samples, loop them, effect them, and then basically just play through whatever you edited. Because radiaL records live, you need to mess with your tracks as you’re recording. To do this, I used the MIDI keyboard as a controller, mapping the different keys to mute and unmute tracks, restart tracks, affect filters, etc. For dance music, I have some trouble getting away from the idea of a constant beat, so there’s no really crazy rhythms here, except maybe for a little bit in the second beat. Anyways.

This is the original click track:

Here is the first beat I made. It uses the original click track in four different loops, layered over each other, effected, and muted at different times.

The second one also was four tracks. One is slowed way down, and since the clicks are really a compressed sample with inconsistent tone quality, it helps create that kind of weirder rhythm in the middle. Can you dance to this? I don’t know.

This final one had three tracks and took the longest to record because I had to keep controlling the track that sounds like a bass drum and I screwed it up over and over.

And that’s it. radiaL is a pretty cool program, but I doubt I will use it much in the future not only because live recording is somewhat tiresome when you’re trying to get it right, but also because it’s really glitchy. Sometimes things just stop working and you need to restart it. Also, the version we’re using has all kinds of unlicensed effects that screw up the recording occasionally. In fact, the radiaL in one of our music labs was just a free trial that expired. Top notch.

Ringtones

For our first Electronic Music assignment, we needed to create two different ringtones in the style of musique concréte.

The first ringtone we created from sounds we recorded in the environment. I initially thought I would go and record my material in the post office because mail is another form of getting in touch with people, but I forgot the post office is closed on Sunday. Then I decided to go to record in the church and take advantage of my previous obstacle, but the service I walked in on was in a different language and I thought it would be creepy if I recorded people without being able to tell them what I was doing.

Instead, I made the theme of my ringtone “Winter” because it’s winter outside and I didn’t have any other ideas. I recorded myself walking around in the snow, I recorded melting snow dripping down the drainpipe, and I recorded a heater to kind of bring the two ideas together. It starts with me walking in the snow, then the heater warms up and the snow starts melting (in rhythm). It ends with the dripping water, and you can hear the water sample I stole in its original context. So it tells this incredibly emotional story.

I wanted the beginning to start arhythmic and slowly evolve into a rhythm. I really like what Animal Collective does in Peacebone- essentially starting with random/uncoordinated sounds and gradually making them into a beat. It was kinda tough to do effectively in 15 seconds, but I tried. This is “Winter Ringtone”:

The second ringtone needed to be taken from a single sample instead of lots of different recordings. We needed to repeat the sample at least three times and put different effects on different repetitions. I wanted it to have something to do with cell phones, and a little bit of Youtube searching gave me this clip:

I broke it up, changed the speed and pitch on a lot of the samples, did some audio smoothing on the waves with a magic pencil (although I still couldn’t get some of the pops out…hopefully I will learn how to better get rid of them in the future), and made it into “Compromised Ringtone”:

The repeated samples aren’t uninterrupted or unclipped, so I guess I’m kind of hoping that’s ok, but the assignment didn’t specify the repetitions needed to be continuous.

And that is Assignment 1.

Genuine Live Musical Recording

So my band had its first performance last Saturday night on a basketball court in one of the residential halls. We played six songs, about a half-hour set. My suitemate, coincidentally, was filming a video project that weekend, and as a part of his assignment he recorded sections of the concert. I extracted some audio from his video, and there was enough of it to post this song. The audio quality isn’t great, the balance (especially vocals, guitar, and keyboard phaser…) isn’t great, and since it was our first performance the performance itself was not superb, but it didn’t come out too badly, I don’t think.

Anyways, this is a song called Can’t Hold On, and it’s more or less complete except for a small part of the instrumental intro.

Electronic Music I Like

I have listened to a fair amount of electronic music, but for the most part my experience has been along the lines of survey instead of depth. I listen to a Girl Talk song here, a Caribou song there, Simian Mobile Disco or Prefuse 73 occasionally, but it’s only with certain artists that I really go beyond their major hits or a once-through listen of an album. However, these artists are some of my favorite of any genre of music.

I’m a song-oriented kind of guy, in the sense that music I really love results from music and lyrics that complement each other. I favor songs over mashups- not that I dislike layering things over each over, but I just prefer it when the layers are part of a tight, complete song as opposed to different songs combined and spliced together. I want to do more than dance when I listen to my favorite electronic music. I want a melody, or if there is no melody I want there to be a reason. I want emotion. I want to get the sense that the song could very well stand on its own were it not for the effects/delay/electronic stufff, but I want those electronic aspects to enhance the song and make it better than it would be on its own.

At any rate, I’m just gonna post a couple of songs that I think do this from some of my favorite electronic or electronic-utilizing artists.

Firstly, Radiohead. Incredible songwriters who know how to use their instrumentation to an insanely good degree. One of my favorite Radiohead songs, off of their album Kid A:

Secondly, MGMT, who somehow manages to blend dance-y songs with great melodies and this really raw feeling of desperation. I feel like it’s silly to post this cause everyone’s heard it but I’ll do it anyways.

Finally, I’ll just post one of my favorite electronic songs ever, which is a collaboration of the Chemical Brothers and Midlake, both incredible artists in their own right (Chemical Brothers also does this thing I like of making their dance songs actual songs as well). It’s off of the Chemical Brothers album We Are the Night.

Other electronic bands I enjoy more than casual listener: Daft Punk, The Knife, Ratatat, Animal Collective, Eluvium, TV on the Radio.

ELECTRONIC MUSIC.

Web Comic and Stuff

I just started writing a webcomic with Cole called Quiet Glen Mind Police. You should check it out- we update Tuesdays and Thursdays. It is part of the reason I am not posting as much on this blog (my joke ideas get funneled there). The other reason is that my band is taking up more and more of my free time in a very good way. We have our first concert this Saturday, where we’re basically inviting a very small amount of people who won’t care if we suck. I think we’re recording it, so if anything turns out I’ll post some stuff here.

Also, this blog is now going to be used for my Electronic Music class to post assignments and things. I guess I’ll be writing more frequently with those deadlines.

The Lincoln Logs

Brief excerpts from “The Lincoln Logs,” an ongoing story that chronicles the day-to-day activities of former president Abraham Lincoln.

January 14, 2009

A small film studio

“Hello, everyone! I’m former president Abraham Lincoln, and I’d like to tell you a little bit about Liberty Mattresses. That’s right- emancipate yourself from back pain and sleep loss with our patented firmasoft core that supports your spinal column while conforming to your preferred resting position. A house divided may have trouble standing, but it can certainly lie down and catch some shuteye on our beautiful new line of queen size beds. And, for a limited time, everything is 50% off! To pass on prices like these, you’d have to be crazier than my wife! So come down and see us in the middle of Culver City or, for those of you further away, be sure to stop by our Gettysburg address. Li-”

“Cut, ok, let’s try that again, this time don’t look down so much. Remember, we want to see your face. Ok, 3, 2, 1…”

Outside of a deli

“Hey! Hey, you’re Abraham Lincoln, aren’t you?”

“Um, well-”

“Yeah! Yeah you’re him!”

“Er- yes, ok I-”

“Say it!”

“Uh…”

“Come on, say it! Say it for my daughter, she wants to hear it.”

“I WANT TO HEAR IT!”

“Look, I usually don’t-”

“Please, just say it! Say it!”

“Fine, ok. Four score and seven years ago.”

“AHAHAHA! Yes! Did you hear that, Laurie?”

“YES I DID MOM I WOULD LIKE SOME ICE CREAM.”

“Well, thank you very much, Mr. Lincoln. It was great to meet you, but it looks like someone needs ice cream. I’m sure you understand about that.”

“Of course. Nice talking to you.”

Later, at a modest villa in Beverly Hills

“What am I doing, Landon? This- look, I just finished filming a commercial for a mattress store! Me, Abraham Lincoln. Mattresses!”

“People need mattresses, Abe. I mean, what else are you gonna do? Sit around the house? Watch Ken Burns for the bajillionth time?”

“I mean, that’s just it, Landon. I feel like I haven’t done ANYTHING in a really long time. I haven’t contributed anything to this country.”

“How can you say that? You were the greatest president America has ever seen.”

“But look at me now. Middle-aged, sitting around this little mansion- I hate this mansion, by the way. I’ve always hated it. It’s so…big and, I don’t know. I feel like I have no connection to anything or anyone. I need to DO something. Anything.”

“Why don’t you drink this beer?”

“Well…ok. For now. But I am discontent.”

GIRLS GONE WITH THE WIND

“Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn about your personality.”

“I don’t know nothin’ ’bout birthin’ boobies.”

“Take a good look my dear. It’s an historic moment you can tell your grandchildren about – how you watched everyone’s panties fall one night. “

“As God is my witness, as God is my witness, they’re not going to lick me! I’m going to live through this, and when it’s all over, I- WOOO! YEAH! HEY GUYS, LOOK AT THESE!!! I JUST WANT TO HAVE SOME FUN!!! WOOOOO!”

Love’s Labours Lost

to the Yankees.

I Am Really Good At Slime Volleyball

I almost got recruited by ITT Tech.

But I didn’t.