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Well, here it is. This really isn’t a new album exactly. It’s more of a collection of things, doodles, and some seriously intentional music that I had made all by my little self. Most of this stuff is posted on this blog, but NOT ALL OF IT. This album compiles everything I’ve done on my own that I found worthy to put together in an album offering. The interesting part is some of this stuff dates back to 2013. I have acquired a lot more equipment, moved a lot, learned a lot, repaired a lot, failed a lot, but at least had fun along the way (with frequent backups). I just bought another piece of equipment that may change everything a bit (Novation Launchpad) and I wanted to compile everything I did personally up to this point and put it in an album.
Credits? Well, ALL ME!!!! I PLAYED AND DID EVERYTHING HERE.
Song List and commentary (Also known as “liner notes” because I miss the day of vinyl record album sleeves):
Here’s the 110 meg zip file of all the tracks and the cover! Enjoy!
And as always, like Todd Rundgren said, “Yer gonna wanna get out yer headphones, cause they’re really gonna help ya on this one.”
So I bought a Novation Launchpad Pro for Christmas (From me to me). This is a controller for digital audio software (mostly Ableton). I have always complained about the learning curve in Ableton and how it does things differently. Well, seeing that it IS an industry standard in an industry I lovingly call my “hobby”, I decided to invest in the software and force myself to learn it. This device helps that learning and makes understanding of it a lot easier.
I have started stealing drum sounds from Neil Peart (from Rush) and using them as my drum foundations on this project. These drum sounds and the riff are respectfully sampled from the song by Rush titled “High Water” (from the album “Hold Your Fire”). Admittedly, the groove/shuffle of the original drum pattern are lost a bit as I quantized it. It made it more robotic and less human which I think adds to it in an odd way. I called my version “High Water Pants” “High Mystic Water Rhythms”.
This is my first second stab at this, so be gentle. I am amazed at the simplicity and power of all of this technology and my mind has been blown multiple times in the past 48 hours. I’m in love with this stuff.
Check out my first second shot at a LaunchPad Pro mix with Ableton. Not too shabby. Take special note of the groovy drum solo break in the middle. I’m so nifty! 🙂
I have decided that one Rush song was not enough to destroy, so I also diced up Mystic Rhythms and added a whole new segment mixing the drums from this song along with the song mentioned above (High Water).
I’m sure Neil Peart will be completely pissed, but I am learning a lot and having fun! Let’s face it. The man’s drum sounds, sound awesome! I basically sampled each of his drum sounds separately (to a very short wav file), then assigned each drum (wav file) to a button, then wailed away on the pads and tried to make my own drum patterns out of HIS sounds. I put another nifty drum solo type break near the end. THIS IS JUST TOO MUCH POWWWWWERRRRR! I’m blowing myself away here!
This is compiled from sessions recorded in 2016. Bob and CeMeGo had things scattered all over the hard drives. It has taken a while to compile all of this together. Some you may recognize from this blog, others were created and never posted.
Track List
Personnel
Bob & CeMeGo (and occasional Nguyen Chaney).
Tools
Ableton Live (The great learning curve)
Adobe Audition (too useful unfortunately!)
Korg Mini-KP
Korg Kaossilator Pro
Korg MicroKey
Korg MicroKorg
Sony Acid Pro 7
Korg Volca Bass
Korg Volca Beats
Korg Volca Keys
Teenage Engineering Pocket Operator PO-12
Click here to download the album in a zip file with cover art (46 megs).
We still don’t make money off of this crap. We do it for fun! The best compensation would be a comment or review right here on this blog again. Chob thanks YOU for your junk!
If you are old enough you will remember this theme. I mixed it together with really bad audio bits from youtube. The opening theme is sewn up with the ending synthesizer funky theme. As a “bonus” (I guess) it reprises the opening at the end.
I just heard this out of the blue and remembered how funky it was. Crank dat shit (in the middle at least).
It can’t get much better than this at this point. This was seriously considered as a viable song, then we just gave up and moved the BPM up to 300 just to see how it sounded. We went to IHOP for breakfast at 4pm and came back and finished this. I blame IHOP !!
Starring:
This is a song played on all black keys. I wanted to work a little harder on creating with the MicroKorg and Kaossilator alone.
There are still some minor time issues, but HOLY CRAP THE SOUNDS ON THE mICROkORG ARE AWESOME. So many presets and this is with little to no variation of these stock presets. The quality and variety of the sounds are amazing. I went through as many as I could.
Geek Notes:
Note: This is terribly long (12 minutes and 23 seconds)… bump it around if you get bored. I think the last 2 or 3 minutes sound the best (thanks to a bent, reverb’d, and delayed string chord I liked and it notably ends in this). There’s a really loud over-modulated bass bit in the middle thats hilarious and may destroy your speakers.
Once again, no sense of time or self control. This is just too much fun to make! I couldn’t stop myself. 🙂