Weekend Orchestra Thing

Weekend Orchestra Thing by Gamma Goblin

I threw this together on Saturday. For the last few weeks I've been wanting to try some more "orchestral" stuff... counterpoint and all those other buzz words. I guess it started around the time hydlide asked for people to submit musical compositions to grace the intro of a movie he was making. I would have wanted to do a traditional "big score" piece but since I'm shit at that I shyed away. The desire for that type of music stayed with me though and it manifested itself on Saturday last.

It started off as a string quartet but I got bored at fleshed it out with string sections and percussion. All the musical ideas where just tacked on together in a linear fashion, and they were done purely for practice rather than musical beauty, but it comes together quite well at times. Its missing woodwind sections, which is kinda annoying. I did attempt introducing woodwind motifs later but this just muddied it up.

While it's not great, I am encouraged at the kind of results you can achieve within a relatively short time-span. Composed on a laptop away from home, without a keyboard in sight, which has a lot of benefits. Oh and it's all done with standard Reason 4 Orkester refill.

I decided to upload the Reason RNS file, just in case anybody wants to have a look at it themselves: http://www.box.net/shared/523509yskj

[About the image] An edited version of an image taken from peacehealth.org. Its description: "Franz St. George, PhD, Medical Physicist, fits the Stereotactic head frame to a patient in the Gamma Knife Center in preparation for an MRI that will help precisely locate the site for surgery."

Shinjuku {music - fusion jazz}

Shinjuku by Gamma Goblin

Threw this together last night. Only a stub of a song but I like how it all came together. I can hear Esbjörn Svensson and Hiromi influences. I sometimes create music that I personally wouldn't listen to but I could listen to this all day. Shinjuku title taken from image, which was chosen because I got a good rain-in-a-city feeling when creating it.

[image: "Movement#2(Shinjuku)" by Philip Lepage]

Flashdance - Love Theme - G.Moroder {music}

I did this years ago, just felt like putting up something a bit gentler. Production is whack but I did transcribe it by memory, which which made me feel kinda happy at the time :) I know the ending is wrong but I didn't want to go back and listen to the original at the time. Done with synth-action keyboard, hence the random key velocities. Go on, give it a listen, it's only a minute and a half long. My version might be crap but the beauty of Moroder's original composition shines through.

Love Theme by Gamma Goblin

[Flashdance: Movie : Album : Dancing]

Signal Strength

I threw this thing together in about an hour one afternoon [and the artwork that night with help from two old photographs of mine]. Not much to say about this, except its more experimentation in Reason. A-Tonal, and in 3/4 time although you mightn't notice. I remapped the keys on my keyboard with midi-ox to allow for an easier way to experiment with atonality (a cool way to come up with new melodies when all you can see in your head is the scale of C Major). I finished it off with some real-time granular distruction [I promise to have a post up soon with a video and combinator patch demonstraiting it's use] Nothing perfect about it, but I liked how easy it is to create warp effects like at 36 seconds by merely muting a channel and twidling a knob on the combinator patch, and then a type of "spin down" effect at 59 seconds by doing something similar.

Soundcloud description: I think I might re-name this ... "Sketchy Signal Strengths and the Errors From Mars". A-Tonal, and in 3/4 time but you wouldn't notice. Home made real-time granular time-shitting within Reason. Skank you very much!

Signal Strength by Gamma Goblin

Quetzalcoatl and the Trimethylxanthine Warriors

I made two poops today (no, not those kind of poops). I was messing about with image filters and stuff and created the above pic from a photograph of a man wearing sunglasses, and I created the song below after getting bored with fixing my midi keybaord. I was just experimenting with a Thor module in Reason (piping a Subtractor output into it and mashing it up with its own audio). I liked the growling bass effect so I decided to extend it into some kind of musical thing.

It's all so shit, but they are just experiments for something greater.

Quetzalcoatl and the Trimethylxanthine Warriors by Gamma Goblin

Hypertension - 167.806

Hypertension-167.806 by Gamma Goblin

Crystal Cretins

Rather than post another futile comment on nitro2k01's post*, I decided to wank over an arpeggiator instead. I built the drum pattern then some cheesey bass and twiddled all the nobs as the three chord arpeggio played over and over. Pure wank, but some nice ideas.

Cos you can't call copyright on a three chord arpeggio! Oh and random French vocals for that touch of classy "je nais c'est quais!"

One day I shall stop taking the piss and do a serious song again, but not today.

Crystal Cretins by Gamma Goblin

* I was going to say that upon closer listening, the arpeggio sequence in AYO Technology is far more complex than the CC one. There are two patterns being played simultaneously (one is slower and at a lower register)... but let me guess, that just means 50Cent "sampled" it twice, right? >.> And what about the fact that the intro and mini riff's played throughout the song all sound like similar patches, without arpeggio. That 50Cent must be one tricky dude to pull all that off by "cleaning up samples". People never fail to disappointment me.

Back To Root

You know, I'm having a great time trying out new dnb and electronic musical styles in my spare time, but I realise that I will probably never loose my ambition to make electronic music sound as real as possible, which in turn means I'll probably never get too far with aggressive breakcore, sick dubstep, fucked up wonga jungle etc. I joke around with that kind of music too much to make a serious tune (probably a defence mechanism).

So rather than get depressed about that, over the weekend I just sat down and did what I've spent years doing, improvising on the piano. This is one little ditty I came up with. You could probably class it as spoof-jazz ('jizz' or 'shit-jazz' if you're feeling unkind). Musically its whatever, but what got me most excited is the drumming part. I tried out a few different techniques to get some natural sounding snare 'ghost' notes, and I'm really delighted out how well the whole drum track came out, with relatively little effort too.

Production notes: [click track] (FX'd Piano part then Drum Part)quantised... some minor changes made to note velocities in piano track, resolved the ending to a tonic chord. The rest was left alone. All done in Reason. A few more random thoughts about recording drum parts follow below...

Back To Root  by  Gamma Goblin

Not used in this piece but used elsewhere. Record the drum part at a slower with the song playing at a lower tempo. It allows you to get more drumming in and as long as you don't go too crazy when performing, the speeded up recording should sound smooth and tight.

The biggest trick with recording "natural" drum tracks is not to try to lay it all down in one take. Thats what I used always do. It was the easiest way to make sure the drum part wouldn't sound like it was played by an octopus because you were mimicking a real drummer (4 limbs) with your fingers, but it would end up messy and patchy. I used three separate takes for the piece above: "Kick, snare, toms + cymbals". With that setup and practically no planning, you can still manage to avoid the octo-drummer phenomenon, achieve better dynamics, and an overall better and more complex percussion part. And all parts were improvised in one take after each other.

Oh and quantising is your friend: I hated it for years but thats because I was cretin and using it wrong. Quantising artefacts can be heard in this piece too but they can be easily smoothed out when working on a more serious piece of music.

The best sounding drum track will come from a mix of sequenced and recorded parts.

Tubular Heart

Tubular Heart by Gamma Goblin

Supermassive Black Hump

Coming to a store near you soon!

Ok so I'm dragging a bit on this one but I'll finish it all up with this post [probably]. In a nutshell, its Black Eyed Pea's "My Humps" mixed with Muse's "Supermassive Black Hole".

I did this while away from my main work station (business trip!). I put it all together on a laptop just using the crappy laptop speakers but I don't need any excuses cos my version is fantastic :) I worked out most of the mix in my head while driving around listening to the Muse track.

Upon returning I was most worried that the Hump vocals wouldnt sit down well into Muse track but to my surprise they arent too bad. As a matter of fact, its brilliant!

Supermassive Black Hump.mp3

*********************** Related Posts ***************************
Initial Reaction to Supermassive Black Hole
Supermassive Black Hole Artwork and Origins
More proof relating to the songs meaning
*****************************************************************

Dr:rex or: How I learned to give up snobbery and love da bomb

I've been using Reason, in one shape or another, for years now. The combinator in version 3.0 is a delight to use and the mastering suite is a great way to punch up dead tunes, but the one thing that I ignored throughout all incarnations of Reason is the Dr:rex module, out of pure snobbery to be honest. I resisted the urge to pop a loop into it and see what it could do, "I dont need none of that gangsta shit in my music" I used to say. Well with Reason 3.0 I gave it a whirl and to my amazement I took to it like Rick Wakeman taking to a gold lambé cape.

I was an absolute midi whore! Everything; every note; every change in the timbre of an instrument had to be recorded in midi form otherwise someday the samples would go missing and I'd have nothing left but a trigger list. At least with a midi file you have the core of the song left to rebuild on. To an extent thats true but using loops in Dr:rex allows for great diversity plus its fast! I can just whack a complex drum loop into it and start improvising over the top instantly, and thats exectly what I did with the tune I'm including with this post. As with 99% of my stuff, its rather unpollished but unlike most its actually got a bit of time put into it (most are just one track at a time jams where I improvise over improvised tracks, a one man band if you will), I think the top end could do with some work; those hithats are a bit shrill. It has no title, but I saved it as "spin" for whatever reason. Its an odd little ditty with a hint of Jon Lord at times :)

Spin

Shaman of the Toilet Bowel

This is an old recording I made with a demo version of Reason 2.0. It must be nearly 7 years old now. The demo version didnt allow you to save or output a wav file, plus it was limited to 15 minutes use or something like that, so you had to work fast. I knocked this up to simulate the sound of someone retching in a toilet of a nightclub, utilising one of the subtractors "talking" patches.

In case youre wondering; yes it was a a negative slant on the whole night culture thing. I've changed my views a wee bit sense then :) This is what I originally wrote about it all those years ago:

So in honour of pleading to "God" over a bowel in a seedy nightclubs toilet while the euphoric music pumps through the walls, I’ve created “Shaman of the toilet bowel”. I think it really captures that retching rapture people spout when they’ve had one glass too many.

I guess it still represents this though, just my general attitude has changed. All I had of it was a crappy little wma file, which had all the production values of a east european porno. I did a fair amount of compression and upped the lower end to give it a bit more of a bite. You have to love that loose bass line lol

The Shamen

The Final Synapse

Image by Graham Johnson

This is my first non-midi multitrack tune. It's just a glorified test really, kinda like what would be left on the floor after a fight between Jean Michel Jarre and Tangerine Dream. There was no reason behind it, the title took longer to come up with than recording the music. Theres quite a few layers to it, which are almost entirely made using the Korg Wavestation soft synth although there are one or two time/pitch stretched samples of my own in there. Anyway, here it is warts and all.

The Final Synapse

Jellyfish

I was listening to Scooter and I decided I wanted to do some happy hardcore but I got bored and went off in a tangent. Its rather tame, I think I came up with a new genre, Harmless Hardcore, as in "god bless him, its harmless". I do have a German MC in it though, well of sorts. I dont have a clue what a mastering on this is like, just turn it up loud!

Jellyfish

Read all about Helmut Von Schmella here.

Going Sick For The Smut Machine

What a title eh? “Going Sick for the Smut Machine”, now this song needs some explanation :) Like the rest of my tunes its meant to be taken with a pinch of salt, and a dash of imagined better production. The title refers to a laptop purchase I helped a friend with.

My friend is one of those burley rugby types, you know, the type whos natural interest in technology goes as far as “ball goes up; ball goes down”. For years he protested that computers were the devils work. Well to be fair, he kept tinkering away and finally felt happy enough that the idea of investing in a laptop was for him. So I was there to do the choosing, I was doing Computer Science after all “sure I know everything”. I picked out a medium spec Dell Inspiron for him. If you have a problem with Dells, tough diddy! At least with Dell they’ll look after you if something goes wrong. He was going to buy one of Jimmy O’ Briens PC shop specials, and while Jimmy might be a lovely man, and probably live a long and prosperous life, I doubt his shop, and therefore, warranty would.

During all this time we affectionately referred to his prospective new laptop as “The Smut Machine” because we joked that the only reason he wanted it was for looking at pornography. Anyway, the big day came when Santa Claus in the white van delivered the smut viewer. Due to his work, my friends living address is prone to change so for convenience, we had it delivered to his family home. So excited by the news of the new arrival that he just couldn’t wait. He phoned up work and pulled a sickie, just so he could drive home straight away. That day gave rise to the term “Going Sick for the Smut Machine”, and it inspired this song.

It started off life as just a sleezy base line and quickly morphed into some kind of space jizz jam. Theres no real melody over the top, but perhaps more suitably; just a load of keyboard wank! :) I kind of went a bit crazy with the ethnic drumming too, I had just discovered that Combinator patch in Reason the day before.

Going Sick for the Smut Machine.mp3

I had great fun making the image for the song and I do wish I kept track of where I steal the images used for all my montages but I don’t, so there!

Infatuation

Bury the knife, bury it well. [this has replaced the earlier explanation of the song]

Another piece of music from me. Once again, it has been arranged in Reason (best purchase ever! No matter how crap you are musically, it still feels great!) and makes use of one or two drum loops loaded into Dr: rex modules (my new found friend :). I initially started it during my final exams last month but finished it recently. It’s working title was “Exams are stressful” but 90% of it was completed afterwards. Its no more than a collection of ideas loosely strung together, which may appear again somewhere else. It’s a gentle piece that shouldn’t offend anyone [ironically it did lol]. Its main theme is based around a short awkward, anxious even, phrase which is to be expected given its title. There’s also a “happier” more “melodious” theme near its middle. That’s all I’ll say; you can like it if you want, I really don’t give a fuck! [it turns out, I do actually] :)

Infatuation.mp3

About the image: I found a picture of a random girl on webshots.com, did a bit of magic to it. Added a hammer and sickle logo I found of wikipedia. The early main theme sounded a bit Russian to me.

Secrets of a Martian Forest

Finally... The tune only took me too hours of doodling in Reason (originally just trying to recalibrate the patches on my audio interface card) but to host the fucking thing took me two weeks!

The Internet hates audio. Sure, we have billions of petabytes available for videos of spotty teens miming shitty pop songs, but dare you try and find a reliable, free, host for audio and you shall fail! I guess it stems from the whole mp3 worries people had years ago, but jesus christ, people are hosting feature length movies on google video now!

Anyway, the song. The original working title was "The Crunch" but for some reason Doom came to mind when listening back to it. Thats the Mars connection. I do wonder at times what those funny shapes on Mars are, and so, 3 hours later, I came up with a title I was happy with. Well, when your music is crap you might as well have a pretentious title :)

I was very happy with the photograph I used for the artwork, its almost exactly what I imagined when searching for such an image. It comes from a great photographer, David Rencher. He has some fantastic night shots. Most interestingly, his geotags his photographs using google maps.

I'm hosting the file on mediamax.com. I swear to god, if it goes down again I'm going to lash the cash and buy some decent ftp storage off someone. Its fucking reticules. I uploaded that file at least 20 times two weeks ago and this weekend it finally appears! The song itself isnt great, I was kinda just wanking over the Dr. Rex module and it grew from that, although theres only 3 rex patches, 2 be drum parts. Some fab manual drumming at the end... like me, youll love it too! :) I could keep tinkering with it (badly needs some chorusing in spots) but its just a doodle...

[Secrets of a Martian Forest.mp3]

123

Usually I go into detail when I publish my music. Personally I don't like knowing too much about the music I'm listening to as it sometimes taints the experience (the same as poetry really) so I'm not going to say much in future maybe, except for some technical details. Done in Reason, synth patches programed by me (except the percussion... found that patch lying around somewhere), name comes from the BPM of the song. Images for the art work were taking from pics I took at last years Ploughing Championships :)

Oh and by the way, I don't care what anyone says about it because a hot Latina already told me it was brilliant, and thats good enough for me :)

123 by Gamma Goblin