March 2005

"Procession (Cooked)"

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"Procession (Cooked)" [mp3 removed]

This is the tune I posted previously with more fleshed out (slap) bass and some atmospheric sweeps. The mood is a bit eerier and the bass drum quite insistent as befits a marching band of otter-like creatures in LED-mesh raiments moving slowly through the streets after ketamine has been dumped in the village water supply.

"Procession (Raw)"

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"Procession (Raw)" [mp3 removed]

This is a bare bones version of a tune I'm working on. I've since moved it along several stages, adding more instruments and a bit more elaborate drumming than this lone, slightly hamhanded tom, but this draft has its charms. A sort of folk processional (why does everything I write end up sounding Irish? some deep genetic roots I didn't know I had?) is played on a very flatulent sounding Sidstation, then repeats with some bright house-y chords with a sampled Absynth.

I'm teaching myself to write in Cubase and it's painfully slow because it's not as intuitive as Harmony Assistant, the other program I've been using, or my old Mac. The scheme relies more on key commands and shortcuts that you only learn by accident, or belatedly discover buried in the fine print of the manual. Ultimately the advantage will be more control over more instruments, being able to mix midi and sound files, and having access to some of the juicy plugins that are out there. (Again--I would never talk this way about Photoshop filters: I think music engineers "get it" better than art engineers.)

This week, dear diary, I've learned: (1) how to reset Kontakt to reduce latency (note lag); it's still not 100% but is vastly improved; (2) how to trigger a 120 bpm beat so it plays in sync with a midi part (after some experimentation, I reset the tempo track to 122 bpm and added a triggering note every four beats, which is the length of the sample); (3) how to sync the Sid with an external midi clock; (4) how to turn off program changes in the Korg I'm using as a midi controller, so the Sid's programs don't keep switching as I dial around the Korg. I'm also getting a better handle on bending notes with the Korg's filter knobs.

Bonus: "Procession (Panning Wah-Wah Organ Version)" [mp3 removed]