Am pleased, and yet, humbled, to announce a new LP on Bandcamp: Disc Formation.
10 songs, mostly previously-unpublished but with a couple of older tunes remixed to bring them in line with what I'm doing now.
These songs are less about modular gear (like many modular users, am still reeling from the shocking unveiling of Billy Corgan's vanity synth) and more about softsynths and arrangements on the PC. Experiments with field recordings begun on the 40 Yards from the Machine release continue. Your support in the form of buying the LP or songs would be very encouraging, but all the material can be streamed.
March 2014
Disc Formation - Liner Notes
Notes for the Disc Formation LP on Bandcamp. These are mostly tech jottings so I remember what I did. Any thoughts, questions, etc on the music itself are welcome at the email address on this about page.
1. Every Single Person 01:50
The vocals came from a field recording of a recent walk to the local deli and back. Chopped up you can hear "Every single person who comes in on this crew is off tomorrow," me saying "thanks" and "you can keep the penny" to Mr. Lee, and his "OK" in reply. Most of the synth sounds are a Linplug percussion softsynth called Element P, played with Cubase's in-house midi echo and arpeggiator effects.
2. Squeaky Arpeggio (Granular) 01:54
The granular whine running throughout, with and without reverb, was made with the Qu-Bit Nebulae granular synth/sampler module. As accompaniment I wrote a piano part -- quasi-Modernist variations on a quasi-Caribbean theme. For the LP version, I added notes to the piano part and used it as a score for other synths, which replaced the piano almost entirely.
3. The Other James Taylor 02:54
A "groove" made with some scratch samples, drum hits, and various effects on the Octatrack sequencer. The main effects -- delay and comb filter -- are running on Track 8 as a master track.
4. Pernicious Percussion (Massive) 01:29
See notes re: Pernicious Percussion below. This version runs the Vermona file through a mastering effect called "Post Filter," which is a comb filter adding octave jumps to the pitch, among other changes. This is interrupted twice with a mock-chorus consisting of layered softsynth riffs (NI Massive and Steinberg's Retrologue).
5. Titanthropic 01:37
Written and performed entirely in the Octatrack sampler/sequencer. The bass and lead synths are sampler-altered versions of Reaktor Titan riffs I made and loaded in the Octatrack.
6. Snaps and Claps 01:32
More snippets from the same field recording used in "Every Single Person," as well as live recordings of snap and clap sounds from my hands. Synths are Element P and Massive.
7. Frame Jam 03:14
Most of this was done with a granular synth from the Reaktor user library called Frame. Some Massive riffs were added.
8. Tesseract Ranch 2014 02:20
Considerable reworking of a tune from 2007 done with the Electribe rhythm box and Vermona Perfourmer analog synth. Added were an NI Massive riff (the lofty pad) and Element P (randomly arpeggiated bass notes).
9. Pernicious Percussion 02:18
Written and performed on the Octatrack sequencer, using recordings previously made with the Octatrack's MIDI controls driving the Vermona DRM1 Mkii, a vintage analog drum machine. The Octatrack's arpeggiator is triggering random clap, snare, and cowbell sequences at 150 bpm. There is some actual live knob turning in the distorted toms.
10. Calypsum 2014 02:26
One of the first tunes I did in Cubase, nine years ago, "Calypsum 2," completely tightened up and reworked. Was pleased to discover that the original synths (Free Alpha and Kontakt 1.5) are still playable with a little jiggering from the older version of Cubase I used (SE). Am pretty sure this started as a MIDI drum pattern, playing pitched samples in several instruments (if so, a kind of found, accidental melody).
Disc Formation
jpeg of MSPaint rendering, 2014
The Windows 7 Paint has a colored pencil tool that's not bad for shading -- I used it quite a bit here in the "gradated" areas.
That "improved" MSPaint now has intriguing contradictions: the new brush-like, pen-like, and crayon-like tools can still be used with old legacy pixel lines.
What I've been thinking of as a creative clash of visual rhetorics may be the endgame or death-throes of a certain type of digital imaging, if Jon Williams is prescient in his call to "End Raster Art Now."
In 25 words or less, web imaging is moving towards a vector model, where angles and curves draw mathematically, as opposed to the raster model, where art is a function of pixels and grain.
Adobe Illustrator is vector, Photoshop is raster. Vector has a tendency to reduce images to smooth gradients, without bite, tooth, or grit. Also, screens are still pixel-based, so vector is ultimately converted back to pixel. That is not efficient or minimal. So I think it's permissible to keep exploring contradictions within raster, using familiar forms from painting (Cubist faceting of space) and pixel art (lines and loops).
GIF Rescue - Angelo Plessas
Above is the final GIF we'll be rescuing from this GIF-off ladder competition: the humanitarian impulse has flagged along with pageviews, RSS subscribers, and twitter followers as this series has progressed.
Angelo Plessas' Op Art clouds with blinking rainbow "lost" horrifically in the first round after his opponent rallied friends and grandparents to ramp up the vote (OK, likely not true, but we'll never actually know what happened - no hanging chads will be counted). Such an elegant, happy little GIF did not deserve the obscurity. What a lift if this underdog had made it to the final four.
GIF ladder - and we have a winner
Am not supposed to have these results so soon but as an exclusive for long time RSS subscribers, this is what's upcoming in that GIF competition we've been covering. Here are the final four and the final two:
And a winner:
Garden, by Pitchpot. It's exciting when work you like wins.