19:53 Minutes of Pure Acid

[emdot_ambient]

Vishnu
Psy-Factor
Shojinatoq Strut
File Raze

Okay, so it's 4 songs that total 19:53 minutes, but . . . so what.

I've just posted two of the most serious compositions I've written to date, so I thought I'd also purge myself of 4 totally-for-fun pieces.

These were done back in . . . 2000? They are all 100% Propellerhead Rebirth. No extra FX or mixing of any kind. As such, the mixes aren't great and the sound it pretty lo-fi. Rebirth was still a great program.

Psy-Factor and Vishnu were actually collaborations with some Russian who went by the name Om, and collaborated under the name Aerospace Project. It was hard for me to communicate with him, as I think he had a bad dial-up connection and didn't speak English very well (and I speak NO Russian, being a SAP). Anyway, in these songs, he only provided me with a file with the melodic passages, no drums or sequences, so I programmed the drums and the entire arrangements.

Love 'em, hate 'em . . . Eh! Who cares? Have fun.

[Ildon]

I love how everyone on this forum has been doing music for like, 30 years and I've been doing this music thing since like... '04. You guys have all these long histories like... "Oh, I did this piece of music 17 years ago with an internet music legend who Ildon will never know about. "

Okay, time to put on my serious face. --> :O

Vishnu: Cool! You two worked real well together, it seems. I like the melodic stuff in this a lot, and the beats are cool, too.

Psy-Factor: I like the melodies in Vishnu better, but the groove and flow is much better in this one. The way the beat interacts with the melodies here is also really neat. At first it sounds like a happy beat, but when you layer those cool phrases over it it becomes... I dunno. Something really cool.

Shojikhfdjh Strut: This one sounds cool. A little empty, but cool. Kinda made me space out to it. I almost didn't realize it ended.

File Raze: I got lost here, and not in a good "I'm in a trance" way. The music kinda left me behind and it took me a while to get back into it. At first it sounds cool and I thought... "Rebirth can get some pretty good sound. " but then it moves into a completely unexpected direction that made me go ":|" but then I got back into it and found myself bobbing my head. So this one's a little on the weird side in my opinion, but great if you give it a chance. I'd say it's my second favorite out of the four, with Psy-Factor being my first.

Oh yeah and bump.

[emdot_ambient]

He, he, well you'll have all these cool stories too once you're as old as I am

Vishnu: Cool! You two worked real well together, it seems.

Actually it was very frustrating trying to work with him because communication was so hard. I'd send an email with several specific questions and he'd answer only one of them, and even then his answer made me think he hadn't quite understood the question.

He basically sent me a zip file with a bunch of "songs" in the Rebirth format. None of them had drum tracks and none of the melodic patterns were sequenced together. It was kind of like someone handing me 2 TB-303's each with a dozen or more patterns on it, but no sequenced patterns. So I had no idea how he was intending the melodies and bass lines to flow. In the end I just didn't even try to second guess him. I wrote all the drum patterns and used whatever 303 lines seemed to work. I ended up only using a fraction of the patterns he had programmed.

...The way the beat interacts with the melodies here is also really neat...

Yeah, I'm proud of this one. I really took liberties with the 303 parts here, becuase from the pattern sets I was provided with I could tell Om was thinking of this song as having a much more linear melodic progression. I used a lot of repetition of the same basic patterns and focused more on creating different sound worlds by using different FX on each section and varying the 303 sounds a lot. This was one of the first songs I got heavily into the shuffle feature on the drums, too, which adds a nice swing to it.

Shojinatoq Strut wasn't a collaboration, it was all me. It really could do with a bunch of supporting tracks, but I like it as a bouncy happy acid thing.

File Raze:...this one's a little on the weird side in my opinion, but great if you give it a chance. I'd say it's my second favorite out of the four, with Psy-Factor being my first

I've always wondered how this one would go over. I thought it was weird, too. More on the hardcore side of things. I think of this as the soundtrack to a malicious hacker attack in some Gibson-esque cyberpunk sci-fi novel...like someone hacking into an enemy's brain and erasing their entire personality. This is one of a set of tracks I did with Rebirth version 1.0 and then later updated to version 2.0 (where they added the TR-909 drums). It may have come out of a very productive period I had while under the influence of the flu. Those were some seriously trippy and strange songs The flu can be very inspiring. Anyway, I have a kind of love/hate relationship with this one. Sometimes it sounds crap, other times I really love it.

Thanks for listening and leaving a note!

[yashioki]

Great use of Rebirth! Especially some of the fx on Psy-Factor really impressed me. I never really get tiered of the acid sound. Haven't used rebirth for several years but these songs really brought back memories. Great fun!

/Ohmu

[emdot_ambient]

Thanks, yashioki! I haven't used Rebirth in years 'cause I hate fiddling with programming it and then connecting to a project via Rewire. But it had a hell of a lot going for it. I've got tons of other stuff I did on it that I'd like to do better mixes on (with added tracks). I've never gotten tired of the acid sound either. It can be really funky and fun or really trippy and out there.

Thanks for listening!