"Dancing on the edge of the end of the world" (new song from dysamoria)

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Here's an old one that was rebuilt into a new one... Old tracker module recreated in Logic with newer sounds (including some real instruments) and vocals. It's more Depeche Mode-like than my last couple, if you're wondering about style. i hope someone likes it :-)

https://soundcloud.com/dysamoria/dancin ... of-the-end

(it was originally this: http://dysamoria.com/music/downloads/determination.zip - zipped Impulse Tracker module)
- dysamoria.com
my music @ SoundCloud

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It reminded me more of '80s Peter Gabriel than DM. Great choice of sounds, the electronics/synths combining and contrasting well with the vocals/guitars. I liked the flute on here. Now that you mentioned DM, I thought your vocal did sound a little like Martin Gore in places.

Good work :)

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Cool song! At first, I didn't know what to make of it. It's a slow build up rather than a verse/chorus thing. But I got used to it and its originality definitely won me over.

I liked the lyrics. The vocals were quite good although sometimes I struggled to make out the words because there is a lot happening in the mix.

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seismic1 wrote:It reminded me more of '80s Peter Gabriel than DM. Great choice of sounds, the electronics/synths combining and contrasting well with the vocals/guitars. I liked the flute on here. Now that you mentioned DM, I thought your vocal did sound a little like Martin Gore in places.

Good work :)
I'm sure the shakuhachi flute sample has a huge impact on your Peter Gabriel impression ;-) I considered leaving it out of this version, since it's such a characteristic sound of one particular Peter Gabriel song (likely the sample comes straight from the song, though I don't know if it was a sample itself)... but the song was kinda built on it and I hope it's been long enough since Gabriel's song to not be instantly associated for everyone... Then again, you went there immediately :hihi:

Three of the singers I learned to sing to are Trent Reznor, Michael Stipe, and Martin Gore (more so than David Gahan). So, yeah, that's why I sound a bit like Gore here.

Thanks for taking a listen and for commenting. :-)
- dysamoria.com
my music @ SoundCloud

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Frantz wrote:Cool song! At first, I didn't know what to make of it. It's a slow build up rather than a verse/chorus thing. But I got used to it and its originality definitely won me over.

I liked the lyrics. The vocals were quite good although sometimes I struggled to make out the words because there is a lot happening in the mix.
Thanks for listening and for your feedback. The structure of the song (and lots of my stuff, it seems) is not so heavily verse/chorus oriented. I like verse/chorus, but I don't tend to write songs that way. I'm getting more into it the last year or so, but my writing tends to originate in soundtrack styles (cues, phrases, and dramatic builds), and I work more from a sound focus than a musical structure focus. I've been trying to change that, but I also like to think I could be doing kind of my own thing in this way. :shrug:

As for vocals, I try to go by what I hear in published music I enjoy and sometimes vocals aren't perfectly clear in those. I struggle to find a balance there. Some of the problem is surely EQ and mixing, but I'm not a mixing expert. I wish I was working with an engineer and producer, people that know the craft and are into my stuff, but I'm just a hobbyist and that's unlikely to ever change... unless something really unexpected happens in my life at this point.
- dysamoria.com
my music @ SoundCloud

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Frantz, btw, I really like the "Fragile Gods" name. I'm thinking a friend of mine, based on his music collection, might dig your stuff in specific, so I'm going to send him to your soundcloud.
- dysamoria.com
my music @ SoundCloud

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Jace-BeOS wrote:I've been trying to change that, but I also like to think I could be doing kind of my own thing in this way. :shrug:
Yes, I think the unusual structure works because of the originality factor. I am not suggesting changing it. I mentioned it because it requires the listener to invest more time to figure out where the piece is going. There are pros and cons but overall I like your approach.
Jace-BeOS wrote:Frantz, btw, I really like the "Fragile Gods" name. I'm thinking a friend of mine, based on his music collection, might dig your stuff in specific, so I'm going to send him to your soundcloud.
Thanks. Settling on a band name is tough. It seems like any decent name you think of is already being used by several different bands. I was pleased that "Fragile Gods" didn't return any bands with that exact name on Google. I appreciate the recommendation to your friend. :)

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Some cool sounds in this track. What sort of tools do you use?
:borg:

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V0RT3X wrote:Some cool sounds in this track. What sort of tools do you use?
Thank you :-)

I hope you'll forgive my verbose post, but i will recount much of the song's evolution:

This track is a real mix of old and new bits; it's changed much over the years. The core sound, the Peter Gabriel-like shakuhachi flute, was originally a low rate 8-bit sample acquired through some other tracker module (apparently, it's from the E-Mu Emulator II?), as were the rest of the original sounds; I didn't create any sounds in the original.

Some years later, I ported the song from 4-channel Mod Edit to 8-channel FastTracker II, added some pseudo stereo effects to the flute and the synth (two channels, same note, panned hard left/right, one note a step behind the first; had to undo this later down the line), and added panning motion to the percussion.

Better samples for the shakuhachi became available to me as I trawled the web for the sources of all the tracker module samples I had used over the years (I started my own version of D. A. Wilson's ST-01 project, then found his)... I replaced the existing analog synth sample with a higher quality "Distorted Moog" synth sample (still in tracker land, lilely in ModPlug Tracker by that point). I rendered the tracks to wave files to experiment with them. I fed the shakuhachi flute track through Sound Forge's Acoustic Mirror plugin (convolution) with the "long river" impulse (instant ambient in a preset!), reversed it, and that got me the ambient flute intro/pad. I used SoundForge's fade-in/out and a gapper effect on a copy of one of the Moog synth notes to create the occasional gappy pad ornament. By then, I ported the song to Sonar, since it was becoming a bunch of audio tracks, and not tracker friendly.

In Sonar, I duplicated the lead/bass Moog-like track into two heavily distorted versions, to thicken the synth line in different ways (one is dark, the other is very bright with lots of distortion; these might've been processed through my Peavey TransTubeFex). Then the song sat dormant for a few years. A few days ago, as part of my transition to Logic, I exported the tracks to wave files, spent an inordinate amount of time extracting/converting the note data from module format to MIDI format, and created the Logic version.

In Logic, i tried recreating the Moog synth with MiniMonsta, but found the phase cancelation issues too problematic in the mix and went back to the samples, played in EXS24). There's an ES2 under that with a deeper bass sound to thicken it up. The intro needed more content, so i duplicated the gapped ornament, stretched it with FlexTime, bounced it down again. i kept the original percussion, but fleshed it out by constructing a similar pattern out of misc samples (a mild closed hihat and a frame drum with reverb from Ultrabeat, and an old 8-bit tracker hihat "chik" sound called hihat2 that's a favorite for being gloriously artificial).

I rearranged the song, extending it, thickened up the shakuhachi with some EXS24 Asian flute patches, and decided to add something "live". I grabbed the mandolin (lovingly on loan from a female companion) and recorded myself playing a simple pattern (into a Neumann TLM103 I bought years ago when they weren't so expensive). I double tracked it. I added another double-tracked mandolin to the second half of the song, then duped it and added distortion via Pedal Board (:love:) to create an electric guitar-like overdub to make the mandolin become the lead, kinda pushing the shakuhachi into the background... and then spent time just listening. The musical structure of the lyrics were inspired by the ambient version of the flute, and I tested it out a bit just while listening. Tried writing the lyrics, got tired, went to bed.

Next morning, several listens into the day, the little bit of lyric content I wrote into my iPhone the previous night became fully formed and I recorded them. Took a few tries, then added second and third takes to thicken the vocals (panned hard left/right). The song had extended in length by about two times by this point and was almost a standard song length. It still needed something else in the ambient intro... it was too dark and not active enough. I wanted chimes. After doing a search on my drive, Logic, Kore2, and GarageBand content didn't produce what I wanted. I spent a moment trying to figure out how to create them myself, not owning wind chimes. Then I remembered the brass incense bowl my companion also gave me as a sound source. I recorded a few taps of bowl and lid along with the song, added Delay Designer and Space Designer for echoes and reverb, and it satisfied me.

Right before saving the song to mp3 for sharing, I decided to add electric guitar chords to the climax. I didn't feel like spending a lot of time on that, so I used the first preset on my VG-99 that was acceptable. I regretted that choice (unwanted delay pulsing), simulated double-tracking with a pitch offset on two hard panned copies, added Pedal Board to smooth the delay pulses and brighten it up (a different stomp box on each), faded the last note, and done! Bounced to stereo, exported to MP3, shared, took the rest of the day off.

That was a two day work period; about 9 hours each day. These were very good days. In fact, the music I've been making since November 2013 are the only bits of satisfaction in my life ATM.

EDIT 4: stupid typos corrected. Autocorrect actually FAILS when posting to KVR. KVR forum is terribly unfriendly to iPhone 4 CPU.
- dysamoria.com
my music @ SoundCloud

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Jace-BeOS wrote: Thank you :-)

I hope you'll forgive my verbose post, but i will recount much of the song's evolution:

This track is a real mix of old and new bits; it's changed much over the years. The core sound, the Peter Gabriel-like shakuhachi flute, was originally a low rate 8-bit sample acquired through some other tracker module (apparently, it's from the E-Mu Emulator II?), as were the rest of the original sounds; I didn't create any sounds in the original.
I love the sound of the E-Mu Emulator II! If i had the money I would buy a used one, but they are pretty rare.
Jace-BeOS wrote: Some years later, I ported the song from 4-channel Mod Edit to 8-channel FastTracker II, added some pseudo stereo effects to the flute and the synth (two channels, same note, panned hard left/right, one note a step behind the first; had to undo this later down the line), and added panning motion to the percussion.
I could never figure out to use tracker programs, but I used to listen to a huge amount of .mod .s3m and other formats back in the day. I got into them mainly because i found i could download them fairly quickly back when i only had dialup internet. I did try to figure out renoise and made a beat with it but since i already knew how to use ableton live i felt i would just stick to live.
Jace-BeOS wrote: Better samples for the shakuhachi became available to me as I trawled the web for the sources of all the tracker module samples I had used over the years (I started my own version of D. A. Wilson's ST-01 project, then found his)... I replaced the existing analog synth sample with a higher quality "Distorted Moog" synth sample (still in tracker land, lilely in ModPlug Tracker by that point). I rendered the tracks to wave files to experiment with them. I fed the shakuhachi flute track through Sound Forge's Acoustic Mirror plugin (convolution) with the "long river" impulse (instant ambient in a preset!), reversed it, and that got me the ambient flute intro/pad. I used SoundForge's fade-in/out and a gapper effect on a copy of one of the Moog synth notes to create the occasional gappy pad ornament. By then, I ported the song to Sonar, since it was becoming a bunch of audio tracks, and not tracker friendly.
That's a neat effect! I actually need to get a good sound editor for my mac, but sound forge from what i've read is no where near the same as what you can get on the PC. I did use the PC version way back in the day and thought it was pretty well featured.
Jace-BeOS wrote: In Sonar, I duplicated the lead/bass Moog-like track into two heavily distorted versions, to thicken the synth line in different ways (one is dark, the other is very bright with lots of distortion; these might've been processed through my Peavey TransTubeFex). Then the song sat dormant for a few years. A few days ago, as part of my transition to Logic, I exported the tracks to wave files, spent an inordinate amount of time extracting/converting the note data from module format to MIDI format, and created the Logic version.
I imagine that took quite a while! Your definitely more dedicated than me, i don't think I would have done that lol
Jace-BeOS wrote: In Logic, i tried recreating the Moog synth with MiniMonsta, but found the phase cancelation issues too problematic in the mix and went back to the samples, played in EXS24). There's an ES2 under that with a deeper bass sound to thicken it up. The intro needed more content, so i duplicated the gapped ornament, stretched it with FlexTime, bounced it down again. i kept the original percussion, but fleshed it out by constructing a similar pattern out of misc samples (a mild closed hihat and a frame drum with reverb from Ultrabeat, and an old 8-bit tracker hihat "chik" sound called hihat2 that's a favorite for being gloriously artificial).
I did have a go with Minimonsta back in the day, and i thought it was incredible! Actually it was sort of my Dream plugin synth to buy when i got money back in the early 2000s but i never did get around to owning it. When i finally saved up $250.00 or so i ended up going to a local music store and buying a copy of Arturia Prophet V which i still own but never use. I've heard so many great things about the Logic stock plugins and I really can't wait to get the money to buy it, but right now I am trying to buy a used Komplete 9 licence. Actually If i recall ex-NIN member Charlie closer pretty much swears by logic stock plugins and uses them all the time on his work.
Jace-BeOS wrote: I rearranged the song, extending it, thickened up the shakuhachi with some EXS24 Asian flute patches, and decided to add something "live". I grabbed the mandolin (lovingly on loan from a female companion) and recorded myself playing a simple pattern (into a Neumann TLM103 I bought years ago when they weren't so expensive). I double tracked it. I added another double-tracked mandolin to the second half of the song, then duped it and added distortion via Pedal Board (:love:) to create an electric guitar-like overdub to make the mandolin become the lead, kinda pushing the shakuhachi into the background... and then spent time just listening. The musical structure of the lyrics were inspired by the ambient version of the flute, and I tested it out a bit just while listening. Tried writing the lyrics, got tired, went to bed.
Very creative stuff! Neumann are excellent microphones! also again your creative methods are pretty good!
Jace-BeOS wrote: Next morning, several listens into the day, the little bit of lyric content I wrote into my iPhone the previous night became fully formed and I recorded them. Took a few tries, then added second and third takes to thicken the vocals (panned hard left/right). The song had extended in length by about two times by this point and was almost a standard song length. It still needed something else in the ambient intro... it was too dark and not active enough. I wanted chimes. After doing a search on my drive, Logic, Kore2, and GarageBand content didn't produce what I wanted. I spent a moment trying to figure out how to create them myself, not owning wind chimes. Then I remembered the brass incense bowl my companion also gave me as a sound source. I recorded a few taps of bowl and lid along with the song, added Delay Designer and Space Designer for echoes and reverb, and it satisfied me.
So you recorded all your audio with your iPhone? That's pretty good quality!
Jace-BeOS wrote: Right before saving the song to mp3 for sharing, I decided to add electric guitar chords to the climax. I didn't feel like spending a lot of time on that, so I used the first preset on my VG-99 that was acceptable. I regretted that choice (unwanted delay pulsing), simulated double-tracking with a pitch offset on two hard panned copies, added Pedal Board to smooth the delay pulses and brighten it up (a different stomp box on each), faded the last note, and done! Bounced to stereo, exported to MP3, shared, took the rest of the day off.
Man i love that feeling at the end of a long work session on a song when you feel its ready to be shared. I am not really the type who will spend months on one song but I am trying to get into that mindset because it really pays off. Most of my stuff I usually whip together in a day or so.
Jace-BeOS wrote: That was a two day work period; about 9 hours each day. These were very good days. In fact, the music I've been making since November 2013 are the only bits of satisfaction in my life ATM.

EDIT 4: stupid typos corrected. Autocorrect actually FAILS when posting to KVR. KVR forum is terribly unfriendly to iPhone 4 CPU.

Hey thanks for the long reply!
:borg:

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good stuff! it did remind me of DM from the good o'l construction time again EP.
good vox, lyrics and over all production. A+ :tu:
HW SYNTHS [KORG T2EX - AKAI AX80 - YAMAHA SY77 - ENSONIQ VFX]
HW MODULES [OBi M1000 - ROLAND MKS-50 - ROLAND JV880 - KURZ 1000PX]
SW [CHARLATAN - OBXD - OXE - ELEKTRO - MICROTERA - M1 - SURGE - RMiV]
DAW [ENERGY XT2/1U RACK WINXP / MAUDIO 1010LT PCI]

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V0RT3X wrote:I love the sound of the E-Mu Emulator II! If i had the money I would buy a used one, but they are pretty rare. 
Yeah, there are a lot of classic sounds in the Emulator II library! i have a real soft spot for the 80s samples.
V0RT3X wrote:I could never figure out to use tracker programs, but I used to listen to a huge amount of .mod .s3m and other formats back in the day. I got into them mainly because i found i could download them fairly quickly back when i only had dialup internet.
Trackers are not intuitive, and they're pretty rigid, unless you're really hard core at using them. i used them for one reason only: the sounds were "real". Everything else back then was Adlib/SoundBlaster FM synthesis (which really ruined the image of FM synthesis). Being able to use my computer as a sampler was really cool.
V0RT3X wrote:That's a neat effect! I actually need to get a good sound editor for my mac, but sound forge from what i've read is no where near the same as what you can get on the PC. I did use the PC version way back in the day and thought it was pretty well featured.
Yeah, i've heard the same. i'm very disappointed about that, because i was hoping Sony would port SoundForge to Mac, since i HATE every audio editing application on the Mac platform. i've used almost every single one (the only one i haven't tried is the new version of Audio File Engineering's editor (Triumph??). i should check it out. It was still in development when i went looking.
V0RT3X wrote:I imagine that took quite a while! Your definitely more dedicated than me, i don't think I would have done that lol
i don't want to leave any of my old music behind when there's the slightest possibility it could be "upgraded" to my modern tools and the skills i've learned since making them. Some of them are close to my heart, where others are just creative inspirations. There are some i'm leaving behind, though, because they're just not what i consider my actual style.
V0RT3X wrote:I did have a go with Minimonsta back in the day, and i thought it was incredible! Actually it was sort of my Dream plugin synth to buy when i got money back in the early 2000s but i never did get around to owning it.
It's pretty excellent sounding, though my experience with the phasing on the patch i was working on left me a bit frustrated. There's no synch for the oscillators, and i assume the fatness would be lost if there were. This is something i still need to learn how to deal with. Compressors weren't helping.
V0RT3X wrote:Actually If i recall ex-NIN member Charlie closer pretty much swears by logic stock plugins and uses them all the time on his work.
Yes, i saw him say that over on GearSluts, i think. i totally agree. i LOVE Logic's stock plugins. There's something for almost every situation. i've done most of my current music without 3rd party plugins (the attempt to use MiniMonsta was a rare exception, and didn't end up staying anyway).
V0RT3X wrote:So you recorded all your audio with your iPhone? That's pretty good quality!
No, it was all recorded into an M-Audio ProjectMix I/O, connected to a 13" MacBook Pro 5,5, with the Neumann TLM103. i have a minidisc portable unit that i have sometimes used for recording ambient sounds, but i appear to have lost the microphone i used with that...must resolve that and start recording more ambient sounds out in the world. i have considered using my iPhone for this, but would need a quality mic and the iPhone 4 is kinda old stuff now. Maybe if i can stomach iOS 7, i'll get an iPad and a portable mic for it... maybe...
V0RT3X wrote:Man i love that feeling at the end of a long work session on a song when you feel its ready to be shared. I am not really the type who will spend months on one song but I am trying to get into that mindset because it really pays off. Most of my stuff I usually whip together in a day or so.
Yeah, it's a great feeling! i need to make myself experience it more... i have to really FORCE myself to work on this stuff, after having come off of horrible prescription drugs (never again!). The drugs left neurological damage: my ability to act on impulses is massively reduced (on the drugs, my impulse control was almost gone). On top of that, i hate my living situation, so that kills creative impulses to begin with. But i find that, if i discipline myself, and force myself to at least try to learn my gear by auditioning and customizing presets, and occasionally massaging an old project, i will find myself being productive and can get on a role. Then i make songs and feel productive and positive. For a while, at least. It can leave me feeling REALLY lazy for days after i finish a long session of work! :oops:
- dysamoria.com
my music @ SoundCloud

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layzer wrote:good stuff! it did remind me of DM from the good o'l construction time again EP.
good vox, lyrics and over all production. A+ :tu:
Thanks, layzer! :-) i love Depeche Mode; i tend to prefer their more aggressive and modern stuff (that's where i want to be with my own work), but i still enjoy every album they've put out.
- dysamoria.com
my music @ SoundCloud

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