July Contest: GOSSIP

[S.HUSH]

Hey S.Hush

Got your Disco Ball out yet?

-S

Not yet. Still working on my moves

[S.HUSH]

just disco'd it up another notch

Just wait til you hear me sing it. Look out Village People!!!!!

[rpc9943]

heheh i guess my cowboy voice turned out pretty cool haha

Check it out guys

RonC

[thomekk]

Yeah, it's cool!!

[mellotronaut]

Next

Rockstar_not: Style-mix? Reggae meets St. John's Wood. There is nothing new in it: It's solid work: All the proper ingredients are there and perfectly mastered and mixed, one of the best kvr-voices here with a light african touch: quite good. The message is for 'Bono'.
It's very good, but doesn't touch me that much. The reason may be, that I'm always looking for something special...but that's my fault, not yours.

mellolisten

[rockstar_not]

Next

Rockstar_not: Style-mix? Reggae meets St. John's Wood. There is nothing new in it: It's solid work: All the proper ingredients are there and perfectly mastered and mixed, one of the best kvr-voices here with a light african touch: quite good. The message is for 'Bono'.
It's very good, but doesn't touch me that much. The reason may be, that I'm always looking for something special...but that's my fault, not yours.

mellolisten

Thanks for listening. I have to admit I don't know what St. John's Wood is. Is that the short break in the middle where I tried to give a little style change-up?

I really didn't expect it to touch anyone. It was cathartic. Once I sang the Pride lyrics over top of Reggae (which I happened to be listening to alot of recently) it had to be done. For whatever reason, Gilligan's Island also popped into my head, so I tried to meld some lyrics from the theme song into this one.

I just had fun trying out reggae for the first time. I tried a few middle-eastern drum loops over the top and they just sounded crappy. So I left it as is. I know it's not really a very good mix of styles.

-Scott

I also realize that I forgot to include the plugins I used on the bass guitar for my track. For the masses scrambling to find out what they were: Mackie Mini Mono Compressor into Voxengo Boogex amp simulation using a Eden cab simulation that I found on noisevault.com. I picked the bass and palm muted with my picking hand (I don't know if that's how you are supposed to do reggae or not).

[mellotronaut]

Hi Scott, St. John's Wood is/was a noble district in London. I wanted to say, your song sounds more polished as a Jamaicaean Reggae. You did it for the first time?: That's amazing. Your voice has a special touch. Even though it's not so much my cup of tea, I'm impressed.

Mello

[mellotronaut]

Next:

Barnadine: You've described it well....it's simply a beautiful song...I like melancholy without self-pity...no....no, I'm dangerously addicted to it...Please do a version with more vocals, tho I know: that late words give it a special touch, almost like an epitaph.

Mellolisten

[thomekk]

I have the impression, much of the 'german'-singing groups are fairly mainstream in their music, 'though the lyrics are sometimes quite funny.

Hi Mello,
took me a little more answering this than some other answers a usual K-V-R guy's doing in between

To be honest actually I don't know what is going on here in the commercial market. Ok, there are lots of Rhythm&Blues Artists singing "soulish" in german being very sucessfull (some worked as telcom-operators before or actrices for soaps ) and those songs are really not my cup, soo slimey. On the other hand there the Toten Hosen (Punkband) they are from Düsseldorf and I hate their music truely It's old school punk with not very intelligent lyrics. Then there's Herbert Groenemeier (sort of german peter gabriel, bowie) and there's HipHop (which I'm not into), great were "Die Fantastischen Vier".

Yeah and the german Krauts, you named already the one I like too
Just one name to add: Mouse on Mars (also from Düsseldorf , they do a grreat mix of Dr&Bass, Electronica, Real instruments, wierdism, analogism, have a drummer who sings sometimes like Robert Wyatt (he told me that he don't know him though).

And, uhm for techno I'm not the person to talk to


thomekkrautfan

[mellotronaut]

Mouse on Mars: fantastico! and The Notwist: sabbelsabbellecker

Cheers/Mellobanana

[dreibel]

mine's up - Disturbulence. Tried to have some fun with adding oddball psychedelic and prog guitar and synth solos to trance. I don't think I mixed up the two genres quite so well, but I sure had fun

[rockstar_not]

Hi Scott, St. John's Wood is/was a noble district in London. I wanted to say, your song sounds more polished as a Jamaicaean Reggae. You did it for the first time?: That's amazing. Your voice has a special touch. Even though it's not so much my cup of tea, I'm impressed.

Mello

OK, thanks for the St. John's Wood (I actually found out today on Wikipedia that there is a band called the same) compliment.

Yes, this is my first time recording reggae. I did play keyboards on some Police covers in a band about 25 years ago, but that was it.

I have been listening to ALOT of reggae over the internet. There's a great shoutcast station that I have bookmarked on my PDA, and I probably listened to 20 hours of it last week while doing some demolition work on a shed next to our garage. This song has 3 chords: Dmin, C, and Amin. That's it.

I will admit that I found a midi file for the drums, but the hi hats and snares were too straight so I zapped them and played the hats and snares live. Then I had to go in and get rid of some of the kick and drop in kick on other places. The hand claps and guiro - I didn't touch those - they were already entered.

The guitar - I got lucky with the Amplitube LE Clean AC 30 preset and the tail HB in my fat strat. I think I put some delay on it but that was pretty much it.

Bass - again, pretty lucky. Voxengo boogex with an Eden cab simulation. I palm-muted the strings and picked the line. It's about as simple as you can get.

Piano was simply Samplitude SE 'pop piano' patch I believe.

It's really funny to read the comments about my voice. I've always hated hearing it recorded. Now, my sister, she rocks. She actually does quite a bit of studio work because she can sing absolutely anything. She's a great colouratura soprano, but can do soul, R&B, Country/Western. I've never heard her do a Pat Benatar type thing, but I'm sure she has the chops.

-Scott

[core]

Some quick reviews

1-2 many - Sacred Mask Dance (Bossa S-Pop version)
Creepy Sacred Mask Dance stuff.. I like the drums and the synthpop is well done.

Jonny Quest - Nobody knows
Good mix of styles and use of instruments, I like the psychedelic vocals

Fritz Fiedler - High Afternoon
The vocals remind me of a Moby track or something, sounds cool, it introduces the blues vibe very well. Lots going on in this one, strong entry!

Max el Bega - Mix Max
The funk is sweet in this one. Love the electric guitar. The part where the lady speaks in a language I don't know (sounds hot!) is followed by a quick mix of a bunch of styles, well done! The ooohoooeee, yeaheehh, etc in the end get on my nerves a bit but the vibe is just so nice.

Choc - -Classical&dnB
You talk about Tobin to explain the style, but I feel your track is much more straight forward as the reese bass is more d&b in a traditional way. I like the mix of the genres, they go together well. You could've put a little more variation in the amen after it starts rolling halfway down the track. Like put a nice drop in, or more glitchy notes/rolls. Nice job.

Haghi - lullaby for a corpse
I liked the fading reverb.

Dr. Apostrophe X - My Brain's Inside The Computer
I didn't really know which genres you mixed, so I guess they went well together
Well performed!

Dumi - Fulgerul Apare
Trip-hop-ish, nice ambience a la Ninja Tune. Lovely bass.

Thomekk - Chinese Rastas of Canterbury
Love the vocals, the guitars (is that a banjo halfway down the track? lovely sound) are great. Track sounds very consistant, great entry!

Beardedone - Technazz
Pretty lead sound which works very well with the genre. Good percussion, strong entry from you again.

vurt - ambientglitchbeatboxinahumanstylee
what were you thinking?

Patrick9 - Choral Trance
That first sample really sounds like what I used for last months track, must be the Protoplasm Love that sound. I kind of lost it when the trance part came in, the vocals are a bit too strong and don't sit quite right.. abrupt ending.

Gag3 - Genre Yello Salad
Plenty of genre mixing going on here. Well performed, the overall sound is very consistant and you seem to roll from one genre into the other quite effortlessly. Cool metal guitars with Arab on top in the start.

Dunks - out of sight
Dub hop, cool. Like I said I'm a sucker for scratch stuff, so me likes it.

nikp2000 - Also Sprach Zarathustra
The Zarathustra is a bit hard to find. The synth sound didn't do much for me, but the guitar sounds cool.

S.HUSH - Caballo Negro
This genre hybrid isn't really something that hasn't been done before (well maybe the grunt stuff is heh) and it works well indeed. Production is great. The grunting might make it a bit hard to market but otherwise it has hit potential Ole!

Rockstar not - Gilligan's pride
I read it's your first try on reggea, wow! Great job. It feels like a live performance at the beach. Would be nice if you had a Jamaican accent for this track

Armadillo - Turkish delight
Good mix of electronic instruments and traditional ones. I like the drum/percussion programming lots.

The Funky Lime - All the good things return
Lovely glitch percussion/drums. Beautiful guitar melody, love the vocals on this track. Kinda Radiohead meets Mercury Rev, top entry!

Laguna Rising - the Crab song
Happy song, but doesn't actually cheer me up heh. Surf guitar is well done.

Moekii - 160 degrees
Bit too dull on the drums for my taste, I like the middle eastern theme you put in and the strings are nice. Well put together.

Oddbods finger - Empty to depot
The spoken voice sounds great, as does the singing. Very authentic sounding and well composed. Lovely!

Hovmod - Dronegang
Beautiful piano melody, the drones sound very cool. Don't know what's that distorted sounding bit but doesn't bother me much
It would do very well as a soundtrack.

Mellotronaut - The Joanna Polka Lesson
Slightly less weird than last month, but obviously still very mellotronautic. Where's the polka?

Streifentier - Darling in the sky
Very nice vocals and well done Chinese theme. Great job!

Groovesys - The Ancient Banjo Under the Sun
Wow, didn't expect that banjo to come in like that. Great job! Halfway it slows down and we take off our dancing boots to sit down and get all nostalgic, thinking about how things were better when we were young and free and... uh, nevermind

Good job everybody!

[mellotronaut]

Thank you very weird for the review, core!

"Where's the polka?" The second part is a derivate of a traditional polka in 2/4. I first had to learn how to play it from a midi-file, then transposed it into another scale (g-minor actually) and changed the melody and gave more groove to it. Maybe this is why you can't recognize it. But one can dance to it....

The fourth part is also oriented in a polka-interlude, btw.

Mello

[mellotronaut]

Next

Dreibel: Riders, here's the missing horse...cure-like driving rhythm - quite good....covered by well played lead-guitar sounds. Fast two minutes, well mastered...inspired, well done! I'd add some weird noises, but that's my weirdoo

Mello