Chemeleon's "My Imaginary Friend" - building on 2 decades of experience constructing songs

Share your music, collaborate, and partake in monthly music contests.
RELATED
PRODUCTS

Post

I hope that you'll listen with open ears and honest hearts.

While I am no mastering engineer, I do seem to have a talent for creating interesting compositions, a relatively competent singing voice with some nice qualities, and thanks to tracker software and the approach there (first FastTracker 2 when I was 13, then ModPlug Tracker, and now Renoise), I've been able to experiment with unique approach to composing music, exploring structure, scale, harmony and rhythm, creating progressions and rhythmic structures carrying unique weight and emotion through experimentation, iteration and programming. The results, in most cases, seem natural and fluid, carrying an expressive quality. My slightly disorganised approach means I don't really have a formula I stick to, and experimentation can lead to songs with very unique qualities in terms of production, sound etc.

Anyway, long story short : this is a collection of my most recent output, each song a unique expression standing on it's own in some regard, but all connected by a similar mindset / idea, a common theme which is expressed in different forms throughout the album. There are short instrumentals throughout the album, and the character between each song can vary, to greater effect when heard in the context of the whole.

I'n more recent years I've been writing music, on and off, whilst dealing with the stress, alienation, side effects of psychiatric medicine, and sheer devastation of a crippling mental illness. I also have a possibly related nervous system dysfunction - it's one of the most unpleasant, uncomfortable physiological states I've experienced, and basically feels like something's alive inside my body, tunnelling around inside my musculature, while I receive painless but very strong contractions or jolts in my testicles and other intimate areas. It is, or can be, torture, the last attack lasting 2-3 days of medium/strong 'jolts' around every 20 seconds. It's a living nightmare at times. On the other hand, I am adept at dealing with it on a day to day basis - sometimes I even have a normal day.

All of the pieces included here are composed and mastered in Renoise, bar one : Silhouettes and Marionettes, which was composed, recorded, and mastered on an Android tablet. I used a USB mic to record the vocals directly into my device, and composed the song using the Caustic DAW alongside some other tools (a web-based daw to clean up / tune vocals, I forget the name). The quality is on par with my recent output, and I got way more out of my experimentation than I expected to. Definitely a commendation of the versatility of the platform. (FL mobile didn't appeal to me - I wasn't familiar with the original DAW and that's pretty much the only problem I had with it).

Image
Chemeleon's "My Imaginary Friend", available to stream / download for free on bandcamp.

Spotify. Tidal. Available elsewhere too.

Thank you for listening. Have a lovely day :)
Now _Polartimecast, archive remains here :
https://soundcloud.com/chemeleon

Post

Bumping uglies sorry. Just wondering if any of you can help - I'm trying to generate a little more interest / gather some more attention.

Does anybody have any experience with marketing / publicity? I'm guessing if I want it to be successful (in terms of people just listening to it, they can conclude that it's worthless themselves lol), that's the best approach. My reach in terms of social networks is very limited. I'm not well endowed in terms of currency. I've submitted it to a few music review websites, but haven't had any response. The most I get is a few listens when I announce it on forums, etc. At the very least, a handful of people like it and have downloaded it. Any ideas of what else I can do (besides giving up on it)?
Now _Polartimecast, archive remains here :
https://soundcloud.com/chemeleon

Post

Listened to a few tracks.

Nightmare - Extreme panning was annoying. Vocals were annoying. Musically, a little too odd even for me.

Judgement - Mix a little better but distorted in places and way too loud. Way too much going on at one time. Musically, same as above. Just too weird for my tastes.

Imaginary End - Starting to get a feel for your style. Vocals sound really off. I couldn't find a melody with a search light and a shovel. Musically, a little more normal and listenable but just barely. Mix is still too loud. Nothing breathes and all seems slammed together.

I stopped there. Just not my thing. Sorry.
Last edited by wagtunes on Wed Nov 13, 2019 9:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Post

Loved "You are a nightmare". Listening now to "Led to sleep", which I know I've listened to before. Did you submit it on here. or did I just hear it on your page (I saw you were following me, but hadn't followed you back. Have rectified that, now).

In terms of spreading the word, Have you shared on the Renoise forums? I've heard so many Renoise pieces (looking for some way to break into learning it (It still eludes me). However, it's rare to hear such great Renoise production that's in service of actual songs (Hunz being a great example of another).

So far this is shaping up to being one of the most interesting things I've heard lately. Pretty blown away, actually.

Post

P.S Great cover art. Was that you, also?

Post

i did try to listen but im not a member of any of those and the heart radio was the only one i could view online, but wouldn't play.

is there any direct links or soundcloud available?

Post

vurt wrote: Thu Nov 14, 2019 7:29 pm i did try to listen but im not a member of any of those and the heart radio was the only one i could view online, but wouldn't play.

is there any direct links or soundcloud available?
I'm not a member of Spotify but I was able to play it. Maybe I logged in through Facebook. I honestly don't remember.

Post

wagtunes wrote: Thu Nov 14, 2019 7:35 pm
vurt wrote: Thu Nov 14, 2019 7:29 pm i did try to listen but im not a member of any of those and the heart radio was the only one i could view online, but wouldn't play.

is there any direct links or soundcloud available?
I'm not a member of Spotify but I was able to play it. Maybe I logged in through Facebook. I honestly don't remember.
thanks, just tried that but got this
20191114_194034.jpg
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.

Post

clicking on the picture took me to 'bandcamp' ,
where all tracks were available ...

commentary a bit later ...
Image

Post

vurt wrote: Thu Nov 14, 2019 7:29 pm i did try to listen but im not a member of any of those and the heart radio was the only one i could view online, but wouldn't play.

is there any direct links or soundcloud available?
The link is in his signature. That's where I listened.

Post

el-bo (formerly ebow) wrote: Thu Nov 14, 2019 8:01 pm
vurt wrote: Thu Nov 14, 2019 7:29 pm i did try to listen but im not a member of any of those and the heart radio was the only one i could view online, but wouldn't play.

is there any direct links or soundcloud available?
The link is in his signature. That's where I listened.
thanks :)
for some reason on here i didnnt have sigs switched on :?
rectified 8)

Post

3 tracks in and im with elbo, this is some of the more interesting stuff that's been posted, like a strange marriage of squarepusher/autechre type stuff and some more psychedelic stuff. 8)
will definitely be listening through the rest on bandcamp and picking up a copy there too :tu:

the artwork and music go together well too, wasnt sure what to expect from the image, but upon hearing it, it's perfect 8)

Post

thoroughly enjoyed from start to end 8)

Post

Okay, if Vurt's really loving this I must have either missed something or been in a bad mood that day. Going to have another listen.

Post

Okay, listened to all 14 tracks, something I've only done for 2 other people on this forum, one EDM and the other orchestral music.

Too many tracks to comment on them individually so I'll just address some main points.

1. Volume - Biggest problem for me on first listen was it was simply too loud keeping my volume knob where I normally keep it when listening to music. Once I turned it down (and I had to turn it down a lot) the listening experience became 100% better. That is not to say that I still didn't have issues with some things. I will address them next.

2. Vocals - Forgetting pitch, the mix of the vocals has most of them buried in the mix. Maybe this was a style choice. I would have preferred to be able to make out what he's singing but most of the time I couldn't.

3. Music - I detected a lot of poly harmony in these pieces. I haven't sat down to try to figure out what scales were used but none of this was simple major/minor. So a lot of respect there. I would never even attempt to do stuff like this as it would sound absolutely horrible. However, the "structured chaos" of these pieces made it uneasy for me to listen to a lot of it. I tend to enjoy more mainstream stuff. And even ambient would be mainstream next to this. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that this is probably some of the most unusual music I've heard here. In fact, it reminds me of some of Danny Elfman's more obscure stuff. Just not as polished. I think the OP would make a great film scorer for more oddball stuff like out of "Clockwork Orange."

4. Mix - Aside from the volume issue, some of the mixes seem a bit uneven as far as levels between instruments. Again, maybe this is a style choice.

In short, much more enjoyable the second listen through but still not something I could listen to as a steady diet. It's too unsettling. However, I can absolutely understand people loving this. It isn't the same old same old.

Anyway, I'm glad I gave this a second chance and listened to the whole album. After watching Twin Peaks today, this went with the series finale just perfectly.

Post Reply

Return to “Music Cafe”