I downloaded this EP last week, and I’ve been listening to it in the car. It’s holding up pretty well – maybe I’m just desperate for something new to listen to. I guess I’m into the sound design and production of it – very nice though my car’s subwoofer. So I give it a cautious recommendation.

How to Destroy Angels

Given the state of my left thumb, guitar playing is out for the next few months. I thought I would try to do something with MIDI and soft synthesis. I picked up an M-Audio Axiom 25 MIDI/USB Controller. I had intended to use it with Garage Band, which it does reasonably well, but it came with Abletron Live LE, a de-featured version of Live. Since I want to figure out how to do more loop-based composition and/or performance, it seems to be the way to go.

The learning curve on Live looks pretty steep. Unlike Garage Band, it’s a tool that assumes you’re going to spend some time with it to learn. At first, I had no idea how to even get started. Then I found that it’s got integrated tutorials, and I was off and running. The Axiom works nicely with it, giving physical controls that will make using the gear creatively much more natural. Somehow, having to grab a mouse, find a virtual control, and mess with it’s pixels clears most if not all creative musical ideas from my brain. Having physical transport controls is a huge gain all by itself.

The keys on the Axiom are really nice – in fact, hard to believe given the price of the thing. I almost wish I’d gotten the bigger 49 or 61 key version, but there’s no run on my desk for that, and I’m not a real keyboard player anyways.

The Axiom is also pretty complicated. I’ve not done MIDI years, and the jargon and conceptual model has changed a lot, particularly with integrated digital audio and software synthesis. I’m looking forward to getting back up to speed.

Here’s a quick idea. Guitar is in drop-D, 146 bpm with a quarter-note echo. I tuned the base down there also. The canned drums are from Garage band.

sled

Seems like a verse to something.

I’ve been catching up on Metal lately, mostly due to my daughter’s interests in a few different bands, and to some extent, followng Mike Patton backwards to Faith No More. This effort has landed me in the early 90′s. When I was back there, I was listening to a lot of 80′s punk, though I had seen Jawbreaker live, and was moving on to a bit of Hardcore, and some of the NYC noise bands of the day, such as Live Skull.

As I remember it back then, Metal seemed like a dead end, and as a guitarist, I avoiding playing anything like it. In hindsight, there was a lot going on, with some bands adopting some of the aspects of Metal, while adding other influences and styles. As a result, I find myself catching up on what happened on that branch hat would lead to speed metal, death metal, and thrash, as well as popularizers like System of a Down, Korn, etc.

This look backwards has brought me to Helmet, and I’ve picked up their Unsung: The Best of Helmet 1991-1997 CD . Helmet is really a cross-over between more classic metal, hardcore, and punk. The guitars are often in drop tunings, yet have some of the disonant ringing of the NYC noise bands, Vocals can vary from punk, to Black Sabbath, to hardcore. The production is rougher and warmer than we’re used to hearing these days.

Here are a few examples:

Unsung
Bad Mood
Wilma’s Rainbow

Black Rain from Semiconductor on Vimeo.

Whoa!

Just ran into this great song, Dear Diary by Howe Gelb for troubled bloggers everywhere:

Dear diary, I’m a grown man, why shoud I be writing to you?
Dear diary, I’m a sorry to hear that you don’t want to write to me too.
Dear diary, OK lets start anew, I’ll be me, and you be you.
Dear diary, I’m a livin’ a life when I think of war and its on TV
If I don’t want anything more then I’m free.

Howe’s Down Home 2000 Album

I’ve been getting started with music again. The main issue I’m facing is the creative process. So here’s what I’m working on:

monogrey

I started monogrey with the idea of doing something slow. I threw on a drum loop, then did the guitar 1st guitar part. Towards the end, I added a open riff that’s been stuck in my head. When I did the second quitar, I had the idea of running a some dense root-fifth-octave stuff for the ending.

All in all, it seems like I over-did the slow bit – at 70 BPM, it’s kind of crawls. So. I thought I’d try it again, only faster:

monogrey2

This time, I ran it at 110 BPM, with my acoustic/electric as the rhythm part, and changed the open riffy thing a bit,
then added a distorted electric kind of wandering around. I think this ends up sounding a bit too soft. Maybe I should try it again at 90 BPM or so, and shoot for the darker first version.

Overall, I’m trying to keep it simple and leave room for other things, primarily vocals. That said, I’ve never had much luck adding melody and vocals after-the-fact. We’ll have to see what I can manage with this.

Next, I thought I might try starting with some sort of melody or lead-line. The result is this one:

drive-with-horns

The cheesy synth-horns are were I started. I pecked out the lead-line in my head, then picked up the guitar and searched for some changes that worked with it. The result is pretty un-challenging, though I did have fun doing the bass part. It’s pretty easy to sync up with the kick in a 4-measure drum loop. I’m not sure where “drive with horns” goes from here. I suspect it’s probably a dead end.

After all that, the open question is: can I write songs like this – layering parts, or, is do I have to buckle down and write lyrics against my guitar all at once? Past experience is that I can’t retro-fit lyrics and melody to fully-formed backing tracks. The results is usually monotone rambling.

As for the tools, this is the first time I’ve tried writing with any sort of DAW set-up, having done tape-based multi-tracking in the past. I Have to say that it’s pretty nice being about to hack stuff up so easily.

I first heard Explosions in the Sky when I say the movie Friday Night Lights. I looked them up later, and bought Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Die, Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Live Forever, probable a couple of years ago. At first, I like just small parts of the album, but over years, the more I listened, the more it grew on me.

I’ve just picked up The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place. It’s fantastic. buy it now.