Catching Up - Day 22 - Scott

Today I created a track that can only be described as a demo idea for a full song. It consists simply of two bass tracks. It's pretty mellow and would probably be best turned into a song with some drony guitar and possibly no drums.

Catching Up - Day 21 - Scott

I'm back! Today was the last day of classes for me, so I decided to poke my head up for a breather before finals crash over me.

The new song is pretty song-like and sounds like a demo track for something that could be interesting. It consists of two bass tracks (one of which sounds a lot like a keyboard), a keyboard track, and a stock drum track from GarageBand.

Update - Scott

Well, it's the 30th, and I've only finished the first twenty pieces. With the enormous crush of homework right now at the end of the semester, I doubt I will be able to do anything more for a few days or even a week or two. I'll finish the remaining ten pieces as soon as I can. Until then, happy art!

Audio Uploads - Scott

I signed up for an online site to upload audio directly without video. This is obviously much faster and allows me to share the audio without much extra effort. I might add the first couple days' tracks in the future, too, but for now, here are days 8 & 9 (basically parts 1 & 2 of the same "song"):

20101108:



20101109:

Day 9 - Scott

I had even less time today than yesterday, so there will not be an audio upload again. This time, I took yesterday's track, reversed it, duplicated it twice, and did the following:

Track 1: Did a slooooow fade-in with some distortion added.

Track 2: The track straight up without any added effects.

Track 3: Chopped it up into hundreds of bits, randomized the bits into a new sequence, and added a stereo effect.

Voila! It basically sounds like "part two" of yesterday's track.

Day 8 - Scott

I had very little time today, so I just improvised a quick keyboard part on a warm pad that comes with GarageBand. I duplicated the track and copied it later into the same track, pasted it (staggered) into two other keyboard sounds I liked, and called it good. I don't have time to upload it tonight, so it may not be heard until the art show. I like it though; it's very soothing. Pete's flashlight photography seems to capture the mood of it.

Day 7 - Scott

Apparently I'm destined to make spooky-ish tracks. This short track was created using my cell phone, my body (hands and voice), and my Telecaster.

Day 6 - Scott

Today's recording was mediocre at best. I recorded a couple different drum tracks and mixed them together with various effects. Then I added a bass line with some "FATFUZ" distortion, but I completely lost my thread at that point. After screwing around with the guitar for a long time, nothing was working right; I put that away and thought I'd try something vocally, but that was even worse, so I just called it good.

This one will never see the light of day...

So instead of uploading some audio, here are a couple snapshots of some of the gear I'm using:

Day 5 - Scott

This morning's project was made up of five vocal tracks (no other instruments). Four of the tracks are different versions of the same recording: one of them is simply effected enough that the words are indiscernible; the other three were reversed before peppering them with effects.

My inspiration for this "song" (this is the least song-like of anything I've done so far) was Emily's "POST 4." The incoherent words are a deconstruction of the word "brittle."

Here it is:

Day 4 - Scott

I actually recorded this one yesterday, but my Thursdays are really busy, so I decided to get ahead. Besides, I figured out how to reverse tracks (had to do it through Audacity and import it), so I wanted to use my new skillz.

For this one, I started by grabbing the original "jingle" clip from yesterday's song and reversing it in Audacity. I then slowed down the playback speed by a bunch and lowered the pitch to a menacing drone. After that, I imported the modified track into GarageBand and put it into three separate tracks that all play the same thing simultaneously. I created different effects, panning, and volume tweaks for each of the tracks to give it some texture and additional ominousness(ness?). Once I was happy with the results, I grabbed my bass and plugged into my pedal with the old Death by Deathray preset "EXP158" cranked to maximum delay loopage. I recorded two tracks this way; the first has some atmospheric clicks and other noises, and the second is an all-out sonic blast that starts at zero volume and slowly crescendos (with peaks and valleys) until it overwhelms the other tracks in a final burst of energy.

And finally, I took Pete's advice and created a video for the song and uploaded it to YouTube, which took much longer to do than it did to actually record the song, even when compressing it into the lowest res version. (Look for the special cameo appearance by Lester):



P.S. I've decided that some of my next pieces will be inspired by the output of all y'all artistes.

Day 3 - Scott

I just finished song #3. This time, I recorded only three tracks. One of them is a blistery but slow and methodical bass guitar lead; another is a throbbing keyboard sound with modulation; and the final track was a more chaotic process:

1. I grabbed a pre-recorded jingle track (several seconds long) from GarageBand's library and pasted it into the track.
2. I chopped the jingle (they call it a jingle, but it was a symphonic snippet) into tiny pieces and placed them in random order with spaces between them and duplicated them to last as long as I wanted.
3. I forced the track through several effects until it was unrecognizable.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with it. I was hoping to put in some reverse tracks, but I couldn't figure out how to make GarageBand do that. (Anyone know how?)

I'm also still searching for a good solution to posting audio on this blog, but I can't find anything worth my time. Anyone know of something (easy) that would work?

Day 2 - Scott

Once again, the time limit was too restricting, but I created something a bit different than yesterday's track. This time, it's got only one bass guitar track, a drum track (extremely basic), and three Telecaster tracks. The length is 2:46. The overall sound maintains a certain blistering noisiness like yesterday's, but it's more "songy."

After listening to both tracks I've made so far, I like yesterday's better...

Okay. I was going to post today's track, but the stupid free site I used for that purpose is seriously screwed up, so I'll have to find a new site for it and try again on a different track in the future. Blah.

Day 1 - Scott

I successfully completed my first day's creation.

Challenges
The time constraint I gave myself turned out to be somewhat difficult; it took me a little longer than an hour to make the recording. I also think there might be an issue with running out of effects to use, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. For now, the time limit seems to be the one area where I need to give myself leniency.

The Process
I began writing the song (which is creatively called "20101101") last night when I was plugging in my limited gear and testing it out. As I flipped through the various effects on my DigiTech BP200 with my Yamaha BB400 bass guitar, I serendipitously discovered one of my custom sounds ("DISTRT"), which has an interesting delay programmed into it. As I thumped my bass string, it created an interesting rhythm, so I recorded it. Since it was after midnight, I allowed myself to move forward with the process. It took only a few minutes, but I had the start of my song.

When I came home from school today, I plugged in again and put down the other tracks (three more), did some quick mixing, and came up with the final result (a song 4:36 long) in a little more than an hour's total time. It only utilizes two instruments (bass guitar and electric guitar), which is one less than my maximum allotment.