here's a lo-fi house track i made a few months ago. it's just a juno 106 and alesis drum machine, recorded onto laptop - no midi or digital shit is involved, although some digital effects are used (mostly just delay, and the kick drum is pitched down).
largely inspired by larry heard (mr. fingers), and also theo parrish, jamal moss (hieroglyphic being/sun god), reggie dokes...only a little sloppier/punkier/more out of tune...it's really smudgy and sloppy (again, no midi, most of the percussion is played by hand)....maybe too sloppy? not sloppy enough? i don't know. i've been working in this kind of vein for a while (this one is my favorite, i think). i've decided to really only use analog equipment, or at least, you know, real gear. as discussed in other threads here, i think there is truth in obfuscation - and the clarity and limitless possibilities that digital media allow are basically really bad news (although i haven't phased out hard disk recording yet, and am not sure if i'm completely against it). digital synthesis, max/msp, all that laptop shit, it encourages this hyperspastic super glitch freakout, all this minute splicing and editing and shit, everything sounding really clean and good, and thats really boring at this point. it's better working with boundaries and limitations, i think - so i'm going for this dirty but sort of soothing but slightly disconcerting meditative type thing...
so yeah, basically i wanna know what people think. should i go sloppier/messier? or is the whole thing a bad idea? i'm thinking of going noisier, but want to stay away from blaring mid-range distortion (mid range frequencies hurt my ears and are really hard to hear people over)...or something...i dunno..
so yeah, basically i wanna know what people think. should i go sloppier/messier? or is the whole thing a bad idea? i'm thinking of going noisier, but want to stay away from blaring mid-range distortion (mid range frequencies hurt my ears and are really hard to hear people over)...or something...i dunno..
9 comments:
It would be really awesome to hear this, but where is the link?!
i like the words...pretty smart...electronic music has been headed down boring avenue for a while...with a few exceptions...i mean they just dont really make them like "happy song" anymore...but i want to hear the track! link it on it now!
Click on the heading, its a link.
i like this jam track...it kind of reminds me of some of the stuff that farley was and is making on the psr...so i think you and he may have something to talk about...its hard to hear hand-made elctronic music, its either super tight, or purposfully "glitchy" or whatev...they barely even make equipemt you can play by hand anymore.
The tone of all of the instruments is great. I really like the synth sounds, and most of the low ranges really open up -- those really low sweeps sound tight.
To be honest though, the sloppy drums aren't doing anything for me. I definitely get what you're saying, and I completely agree about everything being over produced, but I'd rather hear the sloppy moments happen more in the synths with a steady (but not perfectbeat.
so nix on the drunk handclaps and spastic hi hats? it's hard for me to tell when nice sloppy becomes too sloppy, so it's good to have some kind of frame of reference for these things...i could even just remove the claps from the track, it might still hold together fine...?
My reference for sloppy drums has always been keith moon.. Because he would do these fills that would go out of control and be completley off but then would come back together somehow.
I think what you were saying about it being disconcerting and meditative is really interesting... like, hearing these elements of a house track out of order def. fucks with you a little bit. But if you go in this direction, i think it needs to be MORE CRAZY!!!! (maybe even play the drums straight, bounce the percussion to a cassette and physically cut up the tape and re-amp everything through a toy or a guitar amp or something).
It's interesting, because that might be your argument for phasing out digital hard disk recording: you can't touch the master. There's no way to scratch up or cut up the actual tape itself. It's like how a real ink splat has so much more microscopic complexity to it than some photoshop brush, or how if a VHS tape breaks it might look RAD, but a skipping dvd just straight up blows.
yeah, i think you are dead-on about the materiality thing...its the same thing w/ vinyl records for me, too...with digital music it's kinda like, it ACTUALLY DOESN'T EXIST.
there's a sort of weight, a physicality of sound that is lost when it's all digital...
i definitely like the idea of recording to casette and physically manipulating the tape...that could produce some really interesting results...
What really strikes me is how much you have in common with Chester in terms of recording techniques.
Of course you have all seen Chester's MySpace page, right? With all the songs? (Link on synesthetic superscam) - but he was way into, not only using reel-to-reel tapes, but recording techniques that are "weighter". I really miss using the 8 track recorder that Danny used to record the flowers of disgust records - I like the limitations and the silly tricks - like the random stuff that occurs when you record on pre-used tape - that's what magic was designed for. I want to get my hands back on one of those things.
I want to record music some more, who's game?
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