This sketch is an attempt to combine ChucKian melodic improvisation with external synthesizers. This time I used toad from the tweakbench plugins along with random presets from Crystal VST with AudioMulch as a host. Also using the LoopBe1 internal midi device to reflect generated midi to the midi input.
Anyway, there are lots of flaws. The Crystal presets are wonderfully ambient, but combining fast melody with slow attack leads to inaudible confusion. Also determined it is easy to overload the system in terms of MIDI messages, to be determined whether ChucK, LoopBe1, my aging thoughtpad running VSTs, or something else is to blame.
Here is a soft rap beat for Valentine's Day. There is a bass, sampled guitar (pitch bent Modest Mouse guitar), synths, drums -- two high hats, three bass drums, and like four or five snares layered on top of one another. With all the layering, I was hoping this beat would sound beefier, but it still sounds a little weak to me. Anyway, hope you enjoy this.
The perfect song exists outside of time, floating in the ether. It is an ever receding target. It takes two steps away for my every one, and hides behind the trees of self-doubt, and perfectionism. The only way to catch a glimpse of that beast is to forget that it exists. I try to stumble joyously through the woods of creativity, until, for only a fleeting moment, the perfect song creeps up behind me and breathes its sweet breath on my neck. Once I notice and turn around it runs away, and I only capture its shadow.
Creating this song was an exercize in play. I tried to have as much fun as I could while making the song, and reminded myself frequently not to worry about the final product, or achieving some arbitrary level of excellence in composition, or production.
The only technical detail of note is that I used one of Live's mastering racks called "Louder Compressor." It gave it a super-loud-but-non-clipping-top-40-radio sound.
I had the idea for this mashup a while ago, and at that point the idea was mostly conceptual (stripper/dancer). Â It wasn't until I first overlayed the two songs that I realized how perfectly they fit together. Â They have essentially the same chord progression, or at least very similar ones; the tempos are within a few beats per minute of each other; and the keys are only two half steps apart. Â Altogether, it was an amazing coincidence and a very exciting find. Â
The actual crafting of the thing was a little bumpier. Â I started out on Ableton, but the warp feature was introducing wierd digital noise (giving Elton a kind of underwater-in-space sound), so I switched to Acid, then switched back because I thought I could fix Ableton, then finally gave up and returned to Acid. Â "Tiny Dancer" was evidently not recorded to a metronome, and much of it is just EJ on piano and vocals, so the timing is altogether pretty mushy. Â It took a lot of brute-force, cut-and-paste quantizing to make it all happen.
By the way, my original idea was to do a mashup of "You Don't Know Me" by Ben Folds with "U Don't Know Me" by T.I.  It turns out that this idea was as obvious to other people as it was to me - I thought to check online to see if it exists, and it does (it's by team9).  I decided I couldn't have done anything particularly different or better, so I moved on.  I hope you all enjoy what I came up with.
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T-Pain and Elton John are both hit machines and they both have a love for ridiculous eyewear.
This one is in the genre of modern hip hop combined with some old school-ness. I tried to make the flow sort of a combination of Easy E and Gucci Mane. (And maybe some Soulja Boy.)
I used Reason 4 on drums, Live beta 8 on composition and PT on vocals. I also used instruments from Absynth 4 and Massive.
