This song was just sort of a fun experiment. The initial idea was to create a song using only a small monophonic toy Casio keyboard (not an SK-1).
I played around a lot with pitch shifting and running sounds through different types of amps, like running the instrumental out through a set of speakers and than recording the sound and blending it with the dry line in audio.
Or, running the vocals through a tube amp and letting it feed back ever so slightly.
I also played some subtle ride cymbal and scratched a bass synth tone.
I had fun AND I learned, as I hope you will too.
Thanks,
-Jerko
p.s. the song is called Sugar Kite One. That's the name of the aircraft mentioned.
I tried to make a lot of things over the past week. One was a ukulele song. Another was a funk song called "I'm On The Honor Role (Bitch)". None saw completion with studying for my various finals over the last week, and my impending trip to Biloxi complicated matters. So I packed a good deal of my gear with me, intending to finish something for today.
After an aborted attempt at a Glam Rock song (oh, how I will finish one of those one of these days), I started playing with a Korg plugin that I had received with the purchase of one of my Korg midi controllers. It is a limited version of their m1 synth. At any rate, I started writing some music that sounded like it could be a strange theme to the Karate Kid or some such. It is a simple additive composition. Drum loop made, bass laid, flute, etc. I wasn't too terribly pleased with it though. I needed something to hold it together.
So I asked my friend Joe, who is on this trip with me, to tell me about his first night gambling. Sadly I did not have enough music to include the seven minutes he recounted for me, so I focused his narrative on his trip to the Crazy Four Card poker table, adding some "Hallucination" reverb and some stereo separation with Ableton Live's Utility plugin. The whole thing works better in headphones, and isn't really a proper song, but it makes me cry and giggle at the same time all the same.
I made this in ableton and used the glitch plugin on a couple of the tracks to break it up a bit. This song has like a gazillian tracks for drums, for whatever reason I just felt that stacking them up sounded good. with not much time left, I decided to try to have some actual music to it. I've been having a hard time putting structure into my songs, so I decided that I should at least have a set of 4 chords and a melody in there somewhere. So that actually doesn't kick in until like half way through the song, but alas here it is! enjoy :)
f the many musicians that I work with in BCN, actual collaborations have yet emerged from just two brave souls. As such, this is a special post.
This is about a song developed with one collaborator (Ferdi) that I hope expand. The progression is close to stock (truncated Pachelbel's canon) but in the original meter was intended to have a bluegrass-country feel. Upon playing it together we decided it needed to have a kick in the rhythm, so we used a 7 meter.
Later, Ines and I worked on some adding vocal harmonies. We had planned to rehearse it all together but this year time does not permit. See if you can cross-pollinate the two in your head. Do you think it will work? Any suggestions? (Vocal harmony version below the lyrics.)
you are a song I cannot sing
something about you strains my vocal cords and
you are a person I cannot be
or make believe with all my little words
to try to call you back
over hills and oceans
to feint an understanding
over verse and chorus
to try and call you down
when you're out of my range
to find a better harmony
when it is sounding strange
but if not then you get bored
i think your voice should be
unbound by chords
jealous of the plain
with a flood of acid
flowing through your veins
flowing to your heart
with a constant pulsing
jitters out of time
and crash
you are a song I cannot sing
something about you strains my vocal chords and you
you are a song I cannot learn
because I don't believe in all the words that
try to explain
with the moments folding
under and over and
out of time
trying to explain
why we are broken
trying to explain
why we are so far away
