JKT056 - under the wire

JeffMintue056: under the wire


Out of time. Somehow, am recording this on the sofa in the last 15 minutes before midnight. Not too bad, considering! Well.. have only listened so far in my earbuds, maybe sounds terrible on speakaz. Nonsense lyrics as well. All done on the Zoom H4, aka the stungun.. Nice that it can function as a digital 4-track. Will have to experiment more with this in the future.

Oh, also have been listening to Neko Case tonight. Dunno if i like her, but she at least gave me the idea for what to do in this last minute situation.

JKT055 - "... ... ..."

All music is an attempt at communication, isn't it? At least in the strict sense, it is the transmission of data from instrument to ear. And it seems to me that almost all of the time, this is accompanied by some purpose, some goal of imparting either a feeling or idea to the listener.

I thought it would be interesting to create a minute that somehow does not do this, does not represent me as creator trying to communicate with the listener.

At first I thought I would try to make a minute that would resemble an undending wall, an insurmountable obstacle between me and the listener. This is what resulted:

JeffMinute055: "... ... ..."


This is essentially a self-defeating enterprise, insofar as that if I truly wanted to communicate nothing via this minute I would be precluded from making these notes to accompany it. But please, try to listen to this minute all the way through on its own, and try to divorce yourself from the knowledge of my intentions. What does it sound like to you? Does it make you think of anything?

More on this later.

(photo a screencap from the Charles & Ray Eames film "Communications Primer", viewable at the internet archive)

JKT054 - years pass, memories fade.

JeffMinute054: years pass, memories fade


A letter, circa 1987.

JKT053 - sand&stone

JeffMinute053: Sand & Stone


Well, this is not what I was expecting to post tonight. Played some tennis earlier this evening, and before I left for the court I recorded a quick guitar minute that I intended to build upon once I came home.

But then, in the train, this happened. Started as a drum pattern and bassline. Then it morphed into something of a dreamlike return to something reminiscent of the funk and smoke of 1970s east africa, or at least that was how i imagined it. Once I got home i recorded the guitar, panned things extremely like they used to do on recordings in the 70s, and imported a nice little audioclip of the man himself, emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia. enjoy!

ANNOUNCEMENT PEOPLE!!!

Exciting news! Jeff is about to make the big leap! MinuteMan, Man of Minutes! w00t! His next minute will start the ritual that will end in his 60th celebratory minute, the minute containing all his preceding minutes, the minute also which demarcates his advancement into maturity as a minute maker! Like BAM!!! Anyway to go through the transition and transformation he will have to make a minute a day, proper and true, until he reaches the frontier. So check it out! Hot stuff coming up! Aaawwww yeahhh!!!

Tall Cherry-Lipped Black Russians

LawrenceMinute0078: Tall Cherry-Lipped Black Russians

JKT052 - hmm

JKTMinute052: hmm


This sort of occurred to me out of the blue. Inspired by circumstances in the meatworld, i suppose - mixed messages here and there. Something about my little recording device got slightly wonky when the volume went up. But whateva.
-----
The Law has told me i should post these lyrics, as i'm a bit of a mumbler. Here they are. Fucking girls, eh?:

well i don't know
how to feel
when you talk to me this way
and you danced with me this way

but i know
that they're real
the feelings that i feel
whenever you're around

but everytime i see you
and fall into your eyes
i can't help believing things will be alright

every day i'm waiting
for some sweet small reply
wonder if i'll wake up in the night?

i don't know how i feel
will you always be this way -
will things always be this way?
---

JKT051 - The nerd at home

JKTMinute051: The nerd in his abode


Well, this is what it sounds like when I'm idly humming a simple little musical idea and fail to properly press the stop button. Ass smacking and louder singing commence unawares.

Defiler

The foul doings of a deadbeat defiler. He's lurking in the dark, patiently preying on the innocent, his long twitching fingers aching for some primo debasement.

LawrenceMinute0077: Defiler

JKT050 - random shit.

JKTMinute050: Random Shit


Well, this is an experiment to see how it would sound if one instrument within reason started playing another. Pretty much all of the tracks are drum loops that have been made into MIDI tracks, and then these MIDI tracks have been instructed to play other instruments. Or something like that. Kinda random i guess.

DJ HaamPhist002

DJHaamPhist002: filterpanslowdown


Working through the HaamPhist canon. In this one, we listen as the Haam experiments with both filters and panning. Also with tempo perhaps? How does he do that slowdown in the end within Reason? 'Tis a mystery to me.

I like these HaamMinutes, as listening to them is like watching a scientist at play. Methodical exploration combined with an artistic sentiment. Sweet stuff.

Azo: Gaskow

AzoMinute009:


I took the drums from an old midi file and tried to make something with. Fun to play but quite hard too. A week is enough!! Here is the result.

JKT049 - undertow

JeffMinute049: Undertow


Not much to say about this one. Made it on the train coming home from band practice. Tweaked it a bit upon arriving home. Voila.

Lazy sundays

I dedicated a lazy sunday to this minute, so in a reversal i will dedicate this minute to that lazy sunday. Here's to you, lazy sunday, here's to you.

LawrenceMinute0076: Lazy sundays

JKT048 - tired

JeffMinute048: the party.


there was a party this evening. but oh, the exhaustion. the humanity.

JKT047b - the organ breaks.

Ok, so remember how I was trying to make that last minute sound as if it was a piece played by real musicians on real instruments in a real space?

Well, the rest of this minute is sort of like... character development in the story arc of these pseudo-real musicians. They reveal themselves to be experimental jazz musicians at heart (a la pimenco) who have been simply experimenting with creating an old-school soulful sound. Maybe this doesn't make much sense right now, but listen to it.

JeffMinute047b: The Organ Breaks and the Jazz is played


What happens is this:
1. they play their song, the minute from yesterday
2. around 1:15, the organ breaks
3. the drummer starts a random sort of interesting beat
4. the pianist attempts to join in
5. the bassist joins in once he figures out what chords the pianist is playing
6. one of them must be giving some signal that we can't see, because after a tiny break they all join in on this furious sort of crazy song that nobody knows but them.
7. almost as quickly as it began, it ends.

Anyway, that is all there is to say about that. Here's the reason file if you wanna check it out.

02-10-2009.rns
You will need the following refills to open it:
Abbey Road Samples
ElectroMechanical
RDK Vintage Mono
Reason Drum Kits
Reason Factory Soundbank

DJ HaamPhist 001: A very good place to start

DJHaamPhist001: Let's start at the very beginning


Well, the HaamPhist has a backlog of these here minutes, so I'm gonna post them one by one, get the world up to speed with all that is Haam (hint: they're all on his own page as well, although #4 is MIA). Enjoy!

JKT047 - Real Instrument Emulation

JeffMinute047: Real Instruments?


Well, listening to Iwan's minute of a few days ago, I was really impressed by how well he sort of emulated not just a particular sound but a whole... well, society of music. The instant I pressed play I was transported to the old stone walls and sandy beaches of the eastern Med, all somehow captured on grainy VHS. it was really just staggering.



Anyway, that got me thinking about how cool that sort of thing was, and I thought I might try to make something that had some of the same atmosphere as an old motown recording in a way. I did this mostly on the train to and from work over the last few days, so it was pretty much all done using Reason and utter shitloads of mouseclicks. One of my goals here was to get it all sounding as much like real musicians playing real instruments in a real room (like the one pictured above) as I possibly could. I actually took it a bit further than this eventually, but I'll post the 2nd half tomorrow. Anyway, what do you think?

Good Times

djhaamphist019:


I finished watching the HBO series John Adams last night. It's vaguely compelling as a history lesson and their lives are inspiring, but mostly I pushed through. In the last episode you just watch people get old until they can't possibly get any older and then they expire. Oh, except their daughter who gets the breast cancer and undergoes "surgery" before finally falling prey some time shortly thereafter. And a son from alcoholism. A full hour dedicated to people keeling over. It was uplifting. So immediately after I watched that I powered up the keyboard and fumbled around for a few minutes!

Damn!

This place is heating up! Bunch of sweet minutes posted lately. Like.. Azo's most recent has such an awesome lo-fi atmosphere, and sounds like cool improvisational guitar until a 2nd guitar comes in, and suddenly... you realize it's a pre-planned composition! How cool is that? Then the Haamphist shows up with this killer minute out of nowhere! I still don't understand how he assembled that, it really has a surprising... depth to it.

Then Iwan pops out with this awesome tune that sounds like it came right out of a greek tourism video from 1988! Seriously, I love this one. The way the drums are mixed way in the rear, the cheesy yet catchy melody, the slightly brooding interlude in the middle? It just drips with a sort of modernized commercial ethnicity. It's a feat like making a modern song that sounds just like it was recorded in 1950's motown, but way more subtle than that - it's like total immersion in the world of 1980's mediterranean promotional videos. I threw together a quick video to illustrate what I mean. The middle section is.. well, kinda random. It's 3am.



Oh, also I really like how in the middle section of Iwan's song, the drummer who I imagine playing the song is cool enough to just hit the hi-hat every once in a while. So many realworld drummers would overdo that shit. Truly an awesome imaginary drummer.

Something familiar...

Not sure what this is or what it resembles but it sure sounds familiar.

LawrenceMinute0075:

dj haamphist 018

djhaamphist018:


This started out as another drum session and follows the same basic pattern as 017. Throw in ze drumz, break, add in some tunez, drumz, end scene. This is an unsettling pattern of formality.

Azo: Mica

AzoMinute008:


Here is another piece I did sometime ago, trying to give some kind of atmosphere. Effects helps!

Is this thing on?

djhaamphist017:


Testing, testing. My HTML is très mauvais. Even with DJ
Jeff's professional guidance it's been a long and arduous
journey. Although I did work out the accent grave all by
myself. Yeah kid!

So, many thanks to DJ Jeff and DJ Iwan for inviting me to
post some of my haamjaams. They've both been most kind
and encouraging. This is exciting! Jeff's already
posted 1 or 2 of my tunes and linked to my official
website so I guess I'll start off with the latest and
work my way forward in time. Actually, Jeff kind of
inspired this track when he shared some drum techniques
with me the other day. I sat down to take my drums to
the next lev (lv 0.149), and decided to throw some music
on there and this just sort of popped out. I think
you'll be hearing that from me a lot. I dunno how real
music creation goes but I sit down and something either
pops out or doesn't. I've sat down before to create
like, an islands jam and I've mashed the keys with my
palms for 45 minutes and walked away in disgust, head
held low. I was kinda drunk at the time too though.
So that's how I roll. Everything is an experiment at
this point. They say the devil's in the details and I'm
unprepared for the engagement. Enjoi!

Azo: Battle in a swamp

AzoMinute007:



A brand new set this year, one minute a week or... less!
February, you kidding?

JKT045: Life after the bomb.

JeffMinute045: Aftershocks


Well, this one is less melodic and more just sound-and-noise based. Made some interesting sounds in reason by just messing around with connecting instruments in odd ways and it all sort of came together into this non-melodic atmosphere. Sounds to me like aftershocks rolling through the landscape after a terrible war.

Fibonacci Revisited

Ever wondered what kind of rhythmic pattern would result when dividing a measure into fractions based on the Fibonacci sequence? Well i did... and here is an example of that. In this minute eight sounds are gradually layered on top of each other. Each layer has its own meter assigned to it based on the sequence up to the 9th iteration. That is a triggering scheme of 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 and 34 ticks per measure. Strap on them moon boots, we're headed for outer space!

LawrenceMinute0074: Fibonacci Revisited

LocustCanasta! - Iwan's Locust, Jeff's Canasta

LocustCanasta!: Iwan's Locust, Jeff's Canasta


Well, here it is folks. The conjoining of my Canasta with Iwan's impeccably locust-y Locust. They work pretty well together, eh? Sounds that way to me, anyway.

LocustCanasta! - Jeff's Locust, Iwan's Canasta

The image i had in mind initially when thinking of "Locust Canasta!" was actually a locust canasta party. You know... locusts playing canasta at a party. Therefore i had planned on making a festive canasta to Jeff's Locust. As time passed a different connotation and mood got associated with the term; it has become something more sad and bleak.

Locusts themselves in a way are a symbol for death. Their massive swarms bring famine and demise. This is why gradually my vision of Locust Canasta! has changed to that of a sad, sad woman playing canasta endlessly, imprisoned almost, anxiously clinging to those repetitive and boring patterns, over and over again, hoping to somehow stave off dementia and death while the locusts slowly but mercilessly gnaw their way through the final layers...



LocustCanasta!: Jeff's Locust, Iwan's Canasta