Quantum minute

LawrenceMinute0043:

Sick as a dog, throw me a bone.

Bwing on the CWUNK!!!

LawrenceMinute0042:

Crunky music!

JKT035 - Trials and Tribulations

This one goes out to an old friend of mine who's in a bit of a dilemma regarding his love life. What to do?
JeffMinute035: Confusion,Love&Psychologists


Oh, and i've been listening today to this album Stax of Funk, would love to figure out how to really emulate that old-school sound of motown-esque soul...

JKT034 - One more thrown into the void

JeffMinute034: untitled

Lately been recording vocals just one time through - figure that if I do this enough, sort of force myself to accept what comes out as a final version, eventually my ad-libbing of vocals will improve. As it is though it's pretty pitiful. Anyway, I like the rest of the mix etc., but forgive the nonsensical words.

JKT033 - Late Night

Nice! There is now a night train connecting Noord Brabant (the province i live in) with the rest of the country! Already came in handy for me tonight, just 2 days after going into service.
Umm, this is a minute made to counter my minute from Thursday.
JeffMinute033: Old school improv

Rats!

LawrenceMinute0041:

LawrenceNotes:
Damn... i inadvertently deleted a post again. Here it is once more. Crappy guitar minute.

Down south

LawrenceMinute0040:

LawrenceNotes:
Well how about that. I found this lying around. I started working on it a couple of days ago but i never finished it. I layered a random sample on top of it and thought: let us be done with it!

JKT032 - Damn that was hard

JeffMinute032: The difficulty of breathing in outer space

-=3x3=-

LawrenceMinute0039:

LawrenceNotes:
Boy oh boy! Hope i'm not cheating here. A sample is resynthesized thrice to prespecified pitches on different octaves. Various sample playback and effect parameters are being modulated on each note. There is a lot going on but speaking from a strict technical stance only nine notes are being triggered - uhm... well, ten actually (i miscounted somewhere). Tell me what you think, jeff. Is my method provided for in the rule-book or do i lose by default? Because that would suck fuckballs, it would.

A tough assignment

Tonight there's a strange and difficult assignment. Make a minute of music out of some extraordinarily basic building blocks. The following notes:
C
D
Eb
each note played a maximum of 3 times, in any octave, for any length you wish. Have them overlap if you want, or run them through all sorts of effects. No percussion though - just the notes themselves (unless you can fake some sort of percussion by using the notes themselves.

So we're each trying to make a 1 minute song out of 3 notes repeated 3 times each. Nothing else.

JKT031 - Sound & Fiurie

In this episode, Jeff rages against the immovable machine that is Lawrence. "Post some minutes, ya damn bum!" he screams, but the machine rumbles on. Ok, i'm being rough on lawrence, he has a lot going on at the moment. But when he has some free time, the minutes will flow once more like sweet water to the desert of our ears. Good luck doing all of that crap!
JeffMinute031: Loud and messy

Just to elaborate, we've been talking lately about how we've just gotta go ahead and post crappy minutes. That's the spirit of this whole thing - just stick a minute up there every day, regardless of how good or bad they are. So anyway, this one's like that - single takes of every instrument (including the crappy nonsensical improvised-on-the-spot vocals), thrown out there hoping that it will either stick to the wall or hit the fan. It's amazing how some distortion and good mastering plugins can make a messy ball of crap sound somewhat like a real song.

JKT030 - Random 4 minutes from the old west

yeehaw. round up your horses, it's gonna be a long night fellas.
JeffMinute030: Random music from the old west

All layers of guitar recorded at once thanks to a DL-4 looping pedal. Nice piece of hardware, that.

Actually, listening to this the next morning, it sounds to me like it lies halfway between music out of a spaghetti western and one of those cheesy 1960's Valley of the Dolls type low-budget sleazefests. Like this!:

JKT029 - ambient lullaby

JeffMinute029: Ambient Lullaby

I've been listening a lot to this band called Stars of the Lid - they're a duo colocated in brussels and california who make some really incredible music that isn't quite ambient and isn't quite orchestral. I dunno, it's strange but beautiful. I sort of see them as the heirs of both Brian Eno and Philip Glass, and the things they pull off are really spectacular.

Anyway, Jon (of lightwires) came over last night to work on some new tunes, and for some reason we ended up recording this whole thing randomly. It was far too soothing for me though - something about that rhythmic rumble actually made me fall asleep right there at the keyboard while i was trying to record a drum track.

The aforementioned rhythmic rumble comes from playing some random guitar notes through a Line 6 DL-4 looping pedal and just tweaking it like crazy. The rest is from my sitar. It's about 4 minutes long, so be patient.

BREAKING: shaman voodoo hoe-down turns into sad, sad man!

LawrenceMinute0038:

LawrenceNotes:
This starts out as a shaman voodoo hoe-down in witchita and then turns into a sad, sad man who is an embaressement to us all who stoops to a new low and in vain tries to sell his organs to a bible salesman.

Well...

LawrenceMinute0037:

LawrenceNotes:
Worked on this for a couple of days. When i started this i kind of wanted to do a full song but i guess what i came up with works better as a minute.

JKT028 - Just an idea

I've been playing this videogame at night, hence the lack of recent musical work. It's funny, I haven't really played any games for.. a year? Two? It's really been quite a while. I went over to a friend's house last week though and messed around for a bit with this game called Oblivion on his PS3, and it was just intriguing enough that when I came home that night I downloaded it for myself, for the PC.

Anyway, I don't generally play games because as soon as I start them I kinda go nuts about them for a little while and then get fed up or disgusted with them for one reason or another. Plus they take up valuable time in my life that I could be using to make some good music or do something actually worthwhile. I'm still waiting for that to happen with this game. It's pretty damn addictive.


Well anyway, been having this sort of song idea in my head for a few days, woke up this morning and took the laptop/guitar into the bathroom to record the idea quickly.
JeffMinute028: Just an idea

Think it might be a nice song in the end, unfortunately the acoustics of the room made the guitar a bit boomy so you can't hear the beauty of the main guitar part - there's a little high note that's descending 1/2 step by 1/2 step that sounds really nice, I think.

Threaded - 005 (test vocals added)

Just a rough sketch of the vocals, more to get an idea for the eventual form than to actually sound good.
Threaded005a: vocaltest

Just recorded them quickly really late at night so couldn't properly sing loud during the chorus. Will sound much better once that part's sung nice and loud instead of late-night falsetto. A few spoken notes on how it should be sung are in there as well, it's a nice quick way of leaving myself ideas on what to do.

Well anyway, it sounds crappy but it gets a melody in place and gives me the correct sort of sound to redo the instrumental parts around. Once the instruments are all completed, I'll delete these temp vocals and record the final ones. I think that unless you're lucky enough to get a great vocal track right at the beginning, it often comes in handy to do a temp track like this, just so you can build the song and then really have something to sing along to properly at the end.

Threaded - 004 (bass/drums revisited)

Redid the bass/drum track to go with the guitars i recorded. This is just a sample with the chorus section so you can hear the tambourine (quite soft, panned to the left). Little bit of tambourine during a chorus fills it up and provides an almost subconscious rise in the energy of a song section.
Threaded004a: new bass/drum sample

There's also a bit of synth atmosphere in the background of the whole thing that fills up the emptiness a bit. Anyway, here it is combined with the guitar, and without the click track.
Threaded004b: instrumental


Now just have to record some vocals (and probably redo some guitars, I think it could use some more energy here and there, and playing style has a lot to do with that. It's still a rough mix, I think the drums/bass might need to be a bit quieter in the end. But it's really like an oil painting in progress - you do it layer by layer, then go back and paint over layers that you're not satisfied with. That's how I do it anyway..

The story of an obnoxious clown

LawrenceMinute0036: the obnoxious clown

LawrenceNotes:
I don't know how it happened but i strayed so far off from my original idea that it scares me. How could it ever turn into this? I guess it just started spiralling out of control. It's a little longer (lengthwise that is) to make up for the past few days of silence. Anyway the vocals were tough on the voice. As a matter of fact you can hear the transition from a relatively clear voice to a very hoarse voice quite well. Kinda made it hard to do. So vocals are pretty terrible. Maybe i'll do 'm again tomorrow. But then again probably not so that's why i'm posting it. Do you understand even vaguely what i'm talking about here? I'm not sure what i'm writing anymore. I'm really tired. I'll go to bed now thank you. Good night.