Tenth Day of Techno

Oh Sheeeeit.
It's the tenth day of techno. Give someone a gift. Kiss your girlfriend. Spin a dradel, or don't eat for a day.
Today was a whole bunch of fun.
I decided not to get too strung up on kicking out something supremely kick ass as I've been finding that the more I think about this being a big project, there's been a bit more pressure, and it's made things a little harder. I figured I had some pretty awesome tracks in the bag, so I'd just mess around.

I wanted to do something a bit more chill, and laid back.
Once I sorted out the drums, the rest came pretty fast. I wrote the main chord progression on the fm8. If you'd have told me 8 years ago that I'd be using, and loving FM Synthesizers, I'd have laughed. But I started to figure it out a few years ago. They're going to make a massive revival. And we're all going to laugh about how you couldn't give them away in 2005.
I've been really emphasizing having nice chord progressions on this project. I think it's coming from the film scoring work I've been doing. I'm a sucker for nice chords in the right order.

Once I had the chords down, a did the plucky Moog riff. I wanted to go for an oldschool 70s sequencer sound. Sharp, simple and repeatative. I layered the Oberheim with a slow attack on top. This gave it a cool pluck/fade in kind of combo. Then as I tracked them, I played with the filters, and envelopes so they sort of build and drop together.
I doubled the turnaround on a piano, something I've been doing a lot on this project.

The intro was kind of neat. I've always loved it when a song comes in, and you're bobbing your head along to it, only to find when the rest of the track drops, you were bobbing on the wrong beat. So the riff is on the off beats, but when it comes in you assume its on the downbeat. It might get lost after the little break/drop, but whatever. I think it's cool. I also did a thing where I changed the delay time on the intro so it sounds sort of messy, then locks right before it drops.
Tenth Day of Techno by Spell 'n Math

The OTHER awesome part of today, was I dropped by my friend Rage's new studio in progress, where he allowed me to record a bunch of his Roland TB-303. (That's him in the photo above) 303s are perhaps one of the most retardedly overpriced in-demand pieces of vintage equipment in the world. They're dinky little plastic "bass synthesizers" that are insanely difficult to program, and make one sound. But, they make that sound better than anything else. It's the sound of total 90's acid.If you've managed to come to own one, you're extremely lucky and after programming it, likely a little mental.
Rage's new studio is looking awesome. It was obviously professionally designed. And the dude has the most nauseating synth collection ever. An oberheim 4 voice. An Arp 2600. I hate that dude. It'll be a sweet studio once it opens.

So we set it up going direct, as well as through an amp. Most of the time was spent with me learning how to program it. After about 20 minutes of me trying to get it to play what I heard in my head, it became clear, that you're better off programming 8 semi random patterns, and picking the best ones. So that's what I did.

Here's how it sounds.
Teeebeeee by Spell 'n Math

So now I just have a lot of arranging to do. I'm pretty psyched with all the ideas I've come up with over the last 10 days. I'm going to spend the next few weeks dissecting the arrangements of some of my favorite tracks, and see if I can pick apart what works, and what doesn't. I know that want this record to be accessible. I don't want 8 minute tracks of the same boring loop. I want it to be listenable off the dance floor as well as on it. I'm hoping in a few weeks I'll have it done. When I do, I'll post it here. Probably for free.

-P

Ninth Day of Techno

I'm sick as balls, and I've slacked a little.
I took Friday off to speak to an awesome class of grade fives about music which was completely awesome. I showed them some clips of shows and games I've worked on, and then got then to help me make a hip-hop beat on my MPC. I was then treated to a private performance by 2 clarinetists, and a french horn player. They played the rhythm section of Rockin' Robin. We had to hum the melody. It was pretty awesome.

Anyway, today's track. I went full 90s, and full on Talkbox.
I started by sampling some bass rifs. I mixed them down, and ran them through an AKAI S900 to give it a nice crappy 12 bit sound. Then I chopped it up, and dropped it into Battery. I then replayed it, and screwed with the pitch, and loop points. Pretty much just mangled them. It sounds pretty much full on Chemical Brothers. Then I messed about with the drums, and came up with some pretty cool percussion.
I'm sick as hell, so I took a break and bought some Drugs, and pounded a bunch of coffee, played some Fallout 3, then busted out the Talk box.

Talk Boxes are cool as hell, but a super pain in the ass to use. It involves playing something, then sending it through an amplifier, out of the amplifier, into a box, which blasts the sound up a tube and into your mouth. Then you mic up your mouth. It's really hard to use without getting the sound of your tongue slobbering all over the tube.

I started with the opening arpeggiated bit at the start. That's an FM8 being arpeggiated off my Akai, then blasted into my mouth. Then for the "yea yea"s I multi-tracked my Oberheim, and the fm8.

It's still very much a sketch. We'll see where it finally goes.

Tenth Day of Techno by Spell 'n Math