Instrumental: Dunderhead!

Dunderhead!
June 16, 2011
[3:38]


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Instruments: FL Studio 10: Convolver plugin + vocal sample and electric guitar.

FL Studio has a plugin called "Convolver", which loads an audio sample and triggers it continuously according to the levels of an input sound source.

So here, the sample I am triggering is an old (like, 2003 old) clip of me singing a Weird Al song, "Since You've Been Gone", backwards, backwards. That is, I took the line "Well I'm feeling like I stuck my hand inside a blender and turned it on", listened to it backwards, sang that, and turned the result backwards, arriving at a really goofy sounding version of the original. The words "blender and" came out sounding more like "dunderhead!", thus the name of this track.

The input source for this track was an electric guitar (now I can't remember whether it was the Kramer Focus or the Epiphone Wildkat; I'm leaning towards Kramer Focus). I just jammed out whatever popped into my head. The more trebly and staccato notes result in more obvious triggering of the speech sample; however, the sample really is triggered by every note, which is why there's so much ambient "reverb" and glitchy effects.

Here's the full original vocal sample from 2003 (apologies in advance for your poor ears):



P.S. If you know where I might have ripped off the main chord progression from, let me know. I keep thinking it reminds me of Harry Potter music.

Boston Cream Pie

Boston Cream Pie
(w/ Ray N)
June 23, 2003
[1:00]


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Instruments: Dean Exotica QSE Acoustic/Electric Guitar.

Inspired by a Peanuts comic which I had recently scanned for my brother, Greg, this is one of many recordings in which Ray and I practiced "reverse backmasking", a process in which we would listen to a phrase that had been turned backwards, write down how it was pronounced, say the backwards phrase into the microphone and then reverse that. The end result was usually a strange, retarded sounding version of the original forward phrase, with ambient backwards noises in the background.

At the beginning of this track, Ray is demonstrating a phonetic palindrome with the phrase "Oh yeah, aye wah", which sounds roughly the same forwards and backwards. In the middle, Ray is noodling some slide guitar and reciting the comic strip forwards, starting at the rightmost frame and moving leftward.

Flaa Sish Ne Khun

Flaa Sish Ne Khun
("Incense And Peppermints" by Strawberry Alarm Clock)
August 13, 2001
[13 sec]


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Incense and beh-o-mints, meaningless nems,
Turn on, tune in, turn your eyes around,
Look atcha saalf, look atcha saalf..

Instruments: Kramer Focus 111S.

At some point during the summer of 2001, I had the sudden urge to cover an entire song using "reverse backmasking" — listening to the song turned backwards, memorizing it and singing it backwards, then reversing the result. This can be attributed to something I heard in Paul McCartney's song "The World Tonight", where in the bridge of the song he appears to be pronouncing the words "I can see the world tonight" forwards by actually singing something else backwards. As it turns out, Paul may have actually done something a little bit sneakier than I originally thought, since when you turn that part of the song backwards he appears to be saying "Save animals' fur, Linda Eastman, ya."

So anyway, I figured Incense and Peppermints would be suitably psychedelic for the purpose, so I recorded the backwards vocals, sped them up using a winamp plugin until I got to the key of E, then recorded the electric guitar to go along with them. However, I never got much further than this recording and a couple short instrumental intros that never went anywhere.