Instrumental: Sunderland

Sunderland
June 22, 2011
[0:57]


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Instruments: FL Studio 10: Convolver plugin, Open Instrument Cable, Tambourine Sample, Hofner Bass Guitar Sample, 12 String Guitar Samples.

No organic instruments were harmed in the making of this track.

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. In this case, I used tambourine, bass, and 12-string guitar samples as the samples to be triggered. For the triggering sound source, I used an open-ended instrument cable, tapping rhythmically on the end with my finger. When you have the cable plugged into an amp, this creates an abrupt buzzing noise which stops as soon as you let go of the end. It was this staccato buzzing that triggered the samples. Variations in impact force and friction created variations in the final sound of the samples.

For the chords being played, I ran together an octave's worth of separate Convolvers with 12-string guitar samples and mapped the notes to a MIDI keyboard. I fudged the chords with one hand while triggering the samples with the instrument cable in the other hand. It was fun.

P.S. The "rain" and banging/thunder/explosion sounds were produced the same way as everything else. Just, like, different samples. Secret percussion samples.

Demo: The House (Oh No)

The House (Oh No)
Demo
November 1, 2006
[3:03]


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Lyrics:

Well, the room was bare,
Too clean when I woke,
Though I swore I'd stay awake through it all,
They're gone. They're gone.
The moon was burning through that night
When they left me.

Not a strand of hair was left in the bed;
Not a web was left on the floor,
Oh no. Oh no.
I tried to warn them,
Tried to stop their poor mistaken souls...

But an angry dog was left in the yard..
Couldn't leave for fear of the dog,
Oh no. Oh no.

So I sat and stared, and watched as the walls
Didn't move. The floor didn't creak,
Oh no. Oh no.
And nothing special passed behind me..
Nobody slammed a door...

When the sun came up
The house was all mine,
And the hound had gone.
It's warm and it's calm.
It's fine. I'm fine..

Influences: Masato Nakamura, The Flaming Lips, Sarah Slean.
Instruments: Martin Backpacker, Praat.

Just your run-of-the-mill tale of apocalyptic abandonment, with a touch of cynophobia and non-hallucination.

Here's how it came about: So, while taking a quick trip back in time to play Sonic The Hedgehog 2, I figured on getting some kicks out of the old sound test screen. After chewing on a few tracks, I popped it up to track 10 (hexadecimal 10, mind you) — the by-now niche-famous Sonic 2 tune that never made it into any actual levels. Wouldn't it be cool if this tune had some lyrics? Alright, let's do it.

So I let that percolate for a while...

Hey, and now there's this song sitting there, waiting to be recorded. Okay, that should be easy!

Ack. This needs a female vocalist. I hain't got one on hand... Hey, I know! Let's be all progressive and experimental and use Praat, a speech analysis/processing program, to up the pitch and timbre some.

Hey, that's got a nice texture to it. But it's kind of hollow sounding. But hey, backwards reverb is cool, and should cover some of the imperfections. That was a technique used by The Flaming Lips from time to time in their early albums. You can hear an example in the song "You Have To Be Joking (Autopsy of the Devil's Brain)" from their album Hit to Death in the Future Head.