In a surprising break with form, viz. dithering over whether to do an evening class right up to the point when it is too late to matriculate, I have signed up and divvied out for a place on the local college’s Digital Audio course. I’ve been dabbling with making and recording music on my computers for at least a couple of years now, but to date I’ve been very much the dilettante rather than commit any great amount of mindshare to a tool that could help further my desire to write and record songs.
So here I am, three weeks in with a deadline of sorts to meet. The first half of the course relates to creating and recording music using the Logic recording studio on Apple Macs*, the looming second half relates to skills required to mix and master a song ready for publishing or distribution. Therein, as the Bard probably never said, lies the rub. I need to get a song created/looped/recorded so that I have something to mix. This is where you come in.
I’ve short-listed three musical “concepts” that I’d like to compose and record, but I can’t quite pick one. So, over to you dear reader:
1) “Long Shadow/Sundial” : This one will be made up of loops and grooves…heavily sample based. I may record some short parts with my guitars, but this will be a cut-and-paste effort. I’m pitching for something like Endtroducing… and Private Press -era DJ Shadow with jazzy beats, film dialogue samples and anonymised segments from other songs. On the face of it, an easy thing to try, but it will take a lot of time (or a lot of luck) to find the right samples to get the effect I want. This could end up as a mess.
2) “Wire Choir” : Number two will be largely guitar based…an ambient, almost orchestral piece recorded by creating multiple layered single guitar lines that will accumulate and build into a series of lush, multi-voice chords, far beyond the voicings that one person could play on one guitar. Think of a clash between Gorecki’s 3rd, Brian Eno’s ambient works and Brian May’s harmony guitar. The main downside will be that it will take a heck of a lot of time to lay down the individual tracks…realistically I’d be recording 8- or more guitar tracks to get the chord sounds I want…and that’s before any other elements like rhythm, basslines or keyboard parts
3) “Faceless Monkey” : Number three will be a bit more traditional: I want to try a funk-rock idea that hybridises the Bass wierdness of Les Claypool (from Primus) and the angular, spiky guitar of Buckethead. It’s a much more simple proposition as I could quite happily jam away over a drum or bass-n-drum track ’till the cows start complaining. The biggest challenge of this choice will be programming the drum tracks; I can’t rely on stock MIDI grooves to suffice…I’ll have to tweak the patterns to respond to and interact with the bass and guitar like a good drummer does.
So there you have it. Which tickles your fancy? Deadline is 11th February 2010 to give me a couple of weeks to get composing. Leave your comments here, on my Facebook page (this post will be automatically imported) or throw a tweet in my direction.
J
* Spit, spit. Oh all right, barring some bizarre mouse and keyboard design quirks my first real recent exposure to Apple product has been largely positive.
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