Songs From a Wandering Star is done, ended up being 8 tracks and about 20 minutes long. Way shorter than I wanted, but I felt that this was a good place to end it, and the two tracks I didn't get around to making, I don't currently have the software for (they both require me to learn how to use UHAU, which is a freeware Vocaloid alternative, in other words, LOL). I also cut "The Parable of the Seal" because for one thing, it doesn't fit with the theme, for another, the vocals (from "1,000 O Clock" by Aesop Rock) did not line up with the instrumental very well.
I will upload it when I feel like doing so. Should also probably make a cover first....
next album's going to be just a collection of songs rather than something with a sonic theme, I've already done many sea and space albums.
tracklist
------------------------------------------------
1. The Melody X From a Wandering Star (Remix of "Forgotten Eastern Spirit") [4:50] 2. Space Cowboy [1:51] 3. The Monolith (Ubiclex Calculus Mix) [2:47] 4. ൠൠൠ Concealed Alien From a Quasar ൠൠൠ [2:24] 5. Intermission [0:41] 6. Behold, the Devastation Beam! [2:27] 7. They Did Not Know [1:33] 8. Return to Cyberia (The Night Tape Revisited) [4:02]
Well this is just disheartening. Only one download in the past week and it was for The Beet Tape.
Honestly, I may just stop uploading my music. I will of course, keep making it. But it's pretty clear that nobody but myself, maybe Tre, and whoever keeps linking to "Space Colony Noir Film" (seriously, every few days the plays for that song will spike and I have no idea why) actually listens to the stuff.
No, because that will just further motivate them to track me down.
I just deleted the entirety of Elsewhere (and Limestone Wall, but for different reasons) from my Bandcamp. If this continues I'm just going to axe the Bandcamp altogether, no one uses the thing anyway and I certainly don't need it for anything.
The album still exists, it is just not in publicly accessible form any longer.
That's what I mean by not needing my Bandcamp. I have all of my music on my laptop. I only made the bandcamp in the first place because I was under the silly delusion that other people actually enjoyed the songs I made.
I suppose I should know by now that 99% of the time people tell you they like what you do they're just trying to be polite.
Also don't let creepy bullies dictate what you do. Think about it: if someone devotes any amount of their time, regularly, to following the activities of an ex-troper who they have never spoken to so they can continue to mock him, over an extended period of years, but you are continuing to do your thing and be productive, who is really losing out in this situation? It isn't you.
I never said they were right.
Frankly, I don't even know what they're saying. I never follow the links and see no reason to do so.
I put that out in 2009, man. It fucking sucked, too.
See this is what I mean. If people like any of my music it's a handful of tracks I don't even like anymore. In the case of Desert Burner...I don't even know if I have it any more. I've gotten a new computer since then.
And frankly, that entire mixtape was me slowing obscure Santa Fe band New Mexicoe way, way down and that was about it. I don't even like Desert Burner anymore. I like Kassettenacht way more, and no one has ever even heard that, I re-used the samples from it on this last album for a reason.
the problem i have with a lot of your music is it just sounds like you've taken something and put a beat over it, it just lacks a lot of cohesion. and i often feel the beats are lacking something too. they just sound kinda flat. it's like you're trying to get the sound of acoustic drums out of electronic stuff and it's just not working for me (whether you're trying to do that or not - it sounds that way). sometimes there are timing issues with the beats too, or between the beats and the samples + stuff over it. i mean i'm listening to the new album now and the only bits that have really held me are a little bit that lasted about three seconds right towards the end of 'The Monolith' and the first few seconds of 'Lightwave' where it looked like the beats would be a bit better
my favourite song so far has been the intermission and i dunno what that says about the album at all
i also feel like you were going for a spacey atmosphere but for the most part i havent really felt that, all i can tell is that you've used synths and samples from spacey sources but it doesnt go together into a whole
my favorite is the Beet Tape, though I only joined the Slylamp train this year (Nonfiction Mixed in Silver being my first exposure)
and while some of your work isn't my cuppa tea I do really like other parts of it and I can tell it's something you enjoy, even if you might not realize it yet.
besides, I've heard worse. everything from my album that wasn't Waffles or Anorak Ave. for one.
Well regarding the drums, I'm not sure what exactly you mean, nor what I could do about that. The majority of my percussion is sampled from songs where actual drums are used. Though some of it is clipped from a sample folder I have.
And it is less that I was going for a spacey atmosphere and more that I felt it was spacey. I suppose I have rather vague ideas of what constitutes spaciness, but I tend to mentally file my music into one of a few categories and that is one of them.
Not sure what to do about timing issues either, but I suppose I've never been good with that.
As for liking The Intermission, that is probably the piece that I spent the least amount of time on. See, that's something that's always bothered me. There is a massive disconnect between the time I spend on something and how good it turns out (or is percieved as turning out, anyway).
Anyway. I also just finished this, which I was talking about in the heap earlier. Nominally, the second part of the song is for me. But frankly I don't think I'll be giving Minerva any vocal contributions.
with all that said, i still did like desert burner
I know you did. Point is, I don't.
If you like DB, go give New Mexicoe's Flood Music and Parahelion's albums a listen. The vast majority of that tape is just those two things slowed down.
yeah, they sound like samples of real drums. that's what i mean, they sound like samples trying to masquerade as someone playing actual drums. perhaps you just need better drum samples because i didnt like most of the ones on that album at all
like, the samples you used on that Lightskull Army track are way way better. i like this a lot more than anything off the spacey album. it all goes together way better
I do admittedly tend to get lazy with the sampling, at least lately I do. Simply because sampling things "by hand" (for lack of a better term) just takes forever.
I also did a sort-of remix of that same track I just posted. I should upload that for comparison purposes. It's mostly just slowing down and screwing with a few things, but yeah.
also LOL, I forgot to credit the Stevie Wonder samples on that track.
For the record they are the only reason the entire first half isn't just drums.
^ It feels like massive banks of distorted synths and vocals should come in about twenty seconds in, but they don't. It's like the drum track to a song without the instruments. A good base, yes, but incomplete.
Mind if I try something and send it to you?
Also, The Beet Tape is pretty cool, from what little I've heard so far.
Looked a little at How've You Been? It feels... underproduced. The sounds are too dinky and clipped to make the impact that I think you want them to make, and the production is clean and simple to the point that it lays everything bare. Why not effect things, do more with found sounds, let things go out of focus?
I think that you have the potential to do great work, but you need to take a different angle to what you're doing, slow down, sit on your material a while before putting it out. Most of the stuff on my Bandcamp is the culmination of editing processes that, in some cases, took years. Even if I fob off the initial parts, just make things up in one take on the spot, I make sure to let the thing simmer before I come back to build on it. Some of those tracks are literally the result of me putting together as many as twenty other unreleased pieces together in the pursuit of a new whole.
My point is, I think you need to stop giving yourself deadlines and putting things out before they are really complete. It will make your music better and make you feel better about your music.
Well, I would certainly like to do that (indeed, before I switched to FL Studio, I was, which is why I think a lot of people like Beet Tape better than the more recent stuff) but ah, there is a technical problem in that my copy of FL has not yet had a key purchased, which limits my ability to go back and edit tracks. If you aren't familiar with FL Studio, it doesn't let you re-open old tracks unless you've bought the full version.
Honestly I should probably do that sometime soon now that I actually have the money to do so. Thank you for reminding me.
Truth be told I've had much the same thoughts about How've You Been? myself.
I think that today and tomorrow, I am going to listen through all my old albums (starting with This Too, is a Mystery. Which I will re-upload one of these days if any of you want it) and see what I like an what I do not.
^^^ The idea was one of my own tried and true methods: To create a track, then put it back into another project and massively effect and dissect it, discarding nothing but transforming everything, thus creating the backbone for an entirely new track.
I recently did that with a viola piece one of my friends did. It turned out quite nicely. I'll be putting it up somewhere at some point...
Huh...perhaps I could do that with the entirety of TTIAM. It's long been my favorite of my early albums, it's a collection of sometimes rather creepy nonsense ("What about Pip? Did you forget her? What did you see? What was it that made you lose your mind?" etc. and that's just the first track) that I mostly just hacked together from stuff I found on Youtube, a good deal of that, I never even actually watched. It's the same process that made Desert Burner, but with enough sources that it's not a total rip of anything like DB was.
-----------------------------
1. Intro (feat. The Reddy Record for Boys) 2. Super Eight Soul 3. Fonekahl 4. Desert Radio No. 1 5. Night Radio No. 6 6. Pursued/Kassettenacht II 7. Mountain High 8. Super Eight Soul, Part II 9. Spires 10. Night Radio No. 9 (Dialed-out Mix) 11. A Jazzy Mess (Origin Mix) 12. Interlude 13. Interlude No. 2 14. Drugstore Cowboy (Feel the R.A.I.N.) 15. Broadcast '71 16. Filled-in Circles 17. Desert Radio No. 12 / Night Radio No. 16 18. Intelligent Dementia Music 19. Runs Like Clockwork 20. Neolithic Man 21. Sound Collage #2 (Said) 22. Sound Collage #3 (Manifestations) 23. Sound Collage #1
some memories right har.
I was even worse at naming things then than I am now.
^^ It's fun to do. I think that the one with the most layers of dissolution is "Copse", which began as this sort of Garageband loop composition that I did on vacation when I was 14, before I understood how things like, you know, instruments worked, and ended up... well, like that.
if I can say anything positive about 15 year old music-making me, it's that I just did not give a fuck about anything.
Also I forgot about the JAMS sample on the interlude tracks. "There ya go man, just keep as cool as you can. Face piles of trials with smiles. It riles them to believe that you perceive the web they weave. So keep on thinkin' free."
I know that feeling. Like when I decided to pay homage to The Future's full, unreleased version of "Last Man On Earth" and began composing a two-hour atonal synth epic. Dear gods, the ninth grade. That was something.
Comments
Songs From a Wandering Star is done, ended up being 8 tracks and about 20 minutes long. Way shorter than I wanted, but I felt that this was a good place to end it, and the two tracks I didn't get around to making, I don't currently have the software for (they both require me to learn how to use UHAU, which is a freeware Vocaloid alternative, in other words, LOL). I also cut "The Parable of the Seal" because for one thing, it doesn't fit with the theme, for another, the vocals (from "1,000 O Clock" by Aesop Rock) did not line up with the instrumental very well.
I will upload it when I feel like doing so. Should also probably make a cover first....
next album's going to be just a collection of songs rather than something with a sonic theme, I've already done many sea and space albums.
tracklist
------------------------------------------------
1. The Melody X From a Wandering Star (Remix of "Forgotten Eastern Spirit") [4:50]
2. Space Cowboy [1:51]
3. The Monolith (Ubiclex Calculus Mix) [2:47]
4. ൠൠൠ Concealed Alien From a Quasar ൠൠൠ [2:24]
5. Intermission [0:41]
6. Behold, the Devastation Beam! [2:27]
7. They Did Not Know [1:33]
8. Return to Cyberia (The Night Tape Revisited) [4:02]
upcoming stuffs:
Life on the Salt Flats: Collection of songs, really. I might turn it into a psychadelic thing since I'm liking how the title track turned out.
and um
I dunno, lol. I'm sure something will come up soon enough.
Well this is just disheartening. Only one download in the past week and it was for The Beet Tape.
Honestly, I may just stop uploading my music. I will of course, keep making it. But it's pretty clear that nobody but myself, maybe Tre, and whoever keeps linking to "Space Colony Noir Film" (seriously, every few days the plays for that song will spike and I have no idea why) actually listens to the stuff.
edit: oh.
of course.
No, because that will just further motivate them to track me down.
I just deleted the entirety of Elsewhere (and Limestone Wall, but for different reasons) from my Bandcamp. If this continues I'm just going to axe the Bandcamp altogether, no one uses the thing anyway and I certainly don't need it for anything.
The album still exists, it is just not in publicly accessible form any longer.
That's what I mean by not needing my Bandcamp. I have all of my music on my laptop. I only made the bandcamp in the first place because I was under the silly delusion that other people actually enjoyed the songs I made.
I suppose I should know by now that 99% of the time people tell you they like what you do they're just trying to be polite.
I never said they were right.
Frankly, I don't even know what they're saying. I never follow the links and see no reason to do so.
Well, I suppose that's good.
I put that out in 2009, man. It fucking sucked, too.
See this is what I mean. If people like any of my music it's a handful of tracks I don't even like anymore. In the case of Desert Burner...I don't even know if I have it any more. I've gotten a new computer since then.
And frankly, that entire mixtape was me slowing obscure Santa Fe band New Mexicoe way, way down and that was about it. I don't even like Desert Burner anymore. I like Kassettenacht way more, and no one has ever even heard that, I re-used the samples from it on this last album for a reason.
(this is at lazuli)
the problem i have with a lot of your music is it just sounds like you've taken something and put a beat over it, it just lacks a lot of cohesion. and i often feel the beats are lacking something too. they just sound kinda flat. it's like you're trying to get the sound of acoustic drums out of electronic stuff and it's just not working for me (whether you're trying to do that or not - it sounds that way). sometimes there are timing issues with the beats too, or between the beats and the samples + stuff over it. i mean i'm listening to the new album now and the only bits that have really held me are a little bit that lasted about three seconds right towards the end of 'The Monolith' and the first few seconds of 'Lightwave' where it looked like the beats would be a bit better
my favourite song so far has been the intermission and i dunno what that says about the album at all
i also feel like you were going for a spacey atmosphere but for the most part i havent really felt that, all i can tell is that you've used synths and samples from spacey sources but it doesnt go together into a whole
i am the 1%
and while some of your work isn't my cuppa tea I do really like other parts of it and I can tell it's something you enjoy, even if you might not realize it yet.
besides, I've heard worse. everything from my album that wasn't Waffles or Anorak Ave. for one.
Well regarding the drums, I'm not sure what exactly you mean, nor what I could do about that. The majority of my percussion is sampled from songs where actual drums are used. Though some of it is clipped from a sample folder I have.
And it is less that I was going for a spacey atmosphere and more that I felt it was spacey. I suppose I have rather vague ideas of what constitutes spaciness, but I tend to mentally file my music into one of a few categories and that is one of them.
Not sure what to do about timing issues either, but I suppose I've never been good with that.
As for liking The Intermission, that is probably the piece that I spent the least amount of time on. See, that's something that's always bothered me. There is a massive disconnect between the time I spend on something and how good it turns out (or is percieved as turning out, anyway).
Anyway. I also just finished this, which I was talking about in the heap earlier. Nominally, the second part of the song is for me. But frankly I don't think I'll be giving Minerva any vocal contributions.
I know you did. Point is, I don't.
If you like DB, go give New Mexicoe's Flood Music and Parahelion's albums a listen. The vast majority of that tape is just those two things slowed down.
yeah, they sound like samples of real drums. that's what i mean, they sound like samples trying to masquerade as someone playing actual drums. perhaps you just need better drum samples because i didnt like most of the ones on that album at all
like, the samples you used on that Lightskull Army track are way way better. i like this a lot more than anything off the spacey album. it all goes together way better
I do admittedly tend to get lazy with the sampling, at least lately I do. Simply because sampling things "by hand" (for lack of a better term) just takes forever.
I also did a sort-of remix of that same track I just posted. I should upload that for comparison purposes. It's mostly just slowing down and screwing with a few things, but yeah.
also LOL, I forgot to credit the Stevie Wonder samples on that track.
For the record they are the only reason the entire first half isn't just drums.
Here's the re-work. Only a few small changes were made, tbh.
edit: That's in a technical sense. It sounds pretty different, though it's not too difficult to pick out the original in it, I don't think.
You can certainly do that.
Also, I really wouldn't listen to anything older than How've You Been? it's not really indicative of the direction I'm going in/trying to go in.
Well, I would certainly like to do that (indeed, before I switched to FL Studio, I was, which is why I think a lot of people like Beet Tape better than the more recent stuff) but ah, there is a technical problem in that my copy of FL has not yet had a key purchased, which limits my ability to go back and edit tracks. If you aren't familiar with FL Studio, it doesn't let you re-open old tracks unless you've bought the full version.
Honestly I should probably do that sometime soon now that I actually have the money to do so. Thank you for reminding me.
Truth be told I've had much the same thoughts about How've You Been? myself.
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Where
I must hear it
^^ only .wav files. It doesn't like mp3 files for some reason.
Even if I could (and yes, I can) it wouldn't really help.
I know what you're trying to get at, I think. But I also don't think it'd work.
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Man, I forgot how....weird this album is.
Ah, that is a good idea, actually.
Huh...perhaps I could do that with the entirety of TTIAM. It's long been my favorite of my early albums, it's a collection of sometimes rather creepy nonsense ("What about Pip? Did you forget her? What did you see? What was it that made you lose your mind?" etc. and that's just the first track) that I mostly just hacked together from stuff I found on Youtube, a good deal of that, I never even actually watched. It's the same process that made Desert Burner, but with enough sources that it's not a total rip of anything like DB was.
-----------------------------
1. Intro (feat. The Reddy Record for Boys)
2. Super Eight Soul
3. Fonekahl
4. Desert Radio No. 1
5. Night Radio No. 6
6. Pursued/Kassettenacht II
7. Mountain High
8. Super Eight Soul, Part II
9. Spires
10. Night Radio No. 9 (Dialed-out Mix)
11. A Jazzy Mess (Origin Mix)
12. Interlude
13. Interlude No. 2
14. Drugstore Cowboy (Feel the R.A.I.N.)
15. Broadcast '71
16. Filled-in Circles
17. Desert Radio No. 12 / Night Radio No. 16
18. Intelligent Dementia Music
19. Runs Like Clockwork
20. Neolithic Man
21. Sound Collage #2 (Said)
22. Sound Collage #3 (Manifestations)
23. Sound Collage #1
some memories right har.
I was even worse at naming things then than I am now.
IT'S A QUALITY, NONSTICK PAN
if I can say anything positive about 15 year old music-making me, it's that I just did not give a fuck about anything.
Also I forgot about the JAMS sample on the interlude tracks. "There ya go man, just keep as cool as you can. Face piles of trials with smiles. It riles them to believe that you perceive the web they weave. So keep on thinkin' free."