[track] idm suite from wasabi

i'm dancing
dancing, i tell you

wait the drums cut out and i'm left drifting through an asteroid belt on the solar wind

ok, drums are back and the warp drive's been repaired and humming

and my gosh, a French ambulance
where'd that come from?

definitely a world unto itself
always a pleasure to visit

Hello Gourdo,

Liked it very much. The textures were reminiscent of the Polygon Window album (one of Richard James' alter egos from the early 90s), a personal favourite of mine. Great stuff, with and without the drums. That's a fearsome bass rumble around the 5:10 mark. What was responsible for that, if you don't mind my asking?

ben

Aha - skrewell - unpredictable indeed.

pretty wicked sounding stuff. very evolving. I think I like this side project better than ekajati..eaiser on the ears....
great stuff.

This track makes me feel like I'm among some real talent here - and not just because of sound selection and sequencing (and some Reaktor instruments even have that going on already) - but rather for the assembly of component pieces into an artifact that doesn't resemble any component piece, individually. This soundscape moves through very obvious sections, some of which recur, to meet a very (tragic?) end. Well, there is that ambulance sound - so what was the precursor? That's the beauty of sound - ultimately the movie is in each listener's head. It would be interesting to cull these "daydreams" for comparitive sake.

Very well done!

KEv

thanks for the feedback kev and eric. nice to hear these things; i'm learn a lot about my approach from these comments, if that makes any sense.

ORIGINAL: elektroniqa

...not just because of sound selection and sequencing (and some Reaktor instruments even have that going on already) - but rather for the assembly of component pieces into an artifact that doesn't resemble any component piece, individually.

isn't that the devil with reaktor? it does so much, i feel like i must assmble things carefully because otherwise i'm just a puppet of the instrument designers. i've started doing my own synths because then i can call that slab of sound that eminates from pushing a single key my own.

howdy hypo,

i get a lot of my structural ideas from keith jarrett's 1970's quartets, bill frisell, paul bley, and electric miles davis, so it shouldn't be too surprising that you're hearing some familiar themes. all of my pieces really do have submerged harmonic material and are in a key (i think this is mostly in f dorian, but don't hold me to that, because i'm away from my computer and don't have perfect pitch to check for certain). i don't really do atonal very often (i like atonal music, but i almost never do it). there's even a pretty clear time signature to this one; it's 100bpm, and goes from 12/8 to 4/4 (i'm sure you can tell). so, it's not really that weird. at least, it isn't to my ears.

i really appreciate that will. the odd thing is, i am sort of an aborted product of that same world. i played jazz for a few years in college and took classical piano for about 8 years in total, and never really got that good at either one. i do think that background helps me a lot, because i use a lot of techniques that i picked up in that training.

odd, off topic thought--i'm taking guitar lessons. recently i sat down and figured out voicings for all the major, minor and dominant chords around the circle of 5ths; i know this stuff on the piano fairly well and thought i'd impress my teacher by showing that i could do all that figuring after just a couple weeks of lessons. when i brought it in he (very politely) said that the important thing for me was to just improvise on major scales for at least a year, and not use complex theory until i mastered the fundamentals to a point that they were instinctive. that really startled me at first, because i thought, "wait, i'm a jazz guy, i do weird chords and funky dissonance, that's my thing," but the more i thought about it, the more i realize it's much better to get down those core things in my writing first. this piece is really just a few very simple ideas (fairly simple moving pads in absynth, a few basic drum grooves, and some sequenced noise) chained together. i'm putting myself on a "no new synths" rule until i really get good at the ones i'm using already.

i should have mentioned, he did give me a really good system for drop two voicings and told me i should stick with slowly going through all the maj7, dom7, and min7 voicings around the circle of fifths in all four inversions, one chord at a time. so it's not like he wasn't saying i shouldn't learn these things, but he said i should work on one thing at a time and get good at that before jumping around to whatever new theory challenge arises. did i mention that i also had figured out block chords in fourths, diminished scales, and whole tone scales? it will be useful at some point, but if i can't improvise a good simple melody, then i'm not going to have much use for these weird-ass scales. i wonder sometimes if theory is a bit of a crutch for me. hmmm...

nashville notation? i'm not familiar with that term. what does it mean?

i've played minor and major modes so much on the piano i don't even think of them in those terms anymore. if you say, give me the basic ii(m7)-V(alt)7 turnaround in G minor it's just a time-unchanging picture of Amin7(b5) and a D7 built mostly around an Ab7 chord (that's the altered-tritone substitution) and sound--no conscious thought involved. it's moved from being procedural knowledge (which is very flexible, but slow) to declarative knowledge. it's just sorta there in one piece, like the color blue. and it's something every single first year student at berklee or north texas can do far faster than i can, which is humbling for me. i still have a lot to learn about those minor modes. i can't truck through inversions at a brisk tempo and create that constant flow of interesting chord voicings that you hear from the heavy hitting jazz cats.

ORIGINAL: wrench45us
speaking of strange, I have some sort of mental block and get very lost when i get about 2/3 through the cycle and chords repeat -- ex. D# whoa looks a lot like E flat, but no it's with sharps
and this working with minor modes is also a bit akimbo VI becomes I, so what was I is now III -- how's that work in your Nashville notation?

Sorry Gourd, here I go hijacking again...

Wrench,

With all due respect to the city of Nashville, throw that crap out. If you wanna learn theory, learn theory.

Here's a term you've heard that we're gonna use here: Diatonic. When I talk about playing something "diatonically", it means play within the given key signature and do not change any of the notes outside of the rules of the key signature. OK??

You're theory books probably cover this, but try to start thinking of this:

Start here: Upper case and lower case Roman Numerals --- OK?

Upper case Roman = major, lower case Roman = minor. So, if you were to play diatonic triads in ANY MAJOR KEY, it looks like this:

I, ii, iii, IV, V, vi, vii(o)

-> -> -> the "o" is for the "degree" symbol, meaning diminished, and since the vii chord diatonically is diminished, it is
neither major nor minor, thus the lower case.

So, in your book when you said the "VI becomes I", it's because you've now gone from the Major key to its relative Minor key.
In other words, you're happily playing along in C major, then all of a sudden it's A minor. Well, look at those Roman numerals
written above. Once again, in C major if you count, you'll see that the vi chord is actually Aminor, right??? And it's properly
notated with a small Roman numeral. So what is actually happening is instead of being in C major with the Cmaj chord being I,
now you're in the key of A minor with the Amin chord being "i" (small Roman=minor, right??). And, to further confuse the issue, diatonically in a MINOR key, the III chord actually IS major (in this example, C major). Make sense??

The reason things are, as your wrote, D# instead of Eb is diatonically there are some rules you must follow. If you're in the key of Ab, and you're diatonically playing the triads just like the Roman numerals say above, the ii chord, for instance, is going to be: Bb, Db, F. OK, now if for some reason every bone in your body is screaming at that you would rather have the Db be a C# I can understand. But it breaks the rules, ya see?? In this example the key of Ab calls for that note to be a Db, not a C#, so no matter how much you wish you could call that note a C#, it just IS NOT, according to traditional theory rules.

Remember "Furled" when I told you the Dbminor chord was Db, Ab, Fb??? Well, that's why, within the constraints of the key you can't call the Fb an "E", even though it looks like, smells like and tastes like an "E". See? Rules you must follow.

Enough, probably confused the crap out of you already.

WC

ORIGINAL: wrench45us
but what about my dream of playing a pedal steel preset using Absynth 3 at a Nashville session ?

Then you're on your own there my friend.



Say hi to Edgar Meyer when you're in Nashville, OK??

WC

EDIT: Sorry Gourd, this is serious hijacking. But hey, at least we keep bumping your piece!

I finally got a chance to look at this. IT's AMAZING!

Great job.

Care to know what I think, Gourd?


























I'm dumbfounded. This isnt IDM.

IS IT?

Its a bit random but really doesnt have that "play whatever happens" thing that bugs me about most IDM. This is mood music. This is ambient trance!!
Good stuff! REALLY LOVE THE WORK AT 3:00.
Man thats just good bit crushin!

Reminds me of something I heard on the Passengers CD (you know, Eno and U2).

Yeah...more like this, Gourd! More like this!! You really got the tension and release going on this. A real technohypnotic soundscape!

why not Triscuit?
Trance is anything characterized by hypnotic and melodic qualities, and typically involves repeating rhythmic patterns added over an appropriate length of time as a track progressed, thus creating an effect of hypnotic trance.