Last November I got an early Christmas present, my new iPhone.
When the iPhone first came out, I wasn't entirely impressed. Sure you could call people and check your e-mail. But it wasn't until they started pushing the "apps" that I started to take an interest. Suddenly the iPhone's functionality was nearly limitless. And then I started to hear about people making music on their iPhone.
One of the earliest, and most amazing things I saw that finally made me want an iPhone was this:
This video showed someone using the iPhone as a breath-controller to play music. At 8:30 he plays an amazing concerto with three other versions of himself.
I realized that the iPhone's microphone, touch, and accelerometer inputs could all be added together to create brand new ways to create music. I now have a whole collection of music apps. From synthesizers and instruments, to drum machines and other percussion, to multi-track recorders, to general purpose music utilities.
The first app I purchased upon getting my iPhone was the Ocarina app for my son.
The next purchase was another app that made me yearn for an iPhone when I first saw it. "Ellatron" is a Mellotron emulator for the iPhone. Mellotrons were used by a lot of prog bands in the 60s-70s like Genesis, Yes, and Moody Blues.
As a keyboard player, I have tried several times, but have never been able to figure out how to play a guitar. So my next purchase was an app called "iShred" which is a pretty amazing electric guitar emulator with the ability to strum the strings via the touch screen. This has way more functionality than I know what to do with, but I've already started recording "guitar parts" on some of my own songs using this app and it sounds pretty good.
Here are just a few of the other apps I've purchased or downloaded:
megaSynth: an fairly deep analog synthesizer
GigDaddy: a multi-track recorder
I Am T-Pain: an app that autotunes your voice
Metronome: yes, a metronome
Wickifon: an synth with a very unique style button input
Magic Stave: an app that tells you what note you are singing or playing
I have a bunch of others that I've collected and still figuring out if I will ever have a practical use for them, and there are others I want to purchase when the time is right. All-in-all, I think the iPhone is really going to make for a great addition to my other instruments, both real and virtual.
My next few songs will probably end up featuring the iPhone in some form or other.
"Don't Want A Love Song" is my eighth song I recorded in 2009. I originally wrote this song in 1993 while in college. At that time I created a complete backing track for the song, but never had the ability to record the vocals. I used to perform this song acoustically in the mid-90's while I was in the band Piper Down. It was just me and my piano usually about mid-way through our set while the rest of the band took a break. I recorded a semi-live piano/vocal version of the song two years ago at the same time I recorded a bunch of other piano songs, but I've always yearned to go back and do it the way I originally imagined the song back in '93 with the full backing accompaniment plus harmonies.
The story behind this song is simple. I am not a big fan of sappy love songs. So I wrote a sappy love song called "Don't Want A Love Song." See, it's a sappy love song while simultaneously being about someone who doesn't want a love song. Confusing? Maybe. I thought it was clever.
The piano and harpsichord sounds from this song are recorded on my Roland digital piano. Most all other noises, except for maybe the bass and percussion, are done on my Korg R3.
I made my first animated video to go along with the music. Well, okay, it's four frames of animation repeated until the end, but that's all the amount of effort I want to go through for just a background delivery method for the song. I posted this on YouTube last week, and somehow it has been viewed more than any other video of mine already. Somehow the "Love Song" in the title has brought people to it.
I've finally finished my next song, "Ordinary Day" which is probably my least synth-y song I've done yet. This song is also unique in that it features guitar for the first time played by my brother, Jeffrey.
I actually wrote and started recording this song before my last two that I've published. I believe I started working on it in August. The melody came into my head in church, of all places. (Though I have often found creative inspiration whilst sitting on a pew.) Unfortunately I couldn't do anything about it other than repeat it in my head until I could get home and start playing it on the piano.
I have two initial tests/trials that a new song must pass before I start working on it seriously. The first is that it needs to be memorable. If a song idea comes to me and then I can't recall it later, it probably wasn't good enough to keep. Second, the melody/idea has to hold up to some type of basic instrument accompaniment. I've had plenty of song ideas that seem great in my head, but then when I work out the chords and basic structure on the piano it ends up much less interesting. I have several songs that exist in my head that I have yet to find an interesting accompaniment for, so they stop there.
Needless to say, this one passed both initial trials. I was able to remember the melody well enough to recall it to mind after church and the next day as well. Then playing it on the piano made it even more interesting. The next step was writing some lyrics.
I hate writing lyrics. I'm much more interested in the music--in melody and harmony and taking all these sounds and putting them together like a jigsaw puzzle until a nice picture emerges. Great instrumentals exist, but a song is much more memorable if it is sung.
The opening line came to me first "On an ordinary day..." but then what? I played with a few things until this idea came to mind of a guy who decides to stay home and watch life happen on his HDTV since it's just as good if not better than real life. I was inspired by artists such as Ben Folds, Blur, and ELO all of which often wrote song-stories about quirky people (see "Zak and Sara", "Country House", or "Horace Wimp").
Now I had some words and a melody. Time to start working out the arrangement. The song is a very power pop-style piece, inspired by some of my favorite bands like Jellyfish and Queen. I also had wanted to do something some day with my brother who is an amazingly talented guitarist. So I worked out some piano, drums, and vocals and then I emailed everything to him and asked if he would add some nice Brian May harmony guitars to it.
Jeffrey took it and then disappeared. He sent me one rough draft in September that sounded great. Then a final version in December. In the meantime I wrote four more songs (published two, recording two more at the moment).
After getting the guitar parts, I added them into the mix, added a bassline and a couple extra musical bits, mixed it all up and then poured out what you hear now.
I used my Roland digital piano for the piano parts. The Roland JV-1080 was used for the bass part. The Korg R3 was used for vocoder and minor string/synth flourishes. A VST was used for the drums. Any other non-vocal noise comes from my brother's guitar of which I have no information about to provide here.
Here's another static-image YouTube video with the song:
I worked on this song over much of October. The opening melody with harmonies came into my head one night and kept me from sleeping the rest of the night for fear of losing it. Meanwhile, I kept expanding the melody in my mind until I more or less had a song. I just had to write lyrics for it.
Originally, my mind was using the words "Reach for the sky"--which is what I sing right at the first. Eventually as I began playing with different words, "Reach for the sky" became "Run for your life." I imagined someone who had it good early on, but then failed, and that morphed into an idea of a very successful supervillain with intentions of world domination, who nearly succeeds, but then fails and has the entire world after him. So now with what little he has left, he has to leave and start his life over again on a cool space lair or moon base or something.
Once again, everything here was done by me. The bass and synth noises are all performed on the Korg R3. The piano was from my Roland FP-9 digital piano, with added post-effects to make it sound slightly more like a honkey-tonk or chorus hall style. The percussion is all through VST plug-ins in Cakewalk Sonar. I think it all works pretty well together. I'm particularly proud of the piano solo 2/3rds of the way into the song. I'm not always that great of a player, but I can always go back and fix things by hand; however other than some post-quantization (rhythm fixing), I did the entire solo in a single take.
I delayed posting this a few days until I could make an accompanying YouTube video. I was recently looking at viewing statistics, and even though the videos are usually an afterthought, more people view the video than listen to the widget from SoundCloud. So I figured I'd better keep making them. Once again, I just found a bunch of random images from the web to throw together that basically fit the song.
So it's been a couple months since I've posted a song or anything to the blog. I haven't forgotten about this, I just have been focusing on a few other things, like a giant jigsaw puzzle that took over our kitchen table for a few weeks.
I've actually been working on several songs over the past couple months. One is a Mannheim Steamroller/Fresh Aire-style instrumental piece that I'm currently stuck on. The other is a bit more power-pop oriented that I've currently handed over to my brother (probably the only one who reads this) to see if he can incorporate some guitar with it. Then there's this one which I think I wrote and recorded in record time of about one week.
Once again, the song is written and performed entirely by me (Greg). All sounds are from my Korg R3 and Roland JV-1080. The Roland is used mainly for percussion, and the Korg for nearly all the other synth sounds. There's no great story behind the song, just a riff that came into my head and lyrics that seemed to work with it.
The bass line comes from a Clav sound on the R3 run through some effects in Sonar. I had a lot of fun building up the percussion track using the JV-1080's drums. The only other sounds are a sync-sound the acts as a filler, and a brass sound. Both of those come from the R3, while the brass sound is actually doubled with another brass sound on the Roland.
While making the song several other similar songs often came to mind. It was not my attempt to emulate them through this piece, but I'm sure they were each influential: Yes - "Leave It", Jackdaw 4 - "Bipolar Diversions", Tommy Sparks - "She's Got Me Dancing", and The Fixx - "One Thing Leads To Another".
Once again I put the music to a YouTube video. All the images in the video are just random pictures found on the Internet of not-so-great situations. Again, there's not particular story behind the lyrics of the song. It's just words that seemed to fit as the melody came to mind.
When I first heard them on the radio I swear that time stood still. I bought their album, played it non-stop on my stereo, I couldn't get my fill.
But that was over three years ago. (Where did they go?) It seems that nobody knows.
Time moves on, Like a faded song.
I joined their fan club, hung up posters, Taped their videos. I was their biggest fan.
Stood in line all night for tickets to their sold out show. They were the greatest band.
That all seems like so long ago. (Where did they go?) I hear they're back in the studio.
And now time moves on Like a hopeful song.
(Chorus) There's a new album coming out! (Coming out, coming out) There's a new album coming out! (Coming out tomorrow) There's a new record coming out! (Coming out, out, out) There's a new album coming out And I'll be the first one in line.
When I first learned I'd hear my band once more I swear my heart stood still.
I counted down the days til I would hit the record store The news was such a thrill.
Now there's only one day to go, (Where did time go?) To resurrect them on my stereo.
And now time moves on Like a skipping song.
(Chorus)
(Solo)
(Chorus)
When I got home I put the record on I couldn't trust my ears.
It seems the band had changed their sound And left me all alone, It was my greatest fear.
What happened to the band that I know? (Where did they go?) And now we've got three more years to go.
This song is dedicated to Underworld, Ben Folds, Genesis, Blur, and any other band that I really liked but took forever between albums before finally releasing something terrible and/or changing their style altogether into something I couldn't stand. Or almost as bad, break up altogether before they can produce something else (like Jellyfish, Imperial Drag, Sugarbomb.)
Of my recent songs, the first song that I posted was meant to feature the synthy-sounds of my Korg R3. The second one featured a lot more of the Roland JV-1080. For this one, the foundation is pretty much all built around my Roland digital piano.
I had this idea of a song about the joy that I have felt at times discovering a new band. There have been times when I've heard a new song where everything just disappears, time almost literally stands still, and the song holds my entire focus. It happened the first time I heard Jellyfish's "The Ghost at Number One" on the radio. When it got to the bridge "Mrs. Lynne the fruit of your labor..." I had to stop everything I was doing and just focus in on the song.
So after buying the album and memorizing all the songs, focus eventually shifts attention to waiting for the follow up. It seems like in the 70s albums were released annually. In the 80s closer to bi-annually. Then the 90s to today, it seems like 3 years is the norm. That's a long time to wait for another 40 minutes of music. So the song goes from the love of a band from the first album, to the excited anticipation of an announced follow up. Then it falls apart at the end when the fan finally gets the album, listens to it, and finds out the album isn't what was expected.
This happened to me when Underworld went from a pop band to a weird repetitive techno band that I just couldn't stomach. It also happened after Ben Folds went solo and after a great first album followed it up with "Songs For Silverman" three years later. The album was so disappointing and completely unforgettable that it serves as the main inspiration for the thoughts behind this song. (Ben Fold's has since somewhat made up for it with his last album, "Way To Normal," again released three years later.) Blur was another band that I loved but then shifted their sound to this weirder, harsher, experimental stuff that held little of what I originally loved about the band. I didn't discover Genesis until their "Invisible Touch" album which they didn't follow up for another 5 years with "We Can't Dance" which was quite a let down. Then 6 years later they released another album without Phil Collins, "Calling All Stations" which was even worse. (I've since discovered all their great albums prior to "Invisible Touch" which made up for their weaker later albums.) So these are all the pieces of my history that inspired this particular song.
I've been playing around with the opening melody on the piano for over a year now and had the opening verse in my head for sometime as well. I also had the chorus "There's a new album coming out" in mind as well. Though when I played it on the piano it never seemed to join up with the softer, slower verse part. When I started to work on recording it, I figured I'd just go ahead and put the two parts together and see if they fit. I think in the finished product they actually fit well, both musically and thematically.
As I said earlier, the main foundation of this song is recorded from my digital piano. I used an electric piano sound for most of the verses and a regular piano sound for the rest. I've never been a big fan of electric piano, at least not the adult-contemporary DX7 tinkly piano from the 80s. But I've enjoyed the sound from Supertramp, Billy Joel, Queen, and others in the 70s. I probably would have prefered to try and use a Wurlitzer if I had a good emulation. As it is, I think this one sounds pretty good without sounding to schmaltzy.
After working out the piano parts, I used a soft-synth for some brush-style drumming and used another soft-synth for the rest of the drums. I did all the drums by hand, and only used one loop for some tambourine during the solo. The bass parts are from the JV-1080, and then most of the other synthy background stuff and solo were done on the Korg R3. These were all a combination of presets, modified sounds, and sounds I built from scratch.
The distorted bass in the chorus is a direct reference to Ben Folds Five. I also took some inspiration from the sound of this song from Josh Fix and Ambrosia.
For the record, I've never bought a vinyl record. I had a small turntable when I was a kid where I used to play a Smurf's album and a Muppet rendition of "Bremen Town Musicians." I grew up mainly on cassettes until adopting CDs in the early 90s. For the purposes of this song I mention records, since I don't know anyone who looks fondly back at cassette tapes. I do still love finding a great record store--even if I only buy CDs.
The video, which is a bit more animated than my last one, is filled with images of a sampling of various albums that I've really loved over the years -- until the last verse where it's all images of albums I am less fond of.
Where have I been most of this month? Working hard on my second and latest song: "Infinite In Between." Presented here both through a static-image YouTube video and Soundcloud player at the bottom. Both present the same song.
This song is sort of my trippy pseudo-Moody Blues-inspired psychedelic synth odyssey. I used the JV-1080 a bit more this time and the R3 as more dressing, save for the lead parts. I also added a bit more piano; most of it is single octaves, but there are a few sections where I played a bit more.
Lyrically, the song was sort of inspired by the idea introduced to me way back in 9th grade, I believe, about how between any two points there is a theoretical infinite distance in between. For example, if you stand on the opposite side of the room from a wall, then walk half way to the wall, then half way again, then again, and repeat over and over again, you would theoretically never, ever reach the wall. There is an infinite amount of half-ways to pass through before you ever touch the wall. I coupled that idea with the idea of the undefined state. The point between ON and OFF. What is that point exactly? At what point does something stop being on and start being off? And what about that moment, however infinitely small where you are in between those two states which isn't defined. What if you get stuck there? As a programmer, I often get stuck there and it usually leads to unwanted results, like the infamous PC blue screen of death.
Anyway, once again, I wrote, performed, and recorded everything you hear on the track. The JV-1080 was used for drums, saxophone, and bass. The R3 was used for leads, vocodor, and various effects. I used a lot of presets and very few original or modified sounds. So any R3 owners might recognize a few of the sounds.
The main lead theme of the song, which is played in the intro and during the chorus, came about because I was trying to find a way to get into the song and while I was improvising I found the lead riff. It's actually a coincidence that it fit in with the chorus as well, since it was never in my head when I was originally composing the song. The instrumental break is also an improvised addition that I didn't originally plan on. I was going to just repeat the verse again with some type of solo over the top, but when I sat down to do that, the brassy fanfare popped up in my mind and I built something to suit that. Then added the vocodor and Moody Blues-esque swelling background chorus as well. I liked it so much I had to go back and end the song on it. Originally it would have ended right at the "I am the infinite in between" line at the end of the chorus, but instead I went back to this and faded out. The repeating high piano octaves that sort of add rhythm to several sections of the song came about due to how I have my keyboards set up. I sit near the top of my piano with my computer in between that and my R3. So my left hand which usually accompanies low note octaves could only play on the top of the piano. I was using it to keep time while I played around with the opening lead riff. I didn't intend for it to be part of the song, but then my wife commented how she liked it while listening to an early version of the song, so I kept that in there and through the rest of the song.
I'm still learning about mixing and I've heard a lot about compression so I put compression on everything. I don't really understand what I'm doing and as I was making the song, everything sounded really muddy and unclear. I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong. Then I turned off the compression effect I had on the whole track and suddenly everything sprang to life. I really need to figure out what I'm doing there!
The final song clocks in at almost six minutes. I'm not sure how it got that long. It's really fairly straightforward pop arrangement of: intro, verse, bridge, chorus, verse, bridge, chorus, instrumental, chorus, outro.
Anything else? I'll probably post the lyrics in a separate post later on.
Enjoy and leave a comment here or on one of the embedded files if you like it.
I just found a series of synthesizer tutorials on YouTube called "Synthesizer Boot Camp" by Simon Cann. Mr. Cann is the author of "How To Make A Noise" which I posted about earlier. Like his book, it's full of a lot of good information, though I've seen it done better and more clearly elsewhere.
This is a journal of my attempt to learn more about synthesizers and electronic music as well as a place to gather and sort all the things I'm finding on the web.
Last November I got an early Christmas present, my new iPhone.
The first app I purchased upon getting my iPhone was the Ocarina app for my son.
The next purchase was another app that made me yearn for an iPhone when I first saw it. "Ellatron" is a Mellotron emulator for the iPhone. Mellotrons were used by a lot of prog bands in the 60s-70s like Genesis, Yes, and Moody Blues.
As a keyboard player, I have tried several times, but have never been able to figure out how to play a guitar. So my next purchase was an app called "iShred" which is a pretty amazing electric guitar emulator with the ability to strum the strings via the touch screen. This has way more functionality than I know what to do with, but I've already started recording "guitar parts" on some of my own songs using this app and it sounds pretty good.