Song: The Balad of Bruce

Greg Whitehead - The Ballad Of Bruce by GWGumby

Gather 'round and listen to the tale of Bruce "Ash" Campbell and his battle against the Army of Darkness. Bruce has to struggle against his complicated problems when all he wants is just to take some time off to enjoy the simpler things in life.

This synthpop song was inspired by the events of "The Army of Darkness" coupled with the musical stylings of some of my favorite late 80s synth-based bands such as Underworld (mk 1), Stan Ridgeway, and even a little Martini Ranch. It also includes the debut of my first acoustic instrument, the jaw-harp.

The song started out as a synth improv a couple months ago, just some playing around to see if anything could emerge. Initially it was just bass and rhythm. I had a melody more or less in mind, but needed to find some lyrical inspiration. I'm not sure what made me decide to couple the music with "Army of Darkness," but right when the first line came to mind, "Crash land on a real long day," the idea of Ash literally falling from the sky and crashing onto the ground coupled itself to the music and that's when I knew I had a story to work with.

So next I recorded some initial vocals and a few synth bits. My initial idea was to do something akin to one of my all-time favorite bands, Underworld. Or, more specifically, Underworld Mk 1--the late 80's version of the techno band when they were more Alternative Synthpop closer to INXS. The chorus and overall rhythm is definitely a cross between two of my favorite songs of theirs, "Underneath the Radar" and "Stand Up." Also, the deeper vocals and a bit of the vocoder harmony hearkens back to them as well.

From this point I fumbled around trying to figure out where to go next. Playing around with different sounds, eventually I found that the more plunky, banjo-like sounds really worked with the music. I hadn't intended to go with the country jamboree-style feeling initially, but the idea amused me. It reminded me a bit of some other synth-pop-country crossovers like "Reach" from Martini Ranch and a lot of Stan Ridgeway's stuff such as "Camouflage" and "Goin' Southbound." So I pushed the song in that direction, adding the banjo, jaw harp, and some extra ambient noises to make it feel like it was being sung/performed around a campfire.

All the synth sounds came from the Korg M3, Roland JV-1080, and Roland FP-9 digital piano.

I now have enough music to put together an album. This will be the final song to flesh out a full release. Unless I get some golden inspiration in the next few weeks that forces itself onto the album. I'm not sure how I'm going to publish/release it. I'm still researching that part.

The video is basically a slideshow of screencaps from Army of Darkness that more or less match the lyrics of the song, especially the verse portions.

Song: Turn Your Back On The World

Greg Whitehead - Turn Your Back On The World by GWGumby
"Turn Your Back On The World" is an instrumental piece that I started writing on the piano over 15 years ago. I wrote it intending it to eventually turn into a full song, but never having the capability to do so (until recently), it eventually evolved into a solo piano piece. Now I've finally taken that piano piece and added synthesizer, drums, and other various noises to make it into something a bit bigger and more exciting.

This piece is inspired by instrumental 70s rock songs by artists such as Genesis, Elton John, ELO, ELP, and Yes mixed with more modern artists such as Air, Roger Joseph Manning Jr., and Chateau Marmont.

The sounds on this song come from my digital piano, the Korg R3, and the Roland JV-1080 plus a nice acoustic-sounding drum plug-in.

Once again, here's a static YouTube video alternative.

Song: Today's The Day

Greg Whitehead - Today's The Day by GWGumby
Here's my most recent track for the new year of 2011. It's a little happy spacey synthpop song called "Today's The Day." There's no real story or background behind the song, it's just some ideas and musical phrases that organically emerged while playing around on my musical equipment that sort of capture the hopeful feeling of entering a new year with a sci-fi slant.

I tend to struggle with lyrics maybe coming up with one or two ideas quickly and then struggling to stretch it out to a full song. This song, though, seemed simple enough that I felt like the few ideas that came first were enough to sustain the rest of the song. I wanted the journey to be through the music and harmonies rather than the lyrics, hence the repetition or the lyrics.

While I was making this song, I was thinking it would be a song my wife would really like: a little softer, a little dreamier, and full of arpeggios (she likes those!) She did like it. She says when she hears the line "And when you see us flying overhead" that she pictures people with their arms outstretched flying through the air. So that inspired some of the image for the YouTube video below.

As always, the song was written and performed by me using my standard equipment. All synth sounds in this one come from the Korg R3. The rest from my piano and from plug-ins to my recording software.

Song: My Dreams

Greg Whitehead - My Dreams by GWGumby
Here's one of the things I did over my Christmas vacation. I've got a few more songs in the queue and I'm hoping sometime this year to collect them together and turn them all into an album.

Anyway, this song is called "My Dreams." Once again written, recorded, and sung by me (Greg). The inspiration and idea behind this song came from watching shows like "American Idol" where the people there are so convinced that their dreams of fame and fortune are the most important thing in the world and they'll do anything to make them come true. From that point of view, this song sort of emerged gradually throughout the year in my head and until I finally recorded it last week.

All synth sounds come from the Korg R3. Piano came from my digital piano, and drums from a software plug-in.

Here's the static YouTube video of the same song.

Song: Saturday Night

Greg Whitehead - Saturday Night by GWGumby

Sometimes when I write a song, I get a musical idea and then try to marry it to a lyrical idea. Sometimes it's the other way around. Then sometimes they come at the same time, as with this song. The main line "Don't Go To Bed on a Saturday Night" along with the melody came at once. Then it sat and percolated in my brain for a long time. I liked the line, I liked the melody, but I had no idea why someone wouldn't go to bed on a Saturday night and why I should be telling them not to. So I tried to find other lyrics, but by then the line was so embedded with the melody, I couldn't make anything else work. So I went with it, and here's the result. Basically, it's a song about going out to have fun once in a while. Not very deep, but there you go.

As usual, "Saturday Night" was written, performed, sung and recorded by me.  This one is a bit less synthy than most of my other songs. I used my Roland digital piano for the main piano accompaniment and the electric bass sound as well. The organ sound was from a patch on my classic keyboard expansion card in the JV-1080. The slightly natural sounding drum was from a virtual plug-in instrument on my recording software. That just leaves a few flourishes and synth solo from the Korg R3. I added a bunch of post-effects to the solo which makes it nearly sound like a guitar, but it's all synth.

Here's a YouTube Video with the typical static image:

Song: Video Life

Greg Whitehead - Video Life by GWGumby
Yeah, I know. It's been a while. I haven't given up, I've just had other things to focus on this past year. I took a break after the last song I finished and then found myself hyper-concentrating on a quest to get myself into shape. I've lost 50 pounds so far this year, which has forced me to put some other hobbies on the back burner for a little bit. I just recently re-set up all my equipment in another room and finally sat down to try working on some ideas and somehow this song erupted out in less than 4 days. My hope is to finish a few more before the end of the year with the various holiday breaks coming up.

"Video Life" was sparked by my browsing through the back log of Netflix's "Watch Instantly" section. Once you get past the first few pages of semi-recognizable movies, you eventually start finding some really weird stuff. One title that stood out to me was a horror movie called "The Video Dead."  My mind kind of started riffing on the idea of video coming to life like what's being presented here or in the movie "The Ring."  However, not wanting to dwell on the horror aspect, I switched "Dead" to its natural opposite "Life."  Somehow "Video Life" had a great ring to it.  It brought me back to the 80s with the start of MTV and video shows like "Friday Night Video," and songs like "Video Killed the Radio Star" and "Living On Video."  So now with bands like The Buggles and Devo in mind (with their similar in rhythm song "It's a Beautiful World") I started sketching out the loose concept of someone from the 80s who has made a video that's going to premiere on a show called "Video Life," and how the whole world is now moving to video.  There's also some shades of today's world with reality TV and YouTube and how easy it is to capture and share your life through video.

Like the rest of my songs, "Video Life" was written, performed, sung, and recorded all by me using my usual equipment, the Korg R3 and Roland JV-1080.  (As much as I talked up the iPhone in my last post 11 months ago, it was not used on this particular track.)

The YouTube video is just a still photo. I am fully aware of the irony of writing a song all about video and then posting a static image with it instead. I hope you can all forgive me.

Song: Don't Want A Love Song

Greg Whitehead - Don't Want A Love Song by GWGumby

"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.

Song: Ordinary Day

Greg Whitehead - Ordinary Day by GWGumby

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:


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Song: Run For Your Life

I just finished my sixth song at the end of October, "Run For Your Life" -- an ode to a failed supervillain.
Greg Whitehead - Run For Your Life by GWGumby

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.

Song: Another Fine Mess

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.

However, I'm still making music and here's the latest piece:
Greg Whitehead - Another Fine Mess by GWGumby

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.

Song: "A Fan's Lament"

Here's my latest song entitled "A Fan's Lament."

Greg Whitehead - A Fan's Lament by GWGumby

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.

New Song: Infinite In Between

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.

Greg Whitehead - Infinite In Between by GWGumby

Song: Marble Madness Medley

While I'm on a video making kick, I made this for my Marble Madness Medley which I shared early on in this post:


I'm also experimenting with a site called SoundCloud for hosting/streaming music. You should be able to both listen to and download the song through this widget.

GWGumby - Marble Madness Medley by GWGumby

Song: "Black Rock"

Here's my first fully original song that I put together with all my new equipment. The main synth sounds are almost all Korg R3. Some of the sounds are presets, most of the rest are either programmed from scratch or modified from the preset sounds. The drums come from the Roland JV-1080 as well as one or two minor synth sounds.

I've been playing around with the main theme for several months now, to the point that my 7 year old son has learned it and plays it regularly when he is on the keyboard. After coming up with the theme, I started to think of lyrics. Somehow after recently watching the terrible (and wonderful) movie "Troll 2" the idea of this poor dead ghost of a grandfather being forced to appear to his grandson to help him save his inept family from being eaten by goblins (not trolls despite the title) was on my mind and inspired the lyrics. They are only loosely based on the story, but since it was a source of inspiration, I included random images from the movie in the YouTube video. Feel free to ignore the video and just listen instead.

A link to the mp3 itself can be found here:

• Greg Whitehead - Black Rock.mp3
  

Finally, I have a lot of experience with writing music, and some of recording, but I have little-to-no experience mixing. So if anyone out there who sees this and has any comments to share in helping with getting a better final mix, I'd love to hear it.

Korg R3 Patches: Welsh's Recipes

My third post on this blog was talking about a book called "Welsh's Synthesizer Cookbook." It describes the basics of subtractive synthesis and then at the end it contains 101 or so recipes or patches for various sounds that can be built with a simple 2 oscillator synthesizer. The recipes are extremely generic so that they can be programmed into almost any synthesizer and I implemented them all for the Korg R3.

I've uploaded the bank and have placed it here. It's also available at the Korg forums in the R3 section found here. This file can be uploaded to the R3 through the R3 sound editor software.

For the most part, these patches generally approximate acoustic instruments such as horns, strings, and drums, though there are a few more exotic synth-like sounds near the end of the bank. The recipes are generally based on a simple, generic 2-oscillator synthesizer with a single LFO and no effects. I programmed them as closely as I could from the recipes, though I occasionally modified a sound or two to attempt to sweeten it up a little based on the R3's capabilities. The values in the recipes didn't always directly correlate to the 0-127 input values of the Korg R3, so much of the programming was done through dial approximation and by ear with no audio examples to build to. Hopefully I was able to get close to what the original programmer intended.

I'll be the first to admit some of these patches sound awful. For example, the piano patch is rather pitiful and I have no idea what the timpani is trying to do. Still, it was a valuable learning experience for me as someone who had never programmed a sound three months before doing these and hopefully these patches will serve as a jumping off point to better sounds in the future.

Lots of News; Early Birthday!

In my last post, I wrote about my old Roland XP-50, which I regretted selling. My wife had asked me to start looking for potential birthday presents for next month, so I was searching for synthesizers on Craigslist and found someone selling a Roland JV-1080 synthesizer rack module for a really good price. The JV-1080 is essentially the same as the XP-50, minus the sequencer and keyboard but with extra expansion card slots and a few more audio-outs. I couldn't let a deal like that pass by, so last weekend we drove out to Plano to buy it and bring it home. The seller was also selling some expansion cards, only one of which I was at all interested in, the "Experience" card (SR-JV80-99) which is sort of a sampler card with some extra piano, orchestral, and synth-style sounds.

On the way home from picking up the synth module, we stopped at a music store to pick up an extra MIDI cable to control the module with, and we also decided to get a synth stand with a second tier addition. So now I have my Korg R3 and the new JV-1080 on a double-decker stand. I don't think it will work to keep them like this permanently, but it will do for the moment.
Before we picked up the synthesizer, we actually made another stop to pick up a package from FedEx. It was my Fast Track USB sent back from M-Audio. I mentioned a couple posts ago that it had broken. When I opened the box, I discovered they had sent me a brand new model. It looks different, I think the buttons are different, and it even comes with different software. So that was a bit surprising.

I've spent the rest of the weekend and this week just playing with the JV-1080 and connecting and disconnecting various cords and wires for audio, MIDI, and computer input. I think I've got things more or less to a point where I can start trying to make some music soon. So here's my semi-annotated current set-up:


To follow up with my previous Fast Track humming problems, I set things up with this new model and discovered that I'm still getting the same humming problems. However, I tried something new. I routed my MIDI cables through the JV, in the R3 and then back to the computer. Doing this eliminated the hum! In some of my tests, it still seemed like I was getting some audio looping this way, e.g. the metronome click faintly recording to the track; however I think I can get around that by either recording live without the MIDI cables connected, or recording MIDI first, and then turning off all accompanying tracks when I want to capture the final audio.

Anyways, I hope to be making some music soon! I'll post some more specifics on the Roland JV-1080 soon.

Creating a Sound: Tom Sawyer

So I've been learning about how to make sounds. I've been listening to songs trying to pick apart the sounds in my mind and trying to figure out how I might recreate them on my synthesizers. I figured I'd start with one of the most famous synth sounds of all time, the opening growl sound at the beginning of Rush's "Tom Sawyer":


I had no idea how to make that noise despite all the different books and tutorials I'd seen so far. So I did some searching and found this page that talks about recreating the sound:
Tom Sawyer Growl Sound

There's quite a long discussion on what was used to make the original sound, and some discussion on how to re-create the sound. From there I made my first attempt to recreate the sound. It really sounded awful compared to the original sound.

TomSawyerTake1.mp3

I think I ended up passing the sound through both a high and low pass filter essentially removing most of the sound and getting nothing but the growling noise. I had to add a second sound to try to add the low E back into the sound.

After studying the write-up on the page again, I went back and started again. The page talked about modulating Oscillator 1 with Oscillator 2. I attempted that by using the R3's Cross Modulation feature.

TomSawyerTake2.mp3

This still ended up more of a hiss than a growl.

So I went back and looked some more. He talked about Rush using the Oberheim OB-X synthesizer. I found that there's a virtual version of the classic synthsizer here:
Sonic Projects OPX

I'll post more about that synth later, but using that plug-in I could see how they programmed that particular patch more carefully and attempt to recreate it on the R3. Here's the Tom Sawyer patch on the virtual Oberheim:

TomSawyerOPX.mp3


So once again I went back to start over. This time I tried to match the settings of the OP-X virtual synth with my R3 editor. The biggest difference this time was this time setting the patch to monophonic with 4 unison voices. The Oberheim has 6 which gives it a slightly more powerful sound, I believe. And then adding a slight LFO while holding out the sound.

TomSawyerTake3.mp3

It's still not completely right, but much closer to the original sound. It's amazing how just tweaking one or two little parameters can have a major effect on the sound which is why it's hard to get it completely accurate.

And just for fun, I tried to recreate it on my Korg DS-10 as well, this time just by ear.

TomSawyerDS.mp3

Yikes.

Some Musical Experiments

So here are a few quick musical kernels or experiments from playing with my new equipment. Most of these are 10 - 30 seconds at most. They are just me jotting down some ideas. So could be expanded to full songs later on, and some are just for me to try out some various tools and techniques.

Experiment 1: This was mainly to test setting up MIDI tracks, audio tracks, and multiple tracks in Sonar. So it's a lot of noise but uses the R3 for synth and vocoder, some microphone vocals, a drum track within Sonar, and some random effects. It also uses the R3's appegiator and making sure I can synth Sonar's MIDI clock with my synthesizer. So it's a lot for just 10 seconds of audio mess.


Experiment 2: 12-29-08 take 1. This is capturing a piano riff I was playing with a few days earlier. It's also an attempt and playing with some dials while recording MIDI playback and some reverb effects on the drum.


Experiment 3: 12-29-08 take 2. This is me playing with the vocodor through the arppegiator to use my voice as a rhythm track.


Experiment 4: 01-04-09. I honestly have no idea what I was doing here. It's only been a few weeks, but I barely remember doing this.


Experiment 5: 01-11-09. I had the rhythm and bass in my head before sitting down to do this. I couldn't find anything good for the melody, so I'm pretty sure I created the lead sound on my own to fill in until I flesh it out further.


Experiment 6: 01-18-09. Another one where I had the tune in my head before adding other things to it. I wasn't sure if I wanted the melody here to be a bass line or a melody line. So right now it's a deep sound that could go either way.


And here's the first full length track that I more-or-less completely finished. Other than the drums, it comes almost completely from factory setting sounds on the R3. I created one or two sounds to fill in a few gaps. This is a medley of the first three levels of the 80s arcade game, "Marble Madness," one of the first game soundtracks that I remember that used an analog synthesizer soundtrack.


Direct links to the files:
Experiment 1
Experiment 2
Experiment 3
Experiment 4
Experiment 5
Experiment 6
Marble Madness Medley

Korg R3 Resources

Here's some stuff I've found for the Korg R3:

• Korg's Official Site
  - All the marketing stuff as well as support. Also links to manual and sound library software.
  
• Korg R-3 Yahoo Group - A little slow, but there's a great library of patches contributed from the group.
• YouTube official overview video:
  
• Some audio clips showing off the R3

Blog Introduction

Hello everyone. I'm a keyboard player. I've been playing piano since the age of 6 or 7, taking formal lessons until I was 16. At that time I got my first keyboard, an awful Casio thing that I didn't know wasn't very good. Since then I've had many other better synthesizers and keyboards that I've used to create music. Eventually I sold most of them and until recently only owned a digital piano.

One thing I've never done in over 18 years of playing with synthesizers is actually learn about the fundamentals of electronic music and synthesis. I've never learned how to create my own sounds or how those sounds are produced.

In late 2008, my family and I casually stopped into a music store/guitar center while we were waiting for a particularly long haircut queue. I found a cool little keyboard with a built in microphone/vocoder. It was the Korg R3 (pictured above). That few minutes of playtime I had with it inspired my wife to find one for me for Christmas. In anticipation of receiving the synthesizer, I started to look more into it by reading reviews and watching YouTube clips. I realized that this synth was actually a lot cooler than just a keyboard with a microphone. And suddenly I realized that if I was going to get any real use out of it, I'd better learn as much as I can.

That has currently opened a Pandora's Box for me as I've recently begun learning more about things like subtractive synthesis, LFOs, Oscillators, and other elements of classic analog synthesizers. It's captured my attention and I decided to create this blog as a sort of journal as well as a gathering place for me to put all the great information I'm learning about synthesizers. So this blog is mainly for me, but maybe it will help others who are looking for similar information to assist them in learning about synthesizers.