Hey All
Hey Everyone,
Being in a mega hurry last night meant no blogging.
But here's the ten penny tour of my last 48 Hours:
While killing time waiting for the Sopranos to come on, I fired up the Typing Tutor to try to get my digits moving faster. After an hour that got old, so I started messing with Cubase, and by complete accident I created a snippet that sounded great when looped. Sort of like it had been fed through some kind of Ring Modulator or something.
So I took this tiny slice, mapped it onto a keyboard in Halion and then made up a four bar rhythmic loop, four on the floor with accent note on the two and the four, plus a triplet short note inserted here and there, just to give it a swing. The four bars ended in some kind of swinging bass turnaround.
So far so good.
By the second Sopranos episode of the night (channel four has been repeating them two at a time), I had taken the four bar loop and turned it into an eight bar loop, with a hemi-demi-semi-triplet-quaver roll in the eighth bar.
Strictly speaking, using rolls at the fourth or eight bar is what you do when you've been using breakbeats, since you can't break down breakbeats with a breakbeat (most famous breakbeat is the Funky Drummer Break, created by Clyde Stubblefield when he drummed with James Brown). I hadn't been using a breakbeat, I'd been using a straight beat with a Back Beat (and I am actually one of the people who knows the difference between a Backbeat and a Breakbeat... it is amazing the number of people who should know but don't).
But I digress. The point is that I should have used a Break Beat to break the Straight Beat, but I didn't. Why? Because it's my beat, that's why. You break 'em your way, I'll break 'em mine.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch I copied it to 16 Bars, customised the roll. Ditto 32. Ditto 64.
I think by this time Steve Buscemi had just whacked somebody in Florida.
While King of the Hill played I added interesting rolls to the bars that were multiples of 8 (rolls at different pitches, rolls go down etc) and I discovered that glissandoing the rolls downwards in pitch made a sound not unlike an 8-bit video game doing a filter sweep, or something. It sounded totally Ninetendo-core, so I liked it. Hmm. Maybe it sound slice, dice and sample that sound on its own.
Anways, while King of the Hill played, I messed around with levels and whatever.
After that a weird movie starring Judy Davis and the bloke from the first Robocop Movie. Something about two yuppies opening a shop that goes broke, plus some New-Agey peripheral stuff. Lots of plot-related nudity. I concentrated on tweaking the track.
Realising that the rhythms were cool but the sounds lacked punch, I opened up the mixer and messed with the EQs. Naturally, since there were at least two voices (in a compositional sense) at work, spiking the levels to punch up the bassline messed with the accents and vice versa. But the real problem with how to give the bassline dirt without muddying up the accents, and how to make the accents spit like fat in a fire without thinning the bassline.
Only one thing to do: split up the channels.
Those four words took me the rest of the movie (more nudity, some character developement, pretentious New-Age babble, depressed yuppies, pretentious dialogue and the like... I'm sure someone is saying 'You could have done it quicker if you weren't watching TV at the same time', to which I reply that watching TV was the reason I was working on the music in the first place. Turning it off would have seemed impolite).
Anyways, what I had to do was create a new channel, select the notes I wanted to copy, cut them out, paste them into the new channel and then line them up with the other part. Lining up the rhythms properly was harder than you would think. Especially since I had managed to really mess up the notes somehow.
Once that was sorted -(I never did get it all straight, but I thought the fuck-ups somehow added character to the loop... I may decide that it actually shite and put it back proper next time I listen to it)- I had to figure out why I couldn't hear the two Midi Channels coming through their own Audio Channels.
First I realised that Halion still thought that I was playing to the same instrument, even though I was playing through different Midi Channels. Fine. Make new Halion instrument.
Still not right.
Next I realised that Halion was outputting both instruments through the same Audio Channel.
Solving this took a bit of time. Changing some setting in Halion or changing a setting on the Channel and then hitting the Space Bar and seeing what ran up the flagpole.
Eventually I sorted it. Two voices on Two Channels playing through Two Instruments outputting to Two Audio Channels, each with their own EQ and Effects.
Neato.
Dirt to the Bassline with some Distortion, twiddle the EQ. The accent beats got nastified with the Bitcrusher, and hit with a little bit of reverb. In actuality, it came out sounding glassy and brittle, which is what I wanted.
I messed around with it some more, but by this point I was satisfied that I had done all I could at this point, and it was time for me to go to bed.
I'll play with it some more, see what else I can make of it. If I like it enough I might make a Myspace and put it up for your enjoyment in Cyberland.
Anyways, that was Thursday Night.
Last Night:
I was on a strict schedule, since Electro Rose of Texas had put me on the guestlist for Xtro at Tufnell Park, and I didn't want to repay the favour by being late for her DJ set. She would be on the Wheels of Steel at 10PM, and it would take roughly an hour to get to the Venue. That meant I had to be at the Tube by 9PM. I had to take a shower and shave, which meant that I should probably start that by 8PM. But first I had to iron a bunch of T-Shirst I had washed the night before (while I was doing all that beat programming).
Surprisingly, despite overshooting on the ironing I left the flat with 20 minutes to spare, and checked my messages at Haff's Caff. No messages of note.
Hurried to the Station, stopping at the ATM and again to renew my Travelcard.
On the Tube. Nothing to do but read and listen to the Ipod.
To my surprise, I actually made it to Tufnell Park in plenty of time. Enough time that I accidently walked into the wrong door of the venue and found myself in a Sixties Theme Night they were running in a different part of the venue. D'oh!
I found the right door and found that Electro Rose of Texas had actually put my name on the Guestlist. Which was nice of her, since I did mention, when she offered, that I would only be able to stay for two hours as I was committed to taking the last tube to Angel for Overkill III.
The venue was a big empty hall, with a stage of sorts at one end, the DJ booth at the other and tables lining the sides. The smoke machines left a blanket of smoke hanging over the dancefloor far above my head, but the way the light caught the smoke made me feel as if I was on another planet. At least until someone realised that nightclubs are supposed to be dark, and turned off the house lights. The venue stayed pretty empty for most of the time I was there.
E.R. turned up with the boy I guess is still her boyfriend about ten and hit the decks, playing a set of 80s industrial and electro, including Skinny Puppy, Nitzer Ebb, Einsteurzende Neubauten and some other lost classics. Which was cool. Later I got talking to a couple of Canadians, including a Canadian Psychobilly who complained that no-one ever plays PWEI.
I told him to go to Strength Through Joy the next night. But he told me he couldn't, since he was getting tattooed on Sunday, ergo he needed his sleep. Side note: I discovered on Thursday afternoon that they now have a tattoo and piercing parlour in Harrods on Oxford Street.
I gave him a note with the details of the next STJ.
I told the Canadian my joke about my Brothers and Sisters being born in Calgary:
'Calgary, Alberta?'
'Nah, Calgary Hospital, Cairns.'
More people were dancing, the music was more old-school goth than industrial. But it was after midnight, and I was about to turn into a pumpkin. Or at least miss the last train to Angel.
So I thanked Electro Rose for putting my name on the guestlist (she promised to do it next month as well), and made my exit, stage left.
I narrowly caught the last tube south, and arrived at Electrowerks to be greeted by Alex B and a whole lot of crazy people going nuts to some live laptop breakcore. Getting a closer look at Sickboy, the DJ, somebody grabbed me and I recognised it as Scotty, the Breakcore/Noise producer/dj from Brisbane that I had seen in Brighton with my friend Laura.
He told me that everyone actually loved the review that I had written of the night, even agreeing with the criticisms I had made. He went as far as using the words 'Visibly Swooning'. I can't picture Laura, Lara or the others swooning, but I'll take his word for it.
Sickboy's set was an amazing cascade of beats and breaks and loops that carried me into the middle of the crowded dancefloor and set me springing like a dashboard toy. Xtro had been fun, but this was ecstasy (without the Ecstasy). Upstairs was crazy noise performance stuff, including some bloke with a saxophone (!?).
Back downstairs I rejoined the dancefloor, recognising the faces of friends, including people from Norwich and Brighton.
Sickboy finished and Bong-Ra took over, with big, epic sounding synths giving way to more mad breaks, and even cheesy video-game melodies. More Dashboard Dancing from me.
A note at this point: Those of you who have read the reviews that I write for Fasterlouder will remember that I mentioned Alex B by name in a review. I was a little worried because at that event I didn't actually mention that I was reviewing for Fasterlouder, nor did I ask if I could mention him by name and quote him on anything he said.
It didn't seem to be worth worrying about, since I doubted that anyone in London would read those reviews. It suddenly occurred to me last week that I was probably going to link those reviews to any correspondence I entered into with the editor of Alternative London, a publication Alex has written for in the past. D'oh!
Keen to nip any possible SNAFU in the bud, in a spare moment I told Alex that I had reviewed the show, mentioned him by name, quoted him (but not quoted him saying anyting contraversial) and asked if he minded at all. Alex, being the easy-going chap that he is, shrugged it off with a not-bothered smile, and asked me for the URL of Fasterlouder, since he wanted to read the review.
Okay, this is going to sound totally mercenary and career-climbing etc, but I couldn't believe it. A regular Terrorizer contributor was going to read a review that I had written just because I screwed up and did something unprofessional and had a panic attack over it.
I hope he likes the review, to say the least.
Anways, upstairs an act called Wolf Eyes had taken the stage.
I have no idea where to begin with Wolf Eyes. Essentially a three piece made of a bassist, a vocalist and a guit manipulating a synthesizer. And some noisy beats on a laptop or something. The sound was so thick and intense and loud, with so many horrific frequencies at work that I could only take it in short bursts. This is coming from someone who took a full hour set of The Locust in his stride and went back for more three days later.
I remember thinking 'if you recorded the sound of a nuclear attack, pressed it to vinyl and played it a 33RPM, this is what it would sound like'. Then I remember thinking 'Some bands are like watching a car crash. Watching this band is like BEING in a car crash.' The sheer assault of the sound scrambled my mind so much that I found it hard to think straight for the rest of the night.
Which was annoying, because I had been successfully chatting up a pretty blonde, and after the Wolf Eyes set I entirely lost the ability to be charming, or even coherent. Then again, the girl's attention was now on a bearded chap that looked for all the world like The Tsar of Russia, and was complaining that Wolf Eyes had sold out and were just a rock band now. So maybe I wasn't being incoherent enough.
The Jessica, the half-chinese girl I met at Scottish Jim's STJ Afterparty was there, but she cared less for Wolf Eyes than I did, and her two-tone platform shoes made her feet hurt if she tried to dance for too long. In any case she didn't seem to be in a talkative mood. She told me she wasn't planning on heading to STJ the next night. Which is a shame, since she seemed to be interesting people. I also ran into Richie, with whom I swapped notes about how disturbing the Wolf Eyes set was.
The rest of the night was more hobnobbing and dancing.
Eventually Richie, Scotty and I left the electrowerks at about six AM. Richie and Scotty exchanged contact details (I had introduced them based on their shared appreciation of noisy electronica), and a very tired Scotty peeled of to head to his digs at Putney (he is crashing at friends places around England, and looking for a permanent place to live... if Nenad the Swede does proper disappear, I might give him a call : )
Richie and I were proper hungry. All that dancing does take it out of you, and nightclubs in converted urban warehouses don't, as a rule serve food. Luckily, we found that the local Sainsbury's was open, so we both bought some various breadie kind of items, then negotiated the self-serve machines in our sleep-deprived post-club daze, much to the amusement/horror of the staff.
With food to sustain us, we then wandered through the southern end of Islington/edge of Camden, Richie giving me a guided tour of his old student stomping ground, and me being amazed by the buildings and streets I hadn't seen before. It seems to be that there actually are parts of London where the streets are clean and it doesn't look like something apocalyptic. I think those parts are the ones where the local businesses are numerous enough and big enough that the taxes that they pay contribute to the upkeep of their area.
As opposed to most of East London, where pretty much everyone is poor, and the councils run on a shoestring as a result. That's one theory, in any case.
Anyways, Richie and I swap notes, swap stories and eventually find a cafe in Holborn where we chill for a bit, before we peel off and I catch the Tube back to Leytonstone.
Naturally, at this time I should be getting some sleep.
But I thought I'd share my story first.
My head cold is getting better, and things are looking better all the time.
Time to sign off.
Over and out.
J
Being in a mega hurry last night meant no blogging.
But here's the ten penny tour of my last 48 Hours:
While killing time waiting for the Sopranos to come on, I fired up the Typing Tutor to try to get my digits moving faster. After an hour that got old, so I started messing with Cubase, and by complete accident I created a snippet that sounded great when looped. Sort of like it had been fed through some kind of Ring Modulator or something.
So I took this tiny slice, mapped it onto a keyboard in Halion and then made up a four bar rhythmic loop, four on the floor with accent note on the two and the four, plus a triplet short note inserted here and there, just to give it a swing. The four bars ended in some kind of swinging bass turnaround.
So far so good.
By the second Sopranos episode of the night (channel four has been repeating them two at a time), I had taken the four bar loop and turned it into an eight bar loop, with a hemi-demi-semi-triplet-quaver roll in the eighth bar.
Strictly speaking, using rolls at the fourth or eight bar is what you do when you've been using breakbeats, since you can't break down breakbeats with a breakbeat (most famous breakbeat is the Funky Drummer Break, created by Clyde Stubblefield when he drummed with James Brown). I hadn't been using a breakbeat, I'd been using a straight beat with a Back Beat (and I am actually one of the people who knows the difference between a Backbeat and a Breakbeat... it is amazing the number of people who should know but don't).
But I digress. The point is that I should have used a Break Beat to break the Straight Beat, but I didn't. Why? Because it's my beat, that's why. You break 'em your way, I'll break 'em mine.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch I copied it to 16 Bars, customised the roll. Ditto 32. Ditto 64.
I think by this time Steve Buscemi had just whacked somebody in Florida.
While King of the Hill played I added interesting rolls to the bars that were multiples of 8 (rolls at different pitches, rolls go down etc) and I discovered that glissandoing the rolls downwards in pitch made a sound not unlike an 8-bit video game doing a filter sweep, or something. It sounded totally Ninetendo-core, so I liked it. Hmm. Maybe it sound slice, dice and sample that sound on its own.
Anways, while King of the Hill played, I messed around with levels and whatever.
After that a weird movie starring Judy Davis and the bloke from the first Robocop Movie. Something about two yuppies opening a shop that goes broke, plus some New-Agey peripheral stuff. Lots of plot-related nudity. I concentrated on tweaking the track.
Realising that the rhythms were cool but the sounds lacked punch, I opened up the mixer and messed with the EQs. Naturally, since there were at least two voices (in a compositional sense) at work, spiking the levels to punch up the bassline messed with the accents and vice versa. But the real problem with how to give the bassline dirt without muddying up the accents, and how to make the accents spit like fat in a fire without thinning the bassline.
Only one thing to do: split up the channels.
Those four words took me the rest of the movie (more nudity, some character developement, pretentious New-Age babble, depressed yuppies, pretentious dialogue and the like... I'm sure someone is saying 'You could have done it quicker if you weren't watching TV at the same time', to which I reply that watching TV was the reason I was working on the music in the first place. Turning it off would have seemed impolite).
Anyways, what I had to do was create a new channel, select the notes I wanted to copy, cut them out, paste them into the new channel and then line them up with the other part. Lining up the rhythms properly was harder than you would think. Especially since I had managed to really mess up the notes somehow.
Once that was sorted -(I never did get it all straight, but I thought the fuck-ups somehow added character to the loop... I may decide that it actually shite and put it back proper next time I listen to it)- I had to figure out why I couldn't hear the two Midi Channels coming through their own Audio Channels.
First I realised that Halion still thought that I was playing to the same instrument, even though I was playing through different Midi Channels. Fine. Make new Halion instrument.
Still not right.
Next I realised that Halion was outputting both instruments through the same Audio Channel.
Solving this took a bit of time. Changing some setting in Halion or changing a setting on the Channel and then hitting the Space Bar and seeing what ran up the flagpole.
Eventually I sorted it. Two voices on Two Channels playing through Two Instruments outputting to Two Audio Channels, each with their own EQ and Effects.
Neato.
Dirt to the Bassline with some Distortion, twiddle the EQ. The accent beats got nastified with the Bitcrusher, and hit with a little bit of reverb. In actuality, it came out sounding glassy and brittle, which is what I wanted.
I messed around with it some more, but by this point I was satisfied that I had done all I could at this point, and it was time for me to go to bed.
I'll play with it some more, see what else I can make of it. If I like it enough I might make a Myspace and put it up for your enjoyment in Cyberland.
Anyways, that was Thursday Night.
Last Night:
I was on a strict schedule, since Electro Rose of Texas had put me on the guestlist for Xtro at Tufnell Park, and I didn't want to repay the favour by being late for her DJ set. She would be on the Wheels of Steel at 10PM, and it would take roughly an hour to get to the Venue. That meant I had to be at the Tube by 9PM. I had to take a shower and shave, which meant that I should probably start that by 8PM. But first I had to iron a bunch of T-Shirst I had washed the night before (while I was doing all that beat programming).
Surprisingly, despite overshooting on the ironing I left the flat with 20 minutes to spare, and checked my messages at Haff's Caff. No messages of note.
Hurried to the Station, stopping at the ATM and again to renew my Travelcard.
On the Tube. Nothing to do but read and listen to the Ipod.
To my surprise, I actually made it to Tufnell Park in plenty of time. Enough time that I accidently walked into the wrong door of the venue and found myself in a Sixties Theme Night they were running in a different part of the venue. D'oh!
I found the right door and found that Electro Rose of Texas had actually put my name on the Guestlist. Which was nice of her, since I did mention, when she offered, that I would only be able to stay for two hours as I was committed to taking the last tube to Angel for Overkill III.
The venue was a big empty hall, with a stage of sorts at one end, the DJ booth at the other and tables lining the sides. The smoke machines left a blanket of smoke hanging over the dancefloor far above my head, but the way the light caught the smoke made me feel as if I was on another planet. At least until someone realised that nightclubs are supposed to be dark, and turned off the house lights. The venue stayed pretty empty for most of the time I was there.
E.R. turned up with the boy I guess is still her boyfriend about ten and hit the decks, playing a set of 80s industrial and electro, including Skinny Puppy, Nitzer Ebb, Einsteurzende Neubauten and some other lost classics. Which was cool. Later I got talking to a couple of Canadians, including a Canadian Psychobilly who complained that no-one ever plays PWEI.
I told him to go to Strength Through Joy the next night. But he told me he couldn't, since he was getting tattooed on Sunday, ergo he needed his sleep. Side note: I discovered on Thursday afternoon that they now have a tattoo and piercing parlour in Harrods on Oxford Street.
I gave him a note with the details of the next STJ.
I told the Canadian my joke about my Brothers and Sisters being born in Calgary:
'Calgary, Alberta?'
'Nah, Calgary Hospital, Cairns.'
More people were dancing, the music was more old-school goth than industrial. But it was after midnight, and I was about to turn into a pumpkin. Or at least miss the last train to Angel.
So I thanked Electro Rose for putting my name on the guestlist (she promised to do it next month as well), and made my exit, stage left.
I narrowly caught the last tube south, and arrived at Electrowerks to be greeted by Alex B and a whole lot of crazy people going nuts to some live laptop breakcore. Getting a closer look at Sickboy, the DJ, somebody grabbed me and I recognised it as Scotty, the Breakcore/Noise producer/dj from Brisbane that I had seen in Brighton with my friend Laura.
He told me that everyone actually loved the review that I had written of the night, even agreeing with the criticisms I had made. He went as far as using the words 'Visibly Swooning'. I can't picture Laura, Lara or the others swooning, but I'll take his word for it.
Sickboy's set was an amazing cascade of beats and breaks and loops that carried me into the middle of the crowded dancefloor and set me springing like a dashboard toy. Xtro had been fun, but this was ecstasy (without the Ecstasy). Upstairs was crazy noise performance stuff, including some bloke with a saxophone (!?).
Back downstairs I rejoined the dancefloor, recognising the faces of friends, including people from Norwich and Brighton.
Sickboy finished and Bong-Ra took over, with big, epic sounding synths giving way to more mad breaks, and even cheesy video-game melodies. More Dashboard Dancing from me.
A note at this point: Those of you who have read the reviews that I write for Fasterlouder will remember that I mentioned Alex B by name in a review. I was a little worried because at that event I didn't actually mention that I was reviewing for Fasterlouder, nor did I ask if I could mention him by name and quote him on anything he said.
It didn't seem to be worth worrying about, since I doubted that anyone in London would read those reviews. It suddenly occurred to me last week that I was probably going to link those reviews to any correspondence I entered into with the editor of Alternative London, a publication Alex has written for in the past. D'oh!
Keen to nip any possible SNAFU in the bud, in a spare moment I told Alex that I had reviewed the show, mentioned him by name, quoted him (but not quoted him saying anyting contraversial) and asked if he minded at all. Alex, being the easy-going chap that he is, shrugged it off with a not-bothered smile, and asked me for the URL of Fasterlouder, since he wanted to read the review.
Okay, this is going to sound totally mercenary and career-climbing etc, but I couldn't believe it. A regular Terrorizer contributor was going to read a review that I had written just because I screwed up and did something unprofessional and had a panic attack over it.
I hope he likes the review, to say the least.
Anways, upstairs an act called Wolf Eyes had taken the stage.
I have no idea where to begin with Wolf Eyes. Essentially a three piece made of a bassist, a vocalist and a guit manipulating a synthesizer. And some noisy beats on a laptop or something. The sound was so thick and intense and loud, with so many horrific frequencies at work that I could only take it in short bursts. This is coming from someone who took a full hour set of The Locust in his stride and went back for more three days later.
I remember thinking 'if you recorded the sound of a nuclear attack, pressed it to vinyl and played it a 33RPM, this is what it would sound like'. Then I remember thinking 'Some bands are like watching a car crash. Watching this band is like BEING in a car crash.' The sheer assault of the sound scrambled my mind so much that I found it hard to think straight for the rest of the night.
Which was annoying, because I had been successfully chatting up a pretty blonde, and after the Wolf Eyes set I entirely lost the ability to be charming, or even coherent. Then again, the girl's attention was now on a bearded chap that looked for all the world like The Tsar of Russia, and was complaining that Wolf Eyes had sold out and were just a rock band now. So maybe I wasn't being incoherent enough.
The Jessica, the half-chinese girl I met at Scottish Jim's STJ Afterparty was there, but she cared less for Wolf Eyes than I did, and her two-tone platform shoes made her feet hurt if she tried to dance for too long. In any case she didn't seem to be in a talkative mood. She told me she wasn't planning on heading to STJ the next night. Which is a shame, since she seemed to be interesting people. I also ran into Richie, with whom I swapped notes about how disturbing the Wolf Eyes set was.
The rest of the night was more hobnobbing and dancing.
Eventually Richie, Scotty and I left the electrowerks at about six AM. Richie and Scotty exchanged contact details (I had introduced them based on their shared appreciation of noisy electronica), and a very tired Scotty peeled of to head to his digs at Putney (he is crashing at friends places around England, and looking for a permanent place to live... if Nenad the Swede does proper disappear, I might give him a call : )
Richie and I were proper hungry. All that dancing does take it out of you, and nightclubs in converted urban warehouses don't, as a rule serve food. Luckily, we found that the local Sainsbury's was open, so we both bought some various breadie kind of items, then negotiated the self-serve machines in our sleep-deprived post-club daze, much to the amusement/horror of the staff.
With food to sustain us, we then wandered through the southern end of Islington/edge of Camden, Richie giving me a guided tour of his old student stomping ground, and me being amazed by the buildings and streets I hadn't seen before. It seems to be that there actually are parts of London where the streets are clean and it doesn't look like something apocalyptic. I think those parts are the ones where the local businesses are numerous enough and big enough that the taxes that they pay contribute to the upkeep of their area.
As opposed to most of East London, where pretty much everyone is poor, and the councils run on a shoestring as a result. That's one theory, in any case.
Anyways, Richie and I swap notes, swap stories and eventually find a cafe in Holborn where we chill for a bit, before we peel off and I catch the Tube back to Leytonstone.
Naturally, at this time I should be getting some sleep.
But I thought I'd share my story first.
My head cold is getting better, and things are looking better all the time.
Time to sign off.
Over and out.
J
posted by the.exile at 10:34 am
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