memory lane

i bought a slide whistle in truckee california a week or two ago, and i have to say, it’s one of the most worthwhile investments i’ve made in a long long time. i suggest you get one, bring it to the next drunk’n hotel after-party you have, and quiz your friends on tv themes and pop melodies!

this weeks song is a strange, ambient sound design featuring said slide whistle (and a fare amount of reverb).

this is the sort of piece that you wanna sit back and relax to while you check your email or surf through other blogs. there’s a melody (sort of derived from an old hymn tune), but mostly the idea here was environmental. and mental. playing with long, strange sounds, and slow peeks and valleys. slow down.

i’ll be gone next week…so i rekon it’ll be another two weeks till you hear from me. i appologize. i have some “songs” on file so to speak, but probably won’t get a chance to record them in the next couple of days. until then, then…

thanks for listening,

j

floyd goes to the open mic

episode four:

floyd’s really nervous about going to open mic night.  he’s got some songs he’s been dying to try out live, but he’s nervous that they won’t go over well, and generally has a hard time with social scenes.

listen, and see how it goes.

ABOUT:

this was another experiement for me, initially to find a way to combine a lots of instruments without maxing out my computer completely.  i ended up with a lot of instruments, all generally playing minimal parts.  i wanted lots of different color’s, and wanted to play with more instruments than i have been.  so i started a session of about 5 or 6 orchestral instruments or sections, then 5 or 6 more in another file, and so on, until i had about 4 sessions going, that all got mixed into the final live recordings.  the last step (live stuff) was the melodica, some sound effects, guitar and vocals, and mixing the end to sound cinematic, with volume and panning choices.  considering the number of things going on, and time it took, it feels very short to me now, but hopefully effective.  let me know what you think!  this was also fun, because it started without any clear idea, just sound and idea searching.  the one thing i wanted was the sneaky/creapy/pensive thing, which influenced some of the instrument and note choices.  the entire openning of the piece takes place inside floyd’s head, until he gets out of his head and into a bar at the end of the piece, and makes his decision on the “open mic” experience.

thanks for listening!

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and see detholz, baby teeth, danny black, and dj bobby conn at hideout this saturday night for a benefit for lena yohey’s trip to Nepal this Fall!  http://tmt.detholz.com/yohey-fest.jpg

radio poo pee

“radio poo pee”

hey loves.

running a little late this week, cause friends and i were working on a video project for our friend steve niketopoulos, that we finished and presented last night at his suprise birthday party. super fun.

this weeks “song of the week” is comprised of music from the video.

i wrote and arranged a variety of little incidental musics, and a couple of themes that were more “out front”, and in THIS recording, stuck them all into this “tuning a radio” context. it’s fun to think that everything on the radio is my stuff, and by “fun” i mean “narcissistic.”

i tried to mix it so that it sounded like i’m in a car, driving, tuning a radio, and occassionally talking to myself. the outside sound is from a sound effects library and i just looped it. i then mixed it so that it sounds a little muffled, as it would from the inside of a car. the ambulance that you hear at 2min and 38secs or so i panned from right to left and faded out so that it sounds like it’s moving, both from right to left and AWAY. my “talking etc” vocals i left dry (no effects), cause they should sound like they’re right in your space.

the radio stuff is all mixed together with bits of the songs, bits of white noise, fuzz, interference, and different volumes and eq’s.

this is all an experiment in creating an environment, which i think i’m understanding better and better as i do it. but it still doesn’t sound the way i want it too yet. this one gets close to what that environment would sound like, i think, but it’s not there. i don’t think it PUTS YOU IN THE CAR yet. i’ll probably keep tweeking it over the next week or so and see if i can do that.

see if you can pin-point a couple pre-existing themes in the music too. pretty famous ones. 🙂

as always, thanks for listening!

have a great week.

j

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