Category Archives: music - Page 13

recording process update

Posted by on July 31, 2008 No comments

it occurs to me that i should really post more often during the process of producing this new album. i have started the process of taking my sketches and re-recording them for an actual release. i’m fairly serious about this collection, so i’m giving myself time to really take care of business when it comes to getting them put together. this poses several challenges for me.

first off, i set an arbitrary release date based on what i thought i could do in a week. i’m quite behind. this doesn’t really phase me since, well, i’m the only one who is perturbed by my tardiness but at the same time, i’d like to hit a deadline once in my life. the reasons for not being on schedule are fairly simple: i don’t have a lot of practice time and i hate editing. this means that i’m stuck in the infinite loop of needing to do it right in one take with little practice. not an easy task, i must say. but all of this is purely technical. it’s easily solved. i need to spend more of my time practicing when i’m sitting around in Jax’s room watching him build towers out of soft blocks and anything that doesn’t move.

my other “problem” is the inspiration that i draw from the instruments that i own. one of the simpler sketches got out of hand with the dobro. i’ve been stuck on that one for a while because my intonation has issues and…well…see that part above about not practicing. and then there’s the mandolin. every time i pick it up i feel the urge to work it into something. so i have. and i think it’s even effective this time! so a lot of my “solo” guitar pieces are blooming into multi-instrumental extravaganzas. i’m really happy with that, but developments like this kill timelines.

the whole reason the deadline exists is to push things forward. it’s all mental slight of hand. i’m really pleased with my results so far and when i listen to my rough mixes on the drive to work in the morning i sometimes catch myself thinking “wow! i did that?!” cool stuff.

when it’s all wrapped up, i will be doing something new with the site. i’m actually going to push this recording. the last album made enough to cover its costs which i thought was pretty huge. i’m hoping that i can branch out from the friends and family crowd with this one. i’m not counting on it, but i think it’d be nice. i want to be a part of this great internet publishing revolution too!

new music: electrosketch02

Posted by on June 24, 2008 1 comment

i swear i’ll stop soon. i will not continue to dork around and post mp3s forever. i will go back, rework my material and produce a cohesive collection…

…in a minute…

look, my mom visited for two weeks so i could either go into the studio and be all antisocial with my mom who lives thousands of miles away or i could mess around with some electronica in the living room. i opted for the latter and as a result had a rich visit with my mother and avoided being smacked upside the head (for ignoring her).

in any case, this is about 6:18 of tunage. i like the voices that you can barely understand. they’re some friends of mine reading various things and stuff. i really love working with the human voice and obscuring it. i can also say that i am getting over my fear of drum loops. i think i “get it” now. or maybe i’ve just given in and decided that i’m not a very creative percussionist and loops make my life easier. i think i like the “getting over the fear” option.

take a listen. let me know if you dig it…or if you want to use it in a movie.

electrosketch02

Creative Commons License
electro sketch 02 by j.c. wilson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at www.othertime.com.

new music: garageband faux techno silliness!

Posted by on June 18, 2008 3 comments

so the other day i picked up the latest “computer music” magazine. it’s the “ultimate guide to garageband.” look, i’ve been using GB for all of my sketching and i thought that i might pick up a tip or two. and i did. they include a pile of apple demo movies that go over some things that are obvious and some things that aren’t. the brilliance of GB for me is in the simplicity and sometimes simple is difficult. i watched the movies, learned two or three things and then dove into the demo projects.

wow.

ok, so i wasn’t expecting something brilliant, but i did hope that it would be something that wasn’t slapped together in thirty seconds or less. i was underwhelmed. so i started messing around with some things that i don’t usually mess with. it was a lot of fun and reminded me of a time when my plan was to put out a series of techno-trash albums under a cool pseudonym. we can all see how far that got.

i think this track has a neat groove. without any further ado, from the coffee shop on my lunch hour to your ipod. enjoy!

update: the mp3 was a little distorted, so i fixed that. not nearly as annoying (in terms of quality only).

electrosketch

new music – sketch 3 – and click tracks

Posted by on June 9, 2008 No comments

i got an email from kevlar yesterday bemoaning his inability to work with a click track. my response to him went something like this:

the bottom line is that playing with a click is really useful if you work alone (sometimes). it gives you a frame of reference so that you can do things in multiple takes and get it all in sync. but the reality of the situation is that music hates a constant pulse. think about how much give and take is in the tempo of a folk song or any piece of music from the “classical” canon. if i were to play a bach lute suite straight, with no lilt or give, it would be a ridiculous parody of the work. even in dances (or especially) there is a subtle shift in the distance between the beats. music wasn’t meant to be the slave to a metronome.

how do you balance that? with loops, you don’t. but think about what that means when you make music out of loops. what do we lose when we lose the subtle variations? i’m not questioning the utility of these things where music is a part of a whole and the synchronization of events is so important, but i do question it in music that is meant to be heard.

so if you’re trying to do something tribal, write it out. make your blueprint and play one part through. be musical. let it breathe. then record the next track over that one as though you are performing with yourself from 10 minutes ago. layer it up until it reaches what you want it to be. i think you’ll find the give and take among the parts is better and more powerful.

what a wonderful problem technology has brought to us: how do we play as an ensemble with ourselves?

that made a lot of sense last night when i was slugging it out with today’s release. i wanted to add bodhran and talking drum tracks to my 12-string and bass arrangement. i picked a nice clave and let it rock out for me. sadly, i really like to stretch out certain sections and i think you can really hear where in this recording. one take per track. i couldn’t push my luck with recording drums after the dude went to bed, so they are a little softer than i might like. still, i think it sounds ok.

in total i have 8 songs ready. i’m seriously considering starting the process of recording them all in logic with all of the proper mojo. if i can get 8 of them down, i will know where to fill in the gaps. i’m pretty excited, so we’ll see where it goes. after all, my mom is coming for a two week visit so there will be built-in babysitting!

anyway, here’s the track. let me know if you can dig it!

sketch3mix

new music – sketch 6 – and ramblings!

Posted by on May 29, 2008 No comments

my wife says that this sketch isn’t “peppy.” i think it bounces along well enough. it feels like a throwback to some folksy fireside geetar music mixed up with an etude by fernando sor. i think it’s light and has a lot of space.

as i was telling my friend Kevlar the other day, i give myself 3 takes. that means i get about 10 minutes to warm up on nights when i don’t play for the dude in his room before bed and then i wind up with 20 minutes or so to produce 3 takes.

my rationale for this is pretty simple. when i was studying the classical guitar full time, i learned that if you stop when you make a mistake, you never really get past it. you learn to get to the point of the mistake, make the mistake and stop. so i play through it. this is intimidating at first since it’s going directly to disk for me to hear again and again, but so what? i have a delete key. but i don’t use it. for the same reason that i used to compose in pen: i might not like something now, but it could make sense later.

well that was more of a ramble than i had intended. less talk, more music. if you enjoy it, please make a comment and let me know.

thanks for listening!

sketch6mix 3.5 mb, 3:50.