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nobody-knose--archive · 3 years

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hey all, resident person who does music analysis without knowing how to do music analysis here (looking at you, mind electric post from last september with a few dozen notes), have you ever wanted a vaguely concise list of all the differences between not one, not three, but two different versions of ruler of everything? i made it regardless.

to start, i’ve got to highlight various aspects of the ruler of everything mmmm 2008 version (the reference i’m using to compare the other versions with):

-the bpm is 83

-the key is b minor (bm)

-instruments featured include various strings (violin, cello, bass, i probably can’t name them all by ear), glockenspiel, chimes, acoustic guitar, calliope, drums of course (a drumkit), a specific keyboard synth, electric guitar, bass guitar, choral vocals separate from the lyrical ones (technically not an instrument but i’m including it here for a reason), tambourine, and one more percussion instrument that i genuinely cannot name precisely but theorize is some snare-drum-with-brushes shenanigans or maybe possibly a güiro (sounds like lighting a match, you can hear it in the breakdown part).

-the song is 3:42 long, not counting 13, which is, of course, 13 seconds long

-approximately 32 seconds of it is the outro with only glockenspiel

-notable situations in which there are differences between audio channels include the intro, where the glockenspiel is mostly, but not entirely, stored within the left channel; the reversed cymbals leading into the second verse, where two separate cymbal tones are played in each channel, with very little overlap; the “aaah”s following the first verse of “ruler of everything”, where the sounds switch between coming mostly, but not entirely, in the left & right channels; the reversed “jackrabbit” line, where the sound starts on the right channel and ends in the left, never entirely in only one channel; the laughter immediately following the “wonderful life” verse, which pans between the left & right channels; during the bridge, where there are some backwards vocals that hang out greatly in the left channel and, to a lesser (& different) extent, the right; the final “smile” at the end of the bridge, which echoes between channels as it fades away; and the final choral vocal during the outro, which emanates more from the left channel, though it is still present in the right.

-miscellaneous points in which there are differences between audio channels include, in about the entirety of the “do you like how i dance?” verses, guitar power chords are heard primarily in the left some bowed string flairs come primarily in the right or left (i would guess there’s a cello part in the right & a normal violin part in the left, but i can’t name them by ear), and there’s an electric guitar riff that dwindles off in the left shortly before the breakdown/bridge. during the bridge there is the aforementioned weird percussion bit coming in primarily in the left, two separate reversed synth riffs in the right & left, and another electric guitar riff primarily in the left. during the final chorus, the vocoded (a la taken for a ride 05 ver) and deeper vocals are more present in the right channel than the left & vice versa, respectively, though neither is fully absent from the other.

now that we’ve got this out of the way, time to look at the 2005 release:

-right off the bat, there’s a couple key differences. the key itself is raised up half a semitone, which less places it in a different key & more makes it sound horrendously out of tune with the 08 release. the tempo is also slightly faster, despite its longer length of 4:17 (about 1:10 of which is the glockenspiel-solo outro, about 22 seconds of which is silence covering up the existence of hidden in the sand, with the following 19 seconds being ocean sfx that further lead into hidden in the sand). i’d place the tempo around 85 or 86 bpm, not a significant change, but enough to offset it from the 08 ver.

-instruments featured include- with those that appear in both the 08 & 05 versions in bold, and those that only appear in this version in italics- various strings (i’d wager the same ones as in 08), glockenspiel, calliope, acoustic guitar, real bells/chimes, a specific keyboard synth, a drumkit, acoustic guitar, bass guitar, choral vocals separate from the lyrical ones, that same unnamed percussion instrument from earlier (but more subdued), and tambourine.

boy, that sure is a lot of the same instruments isn’t it? time to move into the meat of the differences: musical shenanigans!

-for starters, the 05 ver sports many different mixes between audio channels from the 08 ver. the intro glockenspiel is located squarely in the left audio channel, leaving only an echo in the right (far less space in between than the 08 ver); the reversed cymbals are mixed together in both channels rather than separated; the calliope is only found in the left channel; the specific keyboard synth is only found in the right channel (this & the previous point apply to the entire track); the small guitar riff during the “powerful job” line that follows the “i’ve been you” melody is mostly in the left; when the glockenspiel returns around the final verse it keeps primarily to the right channel for the rest of the song; the wonky percussion instrument is only in the right channel for the first go of the breakdown, but switches to the left for the transition between the two; the electric guitar riff is far less relegated to only the left, if at all; the reverse tambourine during the transition to the other half of the breakdown is mostly in the right; and the cello (i think) that comes in before the final chorus emanates more from the left channel.

-concerning the vocals in particular for the audio channels, the gentle “ah-ah”s in the first verse move from the left to right channels; the “aaah”s following the first lines of ruler of everything are less concentrated in individual audio channels; the reversed “jackrabbit” line pans between channels more than once; zubin & joe’s vocals across their verses before the breakdown do various things such as taking place entirely within the left & right channels respectively, only having a line’s echo in the one channel, having two different audio distortions/harmonies of a line be in different channels, or having a distorting line pan between channels; the laughter immediately following the “wonderful life” verse is mostly found in the right audio channel; the vocalize following the “you’re making me cry” line is mostly in the left; the falsetto harmony in the following verse is mainly in the right; one deeper, distorted harmony in the intro to the breakdown is only in the left; the final “smile” at the end of the breakdown keeps more closely to each ear as it echoes between them; the deeper and vocoded distorted vocals during the final chorus are fully relegated to the left & right channels, respectively; the “aaah”s following the final lines of ruler of everything switch between coming primarily from the right & left channels; and the echo on the final line is, in one part, offset & in primarily the left channel, and in another part, distorted & primarily in the right channel.

boy oh boy! that sure is a lot isn’t it? what if i told you the part i’m going to cover next includes literally everything else. not being a trained musician, i at the very least won’t start by pointing out every subtle difference in mixing & mastering, and instead catalogue all the other changes i can pick up on. granted, i’m going to ignore the obvious things like sound quality, alternative harmonies/melodies/etc, and different samples, and i’ll try not to restate anything that can be gleaned from comparing the data further up this post

-assorted differences of note include generally greater acoustic guitar use (notably in the first verse), amplified reverb on too many lines to count (the “aaah”s, first verse, and zubin’s lines are notable at least), drastically reduced echo on the reversed “jackrabbit” line, a complete lack of vocal distortion on all of zubin’s lines, far quieter hi-hat from the “practice your mannerisms” line on to the next verse, the chime in the buildup to the breakdown is louder & holds for longer, there’s no glockenspiel immediately following the breakdown, and a far stronger echo placed on the final line.

is this it? is it the end? good question. i could very easily move on & do this all over again with the complete demos version, if anybody cares about that. but from my own point of view, i find that ver to be so different from the finished product that it’d be like comparing a song and a cover of it. anyway, if the tally hallmanac page for ruler of everything gets updated based on all the work i did i want to be cited. the wikia gets a pass though

#i'm well aware this isn't a comprehensive list of... everything. i know about things i've left out i can hear them.#but by god i think this list is comprehensive enough isn't it? tell me when reading this you're missing out on like.#me mentioning there's some violin in the left channel at one point. tell me you're missing out on that so i can laugh at you /j #tally hall #genuinely i don't know a lot about music theory but i'm learning a good amount through experience i think #i've seriously learned so much since i made that mind electric post if i could i'd redo the whole thing but like. not only would it take #a whole lot of time that i don't care to spend. it's a stepping stone now. and not bad on its own rights i just know i can do much better #i'm not one to regret my old because i know my present will eventually become old itself so. no need to dwell on reaching perfection #tis i #should i have specified i think the calliope's probably a synth? i think it's the only synth in the song that sounds like another instrument #the bells/chimes could also be a synth however i find it more likely that they got irl chimes than an irl calliope so the jury's out on that #i won't lie the miscellaneous bolded words everywhere does feel a bit like h*mest*ck but hey i want this to be comprehensible #more so than my mind electric essay just without making it 5 pages long with indentations #he's named! he's a writer he's a singer he's named don't like don't read #...yknow i bet you can pinpoint the exact moment when writing this i absolutely gave up #joe-h #to the world and back again

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nonsensical-rants · 5 years

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So, I 100%ed the Kingdom Hearts Franchise.

Alright. This might be a long take, just saying that now. But I know exactly where to start. This franchise. Is not as confusing as the entirety of the internet would like you to believe. It's mostly due to bad writing decisions here and there. I mean, yeah if you wanna have every single detail and definition ingrained into your brain. Then of course it can get complicated, but what franchise lasting as long as Kingdom Hearts isn't annoyingly convoluted? I can't think of one.

So my thoughts about the series is that they're pretty good! Both as a story and as games, with some very big exceptions. I wanna say that you should definitely not try to 100% all of these games in chronological order in rapid succession. It will drain you. I can confirm this beyond a shadow of a doubt. After I beat KH2 it really start to hit me. Chain of Memories was fine, if not a bit tedious to get all the cards and Riku to level 100. But other than that I more than enjoyed my time with the game.

Heartless are born from the darkness in peoples hearts. Nobodies are created from the husk of a body left behind in the creation of a Heartless. While Unversed are born from supreme negative emotions that live inside us all. The stronger these feelings are/the person is, the stronger the heartless/unversed and nobody. Especially strong people can keep their identity when transformed into Nobodies. Thus explaining Organization 13. Only the keyblade can truly defeat these creatures. What's so hard about describing that to someone? It isn't that far fetched in terms of the fantasy genre.

Though personally. I have an enormous hatred from Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance. Despite trying to keep an open mind about any and all forms of media I come across, I cannot ever get behind this title in the series because it is just too much and strays too far from what i consider to be "Kingdom Hearts". The gameplay was not fun for me personally, the story was iffy at best in comparison to the others and it really felt like the biggest amount of padding. If you have to do that to become a Keyblade Master, I think i'd rather stay as a rouge agent like Sora did for 99% of the series.

The dream eater system was probably the biggest factor here as for 100% completion you have to get every single dream eater, and every single skill that they can give you which means leveling a lot of them up to the point where they have points to buy said skills. Which takes forever. And then there's the Dream Eater tournaments, which I would have never gotten past without cheap strategies I found online. Usually I get everybody to max potential in these games and give the best items and accessories all around. But as soon as I got the platinum I ejected the disk and took a break. I felt like I needed it.

Alright, putting that behind us. The difference in fighting styles from game to game can get a bit jarring but in the PS4 re-releases it can usually be adjusted too in about half an hour to an hour's worth of gameplay. Chain of Memories was fun, but tedious like I mentioned. And Birth By Sleep was actually a fresh of breath air (until you get to the secret boss fights that is...) If it wasn't for my need to see that 100% bar next to the game title I would classify these games as something everybody should try out and enjoy. They are fantastic experiences. So lets go in order for a bit.

KH1 is a classic story, going through Disney worlds with a fine mix of Final Fantasy. Meeting the princesses and seeing they are "Princesses of Heart" that have strength beyond muscles. Able to use the power of Light and what not. There's a few hiccups here and there (like Cloud and Sephiroth not acting like how they are in FF7 but everyone's already mentioned that.) But aside from that and the bad platforming, its a genuinely fun game to 100% and I'd highly recommend it. Maybe even try to get cosmic arts for everyone so you can have 16-19 MP bars. It gets silly.

Chain of Memories i've already mentioned a lot so far. So I don't think I need to go that in depth. Fun to go through but wouldn't recommend 100%ing it because it takes far to long. The story is actually pretty decent and isn't that complicated. Sora and the gang lose their memories of KH1 because of the magic witch Namine, while we get our first look at Organization 13.

KH2. The golden child. Still played by many to this day and its obvious to see why. The game play is crisp and fantastic as I remember it from my youth. Traveling to Disney worlds again (and not card versions of them that have no people except for cut scenes, like CoM) and having a constant looming threat over your head while you try to have fun on your journey. Its great. I have yet to do a level 1 critical mode (as that's not required thankfully) but I did thoroughly enjoy my regular Critical play though. Story still isn't that bad yet. Organization 13 comes in full force, trying to get a new version of "Kingdom Hearts" so they can restore their humanity. I'd highly recommend 100%ing this one as well. Would also recommend maxing out your stats and putting on multiple Full Bloom+'s and Shadow Archieve+'s for the fun of it.

Birth By Sleep. Still not that bad honestly. It comes at a weird time though, and the story telling kind of requires you to have some outsider knowledge so that you're not thrown for a loop the entire time. So it feels weird to go back in the past, but also necessary for the story as a whole. Fun game to play minus the hundreds of mini games you need to do for all three main characters. If it wasn't for that I would recommend playing this game to completion. It's hard to reach higher levels though and as everyone's who played the game knows. Terra sucks at End Game compared to Aqua and Ven. I beat the Secret bosses by sheer luck and I would not go back for them. You do get to learn the origins of what makes most of the future events play out though and you even get to see younger versions of Organization 13. Back when they weren't evil!

Nothing eventful happens in Re:Coded.

Dream Drop Distance... Already talked about it. Let's move on before i'm forced to remember dream eaters and their annoyingly high pitched theme song.

Birth By Sleep 0.2: A Fragmentary Passage. Really good demo for KH3 in all honestly. I had a fun time with it and seeing Aqua's pain and journey through the realm of darkness for a whole 10 years was interesting.

And now we're at Kh3. The big game we waited so long for. And its... Alright. Nothing really spectacular. The graphics are certainly splendid and gameplay feels great! If not a bit too floaty. Thats a problem for some people, especially those who were avid fans of KH2. But I had no problem with it. I have yet to play it on critical but i've heard it makes things far more entertaining. As for story, its also alright. Not the grand ending I was expecting but it was really fun all things considered. Just another ride through more modern Disney worlds. But no Final Fantasy! I get that they feel KH can stand on its own legs now but you can't take out half the formula that people fell in love with originally. Then there's no battle arena or replayable boss fights. Doesn't have to be the Real Orginization 13. Just any replayable fights with end game gear would be enough.

As for my real problem with the games. Is the treatement of the third member of the original trio. Kairi. Oh, how this character has divided a good portion of the fan base just by existing. It feels like all the time that she is just a damsel for Sora/Riku to save and rescue. In the first game, thats fine. Whatever. She was unconcious the whole time and had her heart within Sora. Chain of Memories was a game about Sora losing his memories and Riku overcoming his darkness. Thats also fine. But in KH2. Really? She gets a keyblade and can't even handle a group of shadows? The lowest level of heartless? It's embarrassing. She's supposed to be a Princess of Heart. What's that even mean anymore? It doesn't even seem relevant.

KH2 should've been her moment to become a party member just like Riku did. I dont care that it means you could possibly not have Donald or Goofy. KH2 felt the most like the penultimate ending to the series than Kh3 did in my opinon. Having the choice between your KH1 buddies (Sora, Donald and Goofy) or the Island Trio (Sora, Riku and Kairi) would have added excellent variety and much needed development for Kairi as a person rather than leaving her as a one dimensional damsel in distress who has a Nobody with more internal conflict and character motivation. Moving past that... BBS is a prequel so nothing for the original trio except for meeting Aqua/Ven/Terra. And we come back to the dreaded DDD again.

If my vision for Kairi in KH2 couldn't have become a reality. Then why wasn't DDD Kairi's game? The set up was perfect. The heroes of light need to train to overcome almost double the amount of darkness agents. Kairi (and Axel) are practically beginners at wielding a Keyblade. It should've been their time to shine and get some love while occasionally helping Sora and Riku in their Mark of Mastery exam. Why did it have to be something you do alone? Well actually you're not alone you have the stupid Dream Eaters. Regardless it could have been the newbies learning how to get to Kh2 Sora's level while Sora goes beyond his limits.

As for KH3, it's just awful. Kairi's treatment is awful and everyone knows it. She said she was gonna help but hit one whole heartless in the finale. Better than KH2 i suppose. And as for the argument of her being "too weak" to try anything agaisnt Xemans. Really? She couldn't even like. Step on his foot? Pull agaisnt his grip or switch which hand the blade is in? Since the keyblade can teleport to your hands when you need it. I don't expect her to randomly become a Keyblade Master, but. I think we all would've prefer if she just did ANYTHING over what actually happened. It's sad. I hope KH4 will give Kairi the proper treatment and character development she deserves. But for all we know it might be another Sora/Riku dual protagonist game like CoM or DDD. What do you think?

#Kingdom Hearts #KH #KH3 #kh sora #kh kairi #kh riku #NoksNonsense #Nonsensical-Rants #Opinion

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jjjjjjjjjjjjjim · 3 years

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How to be more consistent in your music

This song used to be under my high school's band name (probably finished around 2014), but was composed, recorded, and produced wholly by me. Eventually I grew a distaste for the track and deleted it off social media. Nowadays I do not hate it; I find it interesting in retrospect.

Despite being an indie pop/dream pop sort of hybrid, the song flows like a progressive track. It has wildly different passages and only two repetitions in its structure. The lyrics go from surrealism to a more grounded, sarcastic romance, depicting how confused I was about my feelings for my first girlfriend. I also sounded like an asshole in the lyrics. I was an asshole.

Anyway, this track exposes one of my recurring problems as a bedroom musician, something you might encounter yourself: a desire to explore all ideas, without an ability to remain in a coherent path. For a single song, this might or might not work (here it sort of doesn’t). For a whole album, it can be curious, though it is often jarring because we tend to grasp for some sort of pattern in a band's or artist's release.

In similar fashion, it can be awful when all songs in an album sound exactly the same. Of course it varies from genre to genre, taste to taste, moment to moment... in the case of my releases, I strive for some uniformity while still exploring diverse ideas. This was a difficult balance to achieve, and I am still in the process of perfecting it.

If you are a musician/producer that found this in the depths of the internet by accident, below are 4 things you can do as a bedroom musician to try and improve uniformity in future releases and projects.

1. Focus around your genres. (The Gravitational Center Analogy) Lay down the genres you associate with the release you want to work on. Maybe you have some in mind now, and it could be that as the composing and recording stages flow, the genres you want to focus on change. Let's take my high school band: we were an indie rock and dream pop outfit. That was our sonic basis.

Now visualize all of the associated genres as gravitational centers, like stars. They might be closer or farther away, but are close enough that they interact in some way.

Around those gravitational centers will be every possible sonic element of your songs: the way the guitar sounds, the way the bass sounds, the drums, the vocals, the lyrics, the song structures, the time signatures, the downbeats... those elements are like planets or asteroids, and they orbit around the gravitational centers, sometimes making complex dances between them.

This is how your music is supposed to be. It needs a coherent relationship between said gravitational cores, which can only be observed when it has a logical interaction between the elements orbiting around them.

In plain terms, it means that the focus should not be ON your genres, but AROUND your genres. Genres are not monolithic entities fully embodied by bands or artists. They are in fact those vague notions (those gravitational cores) that we pin-point only by observing elements that tend to orbit around them.

What elements did I want to take from dream pop for my high school band? I wanted the simple, airy, reverb-laden guitar lines, and the distant vocals. I had to concentrate on that. What did I want from indie rock? The basic yet prominent bass lines, and the tight drum beats. I had to concentrate on that.

So I shouldn't focus on the genres, but indeed on the elements that I associate with those genres. This gives me something much more concrete to work with than a general term and a list of bands.

A huge influence on my music at the time was Deerhunter, but here even Deerhunter is a vague “gravitational core”. What release of theirs influenced me the most back then? It was their second and third albums: Cryptograms and Microcastle respectively.

A lot of my time was spent listening to the songs in those two albums and asking myself what was in those songs that I'd like to have in my music. It was mostly the guitars, the reverb, and at times the drums.

To no surprise, for good part of my life after that I mostly played simple dream pop riffs with the same tones I developed out of studying Cryptograms. I had understood the elements I desired, learned how they worked, redeveloped them in my own way, and applied them to my own compositions. Dissolve and coagulate.

This takes time and patience, especially in your road to create the musical personality for an entire project. Don't try to expedite it.

2. Start testing it out with songs. If you are a bedroom musician, you will try out those elements by recording or producing instrument/vocal tracks. If you are a band, it's either that, collective composition, or jamming. I'll focus on the case of bedroom musicians, as that is what I did the most.

This is time for you to start thinking of riffs, harmonies, melodies, beats, maybe even vague timbres. Whenever an idea pops in your head, take the opportunity to grab an instrument or open your DAW and bring that to life as fast as possible. Once it has been established, record it with your phone or whatever is at hand.

Listen to the repertoire of musical elements and motifs you have and ponder about them. Think of what music could be built around them. When you feel ready, properly record a motif on your DAW and start building around it.

This is an early stage. You are trying to achieve those elements you thought of in the first step, so you shouldn't be afraid to trash whole racks of effects, re-do entire guitar timbres, re-record lines, change the composition entirely, reprogram the drums all over... no matter how much effort is necessary/lost, admit when some element is unbecoming, and do what you must do to approach a sound you enjoy.

The result will either be exactly what you imagined, or something different that still sounds satisfying to you. Regardless of whether this will all be kept for the final version of the song, the process is what reinforces your ability to remain musically coherent.

This is a thing I lacked entirely in my past projects. Whatever I recorded at first was what I'd have in the end. Whatever I mixed for the first time drilled into my mind the notion of what the song was going to be forever. My perception of a track was like a stone sculpture. However, that couldn't be farther from the truth, as a song can change if provided the possibility. All I have to do is abandon my perception of what it is and go back to pursuing what I wish for it to be.

3. Use a single set of philosophies for each release. Imagine a hypothetical Nirvana album. All of the songs have the popular trio, however, a part of the album has been mixed by Steve Albini, another part by Butch Vig, and another by Jack Endino, all of this done in the exact same studio.

It's safe to say that hypothetical album would sound like a chimera. It would probably sound sick, albeit absolutely bonkers, like the producer couldn't settle on a sound, or like the band had to change recording studios every week or so.

That's because the mixing obviously changes the way a song sounds. Many people would be able to tell that “Breed” is a Nevermind song, because the mixing is particular to that album, which was done by Butch Vig. In another case, “In Bloom” has two versions: the first one is similar to how Bleach sounded (I don't know if Jack Endino mixed it), and the other is a clear fit with Nevermind. If you added the old version of In Bloom to Nevermind, it would sound like a bonus track.

This enlightens the fact that you should maintain a single set of production and mixing philosophies for each of your releases, especially when you are dealing with “band” music. Avoid using too many different amplifiers and microphones, changing your guitar's pickup position unnecessarily, or singing with completely different intonation for each song. If you are going to route all instrument tracks to a room reverb channel, try to ensure it is similar or the same for every song. Be precise with the EQ and compressors, and try to approximate the same feel on the frequency spectrums of songs within the same release; if one song sounds too rich in the lows and the next too rich in the mids without apparent reason (e.g. different instrumentation), that can sound quite off.

This is also something I completely ignored in the past, and the results were atrocious. I only ever hit a good spot with production/mixing consistency in two releases: once accidentally in a 3-song demo, and the second time in my latest release. The secret is to focus, be patient, be open for repetition, and understand your limitations.

4. Once you've walked far, walk back for a while. Yes, this sounds counterintuitive, perhaps frustrating, but you have to do it. Once you got however many songs in the process of producing a release, make a hypothetical track list and pay attention to how the songs would interact. Do they work genre-wise? Do you feel your release would occupy a space too broad stylistically than what you'd deem preferable? Separate the songs that don't function well together and remove them from the release. Any empty space can be filled by future compositions. Culling songs like this will hurt, it will feel like wasted work, nonetheless, this can be extremely important to achieve uniformity.

I only recently learned to do this well, and of 7 songs I had for the EP I'm working on currently, I culled a bunch (most being genuinely good songs) down to 3. Now I am composing new music to have more material for the release.

Take into account two Radiohead releases: Kid A and Amnesiac. Amnesiac is dubbed by some as “Kid B”, because it was recorded at the same time as Kid A, and its release might seem like an afterthought in a certain way. Some songs feel like B-sides despite being great compositions. “Knives Out”, for example, has a chord progression incredibly reminiscent of “Paranoid Android” from an even earlier release. (Quick and dirty as I got lazy, but should play it yourself to notice the way they are composed is too similar for coincidence. Paranoid: Cm, A#/Cm, F/Cm, Gm, Em7 || Knives: Cm, A#6, G#Maj7, Gm, F6, E7)

Why did Radiohead choose to cull all the Amnesiac tracks off Kid A? The reasons are many. But Kid A and Amnesiac are very functional albums on their own, and even though some songs could be exchanged between them (“In Limbo” may have been a good fit for Amnesiac too), they work smoothly with the track listing they ended up with.

Keep in mind that the songs which ended up in Amnesiac didn't get kicked out of Kid A for being worse songs, but for not fitting what Radiohead envisioned for the album. Understand that you aren't going to choose the best songs, the songs with the best hooks, or the songs that sound the coolest. You are going to select good songs that create a coherent body for your release.

Radiohead are kings of doing this. Some of their best songs are B-sides or even demos: 4 Minute Warning, Go Slowly, Fog, How I Made My Millions (you can hear Yorke’s now deceased ex-wife in the background)... their quality alone wasn't enough for Radiohead to select them as part of a main release's track list.

Beach House is another good example. When replying to someone who said all their album tracks sounded like B-sides, they agreed, and explained that was by design. Beach House isn't selecting all their poppy songs to populate their main releases, but the ones that better exhibit their vision. For better uniformity, you should try doing similar.

#indie pop #bedroom pop #music production #bedroom music #my music #music tips

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kidd-uk · 6 years

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WATSP - Track By Track

WHERE ARE THE STRANGE PEOPLE?

KiDD

Making The Album - Track By Track

1. Little Flower. The backing track was created the day I bought a new synth. An Arturia Microbrute. It’s got this great little programmable arpeggiator function that I fed some notes into randomly. I played about with that until I found some chords that sounded nice over it and left it at that for a while. It was a while before I returned to it with the idea that a set of lyrics I had written on holiday one year in Italy might fit. The original idea had been floating around for a few years with a more fingerpicked guitar-style tune behind them, but I never really finished it. I tried them over this little improvised piece and they fitted nicely so I discarded the original tune and used them here. It’s all about the synths in the background for me though!

2. An Afternoon In April. This one stemmed entirely from a little thumb piano I found lying around The Tolbooth in Stirling that didn’t really make any kind of sensible notes but a really great wee honk. I made a little rhythmic pattern and recorded it to my phone knowing that at some point I could use it somewhere. It’s the little loop you hear at the start of the song. All the music was written around that and the lyrics came much later once the whole thing had been arranged and recorded. Very rarely do I leave lyrics until the end, but like most of the tracks on this album, the tune came first and I was really into making sounds rather than writing songs at first. I had learned a lot of new recording and production techniques whilst working with Joe Kane on the Dr Cosmos stuff, and a lot of what you hear on this record is me at home, attempting to get to grips with a lot of them. The lyrics came from the title, which was one picked at random from my little book of titles that I keep for days when I fancy a bit of random inspiration!

3. Cyan Seren. This was one of my ‘dice games.’ I had previously developed a way of writing by chance using dice, something that was heavily inspired by Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies and the novel ‘The Dice Man’ by Luke Reinhart. By rolling the dice several times before composing, certain writing and arrangement decision are made for me. These are determined by several categories, each containing six different variables in each, leaving me to ‘fill in the blanks’ as it were. Musically this entire song was written using that method, and even the title. The lyrics were inspired by a very dear friend of ours who had recently passed away and a star we bought in her name to remember her by. She will be forever in our skies.

4. Independence Day. Ian Thistlethwaite is a chap who played strings on the Poundstore Riot album, and came via Ash Cooke, my co-writing partner for that particular project. I’ve never met him, or even spoke to him, but one day he sent me a demo of a song and asked me to record a version of it. I re-arranged the whole thing, added some bits here and there and sent it back to him. I’d say it’s probably about 70% his, but I loved how it turned out and it really fitted with the other songs I had recorded up until then, so I asked him if I could put it on my album. I was chuffed when he agreed. A lot of the tracks on this album have a kind of Joe Meek/Sci-Fi vibe to them. This fitted right in!

5. Satellites. I was flying alone to New York a while ago to meet the rest of Gulp who I was drumming with at the time. On the flight, I ended up sitting beside a chap who was from somewhere like Bradford but who had lived in New York for years working for a company navigating satellites that circled the earth. His job was to steer them around to certain places at certain times for various reasons and I got the impression it was some kind of espionage. I started to conjure up all sorts of images as him as some kind of secret service space-age spy and immediately the ‘this would make a song’ function in my brain started to whirr. By the time I’d gotten through customs, most of the idea for this song was in my head and the little loop you hear at the beginning came from an app on my phone I programmed random notes into and then sung the melody over. I had to borrow ma Da’s Stratocaster for the guitar parts at the end, as the Casino just wasn’t cutting the mustard.

6. Callisto. Callisto is the second largest moon that orbits Jupiter. I loved the name and it fitted nicely over this tune that sounded to me like it could have been one of the satellites being steered around by the chap from the previous song. This was recorded on my old Tascam 4 track cassette recorder and then fed into the laptop and left exactly as it was aside from a few backwards guitar bits. It began life with me playing a drone with a few wine glasses over a mic’d up snare drum and tuning my guitar to DADDAD. Using an old delay pedal I began to steer the satellite around Callisto with the mysteries of the universe twinkling in the background…

7. Modified Radio Birdsong. Another ‘dice composition’ that began life on the Tascam 4 track. I cut up a length of tape, stuck it back into the cassette and made some random loops which I then mixed together and fed into the laptop. There it remained for some time as an instrumental, before I added lyrics at the 11th hour when I had a sick day from work (genuine!). Possibly because I was pretty feverish, I felt a bit self-conscious about them so I heavily disguised them with a vocoder and buried them a bit in the mix almost as soon as I’d recorded them, and then left it as it was. This was probably the first thing I recorded for the album, and the last one I finished.

8. Baby Bird. Friends of mine had recently had a little baby girl. They sent us a picture and she just had this really beautiful wee face. Her eyes were closed in the picture and her mouth slightly open. For some reason it reminded me of when I was young and my Dad used to lift me up to peer into a bird box nailed to the garden shed when there were little baby blue-tits in it. I would always pester him to lift me up again to look at them as soon as the parents flew off to find a worm or two to feed them. As I thought of that memory, the lyrics pretty much all appeared fully formed, the idea the parents will work tirelessly for the wellbeing of their offspring. Something which I myself now understand first hand!

9. Misty’s Golden Years. This came from the book of titles and was another ‘dice composition’. The idea for the title and the story came to me when I was leaving work one day and it stuck with me for ages before I finally sat down and tried to flesh out the lyrics. It started off with a little guitar loop I played through a filter which you can hear at various points over the arrangement. I ended up with far too many ideas for this one, and it took me some time to settle on a final arrangement with a lot of cutting and pasting going on. How very untraditional, I can almost see Neil Young furrow his brow. I kept hearing brass through it, but settled for mouth brass as I’d never fit a brass section in my cupboard. It was also the last thing the old Casio VL-tone played before the batteries melted the insides and it had to get put down. Gutted.

10. Looking For The Way Out. I wrote this the day the idiots of Britain outvoted the good to leave the EU. I’m still in disbelief. This is probably the most political I’ll ever get.

11. Where Are The Strange People? (part 2). This was written in Italy when I was on holiday and had a little two octave USB keyboard with me. I spent the whole holiday just recording little melodies on it with a view to coming home and writing Enoesque soundscapes over them all. I ended up with about six or seven that I really liked and have indeed created the soundscapes, but they are yet to see the light of day. This one was one of my favourites. The title came to me when I was in Wrexham, again with Gulp strangely enough! I re-recorded the whole thing after I composed another bunch of 4 track cassette loops that just fitted the overall vibe of the tune. I was listening a lot to EDIT by Linden around this time, and if you know that album, you’ll immediately hear the influence!!

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