Category: Music

New Recording: Angel or Alien

Well it’s not all been home improvement projects of late, so shifting gears here: My new song, Angel or Alien, is getting close to done. It’s a quasi-autobiographical number, a sort of sci-fi reverie based on contemplating the wonder of the night sky, combined with some speculation about things that can be seen but not readily explained.

As mentioned before, it features an analog-style synthesizer solo in the middle section. Now in the old days I would have played this on a real synthesizer and twiddled the knobs live. I’m particularly keen on sweeping some lowpass filters and adding some big FLO here as an effect here and there. But my setup has gone all digital and fully computerized, so I ended up using a software synthesizer inside proTools for the patch, and the keyboard I played has only the basic pitch wheel and modulation control. So I’m hoping I can map some continuous controllers to the software synth model and either perform these moves as essential an overdub, or just pencil them in.

More importantly, I finalized the lyrics in the last week and laid down a vocal track just the other night. I normally do several takes on my vocals and edit them together to form a master lead vocal track. As soon as this is done, I’ll post a rough mix. Still to do is possible backing vocals and sweetening instruments (backing synths, etc.), and the aforementioned lead synth knob twiddling. But I want to listen to the song a few times before I get to that, so it won’t stop me from posting the first rough mix.

Meanwhile, you can meditate on the lyrics.

…

Angel or Alien
by John Szinger

Walking home alone the other night
When looking up the sky ahead I saw a light
I quickly identified it at as a UFO
But what it really was I don’t know
Was it an angel or an alien ?
Or was it something else again ?

Hover above the world we weave with our machines
One giant step or small leap it’s of our means
For what could be more human than to
Make a thing to do the thing you do?
But is it a demon or is it a dinosaur ?
Is it something more?

Walk on said the man in the moon
Why do the stars in the sky ?
Walk on said the man in the moon
Moonchild teach me to fly
They know you’ve walked miles alone
All that has shone upon soon will be shown
Walk on said the man in the moon
Go home, go home yeah

Twelve thousand years that they’ve been gone
An outer orbit on that big wheel one time ’round
But they’re on their way now, yeah they’re coming home
The stars are aligned man in the moon will leave his light on
All night long

And do they come to enlighten and set us free ?
Or to blind us with bling and enslave us with TV ?
And will they bring death to the world of illusions
Ideas categories ambitions confusions
A shooting star is a sign in the sky calling
So is it a meteor or just a metaphor falling?

Look up said the man in the moon
How can the stars in their turn?
Look up said the man in the moon
Moonchild teach me to learn
They know you’ve walked dark years in dreams
Look deeper and see that it’s not what it seems
Look up said the man in the moon
Go home, go home yeah

GE Music Update

Here’s an update to the GE Music music player. Erik and Glenn have put up hundreds of new tracks! Wild stuff, and an incredible range of diversity, masterful treatment of lots of styles. Rock, jazz, heavy metal, orchestral, electronic; its in there. In addition to lots of instrumental tracks for TV shows, commercials, and the like, there are a few straight-up songs with vocals. Just leave on shuffle play for few hours for a mind-expanding tour of sensational sounds.

Go to GE’s homepage (http://www.gemusic.com/) and click on “Music” in menu on the top. Or if you prefer, here”s a direct link (http://www.gemusic.com/player/geMusicPlayer.html) to the player.

Interim Update: La La La La Life

Well another whole week has gone by without my updating my blog. Ah well, what can I say, it’s summertime. Time to take a break and go play outside. In addition to summertime party fun I’ve been working on my various projects: origami polyhedra galore and recording a new song “Angel Or Alien” trying to fit in an extra hour here or there at night, but both are fairly laborious mentally.  Well last Monday I kind of hit a wall, and spent the next few days feeling tired and burned out. I’ve also been nursing a knee injury which has been taking a long time to feel better. On top of that, my computer died last week.

Things were slow at the cartoon factory with lots of people out on vacation, so Tuesday I worked at home, and ended up sleeping late and going to bed early. Wednesday I woke up early as a big ol’ summer thunderstorm rolled in. I decided to wait at home until the storm calmed down and take a later train into work. I left the house 45 minutes late, and arrived to find the platform crowded with soggy commuters. As luck would have it, my usual train was there within minutes of my arriving at the station, also 45 minutes late.

Heading home on my way to Grand Central Station, I heard a huge rumbling, like thunder or maybe a plane flying overhead, but longer and louder. (Still feeling kind of beat) I didn’t really think about what it might be. I found out on the news that night that a steam pipe had broken underground one block over, and spewed a geyser of steam higher then the Chrysler Building into the sky! I found it a bit odd that they kept saying on the news that it was not the work of terrorists. Sign of the times we live in I guess. They didn’t say, however, that it wasn’t the work of bears!

Thursday work was busy again and I wound up working late to meet a deadline, pinch hitting for a colleague who was out on vacation. Toon dance party online!

Friday I was still pretty tired in the morning, but I had the day off and once I got going my energy finally picked up. Jeannie, the girls and I took a day trip to Jones Beach on Long Island with her sister Mary’s family. A perfect day for it too, 82 and sunny. The surf was pretty strong, and the beach itself is as beautiful as any on the East Coast. Afterwards we went back to their house for a barbecue. It was a great time for everyone and some much needed R&R.

So now I’m in the process of moving into my new computer, which is really not new, but up until last week had been only for running proTools, and now it’s for everything. I have a lot of data to migrate, and a lot of configs to setup and setups to config. My old computer didn’t completely die, just the screen, making it *almost* unusable. I was able to turn on remote access and file sharing on the basis of the position of the UI widgets on the screen. Yeesh. Now I can drive my old computer from my new computer, which is pretty cool actually.

My knee is also feeling better, and I literally have a spring in my step again.

I’ve also been making progress on my new song “Angel or Alien”. It”s fairly long (over 7 minutes right now, but I”m thinking of cutting a section), and is sort of a pseudo-prog number with an existential theme and scifi overtones. Structurally there’s a slow jazzy first part, a fast middle part with meter changes and churning, swooping, blazing gonzo synthesizers, and then a recapitulation and elaboration of the first part. The chords are based mainly on stacked 4ths over shifting roots, which is a pretty cool sound.

I’ve been getting the bass and drums together. The bass part involves a lot of two-note chords, and I recorded it twice but was not happy with the sound either time. Then I tried double-tracking the part, which sound much better than either part on its own. It introduces a natural chorus effect and comes out something like Joco Pastorius. Drums for me always involve a lot of editing, building up and pulling down, creating dimension like a chalk drawing, and they’re taking shape. I’m ready to get down to the piano part, which will really give some flesh to the whole song.

Interim Update

Hello all. I’m mainly getting ready for the Origami Conference this week. Folding like a demon in my spare time. Lots of works-in-progress, but no new finished pieces yet. Been trying to finish my ladybug but so far an elegant solution has eluded me. A friend suggested I try and come up with a Moose, so I’ve been looking at the mooses in the books I have. One is by John Montroll and the other by Robert Lang, and their approches couldn’t be more different. John’s is a great example of his classic style, using all 22.5 degree angles and advanced isotopes of the traditional bases.  It’s pretty easy to fold, and works well from plain ol’ 10″ kami. I did one on the train today, starting on the way in and finishing it on the way home. Came out really nice. Robert’s is all box pleating, and I’m about half done, and remembering why I don’t fold box pleated models very much, all that overhead. Still, I’m looking forward to finishing it, and it should be nice. Also made out of 10″ kami to be fair.

My own idea is rather different than both of theirs, particularly with regard to the antlers, which is of course where the action is in a moose. I’m thinking of doing something more sculptural, out of 2 large flaps, rather than hiding all those points deep in the model and opening it out at the end, a feature which both my examples share. So mine basically reduces to an 8 point base. Of course I’m not at the level yet where I can fold a model straight from the concept and nail it every time. No, there’s usually a fair amount of experimentation to get there for me. So we’ll see how it goes. If it works, I’ll also have a suitable base to fold the Great Forest Spirit from the movie Princess Mononoke, kicking off my long awaited Miyazaki series.

In all the excitement, there is one new thing I forget to mention: last week I did a punch-in on the ending of the sax solo for Heat Wave, and produced a slightly-less-rough-mix. Enjoy!

GE Music Player Goes Live!

Earlier this year I blogged about my friend Erik and his music production house GE Music. Well the project I did for him — an interactive music library browser/player — is now live and serving Glenn and Erik’s tracks. They have it loaded up with a variety of music, a sampling of the range of their work that includes acoustic, electronic, jazz, easy listening, rock, orchestral and soundtrack styles. It’s well worth a listen. Go to GE’s homepage and click on “Music” in menu on the top. Or if you prefer, here’s a direct link to the player. I particualrly enjoy the tune “Bong Shop”. Rock on dudes!

Loopback

Today’s post is some links to friends linking back to me. Warning: if you click on my links, and then click on the links in their sites leading back here, you may get caught in a loop. Re: curse on recursion!!!

First off my brother Martin, posts some pictures and comments here on his visit down here last month. He’s been busy with a new house and travel for his work, and has a gigging band, so he’s been blogging up a storm lately.

Next, friend John Neumann has started a blog here. Read and you will learn that I recently did some overdubs, which he’s since stirred into the mix, for the Happy Monkey Song on his forthcoming album. Also in the post is a bunch of stuff like hints about The Festivus Song, which may become the 9th track in his set, and some sensible dieting advice.

Quiet Revolution Rough Mixes

My Friend John Neumann, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and recording artist is at it again. You might remember him as having previously scored an arrangement of Yes’s Tales From Topographic Oceans for string quartet.

Now he’s working on a new album or original material. The working title is Quiet Revolution. He’s posted some rough mixes here.

I like John’s songwriting style a lot. He is variously introspective, dark, hopeful, and funny, and ties it all together with a tasteful palette of synthesizer textures, loops, ambient sounds and real instruments. His sound is evocative of Peter-Gabriel-era Genesis and John-Wetton-era King Crimson, but he has his own thing going on too. Fans of modern legit music will enjoy Harbingers of Spring in particular, which recontextualizes a classic Igor Stravinsky riff and features some smokin’ bass playing.

The songs are pretty far along (although admittedly I don’t know what he might be thinking of changing around structurally or in his arrangements), and tend to need just minor tweaks like balancing some levels, or adding some effects to the vocals, or a bit of EQ or compression here and there. I find that after working on writing and tracking a song, you tend to get so close to it that you can no longer the subtle nuances of the sound, and it’s good to step away for a while once you’ve hit the rough mix, and come back to it with fresh ears once you have a bunch of songs done up to that stage. John seems to be taking a similar approach with this set.

Anyway, give it a listen an enjoy, and watch for the final versions of the songs coming together in an album later this year.

Heat Wave Rough Mix

For all who are interested, the weekend was a great success. Lizzy proudly and joyously communed, we had a super party and saw a bunch of family and friends. Jeannie’s dad brought a whole bunch of Mexican beers. My parents came into town for the weekend, as did my brother Martin and his girlfriend Kathleen. Thanks to Martin for lending me his bari sax. I’ll be sure to put it some use before I return it. I can think of a song I have that would make a good bari feature. A sort of Duke Ellington meets Alice In Chains number.

The only downside of late has been the absolutely beautiful, perfect spring weather. Oh the irony! My allergies have been so bad that I’ve been measuring the time I spend outside. I gave up on trying to fix my car Sunday it was so bad. Even in midtown Manhattan, where you’d think nothing green is growing, I can feel it. It’s supposed to rain tomorrow, which ought to bring some relief, and if past experience is any guide, it’ll be tapering off soon.

The main topic for the week is that I’ve posted a rough mix of my new song Heat Wave. You can listen to it here. It came out pretty good if I say so myself. At this point the tracking is done, except for maybe a wee punch-in here or there, and the levels and effects are roughed in. Still todo is the actual mixing — riding the faders to bring up and down the different parts, and finalizing the effects. The point of this is to sculpt and shape the sound, make the voices blend where they should and stand out where they should.

I might also add one or two more keyboard tracks. One would be to replace the synth part with a take that’s a bit more jamming. The other would be to add something like a clav part, to help fill in for the lack of guitar. But on the other hand, maybe the arrangement is thick enough and it doesn’t need that. I’ll give it a few listens and decide.

It’s a pretty fat mix as it is. I think I used twenty two tracks, plus effects buses. A lot of stuff is double tracked. The drums are on six tracks, with the kick on one, the snare doubled on 2 and 3 with two different samples, cymbals on 4, hihat on 5, and hand claps on 6. Since the drums are all MIDI, I could conceivably do it all on a single track, but this gives me the kind of control you’d have over real drums, to bring up and down and pan the instruments of the kit. I ran the bass guitar direct, and doubled it with a synth bass.

The piano, which anchors the tune, has a left hand part that doubles the bass at times, so there’s a good big heavy bottom. I layered the paino with two rhodes samples, one with more of an overdrive and the other more of a flange sound. I have a nice sample bank of rhodes presets, and I find doubling them up and adjusting the balance is a lot easier than running a straight piano thru an effects box.

I did a similar trick with the horns. The main tenor sax part is double tracked, and backed up by a synth horn arrangement (I had decided a real horn arrangement was a lot more trouble and not really necessary.) The synth horn is doubled and layered with two rather different sound patches to give a nice blend. I recorded the sax solo on it’s own track, to make it easier to pull it up front in the mix.

The lead vocal track was cut together out of 3 different takes done in rapid succession. I also cut a second vocal track to double it in the verses. In the choruses I’m doing full harmony, which is another 3 tracks worth of vocals. All the backing vocals and saxes (except the sax solo) are on the same effects bus to save CPU power.

So there you have it, enjoy. I have another song I’m ready to start on (a sort of ELP meets Kieth Jarrett number), but it looks like the summer is almost here, and I predict the amount of time I spend in the studio will diminish in the time ahead. Ah well. I’m hoping to do 4 songs this year. We’ll see how it goes.

New Recodings: Heat Wave

Meanwhile, back in the insular isolation of my home recording studio I’ve been working on a new song called Heat Wave. Here’s the story.

Last summer I took a vacation in Florida. The first part of the trip was a visit to Treasure Island on Tampa Bay, and consisted of me and my family, along with my cousin Peter and his wife Kim, hanging around and rotating from the pool to the beach to the bar to the restaurant and back in a loop for 2 or 3 days. The hotel was literally right on the beach, so by the time we were done with that we were pretty relaxed.

The next part of the journey was centered on Orlando, so on the drive up I had the Van Halen song Beautiful Girls going thru my head. I turned on the radio and, perhaps predictably, found a central Florida nonstop party rock station. You know, all ZZ Top, Steve Miller Band, that sort of thing. Even some Rush! Within 20 minutes they did a Van Halen song, Running With the Devil I think it was.

So I was inspired to write a high-energy summertime party rock song, and came up with a number called Heat Wave. Of course as I developed it, it became a bit twisted, with a 7/8 time signature, and copious use of upward chromatic movement, jazz chords, allusions to John Coltrane, and an environmentalist subtext. But it sure is high energy.

I started recording it in January, but this one has been taking a long time. It took a little while to get the arrangement together, and then doing the drum parts was fairly tedious on a sequencer. Which is ironic, because the whole point of it to make it sound free and spontaneous, and above all really grooving. At least the bass went down fairly easily, played live and in real time. From there I’ve been experimenting with the arrangement. I had originally thought of doing it in a Brothers Zing style, with a horn section and guitar, sort of a prog soul vibe, and that I’d ask my brother Martin to play guitar and bari sax. But he recently bought a new house and dismantled his recording studio for the move, so that was not an option. I reconceptualized it for tenor sax and a synth horn section, and layers of synths instead of guitars. Still some work to do, but I like the direction it’s going.

Then there were the vocals. It took me a few tries to really nail it, cuz the part is fairly high in my range, and it’s fast and has some longish phrases with some subtle intervals. I finally got a good vocal take last night, so soon I’ll be editing up the first rough mix. I still have to do the sax part, and I’ve done a couple passes at that too. It’s a challenging solo , a bebop vibe in an out time, and again I want to really nail it, so I’ve been woodsheding that a bit too. It’ll be worth it.

I had hoped to get two songs tracked and in the can this spring, progress toward my eventual next album, but at this point I’m thinking getting just this one finished off is more realistic. Heat Wave is a longish song, over 5 minutes. It’s funny, you think you’d get some economy on a longer song with repeated sections and all, but it really the same amount of work as 2 two-and-a-half minute songs.  I have more songs written and ready to go, so maybe I can find a short one that I can polish off without much effort.

Anyway, I’ve gotten to the point where it’s shaping up nicely. Of course it’s impossible to get across the essence of a song by describing it; words can only describe so much. But a mix will be coming soon. Meanwhile, here are the lyrics.

…

(Here Comes That) Heat Wave
by John Szinger

Ev’ryone is in the sun and having fun
Dance and sing and party all day all night long
Tomorrow’s gonna get up to a hundred and one (Tum tee tum-tum)
As a rule we hit the pool
But the beach ain’t out of reach
Anyway girl you look so fine having a good time
And Santa Claus is swimming cuz the North Pole can’t be saved

Cuz it’s heat wave, yeah a heat wave
C’mon heat wave, here comes that heat wave, look out!
Here comes that heat wave, hey a heat wave
Yeah it’s a heat wave oh yeah

Ev’ry fool is out of school and stayin’ cool
No one’s gonna work today whatcha gonna do
Tomorrow’s gonna get up to a hundred and two (Shoo-be do doo)
Think I’ll have an ice cold drink
Not too far hit the bar
Anyway girl you look so good that I know we could
And Santa Claus is drinking cuz the North Pole can’t be saved

Cuz it’s heat wave, oh yeah a heat wave
C’mon it’s a heat wave, here comes that heat wave, look out!
Here comes that heat wave, yeah a heat wave
Hey a heat wave yeah yeah

You and me time to party feelin’ free
Oceans rising endless summer come to be
Tomorrow’s gonna get up to a hundred and three (Shoo-be do bee)
And Santa Claus is swimming the North Pole can’t be saved

Cuz it’s heat wave, oh yeah a heat wave
C’mon it’s a heat wave, here comes that heat wave, look out!
Here comes that heat wave, yeah a heat wave
Hey a heat wave yeah yeah

Baby baby …
I feel the ice is slowly melting …
Sometimes I feel I want to run away …
Your love is like a heat wave …
Yeah!