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Death Row Candyland
(12 Sep 2009 at 11:32) |
Here's a new Tom 7 Entertainment System song, Death Row Candyland. It's possibly most ambitious one ever, except for the cover art:
Tom 7 Entertainment System - Death Row Candyland
I couldn't figure out how to easily get that diagonal candy cane stripe look in 10 minutes, so instead purely vertical bands which are like their own mini prison inside the letters.
Now you want to hear me overanalyze? This song is kinda like theme from rt2i in that I spent a lot of time on it (like multiple nights), a lot of which was on texture. This is highly unusual for me. I'd go back and listen to it and think, hmm, this particular transition seems to lose too much bass, and then fix it. I didn't stop until I listened through the whole thing and thought there were no undesired jarring moments, cheesefest notes, boring off-pace repeats, or missed opportunities. (Usually I just crap it out in an hour or two binge with all default settings, and hope for the best.) I like the song better than rt2i though because I feel like the basic tune is more sound. I started with what you hear in measures 1–28 (intro, intrigue theme, main echo theme) which loop so nicely and which would easily have been the whole song in 1999-era T7ES. I really liked the twisty uneasiness of the chords and (especially) the echo theme. So I decided to embrace and extend, and the end product has at least 5 distinct parts, and maybe counting the counterpoint something like 9 or 10.
Another way this is similar to rt2i is the way that the melody from the main echo theme shows up in 3 totally different places, changing its meaning each time. I am in love with this trick these days. (For sure it's in Zürich bigtime.) It is a good challenge to pull it off (usually it means adjusting something rhythmically or melodically, and can easily lead to a muddle if clumsy) and I think that the self-reference is so damn satisfying. IMO the part in the coda where the echo theme comes back (gently telegraphed in the square waves in the prior pattern) is completely fucking epic. To me in the narrative of the song it's like something odd but familiar finally making sense. | |
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Crapversity Marching Band – Upright Base
(06 Sep 2009 at 23:58) |
One of my longest time buddies (since I think 1998) Jason (aka jcreed) is leaving Pittsburgh tomorrow, having graduated and now needing a post-doc. In the spirit of doing things that we should have done a long time ago, we had a One Night Band, which was actually two nights, to write and record a song. Our band is called Crapversity Marching Band for our dream to some day make a university formed upon Crap Art philosophy and then to be its marching band. Here is our album cover:
caption: man plays drum with butter knives illustration: jcreed
MP3: Crapversity Marching Band – Upright Base
The song is called Upright Base. We wrote the chords together, me using the guitar and my illiterate florid language to try to try to describe what I was getting at chord-wise, and him with the keyboard eptly naming those funny fingerings and then being like, "Oh well if we have B♭m6 then obviously Dadd9 will go next," which is funny and also really useful when you get stuck off in chord lala land. Today we wrote the words and recorded it. Jason did the keyboard playing (basically improvising all that fancy shit on the spot) and I did the guitars and the singing. Jason was going to do some singing too but then he started guts-clutching like always and it was getting urgent since he needs to get up at 7am to drive to Philadelphia. So just me on sings. I think it came out pretty well.
Two more new recordings for other projects in the queue. | |
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Lausanne... Jealous?
(26 Aug 2009 at 23:12) |
Lausanne... Jealous? by Sick Ridiculous & etc. Photo Marcus S.
A few weeks ago our friend Donna successfully defended her thesis and threw a party, even waiting until a Tuesday night so that Nels and I could play at that nice party, so of course we wrote a song for the gig. It is called Lausanne... Jealous? because Donna is about to take a post-doctoral position at EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland. More than usual—which is saying a lot—this song is loaded with detailed in-jokes and difficult puns. I will provide some hints, since we received positive feedback about the fact that we did this before playing the song at her party. There are three national languages in Switzerland: (Swiss) German, French, and Italian. The Swiss invented the Swatch watch, which you are encouraged to wear multiple of on your arm, for fashion. (Nels and I predict a Swatch fashion resurgence, soon.) They also invented the Swiss Army knife and cheese. Donna always serves mostly cheese at her parties because she has a gluten-free diet. Donna's dissertation is about some objected oriented programming stuff. At EPFL she'll work on Scala, a maximalist language which combines all known programming ideas into one Java-like syntax. It was made by Martin Odersky, who also made a Java extension once called Pizza. That's probably enough to get you started.
Still in queue: ICFP contest report (very soon I'll even be able to include the final results, heh), new T7ES song, Pac Tom update, pics from various events. Shame. | |
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Sans Pellegrino and a bug
(23 Aug 2009 at 17:21) |
Here is a new T7ES song called Sans Pellegrino.
Tom 7 Entertainment System - Sans Pellegrino
— ❧ —
Related: I have been working on several different pieces of audio-generating software and hardware. One of my favorite things about doing this is the crazy ways that stuff can fail, and the unexpected sounds that result. My most current thing is some microcontroller-based sound generation for secret project EG. As part of testing it I created what I think is my first actual chiptune, in the sense that the music is generated by a microchip dedicated to the purpose, not some software emulator or hi-fi MIDI synthesizer. Here is Sensations (chip error); the sound quality is very bad because the only way I have to record this is to hold a mic up to a speaker. It starts out fine but goes to shit pretty soon. What's actually happening is that I'm not making the realtime deadline for emitting samples (chip is only 12mhz) because I'm doing too much computation when there are more than 2 notes sounding simultaneously. Because it's basically deterministic and only generating sound, this actually just slows down everything: the length of the notes and their corresponding pitch, by a factor depending on how many simultaneous notes there are. I had a good laugh about this.
I'm usually very careful when programming microcontrollers because it's way harder to debug than in a regular computer, if you get it wrong. I'm proud to report that this was compile/flash/test #2; the first didn't do anything because I forgot to increment the index into the song; the third worked exactly as I wanted. More on this project soon, I think. | |
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Theme from Zürich
(18 Jul 2009 at 15:05) |
Hi! Right now I am on a broken-cars adventure to Erie PA to run in a half-marathon on an island. I will definitely suck, even not wearing a costume. But then on Monday I am going to Zurich. So I wrote this Tom 7 Entertainment System tune called Theme from Zürich. It is pretty weird chord-wise but especially for its superposition of triplets and power-of-two rhythms. I also think it is kind of catchy.
irony alert: I know that Swiss Miss is not actually Swiss. (For example its logo would probably be in Helvetica) | |
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Album-a-day #24: Baking about architecture
(04 Jul 2009 at 22:47) |
Good day! It's a long weekend in the USA and like last year this time I recorded another album-a-day. It's called Baking about architecture. In music I only believe in one kind of cover:
This was a sort of interesting one. It was my first AAD with my new guitar, and also a new mic and preamp. I also more than usual scheduled this one mentally, somewhat in advance (and then withheld guitar from myself so that I'd be itching to go). The weirdest thing is that typically the first song or two I crap out is pretty bad and then later on I have these moments of inspiration. But this time the first was Eating buildings and then some one-minute throwaway thing that became A tribute to attributes and then Text me like where's Rite Aid at. Eating buildings and Text me like... are easily my favorites on the album (if you only listen to a few songs, make it those two.) I got excited by these early successes and spent a long time on them, particularly on lyrics, and then after five hours I was like jeepers I've recorded less than four minutes so far. After that I was a little burned out and had to pick up the pace. I have a new strategy, which is when I feel like a song isn't going so well, I just cut it loose, meaning I finish it but as quickly as I can and don't sweat it (0xCAFÉBABE), so that I can save time for those critical moments.
I have a bunch of new/different equipment and tech now, so I'm interested how you think it sounds from a production standpoint. Obviously I am really cranking the levels as usual; I am just trying to do my part in the dynamic compression arms race. If you are keen to this kind of thing you will notice a lot of punching in and out, which I hate the discontinuity of, but this was part of my expedient process of recording my lyric ideas and melodies as I was writing them so that I didn't have to put them down on paper/emacs so much or rerecord when I'd screw up one bit.
Production notes:
When I set out to make an album I sometimes solicit song titles and lyrics ideas. This time I did it on Facebook and got loads; there were too many to use but lots of these are named by suggestions. Some made it in as lyrics, too.
Eating buildings.  I really like this one and it's an obvious opener. Lotsa good lines, and probably the best-recorded guitar one. Eating Buildings is the team name we usually use for puzzle competitions, but this song is more literal.
A tribute to attributes. The only two redeeming things about this song are the title (though not really that clever) and the part where I list some things and their attributes, which depending on what circles you roll in you may be able to figure out. I sandwiched it between my two favorite songs so that you get it over with quickly. (Also then the first 3 are in chronological order.)
Text me like where's the Rite Aid at. Everything really came together for this one. I discovered a new music fact: Triplets are super danceable, particularly when syncopated with some "regular" power-of-two stuff (the "you were so beautiful..." part).
It's so mutual. You can tell when I'm starting to feel impotent on the guitar because I start detuning it, but then you get these drone zone ditties where it's impossible to be catchy. It's not bad, just a snoozer.
Love, train & rust, wrench. Usually during the course of the day at some point I'll pick up the guitar and a song will come to me without any obstacles or anything. These are always refreshing. Max gets credit for the best line, "Sacajawheel-'o-fortune". Note that all of the electric guitar parts in the last 4 songs I've posted on T7 Radar are extremely blaring. I do know how to turn it down, but it's currently set up that way and I just think it's so funny!
Helpy, Invert, Soft Pinky & Flexoid. As my synthesizer ages (now about 15 years old, making it almost vintage) it's interesting to see how useless its once hi-fi General MIDI patches have become. I spend all my time in the extended zone mining it for delightfully ironic fake-sounding stuff like "Tron Flute" featured prominently here.
I'll be acquitted. This is this week's songfight. In songfight, internet people all write a song with the same title and then the songs "fight" with voting. A whole week to write a song is way too snoozy for me, but I like those guys and sometimes do the songfight song when making an AAD.
Mosquito romance. This song was built around this musical element seen in the first bar, which is an increasingly thick series of chords (1 finger, 2 finger... 7 finger) followed by an abrupt faint simplicity. It works great right before the switch to "Malaria..." but the rest of the time it just makes the individual parts seem disjoint so that the song doesn't flow very well. I still like this one.
0xCAFÉBABE. This was the most painful one, when recording. I just couldn't come up with any lyrics or melodies beyond the opening "Cafe babe!" which is annoying after pretty much the first time. You can tell when I just start doing 59th St. bridge song stuff, barely even trying. (Listening back, it's not really that bad.)
You mean FIRENZE?. This was a song title suggestion, which means I don't know if it's an overzealous correction about the local name of Florence (I imagine some high schoolers on a big trip for their Italian language class and there's the one kid who insists on speaking even English in an Italian accent when over there, and has even taken up smoking for cultural accuracy) or whether basically the same image but about Harry Potter fandom. Features my signature 2K+-era sine wave add-chords, a style I like to call "DTMF Jam".
Why won't it melt?. Speaking of Def, about a month ago I first realized what "Mos Def" means. The best science pun in this song, which is ungettable unless you read the lyrics or I tell you now, is about the Mohs hardness scale.
Themes (gotta catch 'em all): Non-human creatures in love Things being black Car crashes Love perimortem French words Sudden abrupt quiet during techno
Now get album. | |
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Two new fresh ampersand delicious musics from ridiculous de sick
(02 Jul 2009 at 00:18) |
Well they are not that fresh. As I have mentioned before when we are invited or invite ourselves to play at a party, we (Sick Ridiculous and The Sick Ridiculous) have a deal (as in contractual obligation) to write a song for (and possibly about) the party. These are two songs from two parties in Q2:
Come with me iff you want to live. (Pronounce: "if and only if".) This song we made for Cortney's birthday party at Gabe's house. It is about the public policy implications of when in the year 2039, our future automaton overlords send back in time robotic simulacra to kill Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) in order to stop House Resolution 676, his present day perennial bill to create a single-payer health care system in the United States, on account of in the future the Universal Health Care system is the one remaining outpost of human resistance against the terminator bots. Right?
Hurricane Dan (2006). This one we made for Katrina and Dan's party for when Katrina got her Ph.Desus. The joke here is how we introduced it as a song about hurricanes, but it turns out to not be that hurricane that you might think we'd write if we were writing a song for Katrina's Ph.Desus celebration about hurricanes. I bet you have a hurricane named after you too, or at least a tropical depression. Continues our surfing minitheme.
Both are guitar and singing affairs with super rude electric guitar solos. If you're just gonna listen to one, I think I like the second better. | |
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style="color : robin's egg"
(11 Jun 2009 at 23:51) |
I made this Tom 7 Entertainment System tune tonight instead of following through on the other projects I told myself I'd do. It's called style="color : robin's egg" and it does kind of go Rogue in the middle for a bit. | |
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Waffle Shop report
(15 Apr 2009 at 20:15) |
As foretold by the bards, we played our show at Waffle Shop. This was awesome. It's a totally cool place. The folks running it were super friendly and helpful, like e.g. offering to brew me coffee and tossing us free shirts (seen above), and serving our custom waffle, the "Twix Ridiculous and The Sick Bisquickulous". Lots of people came out, sang along, and even people wandered in from the street, maybe on purpose. We unlocked an achievement: Our Facebook page now has 1 fan that is not already our friend. I don't know if it's related. What you see above is Waffle Shop standard operating procedure, which is that they in addition to serving fresh, golden-crispy waffles, also film a reality show on the premises, which mainly means interviews with patrons but in our case interview with the musical guests. More lovely pictures on flickridiculous, courtesy Maja. There are some muy bueno pictures of us playing too, courtesy some dude née drxiv. Overall a great experience. I think Waffle Shop was happy too, like they kept our setlist to display in their tool shop / kitchen and seemed pretty impressed with the crowd volume. In fact if you go to waffleshop.org right now you will be greeted with manifold splendour. I dunno when video will be available, if ever. I hope eventually so you can see my dancing, which was very popular. We decided during the interview that the right way to describe it is "aggraceful."
I recorded the show: Sick Ridiculous Live At Waffle Shop, in which you can hear us embarrassingly call the place "Waffle House" several times. Even more embarrassing is that the levels are way too high in the recording, though it gets a bit better once I turn my guitar down. Sorry for always blowing the MP3 version when I do line-in; I thought I was correcting for having this same problem last time by turning it to the lowest setting, but evidently I need more.
We have two shows coming up. Art All Morning on the 26th in some warehouse in Lawrenceville will be some kind of acoustic oddity, but is at 10:30am. I am just telling you, not inviting you; 10:30am is a crazy time to go to or play a concert. Especially if you go to Cortney's birthday party at Gabe's house the night before, which we'll also be playing at! Expect new material and Febreezed classics.
Fact: I did my Federal taxes like a month and a half ago, and saved my state and local for the last minute, giving me the worst of both worlds. It could be worse, though: this page has a 600 page PDF with all people and entities that are delinquent on their taxes, and some people are dozens of years late. | |
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openho~1.mid
(01 Mar 2009 at 13:46) |
This weekend was Open House for visiting prospective graduate students for Computer Science at CMU. I graduated like a year ago but I am still interested in perpetuating the program and helping young people make positive life decisions, so Nels and I played a Rock & Roll Techno show at the unofficial open house weekend house party. As is our contractual obligation, we wrote a new tune for the occasion. It is openho~1.mid. Because it is apropos many of the cleverness in the lyrics might not be apparent, but how could you not like the 7/4 beats and my sweaty freeform dance paroxysm?
There is also an mp3 of the whole show which is very overdrive in the techno songs but sounds pretty good in the guitar parts. | |
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