Making Music. Tunes by Idle Thumbsters

[Problem Machine]

Okay it's been 3 and a half hours or so of which maybe 2:30-2:45 was work and I'm pretty tired so I'ma call this done enough for now. If I go to sleep and like it a lot when i wake up maybe I'll develop it more then.

My Heat Cuts the Ice

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/100710544/My%20Heat%20Cuts%20the%20Ice.mp3

[Patrick R]

Ok, I worked about 45 minutes on my song but then I had to pick my partner up from the airport, but now I'm back and I'll see how well I can record this song without making too much noise for the neighbors.

[Patrick R]

Ok, here is my lo-fi rock song "Heater".

 

Lyrics:

 

(Woo!)

Heyyyy

Where'd ya go?

Heyyyy 

Did ya know?

You got me crawlin all across the floor

You're giving me a fever but I need it more

Tap the knob to check before I open the door

I'm ablaze

 

Cuz baby you're a heater

and I'm just a pile of rags

just smoldering here into ash

but that's ok

Cook me cook me cook me

with a nice glaze

I burn for you

 

Heyyyy

Where'd ya go?

Heyyyy 

Did ya know?

 

I feel the pain of everyone

than I feel nothing

I only wanna see you laughing 

in the Purple Rain

I'm going off the rails

on a crazy train

 

Heat Me Up More

 

I realized that I had already recorded a demo for a song called Radiator back in March, and I considered cannibalizing it but I figured that wouldn't be cool for the song jam, so instead I decided to write a new one.

 

I figured "Heater" was a pretty rocking title, so I tried to do some simulation of something

or

would write. I settled on an escalating chord progression, since that suggested a rising temperature to me, and then worked out a rough melody. Then I banged on my legs and belly and coffee table and couch arms until I worked out some semblance of a beat.

 

Doing this with a percussion backing track meant I had to use a click track, which I am terrible with. It's really really hard for me to keep good time so instead of trying I just recorded all of my music in pieces. Guitar bits, percussion, all chopped up into loops I could copy and paste. I copied and pasted them manually, since Audacity doesn't have any good beat matching tools. I figured my laptop mic was so bad that it would never sound good to begin with, so I just leaned into the weird rough edges, trying to make something that sounded junky and stitched together, like a Guided By Voices song. 

 

The lyrics were written last, right before recording the vocals (which I doubled up because I didn't want to sing too loud and annoy the neighbors), but I knew from the start that I would have a run of ripping off lyrics from other songs because it

to the stitched

.

 

 

EDIT: 

I really like your song, Problem Machine. It reminds me of the end credits of a Game Gear game. Or, at least, it gives me the feeling I had when I was seven and up all night playing Echo: The Tides of Time on my Game Gear under my covers with headphones on and I beat it and the credits were just poignant and majestic as all of hell, and I looked at my clock and it was 2:30. Good interpretation of the theme, when those "heater" synths come in you know exactly what they are.

 

Clyde, I know most of the stuff you make seem to be very short songs that are intended to be looped, but the answer to "Where am I supposed to go with this atmospheric piece?" is "Literally anywhere." Even if all you do is just stretch that sound file out to be about 1:45 in length, it's gonna sound really cool and eerie. But I would see just meandering with it, fading in and out different pads, trying different chords, even discordant chords.

[Problem Machine]

Nice, I like the brazenly secondhand approach to lyrics.

I think distorting a chimey instrument tends to lend to a kind of FM Synthesis feel, since I've gotten similar feedback on another piece in the past where I did something similar. It does make it sound like the lower bitrate channels used by old consoles.

[clyde]

@Patrick R

One thing I find interesting about your song is that I feel confident in my assumptions about what your particular performance capacity was on a Tuesday evening. What I mean is, your song seems to have an intended energy-level mostly denoted by speed and velocity; this subtly contrasts with a hurriedness I sense (maybe it's because I read about you having to go pick your partner up from the airport). I imagine that all the submissions were in fact hurried, but it gives your song this feeling of playing a live song on the radio-station while being a little but late for a venue. 

 

I agree with you that my song should be expanded by making it longer. As I listen back to it, I keep thinking that I need to half the time to stretch out what I have. Maybe once I do that, leads or additional chord-textures would fit in more easily. 

[dibs]

I missed all this, and also, i was playing with music last night. dang:/

[clyde]

I missed all this, and also, i was playing with music last night. dang:/

 

I'd be willing to do it again. It was a pretty low investment. Not tonight though.

[dibs]

I started arranging Hounds of Love for brass band. I have no idea how hot use Music thingy on Steam. 
Yes, i would love to do it another night. I'm busy till like Wednesday though. 

[Akidu]

Im going to do some daily tunes until I cant. Ill spend some amount of time every day writing a tune and putting it up.

I think it will be useful for a few things I want to improve on but never get to work on because of my usually long work cycle. 

 

Todays.. https://soundcloud.com/daily-challenge/rain-11-7-15

Went ok, I was trying to start with a theme or feeling. Looking outside at the rain and I was feeling kinda down so I started with that in the ambient parts and worked in heavier bits. Obviously a mess though given the time spent on it. Don't particularly like the vocal chop stuff but whatever. 

 

Not sure if i'll update here everyday, it might get a bit spammy. We'll see. 

[clyde]

It's great, I look forward to hearing more.

[Problem Machine]

Nice. Making something of that length and complexity daily is an impressive challenge. Hopefully you don't have a lot of distractions because that seems like it would take up most of a day.

[Akidu]

Yeah unemployed haha. When I get work things might change. 

 

Today's one is up, no good though. Crappy, very short and no variation. It's hard putting it up where other people can hear it.. I'm used to showing very little of what I make. I spent too long trying to get something I was feeling and came away with very little. Still, im glad I got it done..

[Problem Machine]

So I kinda missed a month in my monthly make-music thing, but I've had a couple of double-months so I'm not gonna beat myself up about it. Here's the thing for last month: This was actually a piece that I started at the beginning of 2014 that I got like 70% finished but ran into some editing problems with and got completely frustrated with. Finally revisited it, arranged it, added a few parts, and finished it up.

Shifting Terrain

[feelthedarkness]

That's cool! Lots of cool stuff here!

 

All of the bands I've been in have been bellowing racket that nobody wants to hear, but posting in the TV thread I was reminded of this silliness a friend and I wrote and recorded in an afternoon for the 20th Anniversary of our annual 24 hour nerd-a-thon. I dragged out my mostly functional Juno 60, and the goal was a bit of an Andrew WK meets the amount of chiptune sound we could muster with no warning, or the ability of either of us to figure out how to make drums with Famitracker in the allotted time. 

 

https://soundcloud.com/feelthedarkness/torture-room-20-years-of-getting-it-on

[clyde]

I enjoy going over fundamentals periodically for entertainment value. I thought it might be useful to someone if I put up a series of videos that I watched in succession in order to learn about harmony again:

 

The physics of sound and vibration.

 

 

The physical basis of harmony

 

 

A lecture on chords and harmony

 

 

A exploration of chord types(?)

[miffy495]

That is fantastic. Thank you so much for those. I think I've got my weekend watching lined up now.

[clyde]

Now that I have learned that songs rarely modulate to other keys and that chord-changes are typically within one key, I'm having a hard time motivating myself to learn the key-signatures (pattern of sharps and flats) for every key on the piano. I'm not sure if it's worth my time, especially since I'm using a midi-program and can easily play something in the key of C on the midi-keyboard and just modulate to whatever key I need in the program. I'm stating this publically in case I'm not considering something important.
Also, I plan to apply this stuff to the guitar and key-signatures seem trivial with that instrument.

[Problem Machine]

Now that I have learned that songs rarely modulate to other keys and that chord-changes are typically within one key, I'm having a hard time motivating myself to learn the key-signatures (pattern of sharps and flats) for every key on the piano.

man I guess the way some people write. I mostly just try to keep my notes tonal to each other, and give zero shits about sticking to a key. Something I like in fact is that because a given chord can be a component of any number of key signatures you can easily perform the same motif while changing the key signature around it and just occasionally transpose a note a half step to keep it from going out of whatever key you're working in now.

 

It's worth remembering that anything that doesn't deal directly with the physical properties of sound is basically made up. Major and minor keys and all of the different modes are just conventions people have gotten used to. Go pentatonic, go chromatic, go harmonic, make up your own keys, go into your synth and tune everything out a quarter step, whatever. It's all about what sounds interesting to you.

[Problem Machine]

Track for last month, done late. Hopefully will get another one done this month too.

Dreams and Nightmares

[brkl]

https://soundcloud.com/b-r-k-l/sets/algorithmic-composition-test

 

I've got this generative music system I've rigged up out of a hodge podge of ChucK code. I can feed it samples (the ones in the test tracks above are crude ones I recorded myself) and it uses loops and fundamentally pretty simple stuff to make these hypnotic tracks that occasionally resemble music. Inspired mainly by Brian Eno and Robert Fripp to try this sort of stuff, but I can't play any music myself.

 

As soon as I uploaded those tracks I got a bunch of spam messages in soundcloud :/

[Problem Machine]

Second track for this month, since I missed last month. I think this one's really special.

The Drift of the Eyes

[Problem Machine]

new one for Octoberr

What May The Fire Consume

[Patrick R]

Last night I made this nightmarish remix of The Jackson 5's "I Want You Back" because I am a horrible person.

[Problem Machine]

hey what do you mean it's not November any more THIS IS NOVEMBER'S TRACK OKAY

More Than The Sum Of Our Parts

[clyde]

This video really helped me make more since of how to quickly make major, minor, diminished, and augmented chords on piano.

 

 

Also, we've been having a really fun time using this site's ability to search some pop-songs by chord progression. It's fun to make up a chord progression and then search it to see what pop-songs use it.

HookTheory