First exploration in a more more chopped up, broken rhythmic style. No loops used, all percussion was handcrafted in Live. (Handcrafted as in even the samples are chopped up and modified.) You will need headphones or something that is capable of reproducing deep bass to hear all the parts of the track.
Leave a comment and let me know what you think! :) ANY feedback is more than welcome!
After the post on fiveG in Harajuku, which was technically Day 19 in Japan, I spent one week working in Tokyo. During this time there wasn’t much music being made of course, but I did sample a lot of nice environments, including busy streets, trains, stations and airports.
I spent most of my after work hours studying modular synth design and patch techniques, and reading through the excellent book “Power tools for synthesizer programming” (check it out in the Library section).
After a week in Tokyo I returned to Ishikawa Ken (on the other side of Japan) and resumed work on the new track (“The Mystery Club“), as well as a couple of other tracks for the Hakusan Project. I hope I will have the time to complete those before the end of February.
My last update is again related to modulars. My good friend NOR in Sweden has designed an LFO module for the Eurorack format which he is currently testing. If all goes well he will share the schematics and component requirements with me and I’ll build one as well :)
There’s just a couple of days left of this journey, which has so far been incredibly productive, but I will try to make the most of the time remaining as well. More to follow on that.
Just a quick update. The past 5 days I’ve spent working on a new track called ‘Snow’. It’s the first track in what I hope will become the Hakusan series, if time, energy and inspiration permits :). You can listen to the result in the post below this one (or here).
I’ve also been sampling some more environments, including some really nice sounds from a Ramen shop that I will post as soon as I’ve transferred polished it a little.
That’s enough for today. Short and sweet. Will keep you posted!
2 days ago I arrived in Japan with the rest of the family. It was a long journey from San Francisco, but relatively easy due to a direct flight to Haneda Airport. We did a quick stop in Tokyo for the night, spent one day taking care of errands and on the following evening boarded a domestic flight to Ishikawa Ken on the western side of Japan.
Our plan is to stay for 1 month in Japan while my wife undergoes a set of genetic examination procedures, to see if the doctors can determine the exact nature of her condition and determine a diagnosis. We will be visiting and consulting with several specialist physicians at various hospitals and hopefully this will finally bring some clarity around her syndrome.
At the same time I’m taking this chance to get my first honest vacation from work in several years. No time laid to waste though, I have 3 projects that I want to work on now that I have some time to focus.
The first is a series of tracks themed around the climate here on the western coast of Japan. The snow, hard winds and raging Sea of Japan has always fascinated me, and I want to see if I can create something that’s a mixture of ambient, IDM and sample based, texturized soundscapes that captures some of this.
The second is the new Native Instruments Maschine (MK2) which arrived in the mail the day before I left San Francisco. I carried it all the way down here so that we can get some quality time to get to know each other. I’m a huge fan of Maschine and I can’t wait to dig into the new features that 1.8 and the new controller brings. I want to focus this energy and time around exploring complextro tracks.
The third and last project is a sample library of sounds from Japan. In the rush to the airport I forgot to bring my Tascam recorder, but I have already ordered a replacement unit to the place we are staying at in Ishikawa Ken. My goal is to capture some of the typical sounds, environments and atmospheres of this beautiful place. If it turns out ok I’ll make it available for download somewhere.
I’ll try to document as much as possible during the next 4-5 weeks here, so please check back regularly.
Thanks.
A late night session with some analog sounds.
I had this image of Parnassus Street in san Francisco in my head, which is what I tried to capture in the siren like sound that you can hear in the second half.
(Parnassus Street is home to a huge medical center, and I imagine the people who live there get to hear sirens a lot…)
I wanted to create a track that feels like something you would fall asleep to on a rainy evening in that neighborhood (which I have never done, but still :) ).
The street sounds you hear I actually sampled on another street here in SF, but it’s close enough to Parnassus. The crackling noise is a tiny instrument in Live that produces a constant vinyl like noise. The rest is a mix of patches created in Arturia’s CS-80V, Minimoog and Moog Modular emulators, and NI’s Massive.
Glitzerstrahl 