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Copr. © 2014 – enjoy, for non-commercial use only.
This is what happens when percussion instruments – vibes, marimba, steel drums, and a couple of crazy bongo-beaters – go a little bit nuts, with an island beat.
It is also what happens when their author decides to take an impromptu “let’s get the heck away from Winter for a week!” cruise to the West Indies … and plays with Logic Pro in his stateroom on an at-sea day.
This is the first released version, of my first song, since Santa App-Store dropped a copy of “Logic Pro X” into my happy Christmas stocking. It is specifically (but not expertly) mixed for MP3, and for the cheapest set of earbuds that I could find. (I also thought about how it would sound if played directly through the tiny speaker of my phone, which apparently cannot reproduce bass tones at all. Hence, rhythm alone is able to carry the arrangement, even if the bass is entirely subtracted. On “good” gear, the bass in particular might sound over-emphasized, but it ought to sound okay if strapped to your jogging arm.)
Like my previous posts, this is a pure-percussion piece. However, unlike my previous, this track uses the instruments and synths from Logic Pro X: there are no SoundFonts here. There are also no loops or mechanical drummers. (Nor were there, previously.)
This is also departure from my previous, “musical-score based” approach, taken in part from what I have observed in other projects. I built it entirely from short regions that are usually two, sometimes one, and in one case six bars long, each one contrived to be preceded or followed by copies of itself and each one designed to sit well, musically, with what would be placed above or below it regardless of sequence. I then made several variations of each, and fiddled with parameters including velocity and sometimes dynamics. Then, I started stringing these things together, in what seemed to be, really, a very impromptu fashion, with very little advance notion of what the result might sound like until I played it. And yet, to my ears at least, the result actually sounds like “a complete song,” even though it is at this point relatively short. Somehow, even though the song is heavily based upon repeating phrases, I do not think that it in any way sounds “repetitious.” (And I find this observation to be quite interesting. The song seems to sound better for being a creative construction of smaller, fairly repetitive motifs. It seems to me that there ought to be some sort of “great songwriting insight” contained in that, somewhere. Or, not.)
And … well … even given that I wrote the thing(!) … I like it. I have the curious experience of both “encountering it,” and of knowing as the creator everything that there is to know about it. All of which I hope is a good sign.
Anyway, enough of my rambling! Let’s take a trip to the islands!
This is what happens when percussion instruments – vibes, marimba, steel drums, and a couple of crazy bongo-beaters – go a little bit nuts, with an island beat.
It is also what happens when their author decides to take an impromptu “let’s get the heck away from Winter for a week!” cruise to the West Indies … and plays with Logic Pro in his stateroom on an at-sea day.
This is the first released version, of my first song, since Santa App-Store dropped a copy of “Logic Pro X” into my happy Christmas stocking. It is specifically (but not expertly) mixed for MP3, and for the cheapest set of earbuds that I could find. (I also thought about how it would sound if played directly through the tiny speaker of my phone, which apparently cannot reproduce bass tones at all. Hence, rhythm alone is able to carry the arrangement, even if the bass is entirely subtracted. On “good” gear, the bass in particular might sound over-emphasized, but it ought to sound okay if strapped to your jogging arm.)
Like my previous posts, this is a pure-percussion piece. However, unlike my previous, this track uses the instruments and synths from Logic Pro X: there are no SoundFonts here. There are also no loops or mechanical drummers. (Nor were there, previously.)
This is also departure from my previous, “musical-score based” approach, taken in part from what I have observed in other projects. I built it entirely from short regions that are usually two, sometimes one, and in one case six bars long, each one contrived to be preceded or followed by copies of itself and each one designed to sit well, musically, with what would be placed above or below it regardless of sequence. I then made several variations of each, and fiddled with parameters including velocity and sometimes dynamics. Then, I started stringing these things together, in what seemed to be, really, a very impromptu fashion, with very little advance notion of what the result might sound like until I played it. And yet, to my ears at least, the result actually sounds like “a complete song,” even though it is at this point relatively short. Somehow, even though the song is heavily based upon repeating phrases, I do not think that it in any way sounds “repetitious.” (And I find this observation to be quite interesting. The song seems to sound better for being a creative construction of smaller, fairly repetitive motifs. It seems to me that there ought to be some sort of “great songwriting insight” contained in that, somewhere. Or, not.)
And … well … even given that I wrote the thing(!) … I like it. I have the curious experience of both “encountering it,” and of knowing as the creator everything that there is to know about it. All of which I hope is a good sign.
Anyway, enough of my rambling! Let’s take a trip to the islands!
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Instrumental
Charday
Pretty cool I'm collecting percussion instruments now tho I have no rhythm, hopefully someone can play them, Katy has great rhythm, hopefully she can! Jd.