As Frank Zappa famously said... Pt. 2

The reason I was whining about originality yesterday was because of this.
Maths by Bleach Fiend
 Who's track is that?  No, it's not mine.  Technically I guess it's a cover, even though it's in the wrong key, etc, bla bla bla.  I honestly thought of this song in the shower, and actually checked it against my itunes library to make sure it didn't come from somewhere else.



And this is the unreleased song that I found on youtube while I was mastering the song.

Oops.

As Frank Zappa famously said...

"All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff."
That's the unabridged quote. That said, it's really hard to come up with original ideas when we're constantly bombarded with them. I'm talking about photography, music, art, comedy, movies, porn, whatever. We see so much of the stuff, and every time we sit down in our proverbial studios 90% of the time we're just recreating what we heard over the previous month. It's hard to be original.

Which is why I want to build a cabin in the rocky mountains with no internet, pack my computer and synths, and make house music that sounds like nothing anyone's ever heard.

House music.

Yeah, I'm already pigeonholing myself.

Music I Enjoy #1

Alright, so I've decided that it would be a good idea to post soundcloud links to people who's music I enjoy every week or so.  Kind of like chemical jump, I guess.


Joe Garston - Thats What She Said (Original Mix) by JoeGarston

Joe Garston.  Since his remix of Sofi Needs A Ladder by deadmau5 I've been following this guy like crazy.  Very true to the genre.

Relaxed After School by CSizzle

This guy's a friend of mine so I'm sort of posting this to help him out.  But putting that aside I love this kind of music.  Very Aphex Twin.  Cheers!

 

Cosmonaut (Original Mix) by Bleach Fiend

I'm also into shameless self promotion.  Here's one of my songs. 

my setup

just in case other people are into this sort of thing, this is my current setup.

Ableton Live (LE) is my main DAW.  I've never used anything else because it works so nicely.  I'm trying out Reason right now but I think I'd just use it as a plug-in within Live, not as a secondary DAW.  I only have LE because I find I work well with restrictions.  I don't know why that is.

For VSTs I'm a huge fan of Native Instruments.  I have Massive, Absynth and FM8.  For drum sounds I use Xfer's Nerve in combination with Live's Impulse.  I also use Amplitube, but never for guitars.

For hardware I have my parents' Yamaha Clavinova (I don't know what model), a Korg NanoKontrol, 2 crappy NDX 200 CDJs (don't hate), a Novation Launchpad, a KP3, an Oxygen 49, and loads of fancy guitar pedals.

My guitar setup alternates between going right into my sound card and my tech 21 trademark 60 amp.

I use my parents' speakers from the 80s for monitors.  My reasoning is that if the music sounds good through those things it sounds good through anything.

introductions

well I'm just getting started up here.  it's 12:08 AM where I live, and I have no reason to be up so late.  I just 'released' a little album and feel like I should take some time off.  so instead of making music, I'll blog about making music. 
album?  yeah, it's one of those 'friends only' deals because I haven't got the patience to make hundreds of them.  if I was on a label it'd be a different story, but at the moment I don't know if I want to seek out a record deal.  I haven't played a single gig that hasn't taken place in someone's basement, which makes it a little hard to get some recognition.  this is mostly because my age makes it very difficult to get into clubs, much less play at them.  then again, I haven't tried that, so I can't really complain.  I'm still in high school, which makes it hard to dedicate as much time as I would like to my musical endeavors.  but whatever.  it's a hobby, hopefully it takes me somewhere...