Starting from simplistic down tempo to the most complicated progressive metal bands, I listen to it all. I started to play the 'Cajon' which is a hand based percussion instrument. Later I picked up an electric guitar and am using the Rocksmith software to learn it. This blog is my take on the various songs and genres that could just be a remix or just plain jamming sessions that I do. I am calling this project 'yellowHood' - a reference to my very popular bright yellow hoodie ;)
Is it actually a surprise that I am a huge LOTR/Tolkien nerd? I went to see 'Guardians of the Galaxy' and there it was, the trailer for 'The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies'. Apart from the stunning 3D in the movie, the best part of it was the fact that they used Pippin's song as background music! I LOVE that song. Simple, effectively emotional (brings a lump in my throat and a few tears every time) and masterfully orchestrated. Irritating table manners by Lord Denethor adds to the melancholy nature of the song. For those who don't remember this (I am up for a LOTR marathon of preferably the extended cut anytime you are ready), here is that song:
I took this and decided to ruin it in exactly two ways
1) Sing the song myself (I went to a Karaoke session last weekend and singing Creed and Linkin Park has boosted my ego a bit. I did totally screw up a Tool's Sober' though)
2) Metallize the song a little (I mean everything \m/ is awesome right?)
So here you go, my version of Pippin's song 'All Shall Fade',
A slightly different experiment this time. I have two versions of the same track.
USE HEADPHONES/EAR BUDS FOR THE BEST QUALITY.
First one is a guitar + cajon track:
I think I am very much into the metal groove. I used Rob Zombie's - Thunder Kiss 65 guitar tone for this one. Have I told you, based on ~50 songs I can make my Rocksmith software assign guitar tones like any one of those songs' bass/guitar? This is pretty bad ass. For the next song based on my mood, I can switch from Rob Zombie to Alice In Chains or System of a Down.
The second is the same track but this time accompanied by the pre-programmed drums. I basically choose the tempo and the tone of the drums (I used 140 bpm similar to my cajon beats and used degraded drums to give a bass-ier feel). Here you go, an actual video of me playing the guitar :P :
Which one did you like? I have my favorites in both parts. But I am starting to feel that my cajon playing is starting to fall behind my guitar experiments. I am unable to easily switch between beats or manufacture new beats mostly because there are only 2-3 unique sounds you can make with a cajon and not all of those tones match all guitars. Time to recruit a drummer? What a bummer. Ironically, I bought the guitar to accompany my cajon experiments, but I am pleasantly surprised that I have been able to do my own thing using the guitar without getting bored.
'chasing My Tail' because that is how I have been feeling for the past month or so. Constantly chasing so much that now I don't know what I will do when I finally do catch up. Will I enjoy the destination as much as I thought I would before I began the chase or will the lack of chasing lend myself to no purpose? (Alright, alright, don't worry, I am fine. )
Surprise, surprise. No cajon in this track! I was playing with the 'Newgrass' band in Rocksmith and was surprised how the 'dynamic' band was fairly stable in their rhythms. The band is supposed to be changing based on what you play (a jamming mode in the software if you will) so when I started riffing my own tune it kept repeating the same thing between different sessions. So I thought why not let the virtual band be my backing track! And to my surprise it turned out pretty well. I practiced this tune maybe 5 times and then finished the recording. Unfortunately I could not completely mute the percussion. So recording a cajon on this track seemed a little redundant. So I had to abandon my cajon for this track. I am thinking I will make up for it in the next track by recording my cajon first and then add rhythm by guitar over it. Will be interesting.
Anyway when I was playing this 'Newgrass' band, the bass line and the banjo sounded familiar made it sound like a twist song, hence the name. The bass line in fact is very similar to one of my favorite Tamil songs (from 1964!) which is here:
I did not do a lot of processing. Only some background noise removal filters. This was a very organic riff. If you listen closely, you can actually hear some mishit notes. But who cares :P ? Or maybe I am just getting a little lazy.. Again just wanted to re-emphasize that only the lead guitar notes are mine. Others are provided automatically by Rocksmith. I am not THAT much a multi-instrumentalist yet ;)
First of all sorry if that grosses you out. I had to get it out of my system, naming a song like that. There is no reason to call this song that in fact you can call it rainbow unicorns if you want. Actually there is a small reason. When I played this riff to my nephew he said it sounds angry. I recently saw X Men: Origins: Wolverine. The character there called 'Weapon 11' looked really angry and he has a stitched mouth so that was the only rationale.
So, believe it or not. I had a tune stuck in my head for more than a 1.5 decades! I guess it might have started when I was watching this Tamil action movie called 'Managara Kaaval' (roughly translated to 'City Police'. You should watch it if you know Tamil!) and there is this background music for the villain character. It haunted me for months and years. Despite the fact that this tune sort of disturbed me in a negative way (that villain character used to scare me when I was little, brings back some terrible memories), I would keep humming it. Here it is: http://splicd.com/Cax-QYVAel4/53/69
And then one fine year (lol year not day) somehow it morphed in my mind and a new tune came out of it which was again stuck in my head. This song's base tune is that tune (starting at 0:36s). Here you go, the final track:
Finally after all these years I was able to get this out of my system. Hopefully this wont be stuck in my head here after.
What else? My sister said my cajon should probably sound less snare-y. So I tuned it (its not really difficult. Adjust a couple of screws until you get the sound you want) and post processed the recording reducing the treble and boosting the bass.
I used Rocksmith's 'Aeolian Metal' configuration for my guitar to get this sound. Do you also hear the palm mutes during the intro ;) ? \m/etuhhhhhlllllll!
Well, well, well. A crazy month. Would you believe if I told you I learnt guitar in less than a month? Well I can't play like Slash/Joe Satriani but I have learnt enough to make my own simple tunes!
I was getting tired of trying to find songs without percussion and drumless tracks. My options were feeling limited for the same reason. So for my birthday (last month), I got myself an electric guitar. My type of music varies across the spectrum (literally) and acoustic guitar gave me only one type of sound and relying too much on chords to sound cool. So I went for the electric guitar. After much contemplation and review reading, I decided I'll get a used electric guitar but a fairly good one rather than a new entry level guitar. I got the Ibanez Art 100 at a local Music-Go-Round store. Then I bought the 'Rocksmith' game/software for my PS3. Rocksmith claims that you will learn guitar in 60 days. Well I was able to get some basics and start making meaningful sounds in less than 30 days. More than that, what makes Rocksmith unbelievable is that it makes the amps that you get for your guitar (at least the entry level ones) pretty much useless! You can create your own guitar sounds (and hence amps) or use general genre tones (metal, rock, electronic or blues) or you could use existing sounds based on songs (For e.g. lets say an Alice in Chains song, you choose that tune, you will have your guitar output sound like Alice in Chains. How effing cool is that?!). I am totally convinced that if you like music and motivated to learn guitar, Rocksmith gives you a really great launchpad and makes it fun. I can go on and on about the game features, but I am not here to write a review for the game. So lets focus on what came out of 30 days learning and practicing the guitar ~1hour a day.
This is it. Turn up your volume or use headphones for better clarity.
I was jamming with 'Experimental Electronica' band on Rocksmith and invented this tune. Yes. I actually made it! Using a simple bass-y riff, I tried to add a few more notes to the tune and before I knew I had more than a half decent tune. Well at least I like it, not sure about you. But I would like to think I am extremely hypercritical about music so *maybe* if I find it decent maybe you will too.
So this was my drill.
1) Use an online metronome and set basic beats first on headphones
2) Play the tune on guitar using metronome as base. Record this (used basic laptop mic)
3) Edit guitar tune to remove noises to give the final guitar track
4) With the guitar track on headphones, record cajon beats (again just laptop mic)
5) Edit cajon beats separately for noises, adjust volume with reference to guitar track
6) Mix guitar and cajon tracks
There was a lot of work. Probably took me 3-4 hours to do all the above. But I am happy with the result. If things go well I might consider investing in some amateur recording equipment. I actually would not mind if somebody wanted to lend a hand in these matters as well ;). Also if you wanna jam (feel like things would be more interesting with dedicated bass, vocals), let me know.
Called it introSpect for two reasons. One, it is downtempo-ish in style and introspect is the name of my Pandora downtempo station. Secondly, I discovered that ALL music is inspired :). When I was jamming I was always looking for an existing starting point or inspiration, be it tune/tempo/beat. So I sort of had this self realization that maybe not all seemingly 'copy' tunes are real copies. There could be coincidences. Not for Harris Jeyaraj. NO.
I actually have two more tunes under my sleeve both different genre from this. Much heavier than this. I was so pumped up, I called my sister and played to her on speaker phone and my nephew heard it. He called this one a sad song and the other ones angry songs. He demands a happy song but looks like I will have to work a bit harder to convince my nephew.
This time I was inspired by a song by the band 'The Ocean Collective'. They are largely a metal band but experiment a lot with their songs. This song 'Epiphany' appears in the album 'Heliocentric' largely dominated by the piano and vocals. This song is an example for how much metal artists experiment with their 'sound'. Its amazing that a fan can go through the same journey as the band itself and all it takes is your willingness to give in to the opportunity to take you for a ride! The Ocean recently had a concert in Boston so I was listening to their albums non stop for a few weeks 'preparing' for the concert because unlike most other genres, you have to 'get it' in metal to be able to enjoy the music. Then I stumbled upon this beautiful piece. Here is the original:
Intro (0:00 to 0:14), Part 1 (0:15 to 0:51), Part 2 (0:52 to 1:28), Part 3 (1:29 to 1:44), Part 4 (1:45 to 2:19), Part 5 (2:20 to 3:12) and Outro (3:13 to End).
Intro ==> No beats
Part 1, Part 3, Part 5 ==> Beat 1 (Slow)
Part 2, Part 4 ==> Beat 2 (Fast)
Outro ==> No Beats
Apart from the song itself, I also wanted to share what some of the songs take me through when I do research. I did not really know what 'Epiphany' meant so I did a Google search (Wikipedia is your friend). Also *sometimes* the comments on Youtube videos are interesting. For the song link to Youtube that I posted, there was a comment in Spanish that I did not understand so I used Google Translate and figured that the comment was talking about 'Atheism Vs Agnosticism'. I was again confused what the difference between these two philosophies were (Wikipedia is your friend). I was also greatly surprised when I was reading up on Agnosticism and the view 'Rig Veda' (a set of sacred Hindu texts) has about the origin of the universe and I got reminded of the discussion that I had with some of my friends about Hinduism the religion Vs Hinduism the philosophy. One song led to this knowledge journey! I am too lazy to get into an argument about whether we are all going to agree with what the song lyrics say. I just like the way it sounds. But if you are interested, here is the band front-man talking about the philosophy behind the song.
Getting to the local stuff this time! A friend of mine suggested I should try dappankuthu style beats on my cajon (Thanks Suneesh!). A few of my friends also asked me to shoot a video instead of just the audio recording. So here we go.
For those who don't know, Dappankuthu is the music dance combo that is popular in south of India mostly in Tamil Nadu. For more information read this hilarious wiki page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dappan_koothu
A naturally energetic form of music dominated by percussion, is often accompanied by the drunken dance. But there is no denying that if there is Tamil blood flowing throw your veins, there is no way you sit quietly when these beats start playing. You either start whistling or dancing. Here is a clip of what Suneesh shared with me:
http://splicd.com/Mr-zER6idsM/5/30
That guy is a natural. Inspired by this, I shot this video me doing something similar on cajon. What fun maamu!
Funnily enough, this piece took me the most practice runs before I recorded it. The beats are usually so impromptu that I really could not focus on a 'constructing' a piece. Every time I would just wing away and start playing without being able to repeat myself the same way. So I had to actually sit and concentrate (even write down some notes) so that I could add a little bit of structure.
I was skeptical about the audio quality if I shot a video. However it turned out not that bad. But the audiophile in me, I split the audio and video tracks, processed the audio a little bit and relayered it on the edited video. Windows Movie Maker is not Camtasia, but its ok for these kinds of simple editing I guess..
P.S: I also included a rare ARR dappankuthu piece. Can you figure out which song that is?
Prog rock/metal has been my favorite genre for the past few years. I love the complexity and the technicality that the bands in this genre showcase. Sometimes they are so talented and show so much that I think it is really unfair that pop is the popular music and these guys don't receive so much air time. Anyway, views apart, I got hooked onto this English band called 'Haken' recently. Their recent album is called 'The Mountain' and its absolutely bonkers. Whether you like prog or not, listen to the following song called 'Cockroach King' and experience the breadth of genres in just one song. The REALLY prog part starts at 2:41.
It has some really cool vocals starting at 4:53. And yeah, most prog/metal songs are 'long' when compared to general pop/rock genres. These days I consider 8 minutes as a song average run time!
This song has a dual called 'Nobody' which was released as a bonus track in the album. This was sort of an acoustic/mellower version of 'Somebody' and did not have any percussion track in it. I jumped on it for my next project. Here is the original:
Intro (0:00 to 0:13), Part 1 (0:14 to 0:43), Part 2 (0:44 to 1:44), Part 3 (1:45 to 2:11), Bridge (2:12 to 2:25), Part 4 (2:26 to 2:59), Part 5 (3:00 to 3:56), Part 6 (3:57 to 4:24) and Outro (4:25 to end).
Intro ==> No beats
Part 1, Part 4 ==> Beat 1
Part 2, Part 5 ==> Beat set 2
Part 3, Part 6 ==> Beat 3
Bridge ==> No Beats
Outro ==> No Beats
I improvised 'Beat 1' and it does not appear in 'Somebody'. 'Beat set 2' is similar to the one in 'Somebody' except I incorporated some amount of build up. 'Beat 3' is what I actually learned from 'Somebody'. I would have never guessed or been able to play that beat naturally, quite unique.
So now I think you can never guess what I am listening to at a given point. I have posted a couple of ARR songs, an industrial metal, an EDM song and now a little bit of prog. I am going try to make these diverse posts so if somebody is reading this, they have a chance to experiment and branch off their usual music. There is so.much.out.there.
I am thinking for the next post I'll record a video of me playing the thing. I wonder how the sound quality will be though..
This time I wanted to experiment with a little techno/trance music. I heard the song 'Keep It In The Family' by the band 'Hybrid' in their extremely well named album 'I Choose Noise' in one of my Pandora stations. I am always on the look out for my next project and this song struck a chord very easily due to its lack of dominant beats. 'Hybrid' is one of my most favorite techno/trance bands; The Crystal Method, The Prodigy, Pendulum. Fatboy Slim are some of the others. In fact, if I am making a movie, 'Hybrid' will feature very heavily for my OST and background score. I will somehow make them work with ARR ;). For e.g. listen to the following track called 'Last Man Standing' by the band in the same album, it is an amazing piece. Ominous symphony, breakneck beats and boss-like bass.
Now as is my M.O, I split the song into several parts and worked on it.
Intro (0:00 to 0:44), Mellow 1 (0:44 to 1:05), Mellow 2 (1:05 to 1:49), Bridge (1:50 to 2:31), Mellow 3 (2:32 to 2:54), Mellow 4 (2:55 to 3:37), Main (3:38 to 5:05) and Outro (5:06 to end).
Intro ==> No beats
Mellow 1, Mellow 3 ==> Beat 1
Mellow 2, Mellow 4 ==> Beat 2
Bridge ==> No Beats
Main ==> Beat 3(various levels of breakdown)
Outro ==> Beat 3
One of the things I played around with this time was I adjusted my recorded track's volume based on different parts in the track. So for the mellow parts and the outro I reduced the volume on my track whereas for the Main part I cranked it up as it sounded nicer after the build up. I also tried to record with my mic switched off but apparently that does not work..
