I never really liked electronic music. I grew up in that period of the 90's where the mainstream music Zeitgeist was so tired of the DX7-drenched 80's sound that there was a rejection of synthesizer and keyboard music in general. That's the generation of Grunge and Pop-Punk and (sigh)Nu-Metal. It took me way to long to let go of those deeply-rooted, but unfounded and logically frail barriers. My gateway was, weirdly enough, the new wave of UK Jazz that's devoid of the kinds of musical prejudices I was carrying. Shabaka to Sinephro to mackwood and all of a sudden to Floating Points and Four Tet and .VRIL and Lotus Eater. 

And here I am, making music I'm proud of, but can't altogether trace the lineage of. An exercise in the humbleness of discovery that's all but veiled self-discovery.

Techno-ish pseudo-Ambient I

I'm hoping to find an identity by trying my hand at different genres. It's a way for me to explore and learn. Sometimes, however, I'll just make a track and not know where it fits. This is one of those cases. As I name the tracks after a vague description of what I was trying to do, this one has to be called: "I honestly don't know I". The roman numeral I is because I suspect I'll have more of those.

I honestly don't know I

I really enjoy making semi-generative music. The 'semi' part is because I'm not generating melodies straight up from a script, but rather I'm just using a musical combination of randomness and modulation.

In this case in particular, I have a very simple, but jazzy chord progression that has some fixed parts (root and 7th) plus weighted randomized supporting notes and  upper extensions. On the melody size, I have a random note generator locked to a scale plus some complex modulation to pick the frequency and length of notes weighted for where they lie on the bar (you'll notice the melody notes generally avoid the first downbeat, where the chord falls)

The bass is a very simple randomized walk-arpeggiation of the chosen chord structure.

The drums, well, the drums are chaos.

Generative Glitch Jazz I

I think this is a beat. At least it started as a beat. I had a drum pattern with some quirky foley sounds and then a synth melody. It was a loop, then I set-out to arrange it as a beat, but then I added some more flavour to the chords in the B section and then I started feeling like a synth solo and then it became this thing. I'm still calling it a beat. Beat I.

Beat I

I've been trying to mix electronic sounds with acoustic drums for a while now and I'm finding it very challenging, not just from a sound mixing perspective, but a mood perspective. Mixing the two implies mixing genres and vibes, which has been throwing me for a loop.

Not sure this track is anything but an experiment, but I'm proud of it, so here it is.

Deep Techno, I guess

I've been trying to make Jazz music by electronic means for a while now. It's been pretty hard.

So much about the ethos of Jazz is dependent on the traditional notion of musicianship: a group of people in a room, trading improvised passages. So much of its tradition is shaped by virtuosos. The thing is, even though I play 'real' instruments, I don't play them well enough and also (and this might be strange to admit) I don't even like playing them that much. I started playing the saxophone when I was 15 and then went for 20 years without playing, I got back into it last year, but I don't really enjoy the process. So I sold it. Now I have a clarinet (because it's quieter, cheaper and sweeter), but I also got a wind synth.

Yeah, the wind synth is not the same, but it's close enough for what I want, it allows me to literally breath some emotion into what I play without it being loud or overly hard to intonate and I have a lot more fun this way. This track features me playing the wind synth.

But another part of Jazz is the collaboration. So I invited the amazing producer and guitarist @ubo-music to contribute some jazz guitar improvisation and that changed everything. It brought a totally new life to the piece.

Overall, the process was: write a very repetitive pattern for the keys and the bass, then use that to play the virtual sax. I sent that to ubo, who send back this guitar part. Based on his part, I then re-recorded a big chunk of the sax parts. After that, I went back and played the keys again to add flourishes and variations, same for the bass. For the drums, I used Superior Drummer and made a bit of a collage of midi parts (I love doing this, it's like sampling, but for midi.)

In the end, even though nobody played together, I hope it still feels organic and if it does, it's because we did collaborate and traded passages, only they didn't happen in realtime.

Honestly, it's strange calling it Jazz. I have so much respect for the roots and traditions of the genre, but it has also evolved so much since the early days in New Orleans that I think I'm entitled, just like everybody else, to bastardize it in whatever way I see fit.

Jazz III (feat. ubo)

Another Jazz track, this time with more Brazilian flair in the groove. This time, I collaborate with @derek_barlas who brings his beautifully played acoustic guitar to take this to a whole new level.

I knew I wanted a mando solo, mostly as homage to the greats of Brazilian mandolin. With that, the rest of the orchestration came as a complement. Since the mandolin and the acoustic guitar are fairly delicate, I used an acoustic bass and brushed drum sounds as to provide the right balance. I'm not sure the mix is good, but mixes are never done, you just get sick of them at some point and this is the point where I got sick of this one.

Jazz IV (feat. Derek Barlas)

This track is made out of only vocal samples, no other instruments were used. It's part of the latest challenge done with the Music For Cars Collective.

vox sampli

"This collaboration was born out of a desire by Diogo @diogo-terror to create a track with a 'live', dynamic and improvised feel.

Diogo came up with the original song idea and arrangement of the track by playing in the synth pad tweaking the notes and configs of the arpeggiator, distorted guitar and running bass line.

Trev then played in live drums using roland v-drums electronic kit to continue the live feel we wanted to create. Trev added some extra synth and lead melodies, ear candy, a little bit more fine tuning the arrangement and then mixed and mastered the track."

Fusion (with Trevphonic)

Posting music that may or may not be finished.

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