This is a tribute to and parody of Henry Rollins, DJs, and rave/dance music in general. I love Henry Rollins' work, but I also love dance music, and felt the need to both defend DJs and yet at the same time prove Rollins' point - so I completed the track in a few hours, including uploading.

The idea was to make SHITTY rave music, not great rave music.

All sounds were sampled from this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyRDDOpKaLM

A simple dance loop and very basic kit were added for the beat. The weird mangled riff is a warped version of Henry Rollins' impression of 'shitty rave music'. Some of Rollins' vocal drum impression made up part of the beat.

The entire track was assembled on a Korg Electribe ESX.

A rock track using Rollins' ranting on modern music may well follow soon.

Shitty Rave Music (featuring Henry Rollins and DJ Fuckhead)

A remix of Carlin's genius rap from his 'Life Is Worth Losing' show. I've been meaning to do something with this for years, and finally got around to it.

The samples are from Herbie Hancock's 'The Twilight Clone' (from his album Magic Windows), and Tom Waits' 'Step Right Up' (from his album Small Change).

All effects and weird bits were created by me, and I re-edited Carlin's vocals to cut out audience noise and keep closer to the beat.

George Carlin - A Modern Man

This was created for the Disquiet Junto - this was the mission assigment for this week: "...represent the way Red, Green, and Blue interact with each other and form other colors in the process. You'll accomplish this through two steps. First, you will create three simple sounds, one representative of each of three primary colors. Second, you will cause them to interact, in the form of a composition. The initial sounds might be tones, or beats, or chords, or even note sequences.

"You'll symbolize Red with a sound derived from the number 600, Green from the number 540, and Blue from the number 450. And certainly, you might choose to explore the ratios between these numbers, rather than the specific numbers themselves (e.g., 60/54/45 or 30/27/22.5, just as two examples)."

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto

--

I started by creating tones in Audacity - the quickest, most obvious route to simulating colours derived from numbers. I created a range of tones, all at 600hz (red), 540hz (green), 450hz (blue), 60hz, 54hz and 45hz. I initially tried to match colours to particular waveforms - red was sawtooth, blue a square wave, and green for a sine (that's how they 'felt right' to me). 

But I didn't like the results once I started playing with the waveforms on a sampler. I had two abortive attempts at doing something I didn't hate, and got lucky on the third attempt.

I was determined, despite my mounting frustration, to stick to using ONLY tones of 600hz, 540hz, etc. and not to deviate from that. I wanted to get a similar effect to the way red, green and blue, when combined on a TV, monitor, projector, etc. will produce a range of colours simply by overlapping. I suppose I cheated from the beginning by using tones of 60hz, 54hz, and 45hz, but I needed some bass sounds for it to feel right.

I ended up using 63 different samples, starting with saw, square and sine waves at the above-mentioned frequencies. Using these 12 basic samples, I edited them in Audacity to produce more, at differing lengths ('red' samples were set at 0.6 and 6 seconds, 'green' samples at 0.54 and 5.4 seconds, and 'blue' samples at 0.45 and 4.5 seconds). I combined the samples, mixing Blue and Red, Red and Green, Red, Green and Blue for each of the different waveforms in various configurations. Some of them produced a 'beating' or 'pulsing' effect (like in brainwave entrainment), but it was too monotonous to use as a beat.

I was going to stop at 60 samples, but I made three synth drum samples (using an Audacity plugin). I ended up only using the drums as little noises, rather than beats.

The crackles and pops in the sound are the result of the waveforms mixing (probably should have turned down the gain more when combining them), but I liked the sort of 'organic' feel they lent the recording.

I played all 63 samples lives on a Roland SP555 sampler. The samples were all set to loop, a bit like a Mellotron (but not as good as that). The SP555 had a 'tape loop' effect running on all samples, and was connected to a Mini KP Kaoss pad, which was set to a slicer (or noise gate) effect. This was in turn connected to another Mini KP, which was running a Mid Grain Shifter effect. Then THIS Mini KP was connected to KP3 Kaoss pad, which was running a Mutli Tap Delay. All 4 devices were set to 106 BPM. (Because the mean average of 60, 54 and 45 is 53 - that was too low for the BPM, so I doubled it).

I recorded three lives performances on a Zoom h4N, and combined the performances in Ardour, to position them in the stereo space and line them up properly. No editing of the performances was done - they were combined 'as is'.

The image is taken directly from here, and was not really altered (just trimmed):
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Additive_RGB_Circles-48bpp.png

Three [disquiet0015-rgbinteract]

Created for the Disquiet Junto.

This week's mission was to create a track utilising two samples, keeping one in the foreground and the other in the background. 

The two samples used were:

Sandpaper sample by HerbertBoland at http://www.freesound.org/people/HerbertBoland/sounds/28541/

Dice sample by Robinhood76 at http://www.freesound.org/people/Robinhood76/sounds/60857/

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:
http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto

--

I nearly gave up on this week's assignment, intially due to irritation, as I just couldn't come up with anything I liked, and then due to an update killing only the audio programs on my computer, and then lastly due to the electricity going down in my house. Eventually, I managed to get something done...

ALL sounds in this track ONLY come from the above two samples; no other sources or samples were used. I had decided early on not to use any other instuments or samples, and to have the samples contrast each other in the mix.

Samples were chopped up in Audacity (before my update killed it), and then manipulated and played on a Korg Electribe SX. Nothing else was used, and all effects are from the Electribe.

The dice samples form all of the drum parts, and the sandpaper is faintly scraping away in the background (it can be heard most clearly right at the end of the track). Nearly all samples were pitched down - half of them pitched down in Audacity before hand, the rest on the Electribe. 

I used the actual rhythm of the dice from the original sample to form some of the rhythm of the track, and then also used time-stretched versions, single hits, and time-sliced versions. I was trying to preserve and enhance the skittering, unstable rhythm of the dice, and the tension between that and the constant, unchanging sandpaper sample (which, appropriately, can be felt more than heard).


The image adapted from this one:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dice_02138.JPG

Loaded [disquiet0016-backforeground]

Alert Loop created for the http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto (project 0024 - Alert Suite). [The track utilising this sample loop and details on the project can be found here: http://soundcloud.com/djkaboodle/your-country-needs-lerts]

The idea is that this is an 'alert bell' sound to be used for audible alerts on a computer. It can be looped and repeated ad nauseum.

This track is an excerpt and remix of the following sample from Freesound:

http://www.freesound.org/people/theTone/sounds/77945/

The track image is adapted from this one:
http://content8.flixster.com/photo/11/08/55/11085534_ori.jpg
found on this page:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/celebrity/spike_milligan/

Chainsaw Alert Loop

Band: http://soundcloud.com/tailorsband
Track: Fear

Session recorded on 17th December at Perth College with fellow sound engineers Arek (http://soundcloud.com/aereka) and Pawel (http://soundcloud.com/pavski) using a Pro Tools 10 hardware system. The recording was pretty much a live take (two quick overdubs and one mistake erased). 

This is a quick rough mix (by me on my own), done in about an hour, as time was limited.  A more polished mix will follow later in the new year.

Tailors - 'Fear' - Rough Mix 01

Band: http://soundcloud.com/tailorsband
Track: Home

Session recorded on 17th December at Perth College with fellow sound engineers Pawel (http://soundcloud.com/pavski) and Arek (http://soundcloud.com/aereka), using a Pro Tools 10 hardware system. The recording was pretty much a live take (two quick overdubs and one mistake erased). 

This is a quick rough mix (by me on my own), done in about an hour, as time was limited.  A more polished mix will follow later in the new year.

Tailors - 'Home' - Rough Mix 01

An avant-garde cover of the Scissor Sisters' Invisible Light. 

All sounds were created and recorded as part of a multimedia project replacing the music and sounds in the original video (vimeo.com/17871386). The idea of the multimedia project was to compliment the visuals with audio that directly related to what was happening on screen. The idea of this cover was to use the newly recorded audio to recreate the video and the concept of the song without using any of the melody or original music.

An 'instrumental' version, without the spoken-word lyrics, is available here:
http://soundcloud.com/djkaboodle/invisible-light-instrumental

90% of the vocal sounds were made by Von Fenton (http://soundcloud.com/von-fenton), the rest by me. Von Fenton's vocals were recorded through an AKG C1000s and an AKG C414 XLS into Pro Tools. My vocal noises and field recordings were recorded on a Zoom H4n.

Most of the sounds were cut up in Audacity and loaded into a Korg Electribe SX. The main spoken word vocals were cut up in Audacity, and played on a Roland SP555, which fed into a Korg Kaoss pad, and back into the Electribe.

A thousand thanks to Von for her fantastic vocal work and wonderful reading of the song lyrics.

The sounds comprising this sonic re-imagining are:

[Von Fenton's sounds]:
gasps
breathing
screaming
muffled gasps and screams
giggling and laughing

[my sounds]:
moaning and breathing
chains
a detuned guitar struck with part of a mic stand
rubbing
dragging and creaking
removing a loose tooth (acutally a die)
licking
opening and closing a door
blood dripping (dripping noises)
body thump

Invisible Light [cover] - with vocals by Von Fenton

This is an instrumental version (without the spoken word reading of the lyrics by the fabulous Von Fenton) of the following track:
http://soundcloud.com/djkaboodle/invisible-light-cover

An avant-garde cover of the Scissor Sisters' Invisible Light. All sounds were created and recorded as part of a multimedia project replacing the music and sounds in the original video (vimeo.com/17871386). The idea of the multimedia project was to compliment the visuals with audio that directly related to what was happening on screen. The idea of this cover was to use the newly recorded audio to recreate the video and the concept of the song without using any of the melody or original music.

90% of the vocal sounds were made by Von Fenton (http://soundcloud.com/von-fenton), the rest by me. Von Fenton's vocals were recorded through an AKG C1000s and an AKG C414 XLS into Pro Tools. My vocal noises and field recordings were recorded on a Zoom H4n.

Most of the sounds were cut up in Audacity and loaded into a Korg Electribe SX. The main spoken word vocals were cut up in Audacity, and played on a Roland SP555, which fed into a Korg Kaoss pad, and back into the Electribe.

A thousand thanks to Von for her fantastic vocal work and wonderful reading of the song lyrics.

The sounds comprising this sonic re-imagining are:

[Von Fenton's sounds]:
gasps
breathing
screaming
muffled gasps and screams
giggling and laughing

[my sounds]:
moaning and breathing
chains
a detuned guitar struck with part of a mic stand
rubbing
dragging and creaking
removing a loose tooth (acutally a die)
licking
opening and closing a door
blood dripping (dripping noises)
body thump

Invisible Light [instrumental cover]

This was a quick, simple track created for a college project. The requirement was for 6 MIDI and 6 audio tracks to be used in Cubase - otherwise, we had free reign. I went for the first thing that popped into my head and stuck with it.

As we had to record at least 2 audio tracks in the classroom, I chose to record one using the microphone built into the Mac, and another through my headphones, plugged into the audio interface as a microphone. My vocal contribution was simply whispering and breathing, which I turned into screaming and noise. The evil monk chant was a sample I downloaded from Freesound - when I find the link, I will credit it here.

It's called 'urf' because that's the noise I was originally going to make to base this track around. I changed the noise, but kept the name, just because.

[image adapted from this one: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Monk-Ascetic.jpg]

Invisble light redux 02 - MIX 01 (edited)

Created in Cubase for college; this is a simple exercise in creating music in 3/4 time, but I will be using it as part of a larger work in coming months...

[image adapted from this one: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Phenakistoscope_3g07690d.gif]

[exercise3-4]

Holistic, alternative, eclectic DJ focusing on Creative Commons licensed music and on independent and individual artists.

DJ Kaboodle

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