Messing around in Garageband on my Macbook Pro in 20201.

DubstepMajorCrushSong - 140bpm - Dirty - 13:11:2021, 17

This is another one of my earliest Cubasis MIDI tracks. Again, it's a very low quality recording. 

It's very, how you say, experimental. It's not one of my favourites because for a long time, it really doesn't go anywhere. I do like it, though, because after forgetting about it for many years, I heard it and it caught me off gaurd.

The song was originally, played through a SoundLab soundcard and taped onto cassette. I think it was later copied tape to tape onto a 'Blast... E.P' cassette. Nearly 20 years later, I have just recorded the tape onto my PC (played on Marantz with Dolby Noise Reduction set to 'Off').

Digitised from Track2 Off 'Blast...' Cassette Tape - played on Marantz deck with Dolby Off.


Breath Of Life (Blast... E.P.) (~1995/6)

This Cubasis MIDI track was one of very first songs that I ever made. The sound quality is terrible and the song never had an overarching structure. I kept on adding blocks of MIDI onto the end of the track as I went along. I went crazy with layering drums over drums over drums and had no idea what a drum pattern was. I love the naivety of the whole escapade. It definitely needs to be shortened.

The song was originally, played through a SoundLab soundcard and taped onto cassette. Nearly 20 years later, I have just recorded the tape onto my PC (played on Marantz with Dolby Noise Reduction set to 'Off').

Digitised from Final Funky Git Track Off 'Funky Git Last / Classical' Cassette Tape - played on Marantz deck with Dolby Off.

FunkyGitLast - OffFunkyGitLastClassical - MarantzDolbyOff

Funky Git (1995/1996ish)

This is a song that I made in the mid-1990's. I cannot remember exactly when. 

It is named as 'Two Soft Night' because it derived from a previous song which I had named 'Soft Night'.

It was one of the first tunes that I made with Cubase VST. 

I think the twangy analogue sound came from a Roland JV-1080.

I quite like this, although I think it could have done with some better equalisation. The treble is a little too penetrating in some places.

Two Soft Night

desiderata-sketch-for-soundcloud

I made a backing track and then had fun playing along to it on my Roland Aerophone AE-30.
I recorded the mix on my Boss BR-80 Recorder as one track so I cannot tweak it much afterwards. Some parts  I know are awful other parts are quite nice.  The vocal at the start is just me being silly trying to justify publishing my mistakes. I am reading a book called  "Music Habits - The Mental Game of Electronic Music Production: Finish Songs Fast, Beat Procrastination and Find Your Creative Flow (2020) by Jason Timothy (Author)" in the book the author encourages us to COMPLETE and FINISH songs and to cope with writing terrible song after terrible song in the hope that things will improve with experience. In this world of AI perfection, I feel it is important to buck the trend and strive to be imperfect (tough to do, I know, ;)). Source, I uploaded the file named: "Go Placidly-parts-xmasInEssex5plusAe30SuckNormalised.wav"

Go Placidly And Suck Trumpets

I wrote this track in around 1998 or 1999.  It was inspired by the forthcoming solar eclipse of 1999. 

Of all my songs it is one of the best in terms of production quality. However, making it did not give me much satisfaction. This is because it was a bit too easy. Most of the sounds come from the sample CD called Jungle Warfare Vol 3 (which I bought at great expense). All I did was cut and paste the samples together, add some minor effects and cut some holes into it.

So, it was a lesson - if you steal other people's work you get very good results, very quickly.

Data Source: Track 29 Off the CD I burned for my old flat mate, Hazel.

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