Lab experiments

Keystone piece for a PhD project in design strategy for branding and business development, details forthcoming...

https://trello.com/b/0MjNRH6b

Album Oriented Radio Experience / Design Prototype 2021.03.14

Album Oriented Radio Experience   Design Prototype 2021.12.01

Okay this is a prototype of prototype of a prototype gift for the holiday season. It's still to be mixed to the finish line - and i've gotta go back and fix/update a couple things - but when lined up like this it creates the basis for a 2-sided vinyl album with three songs per side... i.e. THREEFER MADNESS!!! 🙂

Many of the songs here were done earlier in the year with @Ian-McAvoy putting together all the music then sending a version to me to sing over. They're all covers, for a project Ian put together called “The COVID Tapes” that’s now 36 songs!!! 😳... all for fun… then I realized how to make use of this project for an academic paper... as I do... one that I've been struggling to finish for various reasons, one of which being the need for a more up-to-date and appropriate case study. So this kinda showed up just in time... or JIT, as they say in business school jargon!

All sorta kidding aside, the final piece of this puzzle only happened a couple days ago, by way of an interesting mashup of an old Syd Barrett song called "Golden Hair" with the Stranglers song "Golden Brown". Only then and after some tweaking of the beakers and bunsen burners did the formula hold together in this six-song suite...

-----------------------------------
SIDE A: 13:39
———————-
(1) "Whatever You Want" / orig. Status Quo / ©1977
(2) "Wuthering Heights" / orig. Kate Bush / ©1978
(3) "Do It Again" / orig. Steely Dan / ©1972
———————-
SIDE B: 15:19
———————-
(4) "Angie" / orig. The Rolling Stones / ©1973
(5) "Golden Brown" / orig. The Stranglers* / © 1981
(6) "Comfortably Numb" / orig. Pink Floyd / ©1979
-----------------------------------

*This "re-imagination" of The Strangler's song includes lyrics from former Pink Floyd frontman Syd Barrett and his song "Golden Hair" from 1970. Note that James Joyce is credited on this song as well...

https://byronsmuse.wordpress.com/.../golden-hair-james.../

Side A B Test - Vinyl Album Experience Design Prototype

Well they may be known as the "Fab Four", but this is THREEFER MADNESS we're talkin' 'bout here! And what a mad mad mad mad year it has been (again!). So to close out this challenging 2021st Year of Our Bored Behaviour, Podstream co-founder Joel Flynn showed up on December 30th for a guest appearance at the 411 Seniors "Powered by Age" podcast to sing three Beatles songs, a "threefer" if you will! Apparently there's a documentary on the band on some streaming service somewhere, rumour has it.

This is somewhat of a prototype for those on the Zoom call, for a school project Flynn is currently working on at the studio, which follows up on last week's Dean Martin Christmas song selections. Hopefully this leads to a regular 3-song feature on future PBA podcasts and CJSF 90.1 FM broadcasts. It was a fun session, and as a way finish the year, it'll have do... doo doo doo doo... here comes the sun... i say... it's alright! :)

Also... RIP Betty White... I'm sure the Golden Girls at 411 will appreciate what you managed to get done over your 100 years, less 2 weeks.

A Beatles "threefer" with the 411 Seniors' Powered by Age Podcast, December 30, 2021

411 Seniors' Powered by Age Podcast, full episode from December 30, 2021

Well this is kinda turning into a tradition, now in the 2nd annual Zoom-enabled holiday special with the 411 Seniors Centre, the Powered by Age podcast, and Podstream founder Joel Flynn making a guest appearance from the soundproof pods at the studio at 333 Terminal Ave. Some classic Christmas songs out of the Dean Martin catalog were performed in the afternoon of December 23, 2021... which then hit the airwaves the next morning via CJSF 90.1 FM community radio, up at the SFU campus on Burnaby Mountain. Enjoy the 3.25 songs that were performed remotely on December 23, 2021

Podstream & Powered by Age Podcast, Holiday Special, December 23, 2021

This is a first take... on vocals anyway. Actually it's two takes, doubled up, on a song I didn't know until a few days ago. However, @ian-mcavoy is a big Steve Wilson and Porcupine Tree fan, and I guess was inspired to move out of the normal late 70s vinyl album FM radio shtick to bring things into the year 2007 at least! Let the archeological record show this was the era of compact discs (CDs), MiniDisc® recorders, and downloadable songs for iPods and other MP3 players... the good ol' days before the subprimes crashed the banking industry!

But this Porcupine Tree song "Fear of a Blank Planet".... which is a pun off a song by Public Enemy... is a pretty complex tune, and I' still figuring it out, but it sounds great and I already have some more ideas to test out at the studio. It's also much more familiar territory, style-wise, even though I'd not heard this particular song until recently. Feels like a direction the old halcyon days band would've aimed for, once past its obligatory navel gazing introspection stage!

One interesting thing with this "prototype" is that with the doubled up vocals, each take was done separately, i.e. i didn't sing the 2nd take over the first. I just wanted to see if I could sing two takes close enough to stack on top of each other and listen to the difference. Well they're pretty damn close! In fact, I screw up near the end on the first take... and then managed to do it on the 2nd AT THE SAME SPOT! So when doubled up it kind of works? Maybe... it's not ideal, but sounds like it was on purpose. Nope! Just me screwing up and not learning from it! :)

– Goulet

Fear Of A Blank Planet (orig. Porcupine Tree), digital prototype, 1st iteration, 1/5/2022

Heroes 2 Versions

https://www.soundtrap.com/signup?ref=be5a249aa4c97ac444ecdae4bb880ee2


After singing a version of the famous saloon song "Angel Eyes" at an Italian supper club in Las Vegas on Good Friday 2022, Podstream crooner and co-founder Joel Flynn had an idea that turned into another idea, then another tangent off of that previous idea. They all related to the use of KaraFun, and specifically, the backing tracks in the KaraFun app that are available at http://karaoke-version.com... and they all fed into the Soundtrap online audio workstation platform (shown in the image). Pulling these ideas and building blocks together seemed to work out surprisingly well :)

And now there's a duet of Lady Ella Fitzgerald and Ol' Frankie Blue Eyes that isn't really them, but sets up yet ANOTHER idea around digital media and remixes/mashups that goes back to Flynn's first masters thesis in 2006! There's definitely a publishable paper out of this work, if not some sort of non-fungible token or whatever the kids and cryptos are calling MPEG-21 digital media objects these days!

Angel Eyes - KaraFun artificial duet w/ "Frank Sinatra" and "Ella Fitzgerald"

The backing track to this song was the first purchase I ever made of a karaoke track back on October 30, 2011. I was (at the time) going to be in-character for halloween as Will Ferrell's version of Robert Goulet so I started looking for that Christmas song he sings on the infamous Conan O'Brien appearance

15) Jigsaw Falling Into Place (orig. Radiohead, -1) recorded 2022-11-28

Sirius / Eye in the Sky (orig. The Alan Parsons Project)

"Sirius / Eye in the Sky" (prototype 1) - The Alan Jackson Project - December 3rd, 2022

https://www.soundtrap.com/signup?ref=f620056259229dbffa3923cc2df5eb4a

testing... let's see how long this stays up!

10) Thank You (orig. Led Zeppelin) 2022-11-24 i.e. American Thanksgiving at The American

9) I Thank You (orig. ZZ Top) 2022-11-24, i.e. American Thanksgiving

Soundtrap project link: https://www.soundtrap.com/signup?ref=bf6bfa633f7f37440accf49e9acbdf3c

Lucky Man (orig. The Verve) experimental Jan. 7 Tom Jones vocal test (first take)

Lucky Man (orig. The Verve) Jan. 16 alternate test vox, less TJ

https://trello.com/c/ppXUeNWj

Recording a bunch of quick versions of these kinds of songs (standards etc) for an interactive demo piece.

19) Witchcraft (orig. Frank Sinatra) recorded 2014-06-18

Null (18)

Prompt: “a crooner song”

https://www.udio.com/songs/gG11bqkMfKKFp7MChEJmSN

Sweet Serenade ext v2 (AI-generated, 2024/06/20)

https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/leonard-cohen-advice-young-songwriters

So it's officially the end of 2020's "halcyon days" - i.e. a week past the winter solstice - and you find an old CD-R of an old band you were in back in the day. But now you're stuck in a pandemic, and in a mad scientist frame of mind, so here's what to (re)order from Amazon...

1) Must Be the Day
2) Dover
3) Hyena
4) Road Weary
5) Halcyone

**[EDIT: "Fan of Yours" from 2005 has since been moved to a separate track for this playlist]

So these recordings originally were done for a 5-song demo from a couple studio sessions that the short-lived Campbell River band "Halcyon Days" recorded in Nanaimo BC at Island Pacific Studios with Joel Spillette in 1999. 
Also the track order was switched to put the intro to the song "Hyena" in the middle, including the excerpt from the 1980 psychological thriller "Altered States" (which has something to do with floatation tanks, mad scientists, and Faust freaks!). 

Here's the full quote for context... 

EDDIE JESSUP: "What dignifies the Yogic practices is that the belief system itself is not truly religious. There is no Buddhist God per se. It is the Self, the individual Mind, that contains immortality and ultimate truth."

EMILY JESSUP: "What the hell is not religious about that? You've simply replaced God with the Original Self."

EDDIE JESSUP: "Yes, but we've localized it. Now I know where the Self is. It's in our own minds. It's a form of human energy. Our atoms are six billion years old. We've got six billion years of memory in our minds. Memory is energy! It doesn't disappear — it's still in there. There's a physiological pathway to our earlier consciousnesses. There has to be; and I'm telling you it's in the goddamned limbic system."

MASON PARRISH: "You're a whacko!"

EDDIE JESSUP: "What's whacko about it, Mason? I'm a man in search of his true self. How archetypically American can you get? Everybody's looking for their true selves. We're all trying to fulfill ourselves, understand ourselves, get in touch with ourselves, face the reality of ourselves, explore ourselves, expand ourselves. Ever since we dispensed with God, we've got nothing but ourselves to explain this meaningless horror of life....Well, I think that that true self, that original self, that first self is a real, mensurate, quantifiable thing, tangible and incarnate. And I'm going to find the fucker."

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Altered_States

*NOTE: the original studio recordings from 1999 were "remixed" later in the year as part of a audio design course for BCIT's New Media Design program. Samples of Tom Waits' "The Ocean Doesn't Want Me Today" from 1994's "Bone Machine" and the opening water sounds to PInk Floyd's 1987 reunion album "A Momentary Lapse of Reason". The British Navy sound effects were from a disc of BBC audio clips available to BCIT New Media students.

** All songs written and performed by Joel Flynn, Derek Lee, Ryan Pollock, and Matt Wilson of the band Halcyon Days, 1998-2005

*** And what the hell's is with the rain stick at the beggining? :) Okay, it happened to have arrived in the studio that day and we kinda threw it on there for a lark, but also because the song had a bit of a water/floaty thing going on. We always assumed we could take it out later, but since we were the last band to record reel-to-reel at Island Pacific, we had to go back to get the tapes. When I went back to pick the tapes up in September of '99 before starting classes at BCIT, they'd gotten lost in the shuffle of replacing the analog recording system with a brand one (MOTU, I think). So that was that... HOWEVER... the reason I did the sound design sampling experiment in class with these recordings was to lessen the rain stick's effect by way of sampled water sounds from Pink Floyd. I think I got an "A" in the class... i dunno...  it was a long long time ago! :)

Halcyon Days 1999 – "The Floatation Tank Demos" - a BCIT New Media Design project

OLD ADVENTURES IN LO-FI... 

Next to a small little cobblestone street on the edge of Vancouver's Gastown used to be a bunch of rehearsal spaces for local bands, with all the aesthetics, trappings, and varmints of a set from David Fincher's Fight Club. Matt Wilson, the ex-bassist from from late 90s Campbell River rock band halcyon days had a shared room here with his other band and in late 2008 suggested to former bandmates Joel Flynn (vocals, acoustic guitar) and Derek Lee (drums) to come on by and make use of the space. After the sudden passing of Flynn's father in December of that year, the ex-Riverite singer needed some music to work through the situation. He recruited two other ex-Riverites, his nephew Luke Schuss on guitar and Erin Lahay on piano/keyboards. 

To honour the infamous old singing fisherman - Flynn's father Doug, who had moved on to Fiddler's Green - the five-piece put together a bunch of mostly Irish-themed songs to play at a St. Patrick's Day memorial at the Media Club. The nameless group continued to get together and learn songs, some new originals and holdovers from the halcyon days era, but mostly just a bunch of cover songs that were fun to play. Borrowing Flynn's nom-de-plume of that he used for his digital media art experiments, the band played one other show at the Media Club in July of 2009, but never did anything else outside the walls and microphones of, ahem, "Cobblestone Road Studios". 

Of course, "studios" is saying a bit much, as it is basically a 15'x15' room with some randomly placed microphones. These consisted of either a Rode Podcaster or an iPod nano with a Belkin stereo mic attachment, which were later thrown together into multitrack Garageband projects. Yet this bare minimal approach did the lo-fi job and the Campbell River collective continued to play away in the space until it was closed down in early 2010. Some informal recording took place during this time, but was more note-taking and reference material for the band members than anything else. 

Later in the year, while backing up all these recordings to a new hard drive, Flynn ended up losing most of them when the brand new drive crashed within a  week (damn you LaCie!). File recovery software couldn't identify the Garageband files, and the old "throw the drive in the freezer" last resort couldn't get the drive spinning. The still nameless band never ended up finding another full rehearsal space, or play another show as a full band, while the lost Garageband recordings are still sitting unrecoverable on the busted LaCie (with the eye-catching design by Porsche). 

FAST FORWARD: While rummaging through discs, drives, and other piled up office stuff in early 2011, Flynn came across an old recovery disc from the busted LaCie drive. On it were some raw and rough mp3s taken during the group's rehearsals in 2009 that he gave a listen. With Erin now on a two-year 'round the world adventure, and the rest of the band still in limbo with other projects and a lack of a regular rehearsal space, Flynn decided to collect and coordinate some of these lo-fi recordings through a SoundCloud page, which has now been repurposed for Podstream Studio's uses.

Lab experiments

Podstream Studios