The Other Band That Had T1000′s Brother

Published on March 27, 2011 in Music. 0 Comments Tags: , .

So here’s a brief history of my (re)discovery of Nine Inch Nails.

Firstly, my older brother Dave was into industrial music. I’m not sure to what extent, but I remember him having self-printed posters of Front 242, Front Line Assembly, a Nitzer Ebb album, and Nine Inch Nail’s Downward Spiral. I mean, he was definitely more into your regular alternative rock stuff from the mid 90′s, but I guess he must have dabbled a bit in the industrial scene.

Come to think of it… I wonder how he would even discover these bands? Maybe some real real old online bulletin/message boards? Magazines? Ancient shit.

Anyways, I remember when the video for Closer was getting a lot of attention. I distinctly remember hearing that song a lot when I was kid. I remember thinking that it was really really catchy. I remember the video being one of the strangest music videos I’d ever seen.

I also remember seeing the video/hearing Head Like A Hole. Again I thought the video was really weird. It was sort of seizure-inducing with the rotating robot head thing + really short cuts in between. Also, I remember the song being really catchy.

Then I remember when I moved to the States, I’d started watching MTV. They always had these programs on like Saturday and Sunday afternoons. They would go over controversial videos, or events, or some whack shit that went down in previous years MTV awards. So I remember them going over Madonna’s sex book, her “Erotica” music video, George Michael’s “I Want Your Sex”, and somehow Closer got thrown in there too. I guess tey had banned it or something. They would only played a censored version during the day or something. And I don’t mean like… they cut out FUCK, I mean they cut out several sections of the video that were too controversial.

I distinctly remember when The Fragile was about to be released. I think I’d JUST really got into music then. My CD collection was at either zero or maybe 2 albums. I remember there being so much hype around the release of the album. Double-album, follow-up to their hugely successful The Downward Spiral album. I remember thinking about going to Walmart and buying it lol. But I chickened out or something. When I was first getting into music I felt like there was some weird judgement thing going on when I’d go up to the cashier with this CD in hand. So I rarely bought CDs. Nowadays I take a lot of pride in my music purchases.

I remember a few music videos being released for The Fragile, but I don’t remember them getting a lot of play on MTV. Every so often I might see the video to March of The Pigs on VH1, but that wasn’t even from The Fragile. I’d randomly hear references to the band and Trent Reznor in pop culture (Eminem? Stick nine inch nails between my eyelids). I’d started to get this vision in my head that they were some really deranged band. All their music videos up to that point were pretty fucked up visually. I’d hear about how Trent Reznor was some super dark, depressed, secluded, introvert guy. He was beefing with Marilyn Manson around that time too I think.

Then several years passed. I moved back to Canada. I tried to get into their stuff again during high school, but I guess my obsession with crazy guitar virtuoso shit made NIN sort of useless to me. Sure they had some heavy songs, but all the guitar parts were really simple. I couldn’t listen to the songs for more than a couple minutes. No repeats. And so many of the songs were these weird long drawn out pieces with real quietly whispered lyrics lol. I really didn’t understand what all the hype around the band was all about. I used to listen to the 102.1 The Edge’s History of New Rock with.. I forget his name. Real good dude though. Real good radio program. Some of the episodes would have references to NIN. And my respect for the band grew a little more.

Some more years passed. Again I’d never really hear much about the band. I’d see weirdos in NIN t-shirts. I associated those weirdos with the same weirdos with Tool t-shirts. I thought of them as a band with fans with stupidly elitist standards. And I was trying to get away from that (even though I was very elitist with my taste in music at the time). At the time I felt like NIN fans were just stupid angsty post-gothy types. You know? Dressed in all black with eye liner and shit. Spiked boots and shit lol. They’re all fucking tools.

And just about a month ago I was reading an article on a blog I’ve been following for a while now, This Recording. There was an entry about how a lot of people go through a NIN phase in their lives. And they documented the several stages of fandom. It was interesting. And it gave me a sort of idea of who these NIN fans really are. And I became interested in learning more about the band and Trent Reznor. I was also really interested because I’d recently watched The Social Network and remember the score being really outstanding. Trent Reznor was nominated for an Oscar around that time too (which he ended up winning).

So I went on Youtube. And went through a lot of music videos. Revisited the ones I’d already seen. I felt like I could appreciate them as art rather than a form of promotion for the music and the band. I read up about the band’s history. Learned about how T1000′s brother was in the band, why he left the band, how Filter was formed, Trent’s involvement with Marilyn Manson’s career, and Trent’s struggles with the media and the music industry over the years. I’d watch a bunch of interviews from 15 years ago. All very interesting. Trent wasn’t really at all the person I thought he would be. He would mention how he found himself starting to turn into the person that the media would portray him as. And how that got him into a really bad spot. And you can see elements of that in his interviews from the late 90′s. And then in more recent interviews he seemed so much more relaxed and not afraid to just be himself.

Did I mention the musics REALLY good too? lol

I guess since I’ve personally gone from an instrumentalist/musician role to a producer role, I’ve really come to appreciate NIN a lot more. There’s so much going on in the production. And the mix of sounds are really interesting. Mixing in heavy distorted tones with electronic elements.

I recently acquired the entire discography. I’m really into The Fragile right now. I wonder what would have happened if I’d bought the album back when it came out. How would my taste in music differ? Maybe I would have gotten into music production before guitar virtuosity?

Something Out of Nothing

Published on February 8, 2011 in Music. 0 Comments Tags: , .

I was working with an artist a few nights ago. We laid down a basic skeleton for an idea. And then for the first time I actually watched how another artist worked in their creative state. How she came up with melodies/lyrics/flows.

I’ve worked with her several times before but our work flow that night was a bit different. Usually she’ll have a basic melody and I’ll find the key and an appropriate chord progression. I might lay down a basic drum idea, and then I’ll start playing around with the chord progression. Meanwhile, she’ll be doing her own thing coming up with lyrics/melodies. And it sort of feels like we’re in different creative bubbles when we work. Even though the same music is playing in the background, and we’re both working off of that, I’m mostly paying attention to my part and she’s mostly paying attention to her part. I’ll slowly figure out parts I want to play over certain sections as the basic progression loops, and she’ll start typing lyrics into her laptop and reciting bits and pieces. Sometimes she’ll be like “Ooo that’s so sick! Did you hear that?” And I’ll be like “Nope. I was too busy hearing my own shit.”

But  was a bit different this time as I laid down a bunch of different ideas before she started writing anything. Basically, my part was done for the time being so instead of trying to develop more on the production side as she came up with the lyrics, I just watched how she worked and how she came up with her ideas.

Coming up with something out of nothing. It’s magic. It’s inspiring.

I got to observe exactly what her routine was. Sometimes sifting through old lyrics for inspiration. As new ideas came she would write them down. But after a few repetitions she might filter them out. From a third-person perspective it seemed so methodical and even a bit tedious. So many ideas would get scrapped, but the end product would always be on point.

I guess I too have a similar procedure. It’s a bit different though because I’m working with instruments and instrumental melodies rather than coming up with lyrics and their associated vocal melodies/rhythms.

Come to think of it, it’s actually sort of weird (and perhaps amateurish) how I’ve only recently seen how an artist I work with works. In all my past projects I would send an idea to the artist and they’d come up with their part at home, and a few days later we’d record it. I would never get to see them in their creative state.

So I need a video for this post. I was thinking about recording some video footage of us working in the studio, but decided against it.

Instead, I’ll refer to YouTube.

A few nights ago I found this old documentary on YouTube about Stevie Wonder’s 1980/1981 USA Tour. It showed a lot of concert footage, behind the stage footage, and footage of Stevie writing.

In this clip Stevie lays down a basic idea of a song.

Trigger

Published on January 27, 2011 in Music. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

One of my favourite aspects of music how you can recall/trigger memories just by listening to a song. With certain songs/bands that I listen to, I associate a particular time period in my life. And it reminds me of whatever emotions I was feeling at that time. For instance, whenever I listen to Slayer or old Metallica songs I’m reminded of how it felt to be some weird outcast long-haired kid in high school. Or if I listen to… lets say… the soundtrack to Aladdin (no I don’t actually have the soundtrack) it brings back childhood memories of watching the movie on VHS at my cousins house.

Depending on how much I listen to a band, their music might trigger multiple memories. I’ve been listening to a lot of Depeche Mode recently. I’ve been listening to them since before I was even trying to listen to music.

My earliest memory that triggers is at 7 years old (I’m estimating), I’d hear my brothers playing this music. At that time maybe it was Music For The Masses or Violator. I remember hearing a lot of Songs of Faith and Devotion too. I remember hearing it playing out of my brothers rooms. I remember hearing it from our Hi-Fi system in the basement.

Side story. I think both my brothers bought Violator on CD. Like seriously. You couldn’t share the CD? You couldn’t live with a dubbed copy on cassette? We even had that many CD players in the house? I swear we only had one CD player in my house at that time. So unnecessary.

Side-Side story. Same thing happened with The Joshua Tree. I think they also both had it on cassette too lol.

Anyways.

I also have the memory of re-discovering the band on my own. Time travel to Napster era. What would I download? Firstly a bunch of songs I heard on the radio, then some songs people told me to get, and the finally some songs for research. I remember remembering that I liked some Depeche Mode songs. So I’d Napster search for it and get a couple of random tracks. You know? Research.

And then I’ve also got this memory of being a stupid teenager and listening to their 101 live album from their Music For The Masses era. And then all the albums following that. It was all some depressing shit (musically). I think it listened to it to compliment my usual listenings to death metal. I like mixing in some SAD/DEPRESSING with my ANGRY. Sometimes you need a break from “sand-in-a-blender” distorted guitar tones, double bass pedal patterns, and the Cookie Monster.

There something about their music from around Black Celebration until about Exciter. I don’t really know how to describe it in my own words. I read a comment on YouTube (I was researching videos for this post), and it mentioned “every time I hear this song I feel a wave of emotions”. Sounds cheesy, but I’m going with it. It’s weird because its such a massive change from their early career which had a lot more of a happy/synth-pop/dance vibe. I’ve read up enough on the band to know what might have caused the change in their sound. Their sudden popularity in the US following Music For The Masses. The growing tension between the band members (eventually leading to one of the members leaving the band). And of course…. drug habits.

Come to think of it, I feel like a lot of modern bands these days don’t have that sort of element to them. I rarely ever hear about a band who suddenly became popular, and the band members dealing with some conflict of becoming “too big” and struggling with depression, or developing a terrible drug habbit. A lot of bands from the 80′s and 90′s had their greatest days were when key members of the band were strung out on coke/heroine or something like that. But maybe I just don’t listen to enough modern bands or maybe I just don’t pay attention anymore. Or maybe…. the whole rock star lifestyle thing isn’t appealing to musicians these days.

Anyways

I also listen to new Depeche Mode and it’s alright. I still prefer their material from the late 80′s and 90′s over their real early stuff or their very recent stuff. I mean, I don’t wish they were all fucked up on drugs or something, but their music from that time period I’ll always favor, and I wish they could somehow get back to that.

I’ve suggested to my brothers that we should go see them live. I have a feeling they’ll stick to a lot of their classics.

Anyways. Clip here. I would have used a YouTube video, but Warner Bros Records is being lame and won’t let you embed their videos. And I really like this song and this video, so I had to refer to stupid Daily Motion.

Depeche Mode – Only When I Lose Myself

Little L

Published on January 3, 2011 in Music. 0 Comments Tags: .

Well apparently I haven’t been making enough updates. It’s been a few weeks since the last entry. All of the sudden its the next year, and things are looking up.

Okay time travel back to about 1997.

The year I moved to the US was the year I started to discover music on my own. Whatever was on the TV and on radio I would absorb. I’m pretty sure it was that year that Jamiroquai was getting huge accolades for their Virtual Insanity music video.

Years passed by and I assumed they became a one hit wonder. Eventually I’d come to discover they’re actually doing quite well for themselves. Even before their breakout single, they were acid jazz innovators. And they’ve been steadily releasing albums every couple of years. And it’s all super funky.

I’m still working my way through their discography. This is one of my current favorites. Listening to this has become part of my daily routine lol.

 

Damu The Fudgemunk

Published on December 2, 2010 in Music. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

So far I’ve went through the history of how I got into production and how I got into metal. With the release of Damu The Fudgemunk’s Supply For Demand, I guess nows about the right time to get into how I got into hip hop.

Going from long hair and Morbid Angel t-shirts to crispy line-ups and fitted caps is certainly a strange transition. Identity crisis? Maybe. Maybe one day I’ll move out West, get into country music and start sporting cowboy hats and shit. lol

Throughout most of my teenage years I wasn’t that into hip hop. Those were my metal days. And most metal heads were all about the “YOU CAN’T SPELL CRAP WITHOUT RAP” slogan. On top of that, since getting into thrash metal and “real” metal, I grew a hatred for Nu Metal aka Rap + Metal. Linkin Park? Hate em. Limp Bizkit? Hate em.

It’s not like I was completely ignoring rap music in general. In the early 2000′s rap and hip hop was all over the radio. Some of it I liked, most of it I didn’t pay much attention to. I might have downloaded a few tracks here and there, but never really bothered researching about the artist, the producer, the influences, the roots of the whole thing.

This is going to sound super lame, but I didn’t get into hip hop until the release of Jay-Z’s The Black Album. That in combination with Kanye’s College Dropout which I think dropped around the same time frame. So this is like… Grade 12 for me.

Late start. I know.

Oh hold up, hold up. I just remembered. Why did I even bother downloading (yes downloading) those albums?

The summer before Grade 12 I was introduced to Samurai Champloo by one of my old friends from the US. It’s an anime about a trio who…. I don’t even know what. They roam the country-side of Japan? Battle dudes? Stuff like that. What I really got into though was the OST. I was doing a distance-ed Online Grade 12 Biology course and used the OST as my study music. The music was just so chillin’. It was hip hop beats, but very minimal. I looked into it more discovered that most of the music for the series was made by a Japanese producer by the name of Nujabes (RIP). My early style of hip hop production was heavily influenced by Nujabes. I’ll likely dedicate another entry just for him too.

When I finally got into hip hop production my starter toolset included Reason 3.0 and Recycle 2.0. I’d check up forums as usual. And by this time YouTube was getting real big too. I’d watch videos of big producers talking about using the old MPC’s, SP1200′s, and ASR10′s. I had a few favourite YouTube producers. One of my favourites is this producer based out of Washington DC who guys by the name Damu The Fudgemunk. His videos were simple. He sat in front of his old MPC2000 in his grimy basement setup, loaded up a beat from floppy, played it, and sometimes would use the mute groups function. His videos were a lot different from other YouTube producers because he wasn’t showing off his ability to make a beat in 10 minutes. He wouldn’t show you, but you could tell his took a lot more time with his beats. The MPC2000 only had 2MB of memory! Just think about how small the sample time on the MPC2000 was! You really had to plan your shit out. You really had to know your breaks. The whole vibe of his music was just so hip hop. Breakbeats, grimy vinyl samples, and scratches. His stuff sort of made me want to pick up DJing too.

Anyways. It’s been several years since I became a Damu fan. When I first followed him all he had was a YouTube account. Then he formed a group called Y Society. I copped the CD and the vinyl for their debut release. Since then he’s released a bunch of instrumental compilations, and just recently released another solo project (which I also copped).

Supply For Demand. Check it.

…And Justice For All

Published on November 18, 2010 in Music. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

I’m almost embarrassed to admit that once upon a time my favourite band was Metallica. It’s kind of like how I’m embarrassed of the pictures of myself in my high school grad year book where I have hair down to my shoulders. It’s kind of like how I’m embarrassed that I used to have vinyl stickers of metal bands plastered all over my guitar. It’s kind of like how I’m embarrassed that I’ve collected all four Metallica action-figurines (not dolls).

:::Brief hater-lude:::

I hate getting into bands late. I got into Metallica in late 2001, early 2002. They hadn’t had a real album since Reload, which was considered a sellout album. Actually it was their sellout follow-up to their real sell out album, Load. Or if you’re super hardcore, you’d say something crazy like the Black album was the sellout album. Either way, I got into Metallica post-sellout, but pre-suckass. Yea. I got St. Anger the day it came out, and it blew chunks. But for the sake of anti-hate, I’ll focus on the good stuff.

:::Anti-hate commencing:::

I’ve always been a fan of music forums. I mentioned it a bit in my previous entry. In the early 2000′s there weren’t any music blogs, so my main was to discover “new” music was through music/musicians boards and forums. One of the first forums I hit up was the Tabcrawler.com forums. I originally went there just to grab and print off guitar tabs when I was first learning guitar. I was mostly into pop-punk and a bit of 90′s alternative rock. I learned all the standard songs every beginner learns. I mastered power chords pretty early on too lol.

Somehow I got turned onto the forums side of the site. I first started to read up on guitar gear, amps, bands, random shit. I slowly stopped listening to some much pop-punk and started to get into metal. Late 90′s/early 2000′s metal was defined by nu metal bands like KoRn, Limp Bizkit, System of a Down, Deftones. I would detune my crappy Squier like it was a 7-string and learn how to play to these bands. Then on the forum I learned that the “real” metal heads hated on these bands. So I started looking into the “real” metal bands from the golden era of metal.

Thrash metal. The big four. Metallica. Megadeth. Slayer. Anthrax.

Except for Anthrax, I made my way through all their shit chronologically. I started up with Kill ‘Em All and slowly made my way through all of Metallica’s albums. I’d get all the Megadeth and Slayer stuff too. I was buying up all their live DVDs. I was downloading every live video I could find of these bands playing on Kazaa. I was buying these ridiculous Metallica action figures. I was growing my hair out to my shoulders. I got an ESP LTD EX-series guitar because James Hetfield used an ESP Explorer. I swapped the pickups to EMG actives. Basically, I was real into it.

I loved how the songs were so much more complex than any of the pop-punk songs I was learning before. I loved how the songs were so fast compared to the slower/groovier style of the nu-metal stuff. Most of all I loved how intensely hard it was to play the songs. I really respected these bands as high level musicians. I respected that James Hetfield could play all the rhythm parts of Battery, ALL DOWN PICKED. I respected that Kerry King and Jeff Hanneman’s rhythm parts would make my hand and arm cramp up, and that no one could ever transcribe their fucked up solos. I respected that Marty Friedman and Dave Mustaine would trade impossible solo’s every other section in Hanger 18.

Getting into thrash metal really forced me to practice guitar. Inspirational? Certainly.

I was playing through most of Metallica’s “….And Justice For All” album tonight. I didn’t bother to look up any of the tabs. I mostly just went off muscle memory and ear. The old school metal heads used to debate Master of Puppets vs AJFA. I always went with AJFA. Some say the mix is terrible because of the prominent “smile” EQ, but I never really missed the bass. The guitar riffs are killer.

Listen.

Djent

Published on November 11, 2010 in Music. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

A brief history on how I came to discover djent.

I first heard about Meshuggah when I was in grade 9. I went back to the US that summer to visit friends and also went to Ozzfest, aka my first non-free concert aka my ears were blown the fuck out. Seriously my ears were ringing for days. We were sitting right up at the front, near the right side, right next to a giant stack of PA speakers. I think I incurred some level of hearing loss because of that concert. I didn’t catch Meshuggah that year, but I’m pretty sure they played the previous year. There was also some mention of them on MTV too. I remember hearing something about “Heaviest band EVER” and “heavy for the sake of heavy”. I actually think it might have been in an episode of The Osbournes. This was a long time ago, so I don’t remember it so clearly. But this isn’t really that relevant. I just wanted to state that I’d heard about them several years before I actually bothered to listen to them.

At the time I really only followed bands from the New Wave of American Heavy Metal. The big 80′s thrash metal bands like Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer. If you asked me what my favourite album was at the time, it’d be a toss up between Master of Puppets and …And Justice For All. Even though I got into these albums 15-20 years after they first debuted, they really defined my taste of music in my high school days. With time, I’d eventually explore the many sub-genres of metal. One of the big milestones is when I started to get into Swedish death metal.

Towards the end of high school, I was really into the Gothenburg sound. Bands that came out of the Gothenburg scene like In Flames, Dark Tranquility, Soilwork, Arch Enemy combined melodic guitar riffs with brutal death metal vocals.  I’ll admit it took me a while to get used to the vocals. Most people can’t get past them. The first song I heard that had the growlish/screamish vocals was Arch Enemy’s Enemy Within, and I absolutely hated it. But I appreciated the fantastic guitar work and musicianship. Focussing on that guitar work, the vocals eventually became tolerable. And then somewhere along the line I actually started to enjoy the growls. By the time I got into Morbid Angel felt like I’d built up a high tolerance for extreme vocals and dissonance. I had no problems going to sleep listening to Altars of Madness.

And so it was around this time that I started to get into Meshuggah. They aren’t death metal. Their style has the extreme sound, but the focus is really on the polymetric rhythms. Most of it goes over peoples’ heads, and most of it goes over mine too. So I’ll try to explain this as simply as possible. The drummer plays a kick and high-hat pattern in 4/4, but hits the snare to a 5/4 beat. You do this for 20 beats and you’ll hit a reset, and the loop starts over again. This gives the music a sort of hypnotic feeling. I can’t begin to understand how the drummer is able to keep to different time signatures in different limbs, playing to different time signatures than the guitarists/bassists. Hell I can’t even play the weird syncopated stuff the guitarists do.

The best I can do is program the polymeters using a drum machine. A lot of the musicians you’ll find on the Meshuggah forums take this approach as well. In fact a lot of the bands on the forums started off as a one-man-band projects. One dude in his bedroom, with a Line 6 POD, Cubase, and Drum Kit From Hell samples. Minus a lot of nice outboard gear, this basic type of setup is the core of what Meshuggah would use for a couple of their albums (drum kit from hell samples and all). As their projects grew, the better “bands” were able to fill out and find drummers, bassists, vocalists.

It was in these forums that I first came upon the word “djent”. It’s derived from the mid-range heavy guitar tone you can find on Meshuggah’s Destroy Erase Improve. You palm-mute and hit the strings of a guitar hooked up to a modern metal amp like a dual/triple rectifier or 5150, boost the mids plenty, and what you get is “djent”. It’s also what a lot of these bands that came out of these forums get labeled with. These days, I don’t listen to as much new metal bands as I used to in my high school days, but the ones that I do listen to seem to have been influenced by the “djent” movement. Everyone’s using weird syncopated rhythms. They’re going crazy with

Anyways….

Looking back, I’ve realized how much of an impact the forum has had on me. I probably wouldn’t be producing/recording/mixing it it wasn’t for the Audio Recording and Shameless Self Promotion and Band Spam sub-forums of the Meshuggah forum. I started off recording covers back in high school, and always went to the Meshuggah forums for advice on recording gear, EQ-ing, software, and general feedback. Seeing and hearing what these guys in their bedrooms were able to achieve really inspired me. I idolized guys like Acle, Bulb, Chimpspanner. I’ll definitely do separate entries on their respective bands in future entries, but until then check out the Meshuggah forums.

Official Meshuggah Forum

Since I’ve included a video in every entry I figured I should keep up with that. So here’s my favourite Meshuggah music video. New Millennium Cyanide Christ.

Kaleidoscope Heart

Published on November 4, 2010 in Music. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

It’s strange to think there was a time when I had absolutely no interest in music. Stranger still, it was during this time that I first learned how to play piano. In retrospect it’s easy to understand why I quit piano lessons so early on. I had no interest in music. Piano practice was a chore. At the time the only music I listened to was whatever I overheard playing out of my older brothers’ rooms. It was the early/mid 90′s so I was mostly only exposed to alternative rock. That was the “in” shit back then I guess.

It wasn’t until my brothers moved out, and I moved to the US with my mom and dad that I started to discover music on my own. This was slightly before Napster hit it big, so my sources of finding new music were limited to music videos I saw on tv, music I heard on the radio, and music I heard people talk about.

Sidenote: I remember in 5th grade kids were asking me if I knew about Biggie and Pac, because for some reason maybe Canadians didn’t know about them lol. Really though, I never heard of them until they asked me because my brothers listened to alternative. The only rap music I knew by then was like Coolio, LL Cool J, and I’d probably seen Run DMC with Aerosmith in a music video somewhere.

So what I’m trying to say is the way I discovered music when I was first getting into music was through MTV’s TRL and VH1′s Top 10 countdown. I remember every Friday after school I’d be checking VH1′s Top 10 Countdown. To me, and a lot of people I know in my age group, the pop music that got pushed out during the late 90′s/early 2000′s is pure nostalgia. I’m talking about Marcy’s Playground, Tal Bachman, Sixpence None The Richer, BSB (lol), Goo Goo Dolls, Savage Garden. I’m talking about whatever the hell was on the latest NOW! compilation cd (or Big Shiny Tunes for you Canadians). My brothers generation had alternative rock. My generation gave you a choice of pop punk, the beginnings of widely commercialized (aka pop) hip hop, and girl/boy bands. Everything went pop.

I grew up listening to Top 40 pop music. It’s ingrained in my musical DNA. I eventually abandoned it, and found myself listening to the heaviest of heavy metal I could find, the elitist of elite progressive rock, then the most grimiest of grimy hip hop I could find. But still I’ve got a soft spot for well-written and well-produced pop music.

So today’s source of inspiration is an album by a pop singer-songwriter. You’ve likely heard Sara Bareilles’ hit single Love Song on some commercial on TV (I’m thinking Apple most likely). Her follow-up Kaleidoscope Heart debuted at #1 in the US.  I don’t ever hear her music on the radio or TV, so I thought this still deserved some shine. I just got the album about a week ago, and I’ve really been enjoying it. It’s a nice break from the weird combination of prog metal and jazz I’ve had on loop for the past month. Her style reminds me of Fiona Apple, Sarah McLachlan, but with a bit more pop-rock.

I really wish I could improve my skills in purely pop song writing. I feel like working on hip-hop forces me into a loop-based mind frame. It starts with one hot drum loop. Layer it. Remove bits, and replace certain sounds with other sounds. Take the same drum loop, alter it a bit, switch up the melody ever so slightly and you’ve got the chorus. It’s easy. It’s why people seem to be able to bang out a track in less than an hour.  Working on metal/prog metal is different. It starts with riffs and there’s no restriction in terms of song structure. You want to write a 25 minute epic? People are down for that.

With pop music, you’re stuck with a very formulaic structure, something along the lines of intro-verse-chorus-verse-chorus-middle 8-chorus-out. You won’t find much deviation from that. It’s different from hip hop because your basis isn’t a hot drum loop. It’s different from a metal/prog song because you’re not trying to write the most difficult riff ever or the most elaborate song structure. With pop it comes down to a catchy melody. And beyond that it’s about the arrangement and production. Adding in layers of acoustic guitar, strings, horns behind piano melodies. Getting just the right amount of reverb in the main vocals. The ooh’s and aah’s layered on top of the vocals. The barely audible harmony layers. Creative use of effects like adding a bit of vibrato to a piano breakdown section so it sounds like an old out-of-tune honky-tonk piano. It wasn’t until I started to work on production that I started to pay attention to these details. Pop songs are simple and catchy, but there’s a lot more going on than you think.

Listen.

Anti-hype

Published on November 2, 2010 in Film. 0 Comments Tags: , .

I’m going to try my best not to hate on anything in this post. Here goes….

ALSO. SPOILER ALERT IF YOU HAVEN’T WATCHED THE SOCIAL NETWORK.

The Dark Knight. Avatar. Inception. These movies were super hyped up before they came out. They were super hyped up when they came out. I try my best to avoid the hype. I don’t like going into movies with pre-conceived notions and opinions. So whenever these super hyped type movies come out I try to avoid watching any trailers, tv spots, interviews, reviews on the film. Whenever I watch movie trailers, I never watch them more than one time. Some stuff like word of mouth is unavoidable though.

So recently The Social Network came out. Everyone hyped it up after they saw it. Everyone on Facebook was adding Mark Zuckerberg on their “I Like” pages. Everyone on Twitter was raving about the movie. Anyone I know who saw it said it was amazing. It was tough to avoid the hype.

A month or so later I finally saw it. I tried my best to get into anti-hype mode. I went in thinking this movie will probably be decent, but that’s about it (I don’t trust other peoples taste in movies, no hate).

After just the first scene in the coffee shop, I realized I was really going to enjoy the movie. I loved how the dialogue was so fast in that scene. I really liked the frustrated-underdog-nerd-outcast vibe that Jesse Eisenberg’s Mark Zuckerberg had going. As the film progressed I realized also I really liked the score for the film. It reminded me a lot of the Dust Brothers’ score for Fight Club.

Actually, I thought the film had a lot of parallels with Fight Club. First off, both films were directed David Fincher. Both films had a group of outcasted young men coming together to create their own exclusive club. Justin Timberlake’s Sean Parker played a similar role to Brad Pitt’s Tyler Durden in Fight Club, a sort of projection of of the main character’s ego. And following Sean Parker words of wisdom eventually led to his own downfall. Zuckerberg didn’t shoot himself in the mouth at the end of the film, but he did lose a ton of money and practically all his friends. Both films’ final scenes were inside a high rise commercial building. There’s a scene that involves a sort of hazing of potential Facebook employees that combines a drinking game with a race to who can code the fastest. It reminded me a lot of the underground fight scenes in Fight Club when new members would be thrown into a fight and the camera would pan over to shots of Tyler Durden looking back at Edward Norton’s character and vice-a-versa with a look of accomplishment in their faces. Both films had a lot “thieves in the night” scenes aka mischievous night scenes accompanied by a dirty/distorted electronica-type score: when FaceMash first went online; Zuckerberg and Saverin’s first encounter with Facebook groupies;  the police bust down of  the party Sean Parker was hosting near the end of the film. I guess I would say The Social Network is like a nerdy version of Fight Club.

I haven’t been watching too many new movies recently, but I’d definitely put The Social Network somewhere in my top 5 films of this year. It certainly lived up to the hype.

MO

Published on November 1, 2010 in Everything Else. 0 Comments

I was reading Arun’s blog over at another reflection last night. I think it’s a great start. It’s really well written and seems very well thought out. The whole idea of the blog actually seems very well thought out. The concept of “another reflection” and all of that. The flash video in the second post was hilarious. So props to Arun for all the good work.

I’ve been thinking, I should probably think out these blog posts better. I should probably try to write them out better. I should probably conceptualize the blog out better. I mentioned in my 1st post that the only thing I knew for sure that I wanted to include in this blog was music. So I’d like to expand on that and fully describe the purpose of this blog.

People don’t like blogs that have no real purpose. I don’t think anyone actually follows anyone else’s “personal blogs”. If you don’t really know the person, it’s really not that entertaining to follow that person’s blog. Ever since everyone jumped ship from LiveJournal, the only blogs I follow these days are either informative or self-improvement based.

I’m going to try to make this blog as non-personal as I can. I’m not going to post about everything I did the previous day. I’m not going to make posts about how I hate on this and that.

I’m going to make posts about things that inspire me. Whether that be music, film, new articles, or something that happened to me personally. Each post will feature a little history on how I came upon the source of inspiration, why it inspires me, perhaps what I’m doing to let that moment of inspiration resonate out, and of course a link so you can check it out for yourself.

Additionally I’m going to use this blog as a way for me to practice writing. After completing 5 years of engineering in university, I’m basically really out of practice in terms of writing. I’m not talking about writing novels or anything giant like that, just simple things that involve a little bit of creativity like this blog. I dug up some old essays I wrote in grade 11. There was an old reading journal I had to keep when I was reading 1984. I was really surprised how well written the entries were. I feel like I really missed out on improving writing skills during my undergrad years. The only time I had to write out things were for lab reports lol.

I’d like to point out that the inspiration in this post is Arun’s blog another reflection, if that wasn’t obvious. Go check it out.