regarding this piece, my memory is blurry; yet, i have a vivid recollection of playing parts of it for my guitar teacher on a sunny day, where there was still snow on the ground. it's funny how we remember seemingly irrelevant details, but i guess the atmosphere of the performance is important because the performance is. that would date it to roughly march, 2001.
i switched the piece from classical guitar to piano halfway through writing it, and vaguely remember thinking that an impossible interval had something to do with it (a specific c# cannot be hit on a standard classical). yet, that doesn't change the fact that it's guitar music. the counterpoint is very guitar.
to further complicate things, i've long wanted to turn the piece into a jazzy idm romp. it has a kind of a jingly feel to it that belongs in the warp records sphere.
conceptually, the time machine aspect referred simply to the slowed down guitar chords at the beginning of the song. if you play it a certain way, it sounds like time is collapsing in on itself. or, so i thought, anyways. the various versions i have created here have made an attempt to take that idea to it's logical conclusion. it's a mix of the vision i had at the time and a bit of hindsight.
written early 2001. drastically rearranged in june, 2014. final render completed on july 5, 2014. as always, please use headphones.
http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/the-time-machine-5
Thursday, January 8, 2015
stuck in the middle of an alley closing in on all sides (vst mix) (for thru)
this is one of the tracks that i can't date well. i do, however, remember working on it during the winter, which means it must have been late '00 or early '01. i'm going to consequently deduce that it must have been what i was working on over the 2000 christmas break and date it coming out right after it.
actually, i have another reason to date it in early '01 rather than late '00: the introductory piano part was recorded live into my notation program on my dx100, which i was given over christmas (maybe a little before; it was a cheap garage sale pickup) to act as a controller for my recently broken jx-8p, that i had tried to take apart over the summer to clean a sticky key (a common problem with mid-80s roland analog synths) but failed and left keyless. it's still keyless. yet, the dx still drives it....
that introductory piano part formed the basis of the track, which built itself up fairly quickly. somewhere, i lost the nwc file by saving it as midi, which ruined all the formatting. it's been sitting on my drive ever since.
thematically, the track is meant to orchestrate a feeling of claustrophobia with society pushing down on you too hard. it's meant to transmit a feeling of existential dread. at the time, i really felt stuck with life in general and not sure how i was going to get out of it..
written late 2000 & early 2001. initial instrumentation and render completed mar 7, 2014. minor instrumentation changes to facilitate a small wind section were implemented in late april, 2014. final render completed on may 3, 2014. as always, please use headphones.
http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/stuck-in-the-middle-of-an-alley-closing-in-on-all-sides-5
actually, i have another reason to date it in early '01 rather than late '00: the introductory piano part was recorded live into my notation program on my dx100, which i was given over christmas (maybe a little before; it was a cheap garage sale pickup) to act as a controller for my recently broken jx-8p, that i had tried to take apart over the summer to clean a sticky key (a common problem with mid-80s roland analog synths) but failed and left keyless. it's still keyless. yet, the dx still drives it....
that introductory piano part formed the basis of the track, which built itself up fairly quickly. somewhere, i lost the nwc file by saving it as midi, which ruined all the formatting. it's been sitting on my drive ever since.
thematically, the track is meant to orchestrate a feeling of claustrophobia with society pushing down on you too hard. it's meant to transmit a feeling of existential dread. at the time, i really felt stuck with life in general and not sure how i was going to get out of it..
written late 2000 & early 2001. initial instrumentation and render completed mar 7, 2014. minor instrumentation changes to facilitate a small wind section were implemented in late april, 2014. final render completed on may 3, 2014. as always, please use headphones.
http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/stuck-in-the-middle-of-an-alley-closing-in-on-all-sides-5
this thing has always been difficult to mix, because it's just a wall of fucking sound roaring at you - structured chaos to be sure but it's just loud. it's almost there, though.
i can't claim any specific improvement over the 2006 version. i mean, there's a reason i skipped over this last summer; i didn't think i could improve upon it. it's different, sure, but it's not really "better", and i'm not expecting that it's going to be. this is not an update on the final version. but it needs to be done for the thru project.
i mean, it's interesting, no doubt, but in a pretty geeky way that's only going to appeal to any segment of the fan base that also produces...
i can't claim any specific improvement over the 2006 version. i mean, there's a reason i skipped over this last summer; i didn't think i could improve upon it. it's different, sure, but it's not really "better", and i'm not expecting that it's going to be. this is not an update on the final version. but it needs to be done for the thru project.
i mean, it's interesting, no doubt, but in a pretty geeky way that's only going to appeal to any segment of the fan base that also produces...
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