(this post was started on the evening of may 27th and worked on over may 28th, then abandoned on the morning of may 29th as i focused on a number of more personal concerns. i am resuming it and finishing it on june 7th 8th.)
my parents moved a lot, and i tended to end up with some kind of space in the basement - be it a finished bedroom, an enclave near the laundry or, in this case, access to two adjacent bedrooms, along with a large open area full of gear.
as before, my dad had a desire to have an open jam space, but nobody ever showed up. this was his last attempt at this, but the initial set-up was absolutely amazing - he put a new maple drum kit in beside a giant grand piano, and a huge fender bass amp (which i still have). i was supposed to get one room and my sister was supposed to get the other, but the sister didn't want to live there (?) so i ended up with both rooms, instead.....at least to start. slowly, my stepmother reclaimed one of the bedrooms as an "exercise room" and the various instruments started getting moved out of the recording area (some into my now cramped bedroom), which was reclaimed as a "family room". this was on some level a tragedy, but the fact of the matter is that nobody was using any of this stuff, except me. but, i sure used it...
so, what have i got to look at here?
- the one extra piece of gear on liquify was a dan electro dd-1 fab tone that was temporarily left in the space by my friend greg. out of all those dorks i knew at the time, greg was the one that actually had some raw musical talent (as a guitarist, a drummer and a singer), but he went through this yoga rebirth anti-pot phase in his early 20s that set him down an extremely different path as a human being, one that we weren't really going to base much commonality around. i fucking hate yoga - it just destroys people, as individuals. i've been through this with too many people. it's a fucking awful cult. he was a legit good guy, though. no, really, he was. but, there was a new greg and an old greg, and i found myself voting for the old greg, the one with silly, flappy hair that did too many mushrooms and played guitar like a jimmy page wannabe, not the one on some bullshit "spiritual journey" to buff up and get laid. we just kind of drifted apart...but i wish there was an explicit greg + j recording, and there isn't. he actually left it in the basement by accident sort of thing, and i mostly used it to create a feedback loop in the bridge as i found it wasn't hot enough to get the tone i wanted (it would have sounded better with a boost in front of it, which i didn't have) and i also realized very quickly that it was ridiculously noisy, and consequently difficult to record in such a way as to allow it to be driven later (amplifying it in cool edit just blew up into noise, and you put a gate on that and ruin it). the distortion on the track was actually mostly created manually in cool edit, over top of a very low send. and then i pasted it back on, after. so, it ends up sounding doubled because it is. i mean, you can tell that that isn't my normal guitar distortion by comparing to the other guitar parts, and the dan electro is in fact the reason why (even if i had to find a way to predrive it, as mentioned). so, it's integrated into a few of the guitars and a component on some of the drums, but i was actually trying to use it as a send on a track when i fed it back accidentally, and that's what really ended up sticking. so, if somebody can find a vst of this, i'll archive it, but i wasn't particularly enamoured with it (good guy greg loved it, though - and it worked well with his good guy riffs).
these things have somewhat of a following, but they're just, like, utter noisy cheese, imo:
...although, as mentioned, i wonder what kind of screech you could get out of it if you put something like an electro harmonix linear power booster in front of it....
if i saw one for less than $20, i'd probably snag it.
- it seems like the first use of the new soundblaster is in the track "tribute", which features me feeding my guitar through the environmental audio processor - and it's easy to see how warped it sounds, almost immediately. it's like instant frippertronics. i was lucky enough to get a new pc as a combo birthday/christmas present, which had the soundblaster live in it. as posted previously, here's a vst emulator of this that i hope works well:
- it was around this time that i started using a leslie rotating speaker emulator fairly frequently. like, on almost every song. it's very heavily utilized on 'stress'. i still install this.
- i started using a filter by prosoniq called "north pole" as well that can, for example, by heard on the breakdown in book it. i still install this.
- the "pi" filter was also used quite a lot for guitar effects in this period. i still use this.
- there was a hyperprism plugin pack that i used extensively from about 1999-2004. this company no longer exists and the files don't appear to be available anywhere online. i do still install these, though.
- i started using a program called "sounder" that lets you generate midi sequences using an interface similar to the video game "pong". you tell the computer which notes to play, so you reduce the randomness to note length and dynamics, while picking the key it's working in - making it sound more like a jazz musicians than a computer. it was the kind of generative app i felt was actually useful, to the point that i was frequently jamming with it. i could never get this to work on xp, not even in a virtual machine, but i intend to reinstall it to the 98 system - in fact, it's one of the reasons i'm doing it. this program formed the basis of the track "entropy", and is used in a number of other places.
- there is some tactical use of an old version of acid at this point to mess with some horn and string samples, but i've always found the interface sort of stifling. yes, i said that. in fact, you'll notice that - i don't make music that is loop based like that (sometimes, the differences are subtle, but everything is live, and it's very consciously so). that said, i more seriously toyed with the idea of using it to build a string library, but even the new computer had problems with using it in any meaningful way due to the program's extremely heavy use of ram. acid is not currently in the list of programs i'm installing on this machine. acid is no longer owned by sony, apparently. you can hear this in "entropy", as well, but you'd never guess it was acid. in the end, i just preferred to write midi scores than try to use samples.
- i picked up a morley pro series wah around this time for pretty cheap but i found the effect to be a little more subtle than what i wanted. i mean, i was hardly interested in doing 80s hair metal whammy dives, but, after playing with direct x filters in cool edit, i wanted a much more dynamic instrument that i could warp like a dj or sound engineer warps filters with their hands, but in real-time with my feet, and found this was really designed to be the opposite of that. there was no doubt a mental disconnect between the world this was made for (southern rock guitarists) and the kind of sounds i was imagining (warped sound effects from contemporary experimental techno, like download). i mean, i knew better, but i guess i didn't. that said, i made some sufficiently demented use of it in the climax to "entropy", as well as in the intro solo to "ignorance is bliss" before i swapped it for a digitech xp-100 a few basements later. the pod has a couple of wah sounds in it; it wouldn't make sense to try to model this in a daw, unless you have the right kind of controller. so, you need hardware here, one way or another.
- audiomulch makes it's first appearance here - try the "v2" sounds in gravity's rainbow, or the jungle drum sequences in the "curious george suite" or the weird sequence at the end of the curious george suite. i still install this, although i don't think i used it over my last recording binge phase (i would expect to use it for cycles/second, along potentially with max, reason and a few other overwhelmingly nerdy things. that's a research project of it's own when i get there.)
- i use a bass sequencer program called "rubber duck" by d-lusion (that is based on a tb-303) on a few tracks for the deny everything period (you can hear it squelching in acidosis, and gravity's rainbow):
- the drum sequencing for "curious george" was done using leaf drums, and took in a number of odd sources, such as a donald duck sample. i also used rubber duck as a source for some of the samples. there was also a "leaf effects".
- the secret effect on the guitar tone in curious george is the "megatrancer" direct x plugin, which i can't find anywhere online or in any of my files just right now.
- i made some use of a generative sound program pushed by brian eno called "koan sound" that has since been purchased by wotja and that i should look further into:
- hammerhead, coagula, granulab and sound raider were used extensively during this period. some of the synths on ignorance is bliss used coagula to generate samples that were then pitched using a soundfont program that came with the soundblaster (vienna?) and performed on the jx-8p.
- there was a program used to generate "ukelele permutations" which was some kind of guitar chord teach-to-play software, but i've forgotten the name of. it might have come with the soundblaster, but i don't remember.
- there is some use of the synthesizer in the soundblaster, as well, just as a midi bank. specifically, the "orchestra hit" is used in ignorance is bliss (and then warped mercilessly in cool edit)
- i also picked up a creamy dreamer, which is a modded russian muff intended to sound like the tone that corgan used in siamese dream. i still have this, and in fact still use it. regarding emulations, there are attempts to pin this sound both in the pod and in guitar rig and i'll leave it at that. i have a regular muff as well, and we'll talk about that a few basements up.
- around this time of his life, my dad tended to disappear on sunday mornings for a few hours. in later years, it was obvious that he was trying to avoid going to church, and he even used routine breakfast with myself as a way out of it (after i had moved out). but, in these years, it's a little less clear what he was really up to. however, he'd often come back with things he'd purchased at garage sales - which ranged from speaker parts to beatles lps to obscure, out-of-print prog cds and whatever else he could get his hands on. it was a hobby, no doubt. and, from time to time, he'd come back with some old guitar effects that cost him a buck or two each, which included the following:
- mxr m-168 stereo flanger, early 80s. i still have this, but it is finnicky and often doesn't work. i think it's a power issue. this is kind of a basic flanger; universal audio emulates the rack version, if you insist on it.
- mxr distortion II, late 70s (the big one, with the plug, in the gold box). i still have this, and it's noisy, but it works - i'm no fan of hair metal, which is what it's associated with, but it gives a good noise rock tone if floored appropriately, as well and is used on numerous recordings from 2000-2002, although i never left it in my normal signal due to the noise. these units are very expensive ($600?), and i don't want to sell mine, but i can't imagine why - they don't sound particularly good. i'd rather use a boss sd-1 for that kind of light overdrive sound as it's a bit tighter. the mxr+ is widely emulated, but the mxr II is kind of obscure. like i say - i'd suggest using an sd-1 for normal use, anyways. but, i like having it around as an oddball secret weapon if i want a particularly noisy, live sound (most of the amped guitars in little suite were done with this, as one example).
- mxr m-102 dyna comp (this was broken on arrival and appears to have disappeared. i think he gave it to his friend larry, actually. so, maybe larry got something in return for his broken phaser, after all.)
- ibanez ge-601 (this was broken on arrival and never fixed. i still have it, though.)
- i picked up a mooger fooger mf-102 ring modulator that spring, hoping to drive it with the morley and get that dramatic foot driven techno-oscillation filter, but it didn't actually work; it just didn't convert to an expression like i hoped. i never got another expression for it. guitarists kind of have their hands busy, so this became an expensive trick item. that said, it is used extensively as a bass (acidosis) and vocal (trepanation nation) processor over the next few years, before i cashed it in as having done it's purpose. it's also become very expensive ($600?), but isn't any more useful than a freeware vst plugin - it's expensive because it says "moog" on it, and likely of little actual functional value to you, unless you're doing very modular synth work. just about any old ring modulator with a carrier signal should be just as good.
i wish i could find a demo with the expression pedal plugged in like i wanted to set up, but what this demo does is really demonstrate how kind of useless the thing really is:
during this period, the eventual set up was:
mxr flanger---->moogerfooger mf-102---->zoom 1010 (for comp-->dist--->chorus/flg---->rev/delay)---->creamy dreamer---->boss oc-2---->mxr phase 90 ---->morley wah
...with the mxr distortion II set up off to the side.
you can hear at least parts of that chain on "entropy", on "ignorance is bliss", on "being a good little monkey" (which uses the ring mod) or on "acidosis", as well as on some tracks recorded in the next basement - like little suite.
and, there's really nothing in there worth looking for a specific emulator for, that i can't get in the pod, or in guitar rig.
- up until this point, my guitar training was in blues and rock music, and i felt i needed something a little deeper, so i started taking classical guitar lessons. i just wanted to get a basic footing before i ran with it on my own. so, there was a classical guitar in the house now, too, which is heard on "acidosis" primarily, until it picks up a little in the next basement. i took about a year's worth of lessons before i stopped. i still had the ibanez, the epiphone sg and the obese strat at my disposal, along with an electric-acoustic.
- a found an electric mandolin at this point at a garage sale that eventually developed some electrical problems and had to be disposed of. it's heard on "acidosis" and "strung out" amongst other things.
- another item i picked up at a garage sale in this period was a bontempi electric air reed organ. this was a noisy, half broken piece of gear that i had to use digital noise reduction to remove the motor from, when recording. it's heard in a number of tracks from 2000-2003 (acidosis, 9:46..., little suite), before my stepmother discarded it under the claim that it was "garbage". sadly. i can get an organ sound from any vst synth, and then mess with it further from there, but nothing quite sounds like this old thing that probably end up in the landfill.
this is similar:
- an ebow was purchased while living in this basement, as well, which i still have. it's heard on "acidosis" amongst other things.
- as mentioned, there was a drum kit in my bedroom at this point (heard on the curious george suite, a commercial break, gravity's rainbow), along with a grand piano a few feet outside of my door (heard on acidosis) and a large fender bass amp (used to record most of the guitars, which i still have).
- there was a peavey bass/keyboard amp (gone) and a cheri guitar amp (still have)
- the wood flute is used in "acidosis" and "book it!"
- the jx-8p is the main synth, still. the ry30 is used sporadically, because the memory was full and i didn't know how to back it up.
- there was a bass, but i don't remember much about it.
- the equalizer i had been hauling around for a few years went belly up around this time, and you can hear me taking advantage of it near the end of "acidosis".
