Work in Progress : Slow Exposure

Another collaboration with Aurélie on vocals and bass guitar.

This will be part of a 5-track EP coming up this summer.

Lots of Moog Sub37 tracks, some Prophet 08 arpeggios, a good deal of Gforce M-Tron Pro and Virtual String Machine sounds.

Love Will Tear Us Apart (Joy Division)

Joy Division cover, live in studio.
DSI Tempest
Moog Little Phatty
Korg Volca Keys
MS20 Mini
Gforce Virtual String Machine

Demo : Virtual String Machine Expansion Pack

I am a big user of Gforce Software's Virtual String Machine plugin, which features a collection of synth strings instruments from the 70's and 80's.

So when an expansion pack comes along, here I am.

The expansion pack adds new instruments to the plugin, some very obscure (Clef Strings? Elektronika EM25?), some pretty famous (Polymoog's Vox Humana patch heard on many classic Gary Numan records, or the Yamaha GX1, an analog beast produced to 10 units or so, notably used by Stevie Wonder on "Village Ghetto Land" and "Pastime Paradise").

Virtual String Machine isn't just a sample player, it's a fully fledged synth, with dual filters, LFO, envelope, effects.
This is a very quick improvisation on some of the new instruments.

So you can use the new instruments as samples if you bypass the synth engine.

But you can also use them as new oscillators for the synth. Some of them are smooth and silky, others are grainy and gritty, nice variety of tones.

All strings from the VSM Expansion Pack.
Drums : Korg Volca through EHX Big Muff.
Leads : Moog Little Phatty

Clockwork Cities (Microkorg Vocoder)

Featuring the ever popular MicroMoorg
Bass&Lead : Moog Little Phatty
Drums : DSI Tempest
Strings : Gforce Virtual String Machine
Choir : Gforce M-Tron Pro w/ Chamberlin




In the clockwork city they all look the same
Everybody’s working and nobody knows your name
In the clockwork city they all look the same
Everybody’s working and nobody knows your name

In the clockwork city there’s no hope in vain
The heart of the wise in the house of mourning
In the clockwork city there’s no hope in vain
Everybody’s working and nobody knows your name

It’s a room full of toys and nothing’s for real
It’s a desolate place you can never leave
In the clockwork city you’ve nothing left to hide
In the clockwork city where things never die

In the clockwork city you know the game is fixed
How much you lose and how small you gain
All summer long I’ve been wasting my sorrow
All summer long broken and forlorn

Kaiju Science

Kaiju Science from Karim More on Vimeo.

Jamming with analog gear...

DSI Prophet 08 & Tempest
Moog Little Phatty
Doepfer Dark Energy (sequenced w/ iPad)
And also M-Tron Pro Chamberlin, MPC500.

Voight Kampff

Restored from my archives... I've recorded this in december 2010 for a horror short film that unfortunately wasn't ever finished.
 

At the time, I did a little tutorial on the recording. Here's what I had to say.

This particular track was actually recorded before I was able to see any footage of the short film. Hell, none had even been shot at the time! I was told by the filmmaker that the film would need some fast-paced, street chasing music.

I decided to go for a tight, urban sound, built around a fat and biting Moog groove.The tempo is relatively slow, because I was expecting to create a sort of musical momentum, beginning with an almost hiphop-styled groove, Mellotron strings, a quiet break, then full-on electric and industrial madness, with nasty guitars and crazy electronic bleeps.

Whether it’s a song or an instrumental, and unless I’m 100% sure that there won’t be any beat and that the track won’t need any fixed tempo, my first step is always to program one, at the very least to provide a tempo guide for recording.

Method-wise, there’s a big difference between recording a song and an instrumental. I will almost always start the former with a completed song. On the other hand, building up the latter is pure improvisation, in that I simply have no idea what the track will be until I push Record and improvise something that I’ll then expand upon.

So, I’ve started by programming a first beat, with the Drums Overkill plugin as main source. This is an excellent database, using the Kontakt engine. Not only does it feature almost every vintage drum machine ever built, but also a clever sample collection arranged in sections such as “hiphop”, “drum and bass”, “experimental”. All in all, a very useful source that provides a large variety of drum sounds that you can tweak within Kontakt.

This particular beat also features a couple of “natural” sounds, that is, a gunshot and a falling bullet shell, both from a huge database of movie sounds I have assembled over the years. Mixing-wise, I’ve juxtaposed two layers of the same beat. The first one has a 6dB boost at 64Hz.

The second one is squashed to death by a compressor, then radically EQd to cut most bass and high frequencies, and boost the mids (EQ deep cut below 150Hz and at 16Khz, boost between 1Khz and 10Khz). This is pretty much a variation on what it’s called parallel compression of New York compression : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_compression.

I then programmed a second beat, which comes midway to reinforce the rhythmic section. This one was treated in pretty much the same way.

Beat (download)

Now that a basic rhythmic foundation is in place, my second task is to lay down some instrumental part that will define what the chord progression (if any) will be, and what the overall tune will be. I would usually play piano or possibly some synth pad, but for this particular track, since it’s meant to be very rhythmic, I’ve chosen to sketch out a bass groove.

Gear-wise, bass to me means MOOG!

A little bit of experimentation here as well : the Moog Little Phatty is plugged to the UA 710 preamp, with a blend of 50-50 solid-state and tube signal, and a fair amount of gain to make it distort. That little trick provides a bit of additional grit to the bass sound. There are 3 Moog layers involved here.

Moog Bass (download)

I then proceeded to add some more harmonic parts around that beat/bass core.The Prophet 08 was to put to use there.

Prophet 08 (download)

Now the track was coming together but it still needed a fuller sound. A couple of electric guitars, playing the fundamental note over and over, would fit it nicely.

It’s often a good idea to record the exact same guitar part twice, and pan one on the extreme left and the other on the extreme right. That’s what I did, and I should add that the slightly off-key, grungey guitar sound was obtained in two way : tuning the first string one step down and passing it through a Small Clone chorus.

Some EQ there too : light boost at 1Khz, cut at 10Khz and big cut 16Khz.
 

Guitars (download)

There’s a lot of orchestral software out there, but I do prefer to create little weird, retro chamber orchestras using Gforce’s M-Tron, and now M-Tron Pro, plugins.

Mellotron (download)

The Mellotron of course is very limited, which fits my idea totally. A little arrangement of Mellotron cellos, violas and violins gives a vintage, off-beat strings flavor which has far more character than any realistic emulation of orchestra would give.

Cover du Jour : "Man with the Gun"

A favorite song of mine from my favorite singer.

Gforce M-Tron Pro for the strings.

"I'm out of my senses
I'll only smile
The night I meet the man with the gun

Not that I'd be defenceless
But I don't think I'll fight
The night I meet the man with the gun

Maybe I'll say what kept you?
I knew you would come
I somehow didn't expect to
Be spared for so long

Was it a whim of fortune
Or was I hard to find
What's the routine of a man with a gun

Was it a kind of torture
Have you been out of town
What is like to a man with a gun

Maybe I'm glad to see you
It's hard to believe
But standing here beside you
Is such a relief

This is gonna hurt me
I do know why you've come
But I got this feeling
That it's already been done"

Underneath

"She came to the river
To quench her thirst
To leave this all behind
And drown desire

We glance upon
The times we’ve known
Deep in her thoughts
She’s sinking down
We chance upon
The things we’ve done
Buried in sleep
And sinking down

We stare upon
The joy we’ve known
The forgotten scene
From a long lost film
We sigh upon
The things we’ve lost
Drowning the tears
And sinking down
We glance upon
The times we’ve known
Deep in her dreams
She’s sinking down"

Drums&Bass : DSI Tempest
Gforce M-Tron Pro, VSM

"Hollow Lands" Sessions

New song, possibly for the "Hollow Lands" album, the final mix of which I'm doing this weekend.

Some Casiotone 101 action in there!



John Fisher and the 1000 Ghost Monkeys from Karim More on Vimeo.

"Johnny’s got a ghost
Johnny’s got a monkey
Working for the man
Working for Johnny
He’s working in the factory where Johnny won’t work
And he’s hurting in the places where Johnny won’t hurt
And he’s mourning for the things that Johnny’s forgotten
Day after day
One thousand ghosts
Hide in my soul

Johnny’s got a ghost
Johnny’s got a monkey
He’s breathing copper, lead and antimony
Bismuth, selenide, lead and antimony
He’s working for the man
He’s working for Johnny
In Tacoma hope to begin to be
Bismuth, selenide, lead and antimony
He’s singing all the songs that Johnny can’t sing
And he’s speaking all the lies that Johnny can’t speak
And he’s breathing in the air that Johnny won’t breathe
And he’s fighting in the wars that Johnny won’t fight
And he’s dying in the places where Johnny won’t die
And he’s crying for the loss that Johnny can’t face
One thousand ghosts
Hide in my soul"

Cover du Jour : Song to the Siren

My favorite Buckley song, with "Phantasmagoria in Two".
I used Gforce VSM and M-Tron Pro Chambertron on this.

Remixing the Past : The Fortune Song

Final song remixed on the 2008 "Broken Sails" EP.
Mostly done with the Virtual String Machine from Gforce.

We are coming to grips
With the way things end
The pursuit of fortune
Is the pursuit of death
Empty the boat
Lighten the load
From the river to the sea
The ocean taught us
Things we don’t understand
The pursuit of fortune
Is the pursuit of death

There’ll be no spring
And we won’t harvest
The pursuit of fortune
Is the pursuit of death

Empty the boat
Lighten the load
From the river to the sea

We are coming to grips
With the way things end
The pursuit of fortune
Is the pursuit of death

Cover du Jour : Sometime World (Wishbone Ash)

A gem from a great 1972 folk-prog album by Wishbone Ash. The original has lenghty instrumental parts but I went for a stripped-down version. Piano and Mellotron courtesy of Gforce M-Tron Pro.

Tetris

I did the music to this, using M-Tron Pro.


Tetros from Nicolas Plaire on Vimeo.

2012, Underwater

My music in there, using Gforce M-Tron Pro.


New Year Down Under 2012 from Nicolas Plaire on Vimeo.

The Crack-Up (Mellotron Version)

This is a 100% Mellotron rendition of the title song off my upcoming album.
All sounds : Gforce Chambertron.

The Crack-Up (Mellotron Version) by khoral

Growing Mellotron Family : ChamberTron

Yup, had to add this one to my Gforce library...

This is meant to be the ultimate Chamberlin emulation, which is the precursor to the fabled Mellotron.

My first impressions are quite good, although I feel that the pricetag is relevant to the rarity of the sampled instruments, rather than to the sheer number of new sounds it provides to the M-Tron Pro.

  

Nonetheless, a fine expansion pack, and I'm currently recording a small EP of songs entirely done on the M-Tron Pro.

Bowie du Jour : Tired of my Life

This has been hanging around my archives for some months now.

Often mentioned to be the very first song he wrote, but it's more likely been written circa 1968. Recorded in 1970. Reworked for the 1980 "Scary Monsters" album. Re-recorded in 2001 for the unreleased "Toy" album.

Piano and Gforce M-Tron Pro.

Tired of my Life by khoral

Cover du Jour : State Trooper

This is actually a remake of a Springsteen cover song done a couple of years ago.
Still lots of Moog and Gforce VSM, but I also added Roland JX3P pad and strings, new vocals and better mix.

Download MP3

State Trooper by khoral

Mellotron du Jour : Full of Holes

All instruments Gforce M-Tron plugin (that was before I upgraded to M-Tron Pro).

Full of Holes by khoral

"Up the River" Preview

A little glimpse of the upcoming "Up the River" album.

This was recorded last week as an interlude of sort.

Miss Roxanne on vocals.

Piano, Mellotron courtesy of the amazing Gforce M-Tron plugin (alto, trumpet, vibes...) and... banjo!

Emily and the Art of Vanishing (II) by khoral