Work in Progress : Who the Fuck are You?

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.

Work in Progress : "Upon a Sleepless Land"

Still working on the "Upon a Sleepless Land" EP.
Korg MS-20 Mini, Piano, Moog Little Phatty, Volca Keys, Prophet 08, Gforce M-Tron Pro.

Recording Sessions : Bird Lady

New song for the upcoming "The Crack-Up" album.

Lead vocals by Miss Roxanne.
Instruments : Moog Little Phatty, Prophet 08, Korg Volca Bass, Beats and Keys, DSI Tempest, Casiotone 101, Microkorg.

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.

Single du Jour : We Die in Sleep

This was recorded with the talented Molly Sundar some years ago, but didn't fit in the current projects.

Moog Little Phatty, Prophet 08 and Crumar Bit-01 for the main part (some Korg Poly-800 as well, if I remember correctly).

"A hard rain is gonna strike

And clouds will never part

Hard rain is gonna strike

Clouds will never part

The 30 ghosts behind me

They’re laughing in my back

They’re sleeping my sleep

They’re dreaming my dreams

Listen love, listen dear

Without regret or fear

Listen love, listen dear

Without regret or fear

The 30 ghosts behind me

They’re laughing in my back

They’re sleeping my sleep

They’re dreaming my dreams

That’s the thin, dry sound of bone

That’s the way things are done and gone

There’s no stranger land than this

We’re the living and the dead

We live in dream and die in our sleep"

Bowie du Jour : Funhouse

From my archives, at last finished, a rather obscure song from Bowie.
Prophet 08 and Moog, and Abbey Road 80's Drums.

"Back into the funhouse
Music is sublime
See the lady spinning
She'll show me
We all lie in the funhouse
No one is your friend
No one loves a loser
We love you
We all lie in the funhouse
Girls wag their pain
No one sleeps in the funhouse
They'll show you
Really good time

Back into the funhouse
My dream dogs have arrived
My summer turns to fall
And I'll miss you"

Remixing the Past : Empty the Boat

Third song remixed on the 2008 "Broken Sails" EP...

We are the worried men
We are the worried men
Without purpose or claim
We are the worried men

Some know their place and some don’t
Some will be safe and some won’t
Some will sing along
Some be guilty and some innocent

We are the worried men
We are the worried men
Without purpose or claim
We are the worried men

Late in the night as we strode
Past the Cape of Good Hope
On the China Sea we lost our faith
We are the ones who leave no trace

We are the worried men
We are the worried men
Without purpose or claim
We are the worried men

Empty the boat in time
Lighten the load in time
Empty the boat in time
Lighten the load in time

We are the worried men
We are the worried men
Without purpose or claim
We are the worried men

Remixing the Past : Broken Sails

Second song remixed from the 2008 "Broken Sails" EP, the title track.

The Mockery King of Snow
Sits silent in the rain
Staring into the wound
In the side of his broken sail
The stars they’re wandering
In the troubled sky below
All the men lay deep in sorrow
They knew of joys that never go

At the corner of sunken roads
In the pure shroud of snow
Even the greatest ship
Gets lost in the undertow
A heavy rain is pouring down
And it’s pouring on our souls
All the men lay deep in sorrow
They knew joy would never go

The fog bells ring, then ring no more
The poison’s getting cold
And who’s to heal our wounds
While we take the highest road
While the oceans depose
Our Mockery King of Snow
He’s been living on the tight rope
Carrying such a heavy load
Leading us to our broken home

Remixing the Past : "Heart of Darkness"

Apart from new projects, I took to task to remix my older catalogue, starting with the 2008 EP "Broken Sails".
Opening song : "Heart of Darkness".
Mostly recorded with the Prophet 08 I had just acquired.

"The waves of murder past
Grieve before the mast
No map no charts
Just a darkness in our heart
The ship our home
All things are sinking down
The underwater nest
The drowning of regrets
Get me another chance
A sweeter way to die
Oh well it’s such a sorry sight

Your sad complexion
Beyond this place
There be dragons
Oh why the sour face
We sail through rain and thunder
We just live in the flicker
I guess we don’t fit in
We just…

Drenched in the sea of lead
Mocking our tears of rage
The sea our grave
Adrift in storm and hail
Grant me another wish
An exit way from time
Oh well it’s such a sorry sight
Corruption
Beyond this place
There be dragons
Why the sour face
We sail through rain and thunder
We just live in the flicker
I guess we don’t fit in
I guess we don’t fit in
We just…

Death is skulking in the air
In the water
In the air"

Cover du Jour : Action this Day (Queen)

Remixed version of the "Deer Me" EP cover song.
Lots of Moog in there, I tells you.

Cover du Jour : Captain Hook (John Cale)

Rework of a song I did for a compilation some years ago for the Bitkins label.
Original song by John Cale, "Sabotage" album.
This was the inspiration for my "Broken Sails" EP
Lots of Prophet 08 and Moog.

The Lost Motel (Work in Progress)

Tempest for the beats and some synth sounds. The rest is Prophet 08.

Dave Smith Instruments through and through.

I'll add vocals.

Youtube Update : Last Night I Was a Ghost

Some of you have trouble with the Dailymotion streaming, so here's the Youtube upload as well. Today, back to work on finalizing the mix.

I'm planning to release this on the "Crack-Up" album.
The new DSI Tempest is drumming all along and boy does it sound great.
Otherwise, the usual suspects : plenty of Moog and Prophet 08, as well as some acoustic guitar.

Work in Progress : Last Night I Was a Ghost

New work on the upcoming "Crack-Up" album.

Miss Roxanne on vocals.

The outstanding DSI Tempest drum machine provided the basis for the song, and I've added lots of Moog Little Phatty and Prophet 08. Also featured, the new Chamberlin expansion for Gforce M-Tron Pro.

Work in Progress : Last Night I Was a Ghost par khoral_kmore

Buy Pot

So I finally got myself to purchase the Pot upgrade for the Prophet 08.

The original Prophet had a couple of issues

One was that all knobs were rotary encoders, which meant that you couldn't picture what the sound parameters were just by looking the panel, because the knobs were rotating endlessly.

The other problem was that a whole batch of these early Prophets came out with a set of faulty encoders, leading the owner to periodically do Deoxit surgery.

Both these issues are solved with the Pot edition, which brings back traditional, trustworthy potentiometers. And for the encoder version, the upgrade is available from DSI for 249$ (I've got a better deal, actually, because my Prophet was one of the faulty units).

It might seem a bit pricey, but the truth is, the upgrade brings the Prophet 08 back to where it should have begun. That is, the price of the instrument plus the price of the upgrade is pretty much the correct price one should pay for an 8-voice analog synthesizer. The instrument becomes a LOT more fun to program and play, so if you're a serious Prophet user like myself, you might definitely want to consider the upgrade. There's no doubt in my mind it's a safe bet on the future of a classic instrument.

Pots on the Run

All right, as the synth geeks regulars on this blog already know, I am a big Prophet 08 user, and owner of an early model, I've been plagued by a defect in the encoder knobs, that makes the values go bezerk every once in a while.

I've grown very tired of that and just ordered (at a discount and free international shipping, thanks DSI!) the Pot Conversion Kit. It replaces the endless rotary encoders with solid, traditional pots, increasing the value and ease of use of this fantastic analog instrument.

More on that when I get the kit!

Single du Jour : Hollow Man Kurtz

UPDATE : Track removed until the final commercial release


Opening groove : M-Audio Venom. 

The rest is pretty much all Prophet 08.
Quote from Conrad's "Heart of Darkness"

Lyrics :

These are the times
That wail and call for you
To bury your death
So deep inside of you
Prayers to broken stone
Dreams and bones and fortunes told
This is the way the world ends

“All that mysterious life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest, in the jungles, in the hearts of wild men. There’s no initiation either into such mysteries. He has to live in the midst of the incomprehensible, which is also detestable. And it has a fascination, too, that goes to work upon him. The fascination of the abomination - you know, imagine the growing regrets, the longing to escape, the powerless disgust, the surrender, the hate”

This is the way the world ends

Moog + Prophet = Fun

A repost from a year ago, this time in streaming.

The Prophet 08 is playing the beat, which is fed to the Moog Little Phatty filter, itself triggered through MIDI by the Prophet and playing an arpeggio.
I then proceeded to add layers of Prophet 08, heavily using the sequencer.

Atari Forever by khoral