hellagems_2009-10-18

Hey Everyone,

It’s beena while since I posted last. I actually meant to post this earlier and forgot to ever post it, so here it is, hope you enjoy. It’s my second song made using logic pro and I used all pre-sampled loops (I think) I may have modified a few to work, but for the most part this was a lazy creation

instrument_test_2

Here’s a video I made for the song too:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHVfmLG4ejE

It’s been a while since I posted, but I had the whole day to myself Saturday and nothing to do, so what better opportunity to make a song This is my second song I made using logic. I had fun making it. No instruments were used in the making of this song, it’s purely computer action, the acoustic guitar parts toward the end are loops from logic. Let me know what you guys think..

rosie_2009_06_07_mpf

Hi everyone, I got logic for my birthday from my boyfriend and decided to use it to make this week’s hellagem. He also got a mac recently for himself, which is the computer that logic is on, which makes this also the first song I’ve ever posted from a mac So to make this, I just played around with logic’s instruments for “electronic” genre, and in the end it reminds me a lot of “Inner City Pressure” from Flight of the Concords (which I think is a poke at West End Girls, Pet Shop Boys?) anyway hope you enjoy!

2009_04_26_fucking_danger

Concept:

I added vocals to the Space Ballad song that I had made a couple posts ago. I was actually worried I wouldn’t be able to come up with any lyrics because I was having major writer’s block, but somehow I pieced it together. When I started I wanted to sing a shangri-las style song and somehow tie it into the album theme: fucking danger. I listened to some shangri-las before I started as inspiration, but it did the complete opposite for me. At first I thought I could do a love song about a dangerous guy. But after hearing Shangri-Las I think I realized I despise girls singing literal songs about boys, it’s funny because every song is about a boy that they love but doesn’t love them or some bullshit like that. I think it’s totally demeaning in a way. Why don’t they sing about themselves? I’d like that a lot more. To me THEY would be more interesting then the boys they’re singing about, which by the way they don’t even describe these boys, I know nothing about them. Anyway, the lyrics are pretty shallow. Also is every song about a different guy? Man I have trouble believing they were really in love with them if they just jump to the next guy so quickly. So in the end what I thought would be inspiration really turned into anger which became my motivation. I started to think consciously about what Shangri-las was keeping from their audience about a girl’s love. What about self destruction? Each boy like a new slit on the wrist until finally you find a good nurse to stop the bleeding for you. There’s where the danger comes in. It might just be me, but I think self destruction is something female vocalists usually don’t sing about, it’s more common in male vocals, I’d like to end that trend. In the end, the only part related to self destruction is the lyrics: “I’m out of control, I’m not safe to myself anymore, never sure what I want, but I’ll try anyway”.  So that’s what I went into it with, but what I came out with wasn’t at all what I had planned. Anyway, I hope that you enjoy, it’s my fucking danger inspired song, two posts in the making.

Technical:

It took me about 4 or 5 hours to record the vocals on this. I used a nice condenser mic and put that through a tube amp, then I put that through the Pod X3 amp modeler (which is where the reverb and delay are coming from). I recorded this in Cubase and cut it up a lot to take out shitty out of key parts and duplicate good parts. When I record vocals I do a gazillion tracks and pick 2 or 3 of the best sounding ones and keep them, so I end up with 2 or 3 layers, usually one is a harmony, and 2 are the main vocal, with this song sometimes I have 2 tracks of harmony and one main, at any rate it’s a highly chaotic overly complex piece it together process – Is anyone still reading this? I’m just bullshitting anyway. The important thing to note is that I have no idea what I’m doing and I just make the rules up as I go along and if my first impression of it is that it doesn’t have potential, I don’t waist time analyzing it to try to fix it, I just delete it and try something totally different.

Lyrics:

You think you know everything

but you don’t and you won’t

not as long as you know…me

(harmony: every step I take, I wonder when the ground gonna to crumble)

Every step I take

I wonder

when the ground

is gonna crumble

Every turn I take

I wonder

what I’ll miss

before the corner

I’m outa control

I’m not safe to myself anymore

never sure what I want,

but I’ll try anyway

You think you know everything

but you don’t and you won’t

not as long

as you know

(harmony: every step I take, I wonder when the ground is going to crumble)

2009_03_29_b

Hey thought I’d post this little loop I made on the Korg DS-10 Synthesizer. I recently bought this and have been having fun with it, I didn’t really make any serious music this couple weeks, but what the hay, might as well post what I have been doing. Hope you enjoy.

2009_03_15_b

This is the first draft for a space balladishy sounding song, I haven’t decided on lyrics yet for it, my intention is to add lyrics and clean it up, spice it up and sweeten it up. I had a lot of technical problems trying to record it so I may end up going in a different direction next time I go to work on it, but here’s what I made.  To record this I used cubase, my not so music friendly Del laptop, a pod line 6 fx thingy, my old casio PT-30 (for drum and bass) and a casio MT-240 (for lead, I put this through the pod).

swimming_in_the_air

I made this song a few years ago. I heard this song again after forgetting about it and thought it was worth sharing. I’d like to get some feedback on it. I’m posting this song as a kick off to more songs with lyrics coming from me. This song doesn’t have much lyrics, which is a problem of mine, so I may actually take some time to finish it up by developing the lyrics more, or I’ll just start fresh.  So now that I’m sharing this with you guys the pressure is on, next hellagem will have to live up to this one. Let me know what you think.

dcp_song

this was an old midi song that I did for a game that my friend made about 4 yrs or so ago (Dynamite Car Plane) the original was all very low fi 8 bit sounding and used square lead for all the instruments and some noise sounds for the drums, for this remix I changed up all the instruments and changed the drums a bit and mixed it more progressively, I also changed one of the basslines around and added it as another track. I really like the new version and I want to refine it more and do some lyrics for it, (that may come next post) , but I do think it’s a bit long  and in need of something more, I hope to fix those things in my next visit to it. Anyway hope you enjoy, and I’m open to ideas so let me know if you have any, thanks.

why_jackie_why

This is more of a tribute to JFK and Jackie K. I have a record of JFK speaches and tributes and stuff so I sampled that through a microkorg vocoder in the key of some chords that are in the song. the guitary sound is a pre recorded sample from a yamaha DJX keyboard and half of the beat was made in ableton and the other half was from a rhythm on the yamaha. That’s it. I had so many problems tonight getting my computer and sound card to work, that I decided to stop where I did and finish the rest later, this was mostly an experiment with the vocoder and the record playing through it. PS sorry if the volume is too low.

tapeworm

I found this song on my old hard drive and decided to remix it, the original is a song I made probably a couple years or so ago, but I decided to import the tracks into ableton and use some of the live mixing techniques that ableton kind of forces you to do, so I made them into loops and re-mixed them. I also added in some midi chord progression with a lead using the tweakbench intruments again. It just so happened there was an instrument in there called tapeworm, but I think I instead ended up using rebar. The vocals on this say “the tapeworm, takes just enough, to keep his host alive” When I heard it again after so long, I realized it’s a really weird and kinda cheesy song, but I thought that maybe with some heavy reverb on the vocals it would muddy up the vocals enough to not make them seem so literal. Anyway, I hope you enjoy. This one took me about 3 hrs to make.