I created this acapella following this tutorial: http://www.halo3forum.com/music/164655-how-create-cpu-acapellas-full-tutorial.html

I decided to follow the original song closely, because it is just easier that way.  I should probably make the kicks more prominent, and add some more interesting drum patterns with open hi-hat, but seeing as how it is already two days late I’ll take it for what it is. I’ll probably use the acapella for a mashup if I get around to it. Enjoy!

I was having trouble thinking of something to do. My other music projects were coming along slowly. I felt like playing guitar, so I decided it would be a good challenge to make something using only guitar and effects. I use a bunch of different delays. The ocean sound is a grain delay and I just rubbed the muted strings. The pops are plucking a muted string fairly hard. I time warped some stuff in weird ways, and reversed a solo that I played.

It ends abruptly because I didn’t feel like thinking of an ending, and I felt that posting the whole 4:00 was a little too much for this kind of thing. It was a fun experiment. I think I will challenge myself to little games like this more often.

This is the theme from the closing credits of the nonexistent underground 80s horror film titled Fucking Danger. It would have been the story of how an innocent college freshman, Denise, finds out about her sexual addiction to adrenaline. Denise falls in with a group of motorcycle daredevils and gets caught in a web of suspense and lust. Banned in 1987 in the U.S. for its brutal, and exceedingly bloody climax, Fucking Danger would have been considered tame by today’s horror movie standards. With a DVD release in 2009, it would enjoy a small surge in popularity as part of B-movie boxed sets.

Da Mystery Of Cheeseboxin’

This is just a quick sketch that I did over a couple of days. I was experimenting with the slice to MIDI function of Ableton 8. It takes a selection of audio, cuts it up based on some parameters you select, and then puts those slices into a MIDI instrument of your choosing. You can use a slice size that is based on the time signature of the piece, for example every quarter note. Or you can choose to slice at the transients that Live automatically finds for you. This is a super useful feature for me, since I used to spend a lot of time slicing samples up by hand.

I had a lot of fun making this song, and I didn’t focus too much on forcing it in a particular direction. I tried to have as much fun during the creation as possible, and let it be what it would be.  I created the instrumental, then I decided to put an acapella track to it, so I sifted through my library until I found something suitable. It’s usually easier to fit a remixed beat to an acapella, so I got pretty lucky this time.

I decided to call this song Da Mystery Of Cheeseboxin’ because I’ve been watching a lot of The Wire. Method Man plays a character named Cheese. The funny thing is Method Man only appears in the chorus of the original song.

For this song I busted out my old groove box, and after playing with it for a while I was able to get some really cool sounds out of it. The drums are the only digital instrument in the song, everything else is either the groove box or the micro korg + some effects. For many parts of this song I chopped up the tracks by hand. For the crazy synth part I used a combination of chopping and the glitch plug in. I also doubled the track and used different settings for the glitch on each track to give it a wierd glitching in and out effect.

From johntaylorgatto.com

The Factory

This is my first completed rap song. It’s about the negative feelings I have towards mandatory schooling. I’m pleased with how it turned out.

The beat has a slightly different structure from Part 1. The rap vocals are three layers each panned differently and pitch-bent to make my voice sound cooler. The master track has some reverb and a saturator acting as a limiter. Live 7 doesn’t have a straight up limiter, so that is why I used a saturator instead.

Lyrics:

SUNG CHORUS:
Oh
those children they must conform
we’ll protect them from all the storms
you’ll know it was good for them
once they’re working in the factory

VERSE 1:
At ten years old I took a test
to prove I was gifted
not one of the rest
I used hands to count, but I wasn’t dumb
I failed by one point, for using fingers thumbs

I couldn’t quickly multiply
so I was quickly classified
a person with a lesser mind
was not allowed to spend the time

with my best friend in school
in the gifted class
I was just a fool
who had trouble memorizing math

we had separate lunches
we had separate times
that we could go outside
we had separate lives

My mom tried to plead with them
was one point that much
you fail one test, and forever you’re stuck?
but in a system based on rules, the rules cannot bend
when rules are the king, they must break you instead

if you run a factory, you’re gonna need the labor
so start training the children you’re doing them a favor

CHORUS

VERSE 2:
For eleven more years
I coasted through the system
did the minimum, sat in class and listened
I did all the homework, I followed the path
the funny thing is, it turned out I was good at math

I thought college was where I could find out
what mold my brain conformed to
what I was all about
what external label, to myself I could apply
and maybe on the way
there’d be other things to try

instead I was met
with bureaucratic limits
unable to play art
for not meeting prerequisites

so I realized
school could never show me
what was in my soul
it could not control me

Shedding the skin
of society’s goals
I now chart a path
into a future of gold

to take what was mine
from the start
before the machine tried to break my heart

CHORUS

Hella Gems Minimix Volume 1

Here is a minimix I put together over a couple of weeks. It’s a nice retrospective (retroauditive?) of our work.

This is mostly a cut-and-paste job. I used very few effects.

Track list:

1. http://www.hellagems.com/blog/2009/01/12/we-can-make-it-together/

2. http://www.hellagems.com/blog/2008/12/13/happy-song/

3. http://www.hellagems.com/blog/2008/12/31/untitled-winter-song/

4.http://www.hellagems.com/blog/2009/01/06/if-his-heart-stops-pumping-adrenalin-it-will-be-the-day-chev-chelios-dies/

5. http://www.hellagems.com/blog/2008/12/16/sugar-kite-one/

6. http://www.hellagems.com/blog/2008/12/09/post-apocalyptic-nightlife/

7. http://www.hellagems.com/blog/2008/12/26/jubilee-2/

8. http://www.hellagems.com/blog/2008/12/29/no-weird-remix/

9. http://www.hellagems.com/blog/2009/01/29/lonely-robotic/

10. http://www.hellagems.com/blog/2009/02/19/what-a-shot/

11. http://www.hellagems.com/blog/2009/01/06/subpoenas/

12. http://www.hellagems.com/blog/2009/02/08/bonus-but-super-late-lzq-2009-02-20/

13. http://www.hellagems.com/blog/2009/01/01/winter2/

14. http://www.hellagems.com/blog/2009/02/12/a-rap-song/

This is a song that I haven’t finished yet. Right now it is a bit repetative to me, when I started this my goal was to make a song with several different unique and interesting parts. Right now it has a few different sections but it mainly repeats 1 theme. I’m not quite sure about the instrumentation, I might change some of the sounds in a later version. I ran into the obstacle erf described in his last post: I found myself constantly tweaking minor details before the song was even finished. I have learned to compose an entire song and then worry about instrumentation and variation. Let me know if you have any ideas to make this better.

I was planning on rapping over this, but I need some more time, since I have never rapped in my life. For Part 2, I will improve this song by possibly sampling some “hey’s” and “ohhhhs” from some real a capella tracks. I tried to fake it on this track by saying “hey” with a different voice, and pitch shifting, and panning different takes to create a thicker sound. I think part of the key is to have recordings of people who have a different timbre to their voice, since you can definitely hear that the “heys” are all me. Once I write the rap I will also improve the song structure, and mix it better.

For now, please enjoy the first part of this experiment and stay tuned for the updated version in part 2.

Dirty South Beat

I wanted to make the most 8bit sounding song I could and this is what I came up with. I used all the classic free VSTs that make creating video game music so easy: Toad, Peach, Syntendo.  The drums are a simple bass and snare sound, with high hats every so often. I didn’t use 8bit drums because I wanted to see if I could make it danceable. The rest of the tracks are itterations of the 3 VSTs I used. I paid special attention to the drums for this track, although they are very simple I spent a lot of time putting variations and fills where I thought they were needed. Enjoy!