BETTER OFF TED

Spinning Cylinders, created entirely from antique cylinder recordings imported into Logic Pro. The source material was recorded between 1899-1919. 

The earliest of the three selections, “Angel’s Serenade” by the Columbia Orchestra was recorded in 1899 by “The Columbia Phonograph Company of New York and Paris” and appears to have heavy surface noise around the beginning of the song. I used the song’s spoken introduction, along with the surface noise to create a number of different elements for this week’s submission, first at the beginning of the song, right before the drop and again at the end.

The piano, xylophone and saxophone samples are taken from 1919’s “Shimmee Town” by The All Star Trio, a bit of the early foxtrot sound you’d have heard at the Ziegfield Follies around that time. Foxtrot was the most popular uptempo dance music style from the late teens well into the 1940’s, so I pay tribute to that here by incorporating the samples into a more modern dance beat. 

Indestructable Concert Band’s 1908 recording of “Rainbow Medley” is where most of my percussion and bass sounds come from in this track. The baseline and midrange LFO nonsense started as a sample taken from the clean vocals in the middle of the arrangement. A few trips through Logic’s AutoFilter and a hundred year old thick syrupy bass. There is a very prominent clack sound throughout this recording, which I used in my track to create a number of the hits in the drum kit. 

Besides the stock Logic audio units, I also used  each one plugin from Massey, Soundhack and PSP. 

All audio selected from these antique cylinder recordings:

“Angel’s Serenade” by the Columbia Orchestra (1899): http://www.archive.org/details/colnyp-15132

“Shimmee Town” by The All Star Trio (1899): http://www.archive.org/details/edba-3871

“Rainbow Medley” by Indestructable Concert Band (1908): http://www.archive.org/details/ind-986

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto”

Created for Disquiet Junto on January 09, 2012.

Ice cube in a martini glass recorded with Tascam PCM Recorder for iPhone. 
Drums: Logic UltraBeat. 
Additional Samples: Ice, Harvestman modular. 
Guitar: Takamine EF341SC 
DSP: Logic stock + AU by +soundhack, PSP Audioware, Massey. 

Fun facts: 
I don’t usually make stuff like this. I’m not really even sure if this is actually dubstep. Maybe someone in the know can set me straight. 

I started at about noon on Monday and ended up going through 3 iterations of “song” before deciding to go in this direction at 9pm (EST). The drums / percussion parts were the first bits that I completed and was able to committ to. I had a couple completely different melodies that I had axed. I took a long break from it, had dinner, and decided that I was going to (reluctantly) not participate in this project, since I wasn’t really happy with anything I’d put down. The first bit I came up with were more rock-based. Layered vocals over chunky acoustic guitar riffs, but It just didn’t really catch right with the shuffle of the beat. DELETE. The second thing haddifferent vocals and a melody that seemed like some terrible progressive house from the 90’s. It was kinda weird but it worked, only not for very long. I was tired of listening to it after only a few bars. I’m also really bad at committing to lyrics so as I was running down the clock trying to think of something “cool” to sing (that I wouldn’t be embarrassed about later) I said, “Forget this” more or less, and made dinner. I was not going to submit anything. I guess I just needed to step away from the track for a few hours because I was able to hear a new melody in my head and gave it another go. This is that new melody. 

At 2:58AM (EST) as I was about to upload my completed track to SoundCloud, I realized that I forgot to renew my Premium subscription and was out of space. I had to go through the whole upgrade process so my submission missed the deadline by 5 minutes. I had a pretty good laugh over that.

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