Remote Possibility - Canis Horribillis

The latest output of Remote Possibility, Canis Horribillis, started out as an early instrumental effort of the virtual band called "Ummmm," which has some trippy xylophone and percussion effects and a compelling, if innovatively tuned, guitar riff by Vincent Knobil. But the ever churning mind of Matt Love, aka IcePac, dreamt up some lyrics for the tune - kind of mixture of "Hell Hound on my Trail" and "Knick Knack Paddy Wack" - and shopped it around for contributors.

To make a long story short, in this particular version (others may be forthcoming), I "sing" the main vocals, using my best western drawl. I also played the drums. A woman calling herself Liza did a test recording which I used snippets of in the beginning. The stars of the show, however, in my opinion, are the saxophone tracks provided by Ryan Ray. He rips a crazy solo near the end of the tune followed by some wonderful vamping against the percussion at the very end.

Mixing the song was a challenge. I had to do a lot of tinkering to get everything synced up and find a reasonable balance. I experimented with synth effects and creative EQ but was never happy with anything that I tried so I ended up using little in the way of effects except adding some reverb and touch of compression on the drum track. I dinked around with adding a bass line but couldn't come up with anything that sounded decent or didn't muddy things up.

Walking the Crags

Here's a simple tune I call Walking the Crags. It started out, as usual, as an exploration of various chords on virtual piano where I came up with a back-and-forth triplets riff using E flat and A flat minor ninths. Per my MO, I used the chords to create a scale with interweaving clarinet and vibraphone solos. The drums are minimal but live, I played them straight through and there's no editing. It's pretty soft groove and I was going for a nice airy sound with the cymbals. The biggest challenge was to get the bass to sit right in the mix.

Technically, the new thing here is a stereo pan plugin I downloaded free. It offers more control than Logic's default panning knobs and allows you to get the various voices in a more focused position in the stereo field. Otherwise, there's nothing fancy going on here..

Dance Charybdis

Awhile ago I read a prose translation of the Odyssey by T.E. Lawrence. In it Odysseus has to sail between Scylla, a multi-headed giant snake/lizard thing, and Charybdis, a sea monster who sucks ships into her maw by creating a giant whirlpool. I got it into my head of a modern day ship encountering Charybdis which inspired my new song, Dance Charybdis.

Musically it's quite simple. It starts out with two notes back and forth, D and Bb, then goes to a four note sequence, D, Bb, G and A. (Near the end I add F# and Eb for some dissonance). Sonically, it's complex because there is so much sound and I'm using a lot of reverb, phase and amplifier effects. It was tricky to get the balance right and not get too much clip distortion.

It's a horror tune, I suppose, and the idea was to be ominous and scary. I've been pecking away at this thing for three months and I'm still not sure it's right but I decided I needed to put it to bed. The narrative image of the song is a freighter chugging along, encountering Charybdis's whirlpool and trying to escape its current. I use quite a few different intermingled voices representing the ship and the monster.

Grozny Gamble

Grozny Gamble is a tune I produced about a year ago. I was dinking around with a Middle Eastern percussion software kit and I was coming up with some rhythms I liked that had a near eastern feel to them. I started imagining a little combo playing in a coffee shop some place and opted for a zither and flute to carry the lead and chords, and an oud to carry the low end. Looking for something to name the song after, I found Grozny on the map and "Grozny Gamble" had a nice ring to it.

Backgammon is a popular game in that part of the world so it occurred to me to open the song with dice rolling. To achieve the effect I used a felt-lined guitar case and suspended two microphones above it about two feet apart. I recorded several dice rolls (and the shaking of the dice in leather cup) and picked the version that sounded best. Because of the two mics and their position above the board I was able to achieve the effect of dice rolling across the sound stage (between the stereo speakers).

Most of my time was spent sequencing the percussion. I wanted to give it a natural, dynamic feel. Tinkering around with one of the oud's bass lines, I discovered I got a nice ominous sound with a synthesized bass played an octave lower. With that the idea occurred to me to transition from a kind of acoustic belly-dancing theme to a heavy techno sound. The scene I imagined was man moving from the combo playing inside to a war-torn environment outside. Grozny is a very war-torn city. The transition from inside to outside is done in a slow fade-out/fade-in. The Oud gradually turns into the synthesized bass and the percussion morphs into pulsing techno with a gun-cocking sort of back beat. I then introduce distorted, metallic versions of the zither and flute.

Let the Crow Soar

Let the Crow Soar represents my singing debut (no laughing allowed). The title is a play on the former Attorney General John Ashcroft's Let the Eagle Soar but the resemblance to that classic stops there. It's just that I thought crows needed a song too. Why should eagles get all the glory. My crow actually doesn't do much soaring, mostly he grabs shiny objects and pecks at roadkill but, hey, that's what crows do.

Before this tune, I hadn't attempted to sing anything since, like, grade school (not even karaoke). So I used every trick I could think of to make my voice at least listenable. I have an electric piano backing the vocals note for note to help with the illusion that I'm hitting the notes (or at least near missing). I've also pumped the vocal track through a software amp, eq'd out some of the low end and added compression and reverb. I just got a new reverb plugin for Logic from a company called Wave Arts. It sounds pretty good. In this case, I was going for an outdoor feel and I wanted to keep it rough on the edges.

Another thing I did to get the best vocal performance possible was to sing one line at a time. I would loop the backing tracks, sing the same line about a dozen times and pick the one that sounded best. Then I pieced the lines together.

The other melodic elements are electric guitar, bass and electric piano. I spent considerable time working on the sound. I wanted each to retain some kind of character of a crow squawk. The electric guitar, however, is the real squawker.

I brought in a couple of friends, Kim and Greg, to sing backup vocals. After a few glasses of wine, I managed to get some pretty good stuff from them. No golden voices but this isn't a song for golden voices.

I built the song around a couple of drum loops, but once it was arranged, I played the drums straight through. Admittedly I did a little splicing and editing but mostly it's a single performance.

Here are the lyrics:

Black, black in flight
A shadow in the air
Here it comes, diving down
Snatch that ribbon from her hair

On the wing, pressing up
A talon clutching gold
Flying high, headed home
But there’s something in the road

A plunge, a swoop, a dip
Alighting on the ground
Pecking flattened furry meat
Dancing all around

With a steel smile and glowing eyes
A roaring monster comes
Flapping hard, a blast of smoke
The crow was nearly done

Chorus:
Tumble, flail, squawk
Rolling in the wind
Tumble, flail, squawk
The crow takes flight again

Refrain: Pecking flattened furry meat, dancing all around

Din Don Dub

Taking a little break from yacking about my stuff ...

One of the great things about archive.org is the serendipitous chancing upon some hidden gem. (Although this is getting more difficult as the amount of stuff being uploaded has become so vast and the browsing capabilities of the site are limited.) One such gem is a tune called Din Don Dub, a wonderfully layered combination of nature sounds and electronic effects. It has a slow-paced, syncopated rhythm. It sounds as if the audio signal of much of the drums and other elements is reversed. Sometimes that technique comes across as gimmicky but here it works to excellent effect, giving the song a non-human yet organic feel.

There's no information on the artist, Gery Petit. The CC license is French and a quickie Google search reveals that maybe he's music producer in the French film industry.

Beautiful, hypnotic and haunting, I think the tune touches something that's difficult to describe. Enjoy.

Pondicherry Cutie

Here's one I put together about a year ago - Pondicherry Cutie. It's my first full song with Logic, basically learning the ropes of it's FM synthesizer. After I had gotten the theme down, it struck me as something I'd heard before. Then it came to me, it reminded me of Horace Silver's "Calcutta Cutie." Side by side comparison revealed it wasn't really a rip-off, just a similar feel. Hey, it's not like Steely Dan when they stole Silver's bass line from "Song For My Father" and used it in "Rikki Don't Lose That Number."

Salty

For some reason, an old (year and half) song of mine is attracting a lot of downloads at archive.org: Salty. In the last month or so it's gone from around 20 downloads to 160, making it my third most downloaded song after Zigong Blues (656) and Bad Buddhist (394).

Don't know why exactly. It's a pretty low-fi GarageBand effort. It's a simple arrangement around a bass loop with piano and trumpet. Mainly I wrote it as an exercise to help improve the timing of my drumming. When I started recording against loops, I had discovered my tempo keeping was pretty weak. The computer doesn't lie. With Salty, I would come down to my basement studio, load up GarageBand, hit record and do a take or two. Eventually I got a pretty solid version which is what you hear on the song. However, at the time I was still recording with a cheap stereo mic and my old kit so the drums lack clarity and punch. The fills came across pretty well though and they have nice retro sound and feel.

I do like the song. I wouldn't have posted it otherwise. But why the sudden interest? A Google search doesn't reveal any cites of the song in the blogs or someplace. Not that I mind. Just curious.

Beaver Crossing

Continuing with my animal stories thing, although I'm not sure where it's going, I came up this song, Beaver Crossing. (Note that you can now stream the latest song with the player to the left.) It was influenced by two records I've been enjoying lately. One is "Colossal Youth" by the Young Marble Giants which is a very minimalist and subdued, sort of proto-post-punk, recording put out in 1980. It's got great texture and resists all temptation to move into some "big sound." (A temptation I rarely can resist.)

The other influence is a wonderful CD called "Jin Jin/Firefly" by Takashi Hirayasu and Bob Brozman. It's very different from "Colossal Youth" in that it's melodically and harmonically complex, but it shares the minimalist feel in terms of instrumentation. In this case, two guitars and occasional percussion. The sound is surprising mixture of Okinawan and Hawaiian folk and Western pop. Both Hirayasu and Brozman are acoustic guitar virtuosos.

So with Beaver Crossing, I chose an electric bass that's got a bit of a plucked sound (resembling Young Marble Giants' bass), a software kit of African percussion, a ukulele and one of my software instrument favorites, the Chinese muon moon guitar where I make full use of its note-bending capabilities. I settled on using A & B sixths chords and add F# later on. This pretty much puts it in the key of F#. The ukulele strums chords mainly while the Chinese guitar picks the melody. The sound kind of has a bluesy Hawaiian flavor.

In keeping with the minimalist theme, there's only four tracks and no fancy effects. Or almost none. Using tip from the latest issue of EMusician magazine, I set up four bus tracks for reverb panned to the opposite side of their respective instruments. For example, the Chinese guitar is panned to the right but its reverb is panned to the left. The reverse is true for the ukulele. I kept the reverb low-key so the effect is subtle but I think it adds a nice depth to the overall mix.

The effect is pretty much lost when streaming. To hear it, you'll need to download the mp3.

Doby Coyote

I just posted my latest, Doby Coyote, a running eight-bar bass line built on a B-flat seventh chord with drums and various instruments providing the melody. The bass line doesn't change throughout, a habit I've tried to move away from, but somehow this one has a compelling, rolling quality that resisted my efforts to add variation. (I may perhaps be reaching the limits of my current skills.) When the back-beat kicks in, the song's a head bobber. It just seems to want to keep going.

The genesis of the song began with an idea that I had to write a series of stories using animals as characters. The stories would be written sort of like Zen koans or parables, and they'd have commentary like traditional texts. The main character I imagined to be a young coyote named Doby and the parables would chronicle his adventures. The stories, I figured, would be accompanied by music. This song is Doby Coyote's theme. As a theme to return to at various points, I'm quite happy with it. I'm not sure how strong it is as a stand-alone song. But those who have heard it really seem to like it, so I posted it. I hope I kept it interesting my mixing up the instrumentation and moving from acoustic in the first part to electric in the second.

In case anybody's interested, here's a draft of the story I wrote that inspired the song:

-------------------

Doby Coyote trotted through and open meadow with tall grass warming under the summer sun. A jackrabbit popped his head up, looking sideways at Doby.

Yum, Doby thought.

"I see you," the jackrabbit said.

"I know."

"So don't bother."

"I won't."

Doby stopped, sat down, scratched his ear.

"Nice meadow," Doby said.

"The grass is delicious here," Jackrabbit replied.

Doby plucked and chewed a green blade.

"Good for the digestion but, frankly, I don't see why folks like you relish it so."

"How could you? You're a coyote," Jackrabbit said.

"I try to be broad minded."

"That's a laugh."

Doby stood up, doing a long stretch of his hind legs and then the front.

"You know what," Doby said.

"What."

"I changed my mind."

With that Doby Coyote darted toward Jackrabbit who, with a spring of his back legs, bolted into the woods, Doby hot on his heels. Jackrabbit bounded and dashed around the trees and over the brambles. Doby deftly jumped deadwood and dodged trunks in pursuit. But Jackrabbit was faster and soon would reach the open field where Doby would have no chance to catch him.

Snap! An old steel trap grabbed Jackrabbit's leg, stopping him with a jerk.

"Aiy!" He shrieked.

Doby rushed up and, seeing Jackrabbit's plight, stopped a few feet away.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I was only chasing you for fun and to scare you a little. I'm not even that hungry right now."

"I know," said Jackrabbit as he winced in pain. "I was glad you did. I wanted to show off."

"Maybe I can get you out of the trap somehow," Doby said.

"It won't do any good. My back leg is broken. I cannot survive," Jackrabbit said. "You're a coyote. Do what you do and make it quick."

"Are you sure?" Doby asked.

"Yes. Please hurry."

Doby clamped his jaws on Jackrabbit's neck and shook him with all his might until Jackrabbit was dead. Then he pulled the corpse from the trap and took it to the meadow to eat what he could under the warm sun.

Commentary:

Buzzard: Nature's way. I hope Doby left some for the buzzards.

Tortoise: Doby was rash. It was an unnecessary killing made necessary by folly. Doby needed discipline.

Buzzard: Creatures need to test their capabilities and learn their limits. Predators and prey, mates and rivals all contrive situations to do that. It's dangerous and sometimes tragic. But not learning is more dangerous and nearly always tragic.

Buddhism Gone Bad

My next most popular tune, and one that's generated the most positive feedback, has been Bad Buddhist. It also was featured as a BSWC One-a-Day and played on the associated radio show. It has the distinction of being the only song I've written to date with lyrics.

I've long cultivated an interest in Buddhism, particularly Zen Buddhism (along with Taoism), although I don't think I can claim to be a Buddhist as such. In any case, I occasionally talk about it with friends and coworkers. The idea for the song emerged at some point when I made a sarcastic remark about someone and my cube-mate at work says to me, "I thought you were a Buddhist, aren't Buddhists supposed to show universal compassion?" I replied, "That's true but I'm a bad Buddhist." The lyrics of the song quickly took shape. Basically, I poke fun at some common Buddhist notions (and the Dalai Lama) in the guise of a grizzled cowboy character.

This song also represents my transition from GarageBand to Logic, and it's the first recorded appearance of my new drum set (ddrum's Dominion Pocket Maple series). The basic instrumentation I worked out in GarageBand and then ported it over to Logic when I upgraded. The looped bass line is a Russian Balalaika guitar played on the low end. I muscled it up a bit with a software amplifier. The drums are me playing live straight through, no loops. It's rough in a couple of spots and I miss a fill or two but it was the best take of maybe two dozen that I attempted. It's a quick beat and a challenge for me to sustain accurately for nearly six minutes (yes, I'm an amateur).

To introduce the song, and end it, I use Tibetan singing bowls, which I thought was fitting. The background throughout is a kind of eerie, desolate sounding synthesizer patch that came loaded with Logic. The vocals are me using my best western drawl (I'm originally from Nebraska so it's kind of ingrained). I didn't tamper with the voice much other than to add a little reverb and a low end filter to take out some of the "puffs." I used a naked condenser microphone. I've since picked up a puff guard for it.

But what makes the song, I think, is the guitar. It's probably my best modification of a software instrument. It's a Chinese ruan moon guitar which has a thin, fretty sound. Again, I muscled it up with a software amplifier. Then I pump it through a plugin called Bit Crusher which, along with adding distortion, amplifies the frettiness. This gives it a gnarly, grinding steel sound that's particularly noticeable on the decay of the notes. The guitar solo may also represent my best effort at playing a software instrument with a keyboard. I don't know where the performance came from but I couldn't repeat it again if I wanted to.

Enjoy. Oh, and if you're a Buddhist, please don't be offended. I'm just joking around.

Stuck in China with a Zither

I suppose I should writes something about my number one online hit (approaching 500 downloads on archive.org as of this writing): Zigong Blues.

I created this song about a year ago. I was messing around with a software kit of Asian percussion and came up with a cool sort of cricket-chirp rhythm. So I decided to build a song around it. One thing I was interested in was tempo. Feedback on my previous songs indicated they seemed chained to a particular tempo. I was still working with GrarageBand 2 at the time which doesn't let you change tempo within a song. So I thought maybe you could create an illusion of a tempo change with rhythm.

I opted for a basic but slow blues beat using Asian percussion instead of a trap set. At first I drag out the beat using two layers of percussion, moving in a staggered fashion from whole notes to half notes to quarter notes etc. until everything is double-time at the end. This, I hoped, would give the illusion that the tempo of the song was increasing even though, as far as the computer was concerned, it was the same tempo throughout.

Thinking about other instruments, the story forming in my mind was that B.B. King was stuck in some city in China (hence Zigong) without his band or his guitar. So he sits in with a local group and plays a Chinese zither. For a bass I use a Chinese erhu violin. In the real world, it's a rather high-pitched instrument with a textured tone. But through the magic of MIDI, I'm able to play it impossibly low, giving it a kind of deep, eerie, scrapey tone.

Along with the zither, the other lead is a Chinese flute. I start out with lead melody being carried by the zither and the flute repeating a simple line in the background. Later, the flute takes over the lead and brings the song to a climax. I'm imagining the local Chinese flutist trumping B.B. King.

Why is this song my most downloaded? One reason is that one of the guys who cowrote the now seemingly defunct blog, Black Sweater White Cat, found the tune while rooting around archive.org. So he posted it in the blog and, what's more, played it on the associated radio show at a small community station in Great Barrington, MA.

Woo hoo, I'm famous!

RP Rides Again

Another hit from the virtual band, Remote Possiblity. This one's called Vacancy.

Matt Love, our glorious band leader (although he denies being the leader), provided some lyrics about a lonely guy lamenting a missed opportunity with a budding online romance. This put me in an electroniky-synth mode so I cobbled some stuff together using new software drum kit I'd acquired, found a bass sound that fit well and used some sythesizer buzzes, beeps and swirls to create a basic outline of a song: intro-verse-chorus-verse-chorus-outro-extended outro.

I passed this along to Vincent Knobil who was sufficiently intrigued to sing the lyrics and add electric piano and guitar melodies. The results surprised me and work rather well, I think.