Tag: SoundCloud

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“Prelude In Preparation” by Yeast With Teeth

Recorded, mixed & mastered 30 Jun 2022 by Jim Lemanowicz at Blissville Electro-Magnetic Laboratories of Massapequa.

©2022 Jim Lemanowicz

Process notes – 6 tracks of my voice, distorted, edited, sliced in Ableton Live

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This original version of “Prelude In Preparation” was submitted as part of ​Disquiet Junto Project 0548: Drone Vox. The Assignment: Make a drone using just your voice.

More on the Disquiet Junto at: disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here: tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

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“Red Warehouse, More Massacre” by Los Franceses Muertos

An interpretation of what a “math house” genre could have sounded like in the 1980s, from someone who has never tried either genre before.

Recorded, mixed & mastered 22-27 Jun 2022 by Jim Lemanowicz at Blissville Electro-Magnetic Laboratories of Massapequa.

©2022 Jim Lemanowicz

Process notes –
Scale – D#, D, A#, G – used on bass and on all pitch correction
Title – references a Chicago club for the house part of this, and a 1980s experimental improv group and a King Crimson song for the math-rock part.

So, obviously, I had some advance knowledge of this Junto and I started on Wednesday but barely not anywhere further than what I have been thinking for this “Math House” joke/idea for the past few years. I started by deconstructing my submission for Junto 0546. I pulled the drum parts and the marimba part for use as drums and bass starting points first. I then subbed in “house” sounds for each. I changed up a ride pattern for a hat pattern. I subbed in 7/8 for 9/8. That’s all I did on Wednesday. I closed my Live set.

On the second day, I didn’t do much. I replaced the bass, only barely referencing the original marimba part. I listened to a handful of classic house tracks and memorized a rhythm for the bass. It – or whatever it had mutated to – was still in my head 30 min later – so I went back to the former marimba and now bass part and did my thing. I then gave both the bass and drum tracks a 1/16 MPC swing of 58 or something. I also introduced some randomization in the note choice for the bass part and the probability for drum hits as well as panning and filtering for some drum parts.

On Saturday, I recorded many things using a Jay Turser Jaguar copy, a Rogue fretless bass and a Yamaha PortaSound PSS-11. I think that a MS-70CDR was involved with perhaps no clue about impedance matching.

On Sunday, I never opened the DAW and spent most of the day in silence with my usual pain issues in knees and feet, not too much sleep, and a more recent pain in my right wrist, through my arm and up to my neck and the base of my skull, assuming repetitive stress injury and my PC. For the music, I decided that I somehow had landed on some weird automated reggae mutant. I also decided to remove all the GSnap64 pitch-correct on the audio and would sub in Nectar in case I wanted to make use of the formant settings. I took down lots of notes, including a rough structure for the piece. I found this to be in the spirit of some of my 2000/2005 stuff. Much of that was based on an idea that I would one day add guitar and other physical instruments to an electronic backbone back then, but I never did add the guitar etc. After all was said and done, I appreciate some of my weird little pieces with no lead part as a cousin to ambient, where no focus was needed.

On Monday, I selected some short excerpts from the audio (electric bass, electric guitar and keyboard) recordings. I stretched them, looped them and then selected a few Ableton presets (mostly echo or delay) for each. I used Neutron 4’s Visual Mixer’s AI to give me a mix and then allowed the AI in Ozone 9 to select mastering as well. Exported the files. Uploaded. That’s it.

Art – Jim Lemanowicz, 23 Sep 2016

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This original version of “Red Warehouse, More Massacre” was submitted as part of ​Disquiet Junto Project 0547: Genre Melee. The Assignment: Combine two seemingly different genres.

More on the Disquiet Junto at: disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here: tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

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Father Yog-Astley by Smile Puppy

In the fall of 2001, I started creating pieces using Fruity Loops, like many people were doing. When I was working on this Junto in Ableton Live, using mostly the FM synth Operator, it kind of reminded me of those first few experiments and I decided to use a moniker I had given to these early experiments – Smile Puppy.

Recorded, mixed & mastered 18/19/20 Jun 2022 by Jim Lemanowicz at Blissville Electro-Magnetic Laboratories of Massapequa.

©2022 Jim Lemanowicz

Process notes

I decided to encode the names of cult leader “Father Yod” and YouTube legend “Rick Astley” via numerological nonsense via https://ift.tt/cLp3TFR. Of course, I misspelled “Yod” as “Yog,” so now that’s part of the code too. Let’s call that “Jimcryption.” This was a working title as well as a nod towards the decay of the analog/physical world and how the decay of the digital world equals data corruption, or something like that.

25 15 7 1 19 20 12 5 25

Then divided by 7 and kept both the quotient and the remainder
quotients – 3 2 1 0 2 2 1 0 3
remainders – 4 1 0 1 5 6 5 5 4

Then used a purported East Asian notation, Jianpu. Zeros = rests. I wasn’t altogether too careful here but I liked the results, so perhaps more Jimcryption/Jimcorruption.

Solfège: do ré mi fa sol la si
Notation: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

I am gonna go with F# for this
F♯ G♯ A♯ B C♯ D♯ E♯
1 2 3 4 5 6 7

So my tone rows are
A♯ G♯ F♯ R G♯ G♯ F♯ R A♯
B F♯ R F♯ A♯ D♯ A♯ A♯ B

I have 9 sets of two, so I went with 9/8, BPM of 86 with a “bridge” of half-time 43.

Bottom row (by 3s)
– accented the first beat of each dotted crochet 123 456 789.
– used a lower octave
– tonal with a percussive quality – FM marimba (Ableton Operator, “Metallic Noise Pluck” preset variation)
– 8th notes, no swing
– automated a few parameters in Operator

Top row (by 4s)
– accented the first beat of each of these divisions 1234 5671 2345 6712 3456 7123 4567 1234 etc.
– used a higher octave
– tonal, FM pluck sounds (Ableton Operator, “Plastic Marimba” preset variation)
– 8th notes, no swing
– automated a few parameters in Operator

“Bridge”
Touched on some “reverse-steganography.” Processed 1 photo of Rick and 2 of Yod and 13 wives and ran them through CoagulaLight1666. This produced three short grainy sound samples that were then stretched to varying degrees using Live’s Tones or Texture modes. I then sliced each raw Coag track to MIDI and superimposed the marimba MIDI into each, leaving them roughly in time with the marimba part. After that I added a Nectar plug-in to each and pitch corrected to F# maj. Finally, the entire Coag group was passed through an Ableton Delay preset, “Full Range Spatial.”

Decided to grab some 9/8 drum ideas from a book I have – “3,5,7,9 Rock!” by Don Reid – and add these in to create sections. Used Live’s “Jazz Kit” drum rack, tweaked a bit. I tried to accent similar to the marimba pattern and lower the probability of playing the hits off-accent (23 56 89).

Continuing with previous experiments with iZotope’s mixing and mastering tools, I used Neutron Equalizer, Neutron Sculptor & Neutron Visual mixer during mixing and used Ozone 9 for mastering. I mastered it twice and chose the first attempt for this Junto.

Artwork: Penn Station, NYC 17 Dec 2010, by Jim Lemanowicz

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This original version of “Father Yog-Astley” was submitted as part of ​Disquiet Junto Project 0546: Code Notes. The Assignment: Make music that includes a secret message.

More on the Disquiet Junto at: disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here: tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

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Purple Arrokoth by Featherbedding

Recorded, mixed & mastered 11 Jun 2022 by Jim Lemanowicz at Blissville Electro-Magnetic Laboratories of Massapequa.

©2022 Jim Lemanowicz

Process notes –
This was taken from one 27 minute generative session on an iPhone 12 Pro using Mood, Rozeta Collider, MF Randomizer, Rozeta Scaler in Iwato E, Discord4, PhaseDelayArray, Audiobus 3, & Audioshare for recording. This was inspired by some things I was playing with in Discord4 while thinking about and describing to my friend some of the loose techniques I use that bring me to a blissful place musically.

In Ableton Live, I split this into two audio tracks, 4 min in length each, with one being put down an octave and stretched to double its length in Live’s Texture Warp mode. Two other tracks were made from less-effected loops from the same generative session that were pitched down two or three octaves.

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“Astral Weeks” by Vowel Samples

Recorded 31 May 2014, mixed & mastered June 02 2022 by Jim Lemanowicz at Blissville Electro-Magnetic Laboratories of Massapequa.

This is a cover version of a song by Van Morrison. ©1968 Van Morrison.

I am looking for input on my mixing and mastering here. Is the master too hot? Is there enough clarity between the parts? Do the vocals and lead guitar shine through in the mix? Is the cymbal too loud (I quite like it during the guitar solo and during the mellotron/loud parts)? Honestly, details other than “good” or “bad” for the mix or master will always be welcome. However, I am not soliciting any comments on my performances here instrumentally or vocally. I have enough critics of that kind living in my head, thank you. I also have no intention of adding or removing or re-recording any of the parts here.

What I am currently working on is a remix project whilst simultaneously learning some iZotope plugins. The material is a covers EP I completed/released first in 2014. This followed a serious hospital stay and in my mind represented a “stripped-down” approach similar to my cassette 4-track work in the 90s – guitar, bass, drum sounds, vocals, basic keys – and as opposed to my “kitchen sink” approach in the 00s with songs that had 50-100 tracks each at times. This particular cover is Van Morrison’s “Astral Weeks” and is dedicated to Lester Bangs and his horrific experience related to this song and album by Van, as understood by my reading of the book “Let It Blurt” by Jim Derogatis. Lester had a sort of subconscious reach into my life as in high school I was an avid Creem reader of the period slightly before and after his death. His shadow was all over that magazine at that time.

Process notes –
On this track I played a Jay Turser Mustang-inspired guitar, an Epi EB-0 bass, an M-Audio Trigger Finger (triggering some jazz-type Ableton Live drum rack), a cheap cymbal (same one from the 90s) and two tracks of GForce M-Tron string and flute sounds. My arrangement in this 31 May 2014 version subs in a plunky angular lead guitar for the vocal ad-libs that Van originally gave us and what I tried to do with no success when I almost gave up on the project in Jan 2014. I also opted for a shorter track length than either Van’s version or much of the “kitchen sink” work I was doing in the 00s.

The plugins used were Nectar 3 Plus, Neutron 3 Advanced/Visual Mixer (and now 4), and Ozone 9 Advanced. In a limited way, these plugins AI “assisted” me in my mix levels, my mastering treatments and my instrument and vocal effects. I used a hybrid approach where I did not give the iZotope plugins my naked tracks but rather used most of the channel “racks” (strips) set up in 2014 originally. Nor did I use the Visual Mixer for panning. Subjectively speaking, for the past year or so, my mastering has improved with the help of iZotope’s Elements plugins, so I recently went and upgraded. I then committed to learning some new tricks for these old ears. I also tweaked some things that I felt the AI missed, but did not dwell on almost anything here for more than a minute or two.

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This remixed and remastered version of “Astral Weeks” was submitted as part of ​Disquiet Junto Project 0544: Feedback Loop. The Assignment: Share music-in-progress for input from others.

More on the Disquiet Junto at: disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here: tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

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“The Silent, Understood” by Our Quiet Fog

Recorded, mixed & mastered May 27 2022 by Jim Lemanowicz at Blissville Electro-Magnetic Laboratories of Massapequa.

©2022 Jim Lemanowicz

Process notes –

– Am6 inversion.
– Ableton Random device
– Velocity device to allow for about a 50% chance of randomness
– Arpeggiator device
– Chord device
– chose a basic EIC2 grand piano (legacy Live Pack) sound for this.
– Scale device set to C Iwato
– Live’s Echo device
– I used 2 Random Max4Live LFO devices

At around 26+ minutes. Turn off looping, disable record arm, disable the MIDI track.

Ready to review, I find a spot near 14 min and draw in a fade during the quick part and decide to give it a fade out for the purposes of the Junto. I decide this piece will be called “The Silent, Understood” I do an export to WAV and check the file on disk. 4:36. A bit long for my Juntos, but whatever. It could have been 26 minutes!

– Ozone 9 master using a slight variation on a classical preset with some reduced lufs-iness.

Art – captured 06 Feb 2010 with a Sony Cybershot in Massapequa, NY, USA

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This original version of “The Silent, Understood” was submitted as part of ​Disquiet Junto Project 0543: Disquiet Junto Project 0543: Technique Check. The Assignment: Share a tip from your method toolbox.

More on the Disquiet Junto at: disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here: tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

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“Shooting The Moon, 26 Times 100” by Wishbook

I rubbed the oil from my eyes, turned my head and passed to my left.

Recorded & mixed – 11 Jan 2016, 15 Jul 2007 & 19 May 2022 by Jim Lemanowicz at Blissville Electro-Magnetic Laboratories of Massapequa.

©2022 Jim Lemanowicz

Process notes –
Two recordings I made of sax were stretched & split between 26 tracks in Ableton Live to a length of 100 seconds.

PS, I always sucked at math.

Art – Jim Lemanowicz, 27 Feb 2010

This original version of “Shooting The Moon, 26 Times 100” was submitted as part of ​Disquiet Junto Project 0541: 2600 Club. Make some phreaking music.

More on the Disquiet Junto at: disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here: tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

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Recorded, mixed on 29 Apr 2005 and mastered on 05 Mat 2022 at Blissville Electro-Magnetic Laboratory by Jim Lemanowicz

Recorded in FL Studio 5 on 29 Apr 2005 using a Roland U20 E Piano sound and some drum samples.

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“KPG Math Extinction” by Blemishes

Having accepted the challenge, our hero walked into YouTube woods to learn how to bake cookie-cutter cookies at a temperature not recommended for human consumption and burned the whole batch.

Working title – “Fletcherargonmathcuminatmophilefarm Soup Or KPG Math Extinction FAMCAF.”

I didn’t see the options at first but I guess I chose 1. I went through some back and forth about finishing this but I wanted to show up and do the work

Recorded, mixed & mastered May 13/14 2022 by Jim Lemanowicz at Blissville Electro-Magnetic Laboratories of Massapequa.

©2022 Jim Lemanowicz

Process Notes –
Certain decisions were made at the start
– Length of 2:30-3:00 min
– Key of F Phrygian with a bass line using E
– Build it at a tempo of 80 and then slow down most of the parts to 10BPM. I elected to leave the one-note bass line at the original speed, to at least somewhat have a connection to techno, which is really something I know little about anyway.
– do a bit of a buildup and breakdown, thinking this might be less important or impactful a this tempo

Basic instrumentation
– Roland SH2 softsynth bass
– Ableton’s Drum Essentials kick
– Ableton’s 16 hihats drum rack with some random midi selection built in

Added instrumentation that I didn’t quite feel was “techno” but it worked at the slower speed for me, and made it over all more of an ambient piece
– Two tracks of Native Instruments Absynth
– One track of arpeggiated Native Instruments Massive

Effects and stuff
– Ableton Live native devices
– iZotope plugins – Neutron Elements and Ozone Elements

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This original version of “KPG Math Extinction” was submitted as part of ​Disquiet Junto Project 0541: 10BPM Techno. Make some snail-paced beats.

More on the Disquiet Junto at: disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here: tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

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Recorded, analog mix & mastered by Jim Lemanowicz at Blissville Electro-Magnetic Laboratory for Blister Pop Unlimited – 2000, 2001, 2004, 2022