GRcade

http://soundcloud.com/a-battleship-call ... /untitled1

I don't normally do this, but I thought I'd share a work in progress with you.

After months of a complete creative drought, I suddenly got this massive creative spurt the other night and managed to come up with this. And I'm really pleased with it. I'd consider it something of a new direction for me.

It normally takes me weeks or even months to finish a tune - this is unusually prolific for me. Ideas literally kept coming and I spent all night on it (not just writing, but mixing/engineering/tweaking the 'sound', etc). The strong skunk I had probably helped!

It was a piano chord progression I came up with last weekend. But I was tired of doing piano-ey stuff so I decided a new sound was called for.

I connected my Casiotone MT-100 to my laptop via an old Alesis Nanoverb unit to give it this nice chorus effect. I'm quite fond of my collection of cheesy 80s home keyboards - it's where I get a lot of my sounds.

Instead of playing flat chords as before, I tried playing it in stabs - I really loved the 80s vibe of it, so I thought I'd follow that through - gave it a big 80s 'power' beat and some other nice keyboard pads. I jammed a bassline on a nice bass guitar Soundfont (yes, I use those, production snobs) with my MIDI keyboard, added some valve distortion and compression.

In fact, the snare sound is the thing I'm most proud of. Ever since I was a kid I've always really loved those big, boomy, reverb-soaked snares you get in 80s music (think Running Up That Hill, etc). So I consider the epic snare sound here a personal 'holy grail', so to speak

It's a strange little piece if I do say so myself. It's kind of like if Joy Division tried to imitate Last Christmas by Wham, after having been partly inspired by the Super Monkey Ball soundtrack. OK, I'm making it sound far more 'out there' than it really is, but I like it, guys.

It's still not finished (it's not even 3 minutes long) but I really like where it's going.

So please, let me know what you think - on both composition/structure and mixing/production aspects (I don't have monitor speakers, see). One pitfall I seem unable to avoid is mixing the bassline too loud - have I done that here?

http://soundcloud.com/a-battleship-call ... /untitled1

Nice little track Earl

Had it on before bed, found it strangely relaxing.

good work mate, very 80s

It reminds me of Air. Very promising.

Thank you all. I particularly like the Air angle. I'm still currently experimenting in my head with subject matter/vocal style/etc. I still have no firm idea of vocal melody or whether to have optimistic or pessimistic lyrics.

Basically it's a potentially awesome song that probably won't be actually realised properly for a year.

Music comes naturally to me, lyrics don't. All of my lyrics are prose, for a start - no hint of poetry. Yet, still, it can take me months to write the lyrics to a song because I refuse to force it just for the sake of rhyming or just to have something to sing. I really try to make it all to relate to something.

I don't claim to be a good lyricist, but I do take my time and make them illustrate some view I have. But it'll probably be months before I even have the vaguest sketch of vocals...

In the meantime, please listen to my new complete song, Drive You Away. There's another thread about it in this folder.....