MP3: Invention

There’s also some glitchy drum elements, though those are less prominent. Around this time I was exploring Squarepusher a bit, so I could probably make a connection between the two. The melody was originally vibraphone, but I switched it out with a pulse lead which I think works out better in this case.

MP3: Marathon

I tried numerous times since I wrote it to find a proper place for it. It was a MIDI file, and then a “tracked” tune with Garageband instruments, and finally I tried to make it a chiptune. I also tried to fit it onto one of my many attempts at reproducing my first album (The Chronicles of Jammage the Jam Mage, which I still haven’t released yet and will talk about more later on). Three years or so ago I thought it would be cool to take this song that has so many ideas in it, and split it into a couple of tracks, an EP called “The Labyrinth of the Skulltaker”. As of now I have no idea what I’ll do with it. I may try to whittle it down into something more presentable. Though the thought of doing an EP of heavy, instrument based music is still very appealing to me.

In the meantime, here’s the song in question, in all of its questionable glory!

MP3: Labyrinth of the Skulltaker

PASSCODE: The Curse of Ayosire

Toymakers Onell Design have put together a third interactive flash game entitled “The Curse of Ayosire” set in the wonderful world of their sci-fi action figures, featuring music I wrote for the 30 songs in 30 days challenge from last fall.

You can also check out the entire PASSCODE series here.

In the fall of 2005, I was planning a full-length album of video game covers, tentatively titled “The Distance Between Start and Select”. Being as obsessed with “epic” as I was (and still am, haha), I wanted to dedicate songs to entire games, trying to incorporate all of the themes that I enjoyed. One such game that more or less got that treatment was “Marble Madness“, a wonderfully tricky puzzle game where you had to roll a ball through obstacles on an isometric grid. It came out on a few systems but I had the Nintendo version growing up. Naturally there was a lot of nostalgic value in the music for me, and upon revisiting it later I was surprised at how heavy the music was. One part of the track I put together I gave a Tool treatment, which I think sounded pretty cool.

This track started as three individual ones for the various levels of the game, respectively, in TablEdit. TablEdit is Guitar Tablature Software that happens to be great for doing multitrack MIDI arrangements. It was my number one resource for writing out music and initial ideas for a very long time. I still use it from time to time as it’s an extremely fast way to write music, using the computer keyboard entirely to input your notes. Kudos if you can figure out which part of the song this is!

It might be important to note that back in 2005 my music was quite different from how it is now. It’s funny to listen to this now and point out all the silly things that I would never do now (listen to those super athletic tom fills in the beginning! haha) Still, I think it’s easy to see where the evolution came from. I’ll get more into my roots and the evolution in other posts. As well as the super underrated Garageband.

I think I’ll let the music say the rest. The track is called “Fun With Marbles” because I had a lot of fun writing and making it! And because it wrongfully leads people to believe it’s about that old schoolyard game.

MP3: Fun With Marbles

This jam came out of a session a week earlier and we played it a couple of times afterwards incorporating new ideas and refining it. Still, it’s a jam. We originally called it “Can I Still Rock While I Get My B.A.”. This version is lovingly called, “Can I Still Rock and Hang with the Bachelor’s Associates”.

At this point I’d only been playing guitar a few years, and writing even fewer. Pretty much everything I’m playing is by ear and memory of positions.

Nonetheless, I think this is a cool little number that has some potential. Kind’ve has a Tortoise/Slint/Assorted Post-Rock vibe to it.

MP3: Can I Still Rock and Hang With the Bachelor’s Associates

Note: Vault is a new feature which you can also access directly at: Disasterpeace.Tumblr.com

MP3: Jump Error

A few of you have asked for some insight into my creative process, so I'll share some of what went on while I was working on this. The original version that I released back in 2007 was made in Reason, as was this new version. I stripped out all the old synths and replaced them with new patches. All of the pulse-wavey goodness is brought to you by THOR, the wonderful hybrid/modular synth in Reason 4.

THOR Synth in Reason 4, totally awesome.

It can be a daunting task to take a song and redo it from the beginning. My initial idea for updating the sounds was to try and get some of the patches to sound almost guitar-like. In order to do this I used a pitch envelope on the main riff (and the power chords) that very quickly goes from a high pitch back to the normal, intended one. This produces something like a very quick “click” or transient sound which I think gives it a little more character.

Here the filter envelope is routed to control the pitch of the oscillator.

It was also greatly helpful to me to use audio markers to take notes about specific parts of the song as I was working on it. This way, all my ideas were jotted down and I could address them all one at a time.

Use markers to keep track of things you want to change!

Once I finished designing the piece and updating everything, including some more drastic changes (if you listen to both you’ll notice a couple of really big changes to the song), I rewired all the tracks into Logic to mix. In the past I’ve gone seriously overboard trying to mix chipmusic. I think I’ve learned from some of those mistakes and this time focused almost entirely on panning, volume, and dynamics.

One of the biggest challenges with this kind of music (especially chipmusic that utilizes a lot of voices like mine) is that so many of the sounds share the same frequency range. In order to address this I tried to be creative with panning; I approached each distinctive section of the song like it was its own miniature mix (which I think can be a pretty useful approach) and as a result made good use of automation. I also did some sidechain compression which helps the rhythm section fit like a glove with the drums, and can also be used as a really cool “suck” type effect, popularl with artists like Danger and Justice and the like.

Instead of using reverb, most of the tracks that I wanted to have a wet sound simply have a bit of delay on them. I also like to use delay as a rhythmic device, which you can hear at the very end.

With the exception of the notes, this track is almost entirely controlled by a single pass of pitchbend data. Each time you bounce the song, it sounds different. So I bounced it a couple times and mixed them together!

MP3: HMHS Britannic

MP3: Backroads
This is a little fingerpicked acoustic guitar number I was messing around with; would go lovely with some vocals one day.

MP3: This Call is Important to You
This is an experiment in creating a new series of sonic limitations. There will be more of this in the future. I created a new drum kit for this track, and I ran the final product through my cassette player to give it an older, warmer sound.

MP3: Saints Hospital
This is a similar experiment as the previous, except focusing more on FM instrumentation. I whipped up a couple new FM patches for this.

Another one coming shortly!

This is a bit of a follow-up to the idea from the third piece for 30s30d, “The Battle of Vyazma” … more focus on ostinati-like guitar riffs and athletic drumming.. I could potentially see this idea melding with the prior one or acting on its own as a followup/sister piece.

MP3: The Battle of Varna