My music is published as individual "albums," each assembled according to a specific concept (some obvious, some not). As i have alluded in previous posts, i don't necessarily consider the individual pieces as an end to themselves (or particularly important for that matter), they are simply necessary for my larger, more abstract, artistic goal: i call it "assemblage."
I am fascinated by the interpretation of constucted meaning of sequential experiences (a wordy way to say the way two things next to each other create a new meaningful relationship, an interesting detail of semiotics). Had i finished my PhD, that would have been the framework for my dissertation.
In other words, in order to have material to play with, i have to create as much actual music as quickly as possible (sometimes at the expense of technical dexterity and tone quality). Whether obvious or not, much of my work draws from the world of electronic dance music and DJ culture, a world defined by stringing together disparate sounds and pieces of music. The titles, cover art, and release notes all try to approach the unifying concept of each album, some more clearly than others. Like painting, i want the total end product to "speak" about its creation in some tangible way. Each album reflects my auto-biographical chronology, similar to the way each successive track builds upon the overreaching concept.
There are, however, several compositional paradigms that transcend this segmentation. In other words, you could trace the chronological evolution of a particular style across my entire output, a much more normal musicological topic. In some cases, doing so would result in much more familiar/traditional ways of constructing an album stylistically.
Some of these paradigms are:
Fixed composition vs. Free improvisation
Loop pieces
Traditional genre works (rock/metal/blues/folk/etc.)
Ambient/non-metrical soundscapes
Rhythm/lead pieces for guitar
Academic scale/harmonic systems (tonal/modal/12-tone/gesture)
Sectional vs. Through-composed formal structures
Contrapuntal relationships
So to sum up, i think of the album in its entirety as a larger piece of music with multiple movements. Likewise, a group of albums that share similar characteristics point to an even larger structural relationship.
My current project is a group of albums centered around the process of creating albums with only my left arm due to shoulder surgery (that's a real life thing, i'm not insane enough to preemptively orchestrate that as an artistic scenario). What type of album would you create with one arm? How would your choice of project be influenced by staying home alone all day? Would you find yourself thinking about the past? Would you finish old projects or plan new ones for after recovery? Would you re-orchestrate older pieces? Those are the kinds of ideas i'm addressing by creating new synth realizations of my old pieces. Volume 1 is published and volume 2 is nearly complete. I've planned a 3rd volume, but i can't guarantee it will properly materialize...
Thursday, March 30, 2017
Wednesday, March 29, 2017
my recording setup - specs, recipes, and signal chains i frequently use when recording
In my last post i listed all of the gear i frequently use. This time, i'm going to focus on my basic setup and describe some of the ways i patch it all together.
There's no smoking gun or secret special hardware, just a common laptop. Some specs:
HP G60 Pentium
KXStudio
64-bit Ubuntu 14.04
Kernal: 3.13.0-24-lowlatency
Buffer: 512 samples
Frequency: 44.1kHz
Latency: 11.6ms
CPU Scaling: on demand
I don't remember how much ram or storage it has, but it was straight off the shelf in the mid to late '00s. It came with windows 7, but everthing is accessible from the linux side (dual boot), and the very few windows programs i need to access work passably well with Wine. I have several other computers, but the laptop is the only one i use for recording. As for the specs above, the 512 sample buffer at cd quality is perfectly fine for me. My physical accuracy is only a tiny bit better than 11ms, so it doesn't need to be better (i don't play fast enough to feel it and my margin for error at the ictus probably ranges from 9 to 15ms at my sharpest; just a guess).
I do get the occasional xrun or cluster burst, but only when i've left a lot of child processes running or forget to close everything down when i leave for several hours. I just make a habit of closing everything down when i stop for more than an hour, and restart the jack server every session (and whenever dsp load gets too heavy in-session).
Very few of the programs i use are prone to crashing, but some do occasionally crash or freeze and force a hard reboot. Muse (midi sampler/workstation) is probably the least stable, but it's usually my own fault.
I've used many modular trackers, recorders, environments, etc., but my current DAWs of choice are Ardour 3 for multi-track recording, and Audacity for wave editing. I was a long time cool edit pro 2 user until Adobe bought it, but i've grown to like Ardour's internal data approach (no wav files hogging hard drive space unless you manually export them). It's a minor nuisance to export from one to the other then import back into the mix (i prefer destructive editing over bussed real-time plugins).
I'm not a very good or thoughtful recording engineer, so none of my tracks get labeled properly, i change layering and arrangement mid session, i detest effects/group busses (i like to mixdown old school 4-track style and only when absolutely necessary), i leave empty space and muted fragments lying around everywhere, and i make no effort to crossfade or splice segments properly. Remember kids, i'm a hack and i wouldn't even dream of handing anything i do over to a professional. I do all tweaking up front and build my sound from the final playback. What you hear is pretty much what i heard while recording; i occasionally tweak eq on the final mix while normalizing/compressing but 90 to 95% of my sounds and levels are dialed in before i even hit record.
Everything i do either uses internal samplers and software synths, or else gets converted to digital by mixer via usb, and everything gets dumped into one or more tracks in ardour. Sometimes i use a lot of external gear, sometimes i just plug straight into the board.
Most often, i plug guitars and bass into an acoustic amp, take the pre power amp d/i output from the amp to the mixer via xlr into the mixer's mic preamp and adjust gain levels as necessary. I like the hot signal it gives me (my knobs and faders get turned way down but it means i can drive any component into clipping if i want the distortion it makes). It also means that if i really try to shorten cables and keep early stages clean i can significantly reduce the final noise floor without algorithmic reduction and the inherent loss of tone that brings. For example, some of my poorly constructed signal chains produce a powerful 4k-ish hiss by the time it reaches the DAW, which just so happens to be where my pick noise and attack are most prominent; so, the softer i try to make the hiss, the less brightness and clarity in my guitar parts.
My power supplies are also dirty: i can get distinct hisses and hums at 40hz, 60hz, 100hz, and their harmonics if i try (cool if you want it, horrible if your sound source is an unamplified violin or acoustic guitar more than 1 inch from a mic).
I don't use outboard or pedal effects very much. I run most every sound source through Guitarix.
As for what actual gear i use for a particular recording, i just plug some things together and see where it leads. I'm interested in the act of creating recorded music itself, not so much the end product or performing a score. I think of the recording process as the actual artwork. Think of it this way; a painting isn't the names of the colors, the brush and canvas material, and the subject, the "painting" is a person acquiring the materials, mixing paint and additives, physical gestures, and interpretion of a visual or imagined scene, bundled up into a visual artifact. Likewise, my "music" is piecing gear together, making up notes and rhythms and counterpoint from the sounds of that gear, and bundling it all up into a reproducable aural experience. That's part of why i favor cheap, easy to acquire gear.
It's also, i think, the major source of confusion about my music. I am (like most musicians) an introvert and an unrelenting perfectionist. If i went about writing music the normal way, nothing would ever be good enough for other people to hear; i would throw away everything i write or perform. In order to get it out into the world, i have to create an environment where i have no control over the minute details: i have to pick an unchangeable tone,
improvise, plan, and execute the recording all in one go so that there can never be a "better take," (if i can't remember what i played, i can't agonize over timing articulation inflection etc.). The mistakes are important as well: my compositional process (the looping in particular) forces me to either accept the mistakes as part of the piece, or risk losing the entire feel and shape of the piece because i can't remember the really awesome parts during the next attempt and the evolving synth patches won't produce quite the same timber/character each time. Basically, every piece is a live realtime improvisation for an imaginary audience and all i can do with the end result is make it as interesting and non-painful to listen to as possible.
I got off track from my original topic, but i always do that. Thanks for reading.
There's no smoking gun or secret special hardware, just a common laptop. Some specs:
HP G60 Pentium
KXStudio
64-bit Ubuntu 14.04
Kernal: 3.13.0-24-lowlatency
Buffer: 512 samples
Frequency: 44.1kHz
Latency: 11.6ms
CPU Scaling: on demand
I don't remember how much ram or storage it has, but it was straight off the shelf in the mid to late '00s. It came with windows 7, but everthing is accessible from the linux side (dual boot), and the very few windows programs i need to access work passably well with Wine. I have several other computers, but the laptop is the only one i use for recording. As for the specs above, the 512 sample buffer at cd quality is perfectly fine for me. My physical accuracy is only a tiny bit better than 11ms, so it doesn't need to be better (i don't play fast enough to feel it and my margin for error at the ictus probably ranges from 9 to 15ms at my sharpest; just a guess).
I do get the occasional xrun or cluster burst, but only when i've left a lot of child processes running or forget to close everything down when i leave for several hours. I just make a habit of closing everything down when i stop for more than an hour, and restart the jack server every session (and whenever dsp load gets too heavy in-session).
Very few of the programs i use are prone to crashing, but some do occasionally crash or freeze and force a hard reboot. Muse (midi sampler/workstation) is probably the least stable, but it's usually my own fault.
I've used many modular trackers, recorders, environments, etc., but my current DAWs of choice are Ardour 3 for multi-track recording, and Audacity for wave editing. I was a long time cool edit pro 2 user until Adobe bought it, but i've grown to like Ardour's internal data approach (no wav files hogging hard drive space unless you manually export them). It's a minor nuisance to export from one to the other then import back into the mix (i prefer destructive editing over bussed real-time plugins).
I'm not a very good or thoughtful recording engineer, so none of my tracks get labeled properly, i change layering and arrangement mid session, i detest effects/group busses (i like to mixdown old school 4-track style and only when absolutely necessary), i leave empty space and muted fragments lying around everywhere, and i make no effort to crossfade or splice segments properly. Remember kids, i'm a hack and i wouldn't even dream of handing anything i do over to a professional. I do all tweaking up front and build my sound from the final playback. What you hear is pretty much what i heard while recording; i occasionally tweak eq on the final mix while normalizing/compressing but 90 to 95% of my sounds and levels are dialed in before i even hit record.
Everything i do either uses internal samplers and software synths, or else gets converted to digital by mixer via usb, and everything gets dumped into one or more tracks in ardour. Sometimes i use a lot of external gear, sometimes i just plug straight into the board.
Most often, i plug guitars and bass into an acoustic amp, take the pre power amp d/i output from the amp to the mixer via xlr into the mixer's mic preamp and adjust gain levels as necessary. I like the hot signal it gives me (my knobs and faders get turned way down but it means i can drive any component into clipping if i want the distortion it makes). It also means that if i really try to shorten cables and keep early stages clean i can significantly reduce the final noise floor without algorithmic reduction and the inherent loss of tone that brings. For example, some of my poorly constructed signal chains produce a powerful 4k-ish hiss by the time it reaches the DAW, which just so happens to be where my pick noise and attack are most prominent; so, the softer i try to make the hiss, the less brightness and clarity in my guitar parts.
My power supplies are also dirty: i can get distinct hisses and hums at 40hz, 60hz, 100hz, and their harmonics if i try (cool if you want it, horrible if your sound source is an unamplified violin or acoustic guitar more than 1 inch from a mic).
I don't use outboard or pedal effects very much. I run most every sound source through Guitarix.
As for what actual gear i use for a particular recording, i just plug some things together and see where it leads. I'm interested in the act of creating recorded music itself, not so much the end product or performing a score. I think of the recording process as the actual artwork. Think of it this way; a painting isn't the names of the colors, the brush and canvas material, and the subject, the "painting" is a person acquiring the materials, mixing paint and additives, physical gestures, and interpretion of a visual or imagined scene, bundled up into a visual artifact. Likewise, my "music" is piecing gear together, making up notes and rhythms and counterpoint from the sounds of that gear, and bundling it all up into a reproducable aural experience. That's part of why i favor cheap, easy to acquire gear.
It's also, i think, the major source of confusion about my music. I am (like most musicians) an introvert and an unrelenting perfectionist. If i went about writing music the normal way, nothing would ever be good enough for other people to hear; i would throw away everything i write or perform. In order to get it out into the world, i have to create an environment where i have no control over the minute details: i have to pick an unchangeable tone,
improvise, plan, and execute the recording all in one go so that there can never be a "better take," (if i can't remember what i played, i can't agonize over timing articulation inflection etc.). The mistakes are important as well: my compositional process (the looping in particular) forces me to either accept the mistakes as part of the piece, or risk losing the entire feel and shape of the piece because i can't remember the really awesome parts during the next attempt and the evolving synth patches won't produce quite the same timber/character each time. Basically, every piece is a live realtime improvisation for an imaginary audience and all i can do with the end result is make it as interesting and non-painful to listen to as possible.
I got off track from my original topic, but i always do that. Thanks for reading.
gear rundown
What's hiding down in my studio? At some point I'll try to describe how I use it all, but for now here's a quick rundown:
Electric Guitars:
'95 fender strat (mexican)
Ibanez rg
Epiphone lp studio
Acoustic Guitars:
Yamaha F-335
Ibanez
Takamine
Bass:
Ibanez Gio
Violins:
Knilling
Academy
Electric
Banjo
Amps:
Fender Champ 600
Marshall MGFX
Crate GT 2x12
Fishman Loudbox Artist
Fender Deluxe 85
Mics:
Sennheiser E385
Peavey 100
Shure SM 57
Mixer:
Behringer Xenyx QX1002 usb
MIDI Controller:
Arturia Minilab usb
Pedals:
Boss DS 1 Distortion
Boss LS 2 Line Selector
Ernie Ball Jr. Volume
TC Electronics Mini Ditto Looper
TC Electronics Polytune Noire
Various computers, cables, and stereo equipment
Everything i own would be considered "cheap, consumer grade," but serves its function very well. I have a passion for the best of the worst, so to speak.
Electric Guitars:
'95 fender strat (mexican)
Ibanez rg
Epiphone lp studio
Acoustic Guitars:
Yamaha F-335
Ibanez
Takamine
Bass:
Ibanez Gio
Violins:
Knilling
Academy
Electric
Banjo
Amps:
Fender Champ 600
Marshall MGFX
Crate GT 2x12
Fishman Loudbox Artist
Fender Deluxe 85
Mics:
Sennheiser E385
Peavey 100
Shure SM 57
Mixer:
Behringer Xenyx QX1002 usb
MIDI Controller:
Arturia Minilab usb
Pedals:
Boss DS 1 Distortion
Boss LS 2 Line Selector
Ernie Ball Jr. Volume
TC Electronics Mini Ditto Looper
TC Electronics Polytune Noire
Various computers, cables, and stereo equipment
Everything i own would be considered "cheap, consumer grade," but serves its function very well. I have a passion for the best of the worst, so to speak.
Tuesday, March 28, 2017
a semi-thorough taxonomy of my recordings (so far)
Over the last few years I have released an enormous amount of sonic vomit onto the internet. I have decided to use http://paultompkins.bandcamp.com as my exclusive platform for a number of reasons, mainly it costs no money for me, the streaming audio quality is indistinguishable from my master recordings to my own ears, and you can choose to give me money or not, download or not, etc. However, because i am not constrained by ANY commercial or artistic restrictions, it is impossible to guess what you are getting into without actually listening to the hours of music i have published. So, this post is meant to be a rough guide as to the wide range of styles/genres that comprise my music. I'll go chronologically through the albums and give a general synopsis of what to expect, as well as provide a direct link to each album.
The Slumlord EP - http://paultompkins.bandcamp.com/album/slumlord-ep
Electronica/synth pieces composed somewhere between 2003-2005. All tracks were made in jeskola buzz with various vst instruments. The desktop computer that these tracks were made on died many years ago, and though i have some of the original .bmx files, i no longer have the VSTIs or a computer that can render them properly. The rendering process was actually highly unstable, and several tracks took multiple attempts before a satisfactory recording was obtained.
The Build Me Something Experiments - http://paultompkins.bandcamp.com/album/the-build-me-something-experiments
Tracks made while learning to use Cool Edit 2.00. These include sample/loop pieces, reverse playback, time stretching, and effects. These tracks were also part of an unreleased album entitled
"7 Meditations."
Variations on a Tone Row - http://paultompkins.bandcamp.com/album/variations-on-a-tone-row
Each track is actually the same 12-tone piece, but the VSTIs used were dynamic in nature and produced radically different outcomes. Only the finished audio still exists.
Piano Music -
Piano miniatures ranging from counterpoint and programmatic pieces to 12-tone and aleatoric.
Sonata for Flute and Piano -
I think of it as a pseudo-Ivesian, modal sonata.
Daphne and Apollo -
A song cycle for guitar and voice. Alternative folk i guess.
Insertions -
Mostly guitar duets of various types. I imagine them popping up randomly throughout your large mp3 collection (hence the title).
Sounds you can make with things that make sound -
My first dip into the waters of improvised ambient guitar. Heavily influenced by the physical nature of composing with the tc electronic mini ditto.
Not Every Thought Can Be Congruous -
This is sort of a junk drawer album. It has new stuff and old stuff and things that didn't fit right on other albums. It also starts my tendency to use whatever track wasn't finished when i released an album (i get impatient sometimes) as the starting point for the next album.
The Uncollected -
I had a bunch of rock/metal guitar riffs stuck in my head and decided to make the album itself the process of writing and recording each track one at a time.
On A Porch -
Another old/new junk drawer album, this time worked into a single piece in 4 movements.
Fifth Year -
Songs written in my teens and 20s. 1:17 was the basis for Daphne and Apollo.
Contrapuntus ad libitum -
I adore counterpoint and wanted an entire album of arrangements for guitar and bass of various pieces (some i wrote myself). So, i made one as a christmas present to myself.
Simple Pleasures -
My biggest junk drawer album yet. Literally everything i love to do: old, new, reworked, looping, improvisation, electronic, ambient, noise...
The New Blue -
More guitar experiments; looping, duets...
Air -
Like i said, i get impatient, and i finished these a day or two after i published the new blue. I spent a day trying to figure out what else to put with them, but ultimately decided they stand on their own. Am ient blues?
An Evening In The Echo Chamber -
Serious messing around with reverb, echo, looping, and delay. Probably the least structured noise album in my discography.
For the record, i want the next 3 albums to be officially labled the start of my "left-hand period." Feeble, Album of Death, and Difficult Sounds were all recorded in the weeks before shoulder surgery when i had very little control of my pick arm. There's rock and blues and jazz and noise and cheesy synths aplenty.
I'm currently working on synth versions of pieces no one has heard, perusal recordings of classical/academic pieces written over the last 20 years. I gave up on copying links in favor of just finishing this post, so just go to my main bandcamp discography page....
Cheers
The Slumlord EP - http://paultompkins.bandcamp.com/album/slumlord-ep
Electronica/synth pieces composed somewhere between 2003-2005. All tracks were made in jeskola buzz with various vst instruments. The desktop computer that these tracks were made on died many years ago, and though i have some of the original .bmx files, i no longer have the VSTIs or a computer that can render them properly. The rendering process was actually highly unstable, and several tracks took multiple attempts before a satisfactory recording was obtained.
The Build Me Something Experiments - http://paultompkins.bandcamp.com/album/the-build-me-something-experiments
Tracks made while learning to use Cool Edit 2.00. These include sample/loop pieces, reverse playback, time stretching, and effects. These tracks were also part of an unreleased album entitled
"7 Meditations."
Variations on a Tone Row - http://paultompkins.bandcamp.com/album/variations-on-a-tone-row
Each track is actually the same 12-tone piece, but the VSTIs used were dynamic in nature and produced radically different outcomes. Only the finished audio still exists.
Piano Music -
Piano miniatures ranging from counterpoint and programmatic pieces to 12-tone and aleatoric.
Sonata for Flute and Piano -
I think of it as a pseudo-Ivesian, modal sonata.
Daphne and Apollo -
A song cycle for guitar and voice. Alternative folk i guess.
Insertions -
Mostly guitar duets of various types. I imagine them popping up randomly throughout your large mp3 collection (hence the title).
Sounds you can make with things that make sound -
My first dip into the waters of improvised ambient guitar. Heavily influenced by the physical nature of composing with the tc electronic mini ditto.
Not Every Thought Can Be Congruous -
This is sort of a junk drawer album. It has new stuff and old stuff and things that didn't fit right on other albums. It also starts my tendency to use whatever track wasn't finished when i released an album (i get impatient sometimes) as the starting point for the next album.
The Uncollected -
I had a bunch of rock/metal guitar riffs stuck in my head and decided to make the album itself the process of writing and recording each track one at a time.
On A Porch -
Another old/new junk drawer album, this time worked into a single piece in 4 movements.
Fifth Year -
Songs written in my teens and 20s. 1:17 was the basis for Daphne and Apollo.
Contrapuntus ad libitum -
I adore counterpoint and wanted an entire album of arrangements for guitar and bass of various pieces (some i wrote myself). So, i made one as a christmas present to myself.
Simple Pleasures -
My biggest junk drawer album yet. Literally everything i love to do: old, new, reworked, looping, improvisation, electronic, ambient, noise...
The New Blue -
More guitar experiments; looping, duets...
Air -
Like i said, i get impatient, and i finished these a day or two after i published the new blue. I spent a day trying to figure out what else to put with them, but ultimately decided they stand on their own. Am ient blues?
An Evening In The Echo Chamber -
Serious messing around with reverb, echo, looping, and delay. Probably the least structured noise album in my discography.
For the record, i want the next 3 albums to be officially labled the start of my "left-hand period." Feeble, Album of Death, and Difficult Sounds were all recorded in the weeks before shoulder surgery when i had very little control of my pick arm. There's rock and blues and jazz and noise and cheesy synths aplenty.
I'm currently working on synth versions of pieces no one has heard, perusal recordings of classical/academic pieces written over the last 20 years. I gave up on copying links in favor of just finishing this post, so just go to my main bandcamp discography page....
Cheers
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