What you are looking at is but one reason why I'm two songs behind. Well, not really, I just thought it was interesting-looking. I mean, I had spares. I'm not a total dumbass.
No, the real reasons were boring and logistical and had everything to do with just being unable to spend one to six hours making as much noise as possible. I wanted to do threefer, but the other two songs I did today turned out--well, they didn't really turn out at all.
"Dread (023-3202)":
For a long time-- probably dating back to when I first started this project-- I've been obsessed with movie (and video game) soundtracks. It's not really intentional, but this song bears a lot of resemblance to some of the stuff by E. S. Posthumus, who do a lot of the soundtracks for movie trailers. Anyway, I've been kind of obsessed with the idea of creating a soundtrack for everyday life-- to make the drive to McDonald's feel as important as blowing up the Death Star. My plan is you can put this on your headphones, go outside, and instantly feel (estimate) 300,000% more awesomer. I call it Soundtracking Your Life. Obviously you can't download this, so consider it (and the next song, which is also a part) a preview for the whole thing.
As for the song itself, it was my attempt to avoid some of the ruts I've been falling into. A lot of my songs are fast or mid-tempo, so I made this one intetionally slow and dirge-ey. I feel like I've been overusing guitars, so I didn't use any here. Originally it was going to be more of a drum 'n bass thing, but I put in the MIDI strings to give it some more definition and variation. Also the bass kind of sounded shitty. I came up with I thought was this great riff and then it came out kind of flat, muddy and not nearly loud enough. (here I'm talking about sound quality. It's not the riff's fault it came out wrong).
Also, the song's title is the riff, not a phone number. I was calling it that till I got a better view of how it came out, which is when I added "Dread". The More You Know [chime and star].
"Rose":
This song is one of few songs in existence named after another song (I can only think of one other*), though upon listening to it, I'm not sure where I drew the connection. The original title was "Gypsy", but I'm pretty sure that's kind of offensive, plus it doesn't fit the finished product very well, though it should give a hint what I was originally shooting for.
Anyway, as I mentioned, this is part 2 of Soundtracking Your Life. I think my plan is to release the whole thing for free on the blog, and then take all the videos down and force you to pay for them. I'm just a little evil that way. I'm calling this the "Dream" section, because for some reason I can't listen to it with my eyes open. This is about half on purpose and half just how the chimps fell.
I've mentioned before how I think we need more improvising in music, and I think it works better here than anywhere else I've done it. This is more about tone and emotion than melody, and the unfocused directionlessness of the whole think just make it more illogical and dreamlike**.
*As I was writing that, I thought of a more obscure example, but I've decided to keep it a secret.
**If you liked that BS, contact me and I can make one of your accidents look intentional, today! Only $19.95. Accident not included. (Will not actually be done today. Expect a ten-to-ten-thousand-day waiting period.
DOWNLOADABLE VERSIONS:
Rerelease Notes: For this version, I re-edited the bass and drum loops to remove the gaps and pauses. Doing this made the song shorter, so I also had to re-record the strings (which I probably would have done anyway). I also added a fourth strings track and changed some mixing and volume issues, mainly to make the drums louder and change the bass tone.
Release Notes: I remixed this song to make the drums more prominent, and give the guitar more volume, but changing the EQ settings gave the guitar a weird, robotic sound that was all wrong for what the song is. So I ended up just using the original version that you hear here, though the download should be significantly higher quality.
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