Pity Party Pithy Preamble:
Sink's Law #5 states "A Man's Gotta Eat," and I boss technical writers around to pay the bills. Another one of my pithy Sink's Laws is that "Everybody Has a Boss," and I have one too. He's retiring in a couple of weeks and is a huge guitar music fan and has been my biggest musical fan and supporter for over six years. An example actual quote from the man a couple of months ago: "Sure, Steve, you have a 'bass emergency,' and need to go home and record some Chapman Stick basslines? Go right ahead and bring me a CD when you're done!" He's the guy who walks into my office and shows me a Joe Bonamassa video and a guy playing Swedish nyckelharpa (a violin with keys) and asked me what it was. (Thanks Per Boysen as well for the info!) viewtopic.php?f=17&t=10737&hilit=nyckelharpa

We're getting a new boss who doesn't know tech writing. I've been in a bit of a funk lately, and while I'm reeling out the Sink's Laws, another is "Know Thy Limitations, and Plan Ye Around Them." When I get emotionally down (which is not often, I'll admit), I turn away from the music altogether and usually wallow in video games. On that, I can say: Mission Accomplished (Slither.io is addictive!) 3 days spent eating little dots and becoming a fat snake and feeling sorry for myself.

But knowing myself, there's a curve to this stuff: push on through the pity party and eventually I'll end up picking up an instrument or 3 and getting back to rocking it out. Pardon me while I do just that.

ScarBaby

So here is ScarBaby, which is purely an indulgence for me: I hit record on the living room electric piano, set the metronome on 165, and just pushed some mother-frickin' chords out. Then I got out the Rosewood Stick and hammered the root and fifth and occasional octave and tried to science the shit out of my sound. I'm sampling my own lines and then nudging notes around in Pro Tools. I also quantitized my own audio, which is a bit of a new thing for me. Some of the piano is also quantitized after the fact. The drums are done on NI MASCHINE and some of it is also quantitized and ribbed for your pleasure.

Then I took the piano MIDI and sliced and diced it through NI's Session Strings and made 8 more tracks of strings (mixed waaaaay back now). That same MIDI was then filtered into an organ patch, to now make: piano, computer-manipulated Stick bass, strings, Hammond B3 organ, and drums by MASCHINE (and Modern Drummer).

Fair warning: this is some busy-ass stuff. It's a fake studio creation to just give me an excuse to pound on the piano keys really hard and fast. I also enjoyed hammering on the Stick and then cleaning it up and slicing and dicing it. I have something like 6 different busy plugins all tweaking that bass sound to give each note a "growl" that makes it sound "cool" (at least to me, Your Mileage and Taste May Vary). This is my "Stick By Robot," or Better Living through Pro Tools.

It's lacking much in the way of my usual melodies--I'm just going for lots of chord pushing rhythms and I've quantitized the shit out of everything. In fact, it might make a good candidate for another SINKERR collaboration, and Jayesskerr can shred all over the top of this and make it cooler.

This is really 3 to maybe 5 song ideas smooshed together and played really fast. I just know myself and I had to get back to work, even if it's a pure indulgent wankfest.

Also, I have fractal videos that won't just sit around waiting for me to stop moping around and to get back to rocking it out.

My own personal review of ScarBaby: I love the beginning and the ending riffs. They're worthy of songs in their own right. And the 30 seconds starting at 2:05 is some kickass stuff--I should slice that out and loop the hell out of it. The rest is some busy, busy stuff that appeals to hardly anyone but myself but at least sounds like none of the other 7 billion humans rocking it out on this planet (see the part about self-indulgence--y'all can come along for the ride or not on this one--I'm just having fun!)

From Being In a Funk, to Trying to Bring the Funk and failing, but having fun anyway, Steve




[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDbLgecLtig[/youtube]

Good work, man! In my opinion this was interesting on a lot of fronts, and it stands on it's own as is. No need for guitar, add more Stick I say, lol

It's pretty dense at this point, could get interesting as you start surgically splicing it's DNA, ideas from this and that and merge them together. As always, I look forward to what's coming next.

I do think that the piano and Stick combo is a success, very interesting blend...

A Borg like life form, endlessly extrapolated against a multifaceted ether medium. The more penetrating the formulated math, the more organic the detail with cell like tissues of sophisticated geometry.

Form variations are endless, infinite, but what about function? What is it? Or does anyone care with such a feast for the eyes (and ears)? I'm caring and must ask, where's the microbiology to match the fractals (the anatomy to give life to this new geometry)?

Then there's the music. We asked in high school, "What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object?" Now I know the answer, they fuse, driving Stick bass mashing into tumbling two-fisted piano in a cascade of harmonic progressions.

What an encounter with stickist.com on my computer screen with full range sound system on a Saturday morning. Thanks SS, for your obsession.

I appreciate your comments and your interest, Emmett! Thank YOU for making Sticks and for Your obsession with making them better and more awesome!

I was looking at more of those metal finishes with BassMonk trying to pick one on his new Railboard, and just thought how much that takes up the whole Railboard experience up a notch or 4. I also re-watched Freehands Friday #50 with Kevin Keith the other day (trying to steal his slapping technique) and it was fun to listen to his initial skepticism with the Railboard, only for him to quickly discover how awesome it was. I couldn't believe when Greg announced the new finishes--it makes me want another one so soon after getting the blue one. I can't wait to see what new thing and what new place your obsession with perfecting Sticks takes you!

Thanks, Emmett!

Thanks, Scott! I'm still throwing everything against the wall--even other walls--to see What Sticks. I do think that I want to add a lead Stick line to this--there's just enough space left for some distorted Stick. Maybe with some wah. Strokes chin....Damn it! I don't have a wah pedal! This is unacceptable!

I'll probably slice and dice this and keep working on it, and hopefully change it enough to give it a new name--the wife is not a fan of "ScarBaby." I'll let you know what I do with this. I really love that beginning and ending riff--and that accidental harmonic!--I gotta figure out how I did that and repeat that liberally.

Thanks!

Yes - this is why I'm in a slight dilemma! And re the way forward, I know lots of people are saying 12.. but it would also be nice to see an Alto Railboard.

Re the music, you are much too hard on yourself in your write-up Steve. Sure it's busy, but it's fun and has energy. Pick your favourite bits and extract the potential! I agree the beginning and end are good and the section you singled out had some interesting things going on. Agree with Jayesskerr about the piano/Stick combo. Go for it.

Very fun, paigan0! Just listened to it while loading the dishwasher. I had to start it(your video) over because of the large pile up of dishes in the sink due to many unusual circumstances. Then I ran out of dishes and had to stuff some clean ones in just to get to the end of the song. Very full sounding.(of coarse, so is my dish washer now).

Thanks for sharing.

Mike

Wow! This was cool! I wanted to go out on the street and start to run.... Lot's of energy that passes on to the listener! Almost felt like Rocky, running up and down stairs in Philadelphia... Don't know about cutting it up and making new songs, to me it felt one. Try listening to it on headphones walking down the street: you either end up running down the road or picking up a fight with someone just because you have to release all that energy. Really cool!


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Great composition and recording. Thanks for sharing!

I constantly struggle between believing firmly that "Less is More" and "More is More." On this one, I gave in to "more is more but try to leave lots of space" and then I filled all that space anyway by adding organ and strings to an already full piano and Stick and drumset mix. I limited myself to only one track of everything and only one full drumset with nothing extra that a real human couldn't play (just not me, not at 165!). I make an exception with the Strings (8 tracks of strings) and then mixed the strings down so far that they barely add color in a couple of places. The string-heavy version is actually quite a different feel and maybe I'll play with getting good mix of that one versus this more piano-centered mix.

The original piano-only version--when it was hot off the electric piano and still fresh from my subconscious that threw it out fairly fully formed--sounded pretty cool sped up to 172 and even faster, and then I slowly backed down to "human" levels at 165 so I could keep up with it on Stick, and the drums started out extremely more complicated at 145 and then got pruned as I went up to 165. MIDI is fun to play with! Quantitizing audio is weird to me but I'm liking it as a tool. I like to pretend that I have chops if I can, but it's way easier to "cheat" with MIDI than it is with audio but it's also fun to make rhythms that you didn't actually "record." The only limit is your imagination, rather than your muscle memory! (Must write that one down for later...)

"The studio is its own instrument," is one of my composition teacher's pithy sayings so I haven't stolen it as a Sink's Law but it is a rule I live (and die) by. You can fart into a mic and turn it into a symphony. And with Autotune, that can happen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQyIjna3yvk (I'm not gonna embed a fart song into my Showcase. )

But it sure can even out a rough guitar or Stick line that needs to be right on those quarter and 8th notes, especially at 165.

Thanks Bassmonk and Mike!

Thanks for coming by and listening Brian! I love your stuff and your compositions, so I appreciate your comments!
Rodrigo! You touched firmly on what were jobs number 1 through 12 on this one: keep that energy moving! That metronome at 165 is just relentless! I had some keys and chord progressions in mind and everything from the start of the piano to the end was made up on the spot! I tried to remember the cool stuff to come back to it over and over and afterwards, after it all got cleaned up and a stray note or two deleted, I started looking for what to cut out and for what to repeat. I honestly couldn't cut anything! Each section, I said, "Well that leads right into this one, and okay, I repeat that refrain twice like it's fricking classical music, but shut up! I'm a classical dude pretending to be a rocker!"

At the time, it feels like "Oh my God, what was the chord progression that I started this with..frick, I'm about 3 beats away...oh, yeah,..." but all I hear later is "Hmm, I repeated that one part...must have been because it was so cool!" or however you justify these things later. You totally forget about those 14 moments of panic that any improvisation is really made up--it all sounds so deliberate after the fact! And you learn to keep playing with one part of your brain while using the other part to plan what's next.

Another thing my composition teacher used to always tell me "Don't get too attached to notes!" and my OTHER composition teacher (writing, as in books and stuff) who was also a guy named Steve (Heller) always said "Don't get too attached to words!" (and if you're a George R.R. Martin Game of Thrones fan, don't get too attached too characters! It's THE EXACT SAME THING! (he shouts to all those teachers who are right but you make me kill my Precioussssses!)

In the end Rodrigo, all the parts flowed out of the same chord ideas and they all worked to goals 1-12: keep that thing moving! Or "rock it out!" as I say all the time about everything! I'm so very glad that you confirmed that those parts were all working together--not that I still couldn't do some pruning.

Measures 32-42 just breathed a sigh of relief, Rodrigo, and maybe they won't get axed. I do reserve the right to steal shameless from this piece to use again.

Thanks so much guys for checking it out and offering feedback! I should write more stuff that I think only I will like! I appreciate you guys giving me an outlet to share this stuff with! (Although I should be suspicious of any group that has the poor taste to have me as a member, al la W. C. Fields. Or was that Rodney Dangerfield?)!