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 A Monstrous Thing of Beauty (SINKERR Collab) 
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Post A Monstrous Thing of Beauty (SINKERR Collab)
Scott Kerr (Jayesskerr) and I (Paigan0), also known as the Progressive Rock project SINKERR, have released our latest INSTRU-METAL™ work called "A Monstrous Thing of Beauty," with me on bass (Blue Sapphire Railboard) and some drums, and Scott melting your face off with guitar (6-string Fender Mustang) and more Stick (12-string Grand) and drums and violin and keys and producing!

This started with me making the bassline and some drums, and then Scott turning it into "A Monstrous Thing of Beauty," which, because I'm writing this Rolling Stone article and because it's true, was the question I first asked him when it was done: "What are we calling this Monstrous Thing of Beauty, anyway?"

But since we kept referring to using cosmic energy from a certain surfboard to make our little tune, I thought I'd steal from Joe Satriani stealing from Marvel for his "Surfing With the Alien," and do my own version for the cover art. Since the song title references a "Thing" and the Silver Surfer was our unofficial mascot in the song, this classic scene between The Thing and The Silver Surfer has been (hopefully) fair-used re-purposed as a rock matchup between Stick and Guitar. And like the two superheroes who always duel each other right before they team up, Scott mixes guitar and Stick among violin and keys and drums over my Railboard bass riffing to make this Everlovin' Blue-Eyed Thing meets Herald of Galactus, and a Monstrous Thing of Beauty.

Image

And here is "A Monstrous Thing of Beauty"!


Excelsior! Cheers! Yoroshiku! Happy New Year! Akimashite Omedetou Gozaimasu! Kompai! Happyhappy! :)

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Sat Dec 31, 2016 2:56 pm
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Post Re: A Monstrous Thing of Beauty (SINKERR Collab)
I loved this piece! Great writing and playing all around. I heard some Satriani influence as well as Yes. Well done!

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Sat Dec 31, 2016 10:29 pm
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Post Re: A Monstrous Thing of Beauty (SINKERR Collab)
I think I get it 8-). It's, it's :shock: ! "Melting my face" ;) ....



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Sun Jan 01, 2017 1:17 pm
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Post Re: A Monstrous Thing of Beauty (SINKERR Collab)
Sounds fucking great, good work you guys!

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Sun Jan 01, 2017 5:46 pm
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Post Re: A Monstrous Thing of Beauty (SINKERR Collab)
jacubert wrote:
I loved this piece! Great writing and playing all around. I heard some Satriani influence as well as Yes. Well done!

Thanks, Jeremy! I was thinking of course the Satch, but parts of the guitar reminded me of even Green Day (about 2 seconds), and George Lynch from Dokken, and then there is (to me) an unmistakable hint of Eric Johnson in one particular motif--the guitar motif that starts the song. I actually kept referring to it as the "EJ riff," and it was my personal favorite part of Scott's playing.

If I remember right, he told me he had the voice of Steve Vai on one shoulder, making things purty, and then a little devil-horned George Lynch on the other shoulder, telling Scott to make it "More evil." It was the devil that made Scott come up with the section at the end, starting at 4:28 or so. :twisted: "Eeeeeeeeeevvvvvviiiiiilllllll" is how is first described it. That's also where I got some of that "Monstrous Thing of Beauty" duality and binary.

Puts on his English Professor jacket with patches on the elbows and his meerschaum pipe and says:
"The juxtoposition of the archetypes of the Grotesque yet powerful--the local (Nancy Street) yet otherworldly Thing--with that of the Beauty and cold sterility of Cosmic Space--the Surfer-- result in the frisson of tension to collapse the polar binary of the two mutually non-exclusive synergistic opposites..." Blah blah, that Masters in English makes me want to defend my love of comic books heroes that wear their underwear on the outside of their pants...

"Norrin Radd, Silver Surfer of the Cosmic Board, and Herald to the World Eater, Galactus, wears no such earthy trifles as pants!"
:)

JRJ wrote:
I think I get it 8-). It's, it's :shock: ! "Melting my face" ;) ....



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That would be a pretty stiff face that didn't melt! I appreciate your awesomeness!


The_Afro_Circus wrote:
Sounds fucking great, good work you guys!


Josh, you fucking rock, so that's high praise! Love your stuff!


Thanks for listening, guys!

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Steve Sink, Laser Fractals
Rosewood 10-string, #5989, M4s
Sapphire Railboard, #6763, MR
Wenge-on-Wenge NS/Stick, #170130, Bass 4ths
http://soundcloud.com/stephen-sink-1
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-RDlN ... Ez0hN49_Qg


Mon Jan 02, 2017 6:55 am
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Post Re: A Monstrous Thing of Beauty (SINKERR Collab)
lol Thanks for checking it out, guys. Collaborations are a lot of fun, especially because they always end up with some music...

Steve (Paigan0) and I decided to do this even though I am up to my elbows in other commitments. I always have time for music, and since it's Christmas time, I wanted to do something musically crazy for the very, very few here that seem to actually listen to music. What better way to give back to the guys here who put up with my rotten attitude?

There's a ton of stuff going on here, but the tune revolves around one riff. Steve's Rail-board riff seemed like a pretty cool vehicle to make a statement using His railboard riff, a ton of guitars, some violin, and my own 12 String Chapman Stick. I really should play my Railboard more...

Anyways, I decided to use a Fender Mustang as my main guitar here, recorded stereo and split into a "Big Muff Pi" sound and a sleeker, more typical rock OD sound. It sounds Satriani? Well, I will take that as a big, big compliment. Satriani is one of the best guitarists on the planet with album sales to prove it. Thanks! Y'all made my week!

Anyways, the riff was in G, there's a GBDF being played in there along with a couple of other tones that scream... Mixolydian! Dominant 7th Tonality. It was my job to create the illusion of sections, even though that mode is a really dominant 'flavour' here. I was tempted to do the piece in G Mixolydian b9b13 (5th Mode of C Harmonic Minor) for a sort of Egyptian feel, or even Mixob6 (5th Mode of C Melodic Minor) for an even more Egyptian-mesopotamian sort of tonality. I did end up using the G Mixolydianb6 (CDEbFGAB) over the G7 in my "Metal Meltdown section. I included a lot of fast, very fast alternate picked 'parts' in there, lots of tapping and George Lynch and Steve Vai are big influences so yeah, there is a lot of 'stun' guitar playing. I did my best doing what I know.

I did take a brief guitar solo, some bendy-feely stuff that finishes up with a direct Eric Johnson quote; a descending Pentatonic sequence in groups of 5. A guy by the name of Joe Bonnamassa does it all the time too, both are awesome.

After the Solo, I don my Stick. I played a little bit over top of Steve's Railboard groove, and brought it down, so to speak... Then, Steve plays two measures, and I play two measures, then I do a thing of my own, ending with a cool ascending scaley riff. I mean, this site is all about the Chapman Stick, right? I had a couple of friends tell me my Stick doesn't sound like any of the other Stick guys, it's more like a guitar. I will take that as a compliment, too. Cool!

There's some violin stuff in there (Real violin) but it's sketchy. hehe At one point I was probably a much better violinist than guitarist, but I really like guitar music, rock band stuff so I pursued that. Anyways, the violin stuff here, even though it's buried a bit provides an interesting harmonic tonal quality to the whole thing. Keeps the piece "messy".

It was fun to play, fun to listen to and still fun to talk about. Amidst all of the holiday chaos, (or the chaos of life in general) it's a thrill to be able to share musical ideas with people who are not even in the same country. Finding common ground where seemingly, there should be none, and all of that... lol Poor Steve is sometimes a little, 'concerned" about my musical tastes... But it ends up being part of the fun. Steve is always surprised, and I like to think that we teach each other a thing or two along the way with each of these that we do.

I would love to see more of you guys doing internet collaborations, I mean, we all have the gear, we are all practicing ANYWAY, and maybe a little exposure to what someone else does is the kick in the pants that your playing needs to get to the next level. (Inspiration)

Fun stuff, guys. Thanks again for listening!

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Mon Jan 02, 2017 11:10 am
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Post Re: A Monstrous Thing of Beauty (SINKERR Collab)
scott, you can shred brother!
(props to all others of course...)

How much time did it take everyone to put this together? (in total)
Just curious about online colabs...

very cool
also reminded me of this nick beggs tune (which I just love)



Mon Jan 02, 2017 5:24 pm
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Post Re: A Monstrous Thing of Beauty (SINKERR Collab)
randy wrote:
scott, you can shred brother!
(props to all others of course...)

How much time did it take everyone to put this together? (in total)
Just curious about online colabs...

very cool
also reminded me of this nick beggs tune (which I just love)

https://youtu.be/Bu7wJLKlv84
That was an awesome Nick Beggs tune! I haven't seen that one before. I love Nick Beggs!

As for how long this took, that's a longer story. I had just finished my All Stick Collaboration submittal for Scott's project and was about to start something, anything, else.

I then got an email from Krzysztof Marczak, who is a Polish programmer and genius inventor of the program Mandelbulber, which I use to make my fractal videos. He was in a prototype fabrication lab, when a machine in the lab got stuck, and wouldn't turn off, and slowly started destroying itself, like a brick thrown in a washing machine on spin. It made a very rhythmic, almost-hihat repeating sound and he recorded about a minute of it and emailed it one Friday night as a joke to the Mandelbulber development guys. Another guy joked that it would make a good drum set sample bank, and I was literally sitting in front of an open Pro Tools with a blank screen when he said that.

I imported the industrial noise sample of A Machine Slowly Destroying Itself, which had to be the most metal thing I've ever heard, into Pro Tools and discovered that it was just a hair short of 120 BPM! With a little elastic audio to stretch it just slightly right onto the beat, it made a perfect repeating loop. I then took it through Native Instrument's Reaktor and played with it, adding all sorts of different frequencies to the rhythm. Then I looped in a backing "metal" drum track and just went to town on the Railboard, trying to make cool bassline riffs against the noise and drum sample. That whole process of importing the sound file and making a quick looping drum track and 3 minutes of bass took about 5 hours for me. I emailed it back to the guys, who shit their pants at what I had done to that little sample in 5 hours. I admit I was trying to show off to people who know me as a fractal artist more than a musician.

That was the end of it, until I showed it to Scott, who said he loved the basslines. I loved them too and thought they would make a good metal song, and asked him to produce this one, since I'd done the last couple and also--most importantly--because I felt it was a rocking little bassline that deserved something awesome over the top of it, and I didn't think I could rock this one out sufficiently on my own.

So industrial noise sample became drum track which became bassline. That was my 5 hours. I laid down a quick keyboard track and multi-tracked the shit out of it but really didn't like it and was hoping Scott could do better. He could! I suggested his ignore my keyboards and just use the basslines and drums and sent him all source files.

I think the next day, he sent me a rough version of what he had done. It was awesome but it was short of me saying "God damn" and I made a bunch of specific suggestions that Scott ignored about half of, and did the other half, and then added even more. The first version was all rhythm and no melody, so Scott added that in spades and then that was it! I also started to hate that sample after we repeated it too much, and so I asked Scott to cut it back a bit. It starts the song and comes in at various places. It's almost mixed out now!

About a day for me and a day and a half for Scott. He can break that down better, though. I actually spent more time on the cover art than the bassline! It just took the two of us a couple of days from start to finish!

This is also an example of building a song from the bottom up, which is something that I NEVER do. I start at the top and work down. Well, usually chords, then melody, then bass. I've rarely written this way before.

I also think it's awesome that Scott is playing keys and not me! His violin (and of course guitar and Stick) and additions to the drums took this up several notches. I enjoyed this collab, even if it was just to hear that bassline made into A Monstrous Thing of Beauty. Thanks so much, Scott, for rocking this out and helping me make something of this! Thanks for the comments, guys!

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Mon Jan 02, 2017 6:19 pm
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Post Re: A Monstrous Thing of Beauty (SINKERR Collab)
I posted this song on icomposition.com this Saturday and within a few hours, it had already shot to 250 views for the week, earning it the coveted GOLD NOTE (almost as good as a GOLD STAR).

http://www.icompositions.com/music/song.php?sid=219596

It's at 287 views as of this afternoon. It's burning up the metal charts!

My older brother at SoundCloud actually just left his very first comment on anything that I've ever done (he always wanted me to be a guitar player!), and since he remembers several years of me sucking as a self-taught piano player when we were teenagers, he's always been very critical of anything musical I've done (sounds like many fathers I've heard about!) He of course says this is the best thing I've ever done, which aside from the backhanded compliment (really, a bass line is better than all those sonatas and concertos and rock/pop songs just because it's not piano?) is the nicest thing he's said about my music in 47 years... (Sigh....Brothers!)

But anyhoo, I like it too, and thank you Scott for finally making me sound cool to at least my older brother!

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Steve Sink, Laser Fractals
Rosewood 10-string, #5989, M4s
Sapphire Railboard, #6763, MR
Wenge-on-Wenge NS/Stick, #170130, Bass 4ths
http://soundcloud.com/stephen-sink-1
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-RDlN ... Ez0hN49_Qg


Tue Jan 03, 2017 10:56 am
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Post Re: A Monstrous Thing of Beauty (SINKERR Collab)
lol Sounds like Steve's brother is a dick.

It was fun. And I think it's unique. I hope to collaborate or jam with everyone on this site. I'd love to see/hear a collab with Greg Howard or Steve Adelson or Emmett Chapman and some of the other players on here (I am always available hint - hint) lol

Hmmn, I wonder if George Lynch or Yngwie wants to collab on something... heh I guess I'll send 'em an email and see what happens... hehehe

Anyways, Steve and I got this thing together in about 3 days. It could have went a lot of different ways, and that's what makes it fun. It really does.

(I'm not a shredder)

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Tue Jan 03, 2017 11:37 am
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