Vector Laboratories Update 12-7-08

"Christmas Time Is Here..."
Happy Holidays, y'all!

They sure did creep up fast this year, while I was busy doing various things. Scott and I ran up north today to do a bit of Christmas shopping. Getting out and seeing all the lights and decorations and people out wandering the snowy streets looking for gifts does help get you "in the mode," so to speak. We had a nice dinner with Scott's parents and then it was off to "Wally World." Scott was eager to make the shift to Hi-Def, so we did some browsing through the Blu-Ray movie racks and found a number of older films like Stargate and Terminator 2 on sale for $10 each. New releases on Blu-Ray are rather expensive, so that was a good way to start off the collection for cheap. It makes me glad that we had never really built up a very big DVD collection...right about the time you do, they have to come out with some new format!

I'm looking forward to maybe actually getting to enjoy the holidays a little more this year. Last year at this time, I was buried in work and had to be putting in long days right before and after Christmas. This year, the workload is a bit lighter and the pressure isn't so great, which is fine by me!

"Discovering New Tools and Rediscovering Not-New Ones..."

Meanwhile, on the music front, things are pushing forward. After going back to playing real bass on the last track, I seem to have gone all-electronic again on the one that's coming together now. It's not that I don't still enjoy playing bass guitar - I definitely do - but for some reason, I've just been on a major synthesizer kick for the last year. I love having such an infinite palette of sounds at my fingertips with synths, and being able to completely change the bass sound after the part has been recorded if I want to (something you can't really do with acoustic instruments).

A really intriguing and unusual item that just found its way into the "toolbox" is u-he Filterscape (from the same developer who created Zebra, one of my favorite synths). It's a piece of effects software that, as the name suggests, filters what you put through it to sculpt the sound and provide various kinds of sonic movement. It applies morphing EQ curves and synth-style filtering that shifts over time and makes sounds more dynamic. I've barely begun to explore it, but it promises to offer all kinds of sonic spice to the mix.

In the "Not-New" category, I've been rediscovering a software synthesizer I picked up this past summer and hadn't really taken much advantage of. I got Lennar Digital Sylenth and used it here and there on "Compass" (which was previewed on my Myspace page a few months back), and then kind of forgot about it. A few days ago, I decided I really needed to wheel it back out and start exploring it more, and I really like this synth. It doesn't have the sound design depth and flexibility of Zebra, but it has a core sound that is markedly different from Zebra's and it sounds very, very good. Whereas Zebra tends to sound more liquidy smooth and streamlined, Sylenth has more high frequency content (i.e. it sounds a little more bright and airy) and in some ways, it puts me more in mind of an old analog synthesizer. It's a great tool for getting a different kind of sound...another color for the canvas. Finding a "hidden diamond" that had already been installed on my computer for months that I'd never really taken the time to appreciate before is definitely a nice thing. Or, as the Joker put it in the 1989 Batman flick, "Where can I get these fine new items? Well, that's the gag - chances are, you bought 'em already!"

You'll be hearing both on the new track, which finally bucks the recent trend and is going to be a more uptempo, high-energy song that you could actually dance to (if so inclined!).

Time to sign off...I'll probably be back with you one more time before Christmas, but just in case you don't hear from me again before then, I hope yours is a wonderful one.

Talk to you soon!
DV

"Rainy Day Angel" - New Song Preview

Well, hello there...

I guess it's been a while since you've heard from me! I usually try to keep in touch with all of you more often...the last couple of months have been pretty busy. I finally managed to get a decent block of time this past week to just immerse myself in recording and complete a new song I'd been whittling away at when I could find spare moments. It reminded me how much more happy and centered I feel when I'm doing creative work. I'm in the process of simplifying some things in my life so that I can focus more on working away at this album and getting it finished. By the end of the year, I should be back to having a lot more time for that again. Yay!

Since it's been three months since I last checked in, I figured I should post a little new music as well. On the one hand, I hate to dilute the impact of a new release by sharing too much in advance, but since I just have one or two new tracks on my player at a time spanned out over a year or more, most of the songs will be like new to you again when you get the album (unless your memory is better than mine!). The new song preview is "Rainy Day Angel," another rather dark and atmospheric piece, which most of them this time out seem to be!

It occurred to me that this is the first song on which I've played an actual bass guitar line instead of synth bass in a YEAR (well, apart from a few fretless bass melodic lines on the last few tracks here and there). Not sure how that happened, but I've broken the pattern, anyway. Last month, I switched to Spector basses, and I couldn't be happier with them. They have just the right mix of snarly aggressiveness and bottom end and, unlike the Bongo I was using late last year, they feel very comfortable for me to play as well. I used my Spector Euro 4LX on the new song.

In the synthesizer department, "Rainy Day Angel" also features the newest addition to my synth toolkit, Spectrasonics Omnipshere. Among other things, Omnisphere features a boatload of sounds sampled from classic '70s and '80s analog synthesizers like the old Moogs and Oberheims. You get a little taste of that, and roughly the other 50% of the sounds on this came from my long-running favorite synth, u-he Zebra.

Leaving aside the "techy" stuff, I've been seeing some common threads starting to emerge in the material and have been mulling over potential album titles and cover concepts in the back of my mind, but it's still too early for any decisions on that. I might just have to keep all that to myself and not spring it on you until the day the album is released. Always nice to keep some surprises for the end!



Okay, it's time to forge ahead and get back to recording some music. I'm sure I'll be talking to you guys again before the end of the year. Have a great Thanksgiving (for those in areas that celebrate it) and be good. Well, not too good...bad enough to have a little fun and good enough not to muck things up in your life, how's that?

Seeya soon!
DV

P.S. - You can drop by my website, www.davidvector.com or my Myspace page, www.myspace.com/davidvector, to hear the new preview.

"Compass" - Latest New Song Preview

Hey, my friends!

I'm sitting here having a cup of reheated coffee and feeling a little lethargic from the heat...I finally broke down and put the A/C on a few minutes ago. I guess I shouldn't complain - three or four months from now, that icy wind will be whipping off of Lake Huron as we head into another winter (but we don't want to hear that word just yet, do we?). Lacey (our Yorkie/Lab mix pooch) is laying next to Scott on the couch looking fairly dragged out too...she gets a haircut on Friday and must be burning up with that long fur, poor critter.

Anyway, on to the recording update...

The new song is called "Compass," and it's a little different from what I've been doing for the last two or three years. Whereas a lot of what I've done lately has been more groove-oriented and often danceable, this one is more of a "sit and listen" or "play it in the car" type of song. It harks back, just a bit, to the more progressive path I followed earlier on as a musician. I believe this is the first time I've strayed from 4/4 time since my Realty Show CD (and even there, I only did it for part of one song). Lately, I've kind of been revisiting some of what got me interested in music...listening to the kinds of albums that made me want to do this in the first place...looking at where I started and where I've gone since, thinking about what worked for me and what didn't. I guess it's no surprise that my little personal retrospective found its way into the lyrics on this one, which deal with how easy it can be in life to go off on various side roads and forget where the main road was!

On the more technical side, I'm pretty much over my briefly renewed flirtation with hardware synths and have come to find that software instruments work better for me after all. I've settled into Native Instruments Kontakt 3 as my main "axe" - you can use it as a straight sampler for drum and piano sounds and such, or you can get into some pretty deep sound design too - it covers a lot of sonic ground. I also made an interesting find a few days ago - a software synth called Sylenth that I think gets pretty sweet analog-style sounds. I wasn't expecting to be impressed, having become a little disenchanted with "virtual analogs," but it surprised me. I used it for the bass line on this song and a handful of other sounds too. Actually, all the synth sounds on this song are of the analog variety...I do love those warm, '70s style synthesizer sounds used by guys like Vangelis and Jean-Michel Jarre, and that's where I went with this one.

Time to quit babbling about the song and the toys used on it and just let you enjoy it, I guess! And it's also time to get off the computer and go climb into bed and try to find a movie to watch (it'll have to be a rerun, we don't have our new batch of Netflix yet). For my readers in the northern latitudes, enjoy the rest of the summer while it's still here. Talk to you soon! :-)

DV

New Song Preview - "Watch the Skies"

"Hellooooo......is anybody out there...?"
(I shouldn't say it too loud..."they" might hear me...)

A New Song for "Spooky"

I might have mentioned a time or two that I really enjoyed The X-Files. I watched at least 100 episodes over the winter, ordering up DVD's from Netflix (handy little service, that). With the new movie coming out in July, I suddenly got a weird notion to record a song inspired by the show. Since I've also been on a bit of a Thomas Dolby kick lately, I was in the right state of mind to do something more left-of-center (and maybe just a little bit nerdy).

Hence, "Watch the Skies," the latest song preview for the new project to roll off the hard drives and straight to your speakers, via the worldwide immediacy of the Net.

This song also sees me deviating a bit from the more dance-friendly track I'd been more or less following for a while. With its ebb and flow in and out of half time, it's more the kind of thing you sit and listen to. I have a feeling there's going to be more of that coming. It's good to have a few toe-tappers on an album and those kinds of songs do come in handy when playing clubs, but I like to poke into stranger corners sometimes too. Worrying about whether people will be able to dance to a song you're working on can be limiting...you shy away from doing things that would interrupt the groove too much, and may not do what you're naturally wanting to do with a given song, so it becomes a bit more contrived and not as instinctive and genuine.

Let's Play "Swap the Synths"

For those fascinated by the technical stuff, this song features a bit of the Waldorf synthesizers I mentioned in my last blog. But I actually just sold them both (aren't I fickle?) and replaced them with an Access Virus TI, which is also used on this song here and there. It wasn't that I didn't like the Waldorfs...the Virus is just way easier to use, since it interfaces more completely with the computer and can be totally controlled and programmed on screen - essentially, it's a hardware synth that behaves like software. In addition to those, there's also a bit of u-he Zebra 2 (my favorite software synth) on here too, using some new sounds from the Adam Van Baker collection.

"When Will We Get There?"

I've been asked more than once lately when the new album will be finished and released. Truth is, I don't know exactly. The past eight or ten months have thrown a lot of distractions my way which slowed me down, plus I've been going in a few different directions creatively. I've recorded enough new songs to fill an album, but they're a bit scattered style-wise and not all of them would hang together well on one CD, so not everything will make the cut. I suspect I'll probably keep cranking out some new ideas for a while yet, and with any luck, have something that feels cohesive and ready to roll out by the end of the year. It sounds like a plan, anyway!

I also need to find a little time here and there to enjoy some small part of the summer, before another one slips by. Damn, they go fast anymore. So on that note, it's time to get off the computer, have a small glass of Zinfandel, and chill out for a few.

See you on the mother ship....

DV