"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

Chemicals

"All my tubes and wires and careful notes...and antiquated notions..." - Thomas Dolby

Antiquated notions...like working my way back to preferring interesting arrangements and offbeat song ideas vs. trendy, danceable grooves...or returning to an interest in sampling and more vintage synthesizer sounds instead of the latest shiny gadget. Tubes and wires and the trappings of music technology. Random things to ponder over morning coffee flavored with "Cinnamon Bun" creamer that contains God knows what (chemicals).

I've changed things up at Vector Laboratories again. I finally decided to pony up the modest fee to upgrade my Native Instruments Kontakt software to version 3. Kontakt is largely viewed as a software sampler, but its architecture has become so extensive over the last few years that it offers a more potent set of sound design tools than most so-called "synthesizers." It's an amazing sonic "chemistry set" (more chemicals). You can take raw sonic materials and bend and twist and mix and process them in all sorts of cool ways.

In addition to the new sound design tools, Kontakt 3 also comes with an extensive sound library, and of course I gravitated straight to the synthesizer stuff. The real gems (for me) are the sounds sampled from classic Moog synths. I think this is the first time I've played a Minimoog bass or lead sound on a software instrument and actually found the sound completely satisfying, since the sounds are derived straight from the source. Those old, real analog synths just have a power and personality and "phatness" to them that you don't quite get with modern virtual analog synths (software or hardware). Before I knew it, I was digging into using some of those sounds as raw material for programming, and I started picking up some additional libraries for Kontakt to provide even more sonic material (yes, chemicals) to mix and match and transform.

As I was having more fun working with sound than I had in a while using Kontakt, I realized I hadn't even turned my Virus TI on in over a week. So I put it up for sale one evening and it sold and got shipped off the next day (gotta love eBay). To be honest, it's nice to have the hardware "clutter" gone and be back to a streamlined, efficient, software-only setup again. I took a bit of the money from the TI's sale and invested in some additional sound libraries for Kontakt, as well as a more compact 61-note controller keyboard that I could have right in front of me on my desk so I'm not having to reach in two directions constantly (my 88-note controller is too big for the desk).

So, with all that screwing around with equipment largely behind me now (I think), I'm happily working away on a new song. This one uses nothing but Kontakt so far, loaded up with some delicious old Moog and Oberheim analog synth sounds. I also have a sample library of PPG sounds on the way (sounds derived from a real PPG Wave 2.2, not the modern software emulation thereof), which might arrive in time to get used a bit on this song as well.

Now I'm done drinking my chemical-laced coffee and it's time to stop thinking out loud and get on with it. Say hello to Miss Sakamoto for me if you see her around...

DV