Sunday

[Slackmaster2K]

Just something I whipped up last night. Some religious people might be slightly offended, but it's not that bad. It has *very loose* ties to the recent events in washington and new york, but it is NOT DIRECTLY RELATED and under no circumstances am I trying to downplay or make fun of recent events.

Download "Sunday" from http://www.slackmaster2000.com

Fruity loops all the way. I'm seriously thinking about getting Acid because fruity is not very capable when it comes to working with large loop-based projects. I think that this is the first thing I've done that doesn't contain a single live instrument. Although the quotes were taken using a V67 next to the TV.


(BTW, my redirection service sometimes times out. If so, try http://www.thesoggybiscuit.com/~sm2k . If both time out, it's my web host...just wait a while and reload. I'm getting DSL here in a month and will be running my own web server at that time, thankfully. Also, the 64kbps link, which should actually read 28kbps, doesn't work right now either)

Slackmaster 2000

 

[dobro]

Jesus is coming
And he's gonna punch *his* lights out in 60 minutes

Slack I think you've stumbled onto something bigtime here. I really like this piece, and one of the things I like best about it is that different people would hear it completely differently. There's no commentary, no clues except your own intelligence.

You could do more of this - do a series.

I like the music a lot. I downloaded Fruity Loops last night and farted around with it for a while, and thought 'I don't like these sounds much', but I really like the sounds you've come up with here. What are the limitations of the program? How'd you nab the samples?

If you've been following the threads in the Cave, you'll have read the one that talks about how some televangelists blamed America's sinful ways for bringing on last week's attack. When all along the poor buggers don't realize that they're the ones to blame.

Good good stuff. Good work dude. Good dudework. Godwudedorko.

 

[Slackmaster2K]

Thanks dobro. I just had to create something last night. I haven't been doing anything at all for weeks. First I had some kind of strange eye infection that caused me to get motion sickness whenever I would look at a computer screen or try to read. Then my stupid rib fell off again just like last year. Only difference is that this year I couldn't afford a chiropractor (or didn't want to?) so i just sorta toughed it out. Then with the recent events I've spent the past 6 days either watching the news or watching really silly horror movies to forget about the news.

Anyhow, fruity loops is fine for creating small loops. It's not great for creating entire songs out of loops however. The samples I used in this song were the samples included with fruity loops. You're right, they don't sound that great by themselves, but most of them are quite usable once you get your groove on The trick is to use fruity loops' great tools for mucking with sounds very easily. I used pitch shifting and resonance on a lot of the samples, both on a static and per-beat basis to get them to sound cool. I also combined multiple samples....like the timphony at the end is combined with a really low kick sample that I tweeked.

The problem with fruity loops is that it locks you into static patterns because managing a large number of patterns is very difficult to do in its loop editor.

I'd like to find some software that uses patterns, but allows you to edit the individual beats of individual INSTANCES of each pattern. Now that would be power. I'm thinking that Fruity Loops + Acid would be a good solution, because Acid looks and feels more like a multitracker, and it's more freeform. You could create many patterns in Fruity and manage them easily with Acid...although all the switching back and forth would be a pain.

The sound bites are from the religious channel. It's the kind of stuff you can hear at any given time. I just put a mic by the TV and let it go for 30 minutes, then pulled out the clips that worked. Some are taken out of context, like the mall statement was actually "If these people think that we're going to stop going to the mall, and stop enjoying our freedom, then they've got another thing coming" or something like that.

I've got more plans for this sort of thing. There are some crazier shows on that channel that I'd like to get some clips from. I'm thinking about mixing them with clips from the teletubbies. The sounds in that teletubbies show are mega freaky....innocence and freakiness are an interesting combination. Combine that with fanatacism and....we'll see.

The "when I grow up I want to be a rock star" is a quote from my step son. I stuck it in there for perspective. I wish that I had been able to record what he said to prompt me to record him. He was watching me work on this or something and said something like "mommy, I'm thinking about becoming a rock star when I grow up. but if I don't have a lot of money, then I'll just work at the junk yard."

Slackmaster 2000

 

[Jags]

Really well put together, excellent use of loops. I have to say I laughed out loud at the 'george bush's wisdom' quote, absolute classic. The song had a really nice depth to it. Well done.

Jags

We should be wary of ALL religious fanatics.

 

[Slackmaster2K]

Thanks for listening Jags, and I agree

Slackmaster 2000

 

[drstawl]

Cute placement of some humorous quotes/misquotes aside, that was a nice job of blending that bass riff with the voice-unders. Any pretreatment to the voice cuts, wave edit wise?
TVLand always has some cool sound-bites that can evoke a lot of emotion and double meanings. Like The guy who played Batman on TV (Adam West) saying, "Life's too short to watch crap." Barney Fife sounding off with, "Nip it in the Bud!" or Gomer Pyle: "Shazamm!"

 

[Slackmaster2K]

Thanks doc.

I really didn't do anything to to voice quotes at all. I was suprised at how good they sounded for just throwing a mic in front of the TV.....I guess they sound like a TV, which was desirable.

I guess I did put some effect on "the devil did it" line, and then the weird voice right after that line is "the devil did it" backwards and slowed down. The effect was actually a stereo effect, but the mp3 you listened to is mono. Oops on my part. Still sounds about the same.

Slackmaster 2000

 

[Gidge]

That was too short!....very clever and quite entertaining.....that clip about praying for wisdom for Bush, all I kept picturing was Bush's face during their press conference this afternoon with the French President(or whatever they call him)and the guy started speaking French....I think it took a while before Bush figured out he wasnt speaking English...

Im not "religious", I just believe in God, so Im not offended.....Im pro-Bush and still not offended.....you cant help but find the entertainment value of this....

Definitely make it longer.....if you could get clips of Jimmy Swaggart preaching the evils of sins and then cut to a clip of him being arrested for solicitng a prostitute....or similar before/after clips of Jim Baker.....and that guy that said God would take him if he didnt raise more $$.....

funny as hell...want more....Acid will definitely help you out with those issues you pointed out....I picked up a copy of 2.0 for free for GC last year (it was $49 with a $50 rebate).....

 

[Emeric]

This is damn cool Slack. Like the way you line things up rhythmically. Good for fruity loops, that takes so much time tweaking that stuff. A little more reverb on some of the percusive samples here and there might make it a little less dry sounding and add some depth.

Nice job.

 

[Slackmaster2K]

Gidge, thanks for listening. Funny thing about this one...it's like 4 minutes long, but it does feel kinda short. I think I spent too much time in the build-up sections of the song, and not enough time driving it home or letting it end peacefully.

Emeric, I never really thought about adding reverb to these techy samples. I might have to try that, because I do agree that there are some parts where it's just too sparse. I was kind of lazy on this one, and "mixed" it in Fruity Loops. Normally I would have exported each instrument to an individual wave, and then mixed them in n-Track.

Request to all drum software makers: a function that automatically exports individual *normalized* tracks would kick ass. Manual exporting 20 times can be a real drag.

Slackmaster 2000