Archive for the ‘Ableton Live’ Category

The last time I was alone in a bedroom of a 21 year old boy was:

a) 1919

b) 1987

c)June 12, 2008

If you guessed c, you are correct!!!!! (Thanks out to Eric The Whale).

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More Music this week. The sad, and thusly well-received

Big Sky (Abandoned Mix) ft Neurowaxx & DJ Chronos

Finding yet another beautiful guitar piece in the rich archives of ccmixter’s sample pool, this one from Neurowaxx, a piece I found very evocative, lonely, and that had that sort of dusty, old Wetsern movie type of feel.

 

 

And also the discovery of a new musician (Paul, aka ambtax1)employing the lyrics for Pscionic Daydream in a cool new way. This guy is a ‘tracker’, a term that is new to me, but not to the world. He is using older, coder technology to produce his tracks, instead of wave patterns he works with numeric chains, sequencers and his tracks are laid in monophonic channels. All in all, it is a much more technological type of music interfacing than Ableton, but we all end up with musical pieces in the end. Just the approach that is different.

Ambtax1 Beautiful (ft Kaer Trouz)

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photo credit: charlesdyer

I made a record in 18 days. I am calling it Kenavo, which means goodbye in Breton. (If you would like to download it, the zip file, with artwork etc., is available now in the side bar.

It’s strange to not be under gun of finishing, but I want to make music- more. So I have two collaboration projects in the works, my third with dittoditto, also a new one born inside ccmixter, with fireproof babies .

I am also now putting the link for all my creative commons work in the sidebar, and from now on only posting originals here.

I am also struggling with the idea of opening a virtual music store, to try and sell some a capellas, and songs, and maybe other musicians’ works I appreciate, but I am not ready to make this a business, yet anyway. Someday soon, maybe. But not today.

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Click To Play

 

Here is where the creative commons, ‘free to use you and me’ attribution stuff gets tricky. Above is a video from Blip TV which employs a remix of

P.P.G (I Heart Nittso Kaer Trouz Remix)-ft Nittso, Brilliant Orange Object, Nurykabe & Klaus Neumaier

done by Darkroom. Darkroom has done many interesting things with some of my vocals, especially his remix of Breaking Apart, Sous Bois, which I posted previously. There is also another version of this vocal done by scmixer who lives in Argentina. His sounds like this:

I Don’t Believe You (scmixer overload mix)

 

Now, so see I am in South America and have helped provide the soundtrack on a short film. My resume is ever growing.

 

 

I have also purchased some AWESOME powered speaker monitors (thank you M.D for your advice), M-Audio Bx5as, $218 new off ebay including shipping. My life has now become a singular quest to EQ correctly, so much so that last night I was equalizing in my dream, trying to get the sound just right. I discovered too, that I was able to access the 31 band AU equalizer from garageband on ableton live, and it is a pretty good tool. Although 31 points to slide up and down is a little daunting. Not to mention dangerous for me.

Jaspertine who I have mentioned before, and whose loops and remixes I have utilized many times, he and I have almost completed a collaboration project. It is pretty cool, but too dissonant for the tender ears of the boys in the house here, but what do they know? I will post it when it is ready.I am working on a new remix about someone who jumps off a train platform and is killed by the el. Uplifting material. Always.

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Is it that I will come out on the other side, on February 4th, as someone explained to me the other night? Who knows…. Holidays over. Good. Warm ridiculously windy day. Clear light, aprons and hope. What more can I ask?
Philippe (aka ditto ditto) has done a brilliant job of (not really re-mixing but truly composing) a terrible and sloppy cello/guitar loop I sent him, on which after he worked for about one million hours and here ’tis.
Also another super poppy, percussively driven one from me,
and clever Jave who managed to span a couple different decades of sound (including a cool Tones on Tail reference) in his four part lab series which is definitely worth downloading/walking around the loneliness/driving to.

As for the vertical split, all I can say it, I am one and the other. I am trying to take it straight, this confusing life. Mornings are early again….

Rosehill Cemetery (Raincoat Mix, by ditto ditto, featuring Kaer Trouz, plagasul, Wicked Boy, Solace & han 1)

lab sound (part 4) Jaspertine (featuring Kaer trouz)

My Apocalypse Now (Vertical Split Mix) -Kaer Trouz (featuring Jaspertine & Nurykabe)

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Rain Lament (Jaspertine Triste Mix)

 

If there was been one complaint about my music, across the boards, it had been about the drum choices. I happen to love a noisy, white wall cacaphony, but apparently it is not for everyone. I must now need to mention here, ditto ditto (aka Philippe) from just outside of Paris, with his fine ear and sensitivity for subtle sounds. We have been working globally together, on a few projects. The piece is called “Tell us your secret Kaer Trouz” you can listen by following this link , and if you want to download the acapella, you can by creating an account with CCmixter. I have been working hard to understand my new microphone, which like a new friend,must be worked out. Here is a screen shot of all the lines I must draw around my voice, in order to make it. The pink lines represent the manual drawing I did, which , on this particular piece, took 25 minutes. The black lines are my voice.

November sometimes hits me like a locomotive, I love autumn, the chilly hubris, damp smoke and fresh rot, the ways the trees look like stark brooms, jutting into the sky. I have been wanting for a while to do a piece without drums, and found some brilliant guitar samples from Jaspertine on CCmixter, as well as a realistically recorded thunderstorm from RHumphries, and another spare ambient industrial loop from dropthedyle, who may be my favorite Belgian scary noise maker of all time (if one were to have such a favorite).

Lastly, SAM is packing up a truck in Washington DC, and will be in Chicago on Sunday, and after a month of many email & file exchanges, plus a disturbing amount of IM exchanges, we will finally start our project, which I am over the moon about. Stay tuned….

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Once upon a time, in a rainy city, where I cut my adulthood teeth, things were a little rockier. Music-wise. Hard was good, emo hadn’t made its mark, and Ben Gibbert, in his Death Cab, had not delivered his first quiet, emotional line. Well he may have but no-one was yet listening.
I have been thinking about a laundry list of collaborators, some of whom have been good and other terrible.

In college I was in a little jazzy trio, our drummer so high on marijuana that he often played lying down on his bed, because we practised in his apartment.

Then there was a terrible chain of events that caused me to be in a basement with three very foul men, and the one called Bob was very cranky. There too, a lazy drummer who would sometimes simply forget to drum, slow down and speed up at will, and whose haggard wife did not enjoy our noisy nightmare underneath her floor boards. The ‘insulation’ consisted of a couple of egg cartons, randomly stapled to the ceiling. I could hardly blame her as she scowled at us when we left.

After this, I was the singer in a band called Rat King and another called Strega. Fantastic drummer (girl, the same girl) for both. She pounded the hell out of the drums and her idol was Scott Asheton Enough said.

She was also a crazy guitar player who loved the wah pedal and played clarinet. Both were hard rock bands that involved Marshall Stacks, blown out PA systems and fights. Our bassist was exported back to Manchester after kicking someone’s head in with his steel-toed boot, and rendering him eyeless. It was strange, because we had all known each other by then for 5 years, the two of them were roommates.

After this, I became pregnant, and tapered off from these loud, crazy, jam fests of hate and joy. I became the lonely piano player, a Tascam four track cassette recorder (the very same model on which Bruce Springsteen’s seminal ‘Nebraska’ was recorded), a baby crawling around, an old sure SM 58 microphone, which I still have and always use. It is a great microphone, despite its many trips to the floor, dents, and indelible spreads of dark red lipstick, when it was fashionable to wear (and now it is again) in the 1990s.

Music has changed. I am sitting on an mp3 file now, from someone in Belgium, about to voice some new lyrics for him. I am helping the talented James Mullan from Bedfordshire, England, record an alternate demo of a very pretty song. Four years ago, when I started arranging digital music, I came up with a name, Kaer Trouz, which meant beautiful noise in Breton, an ancient language of Celtic origins, with a Gallic twist. Kaer is fading into the background though now too although she will remain a singer, and I am emerging, Shebnem, my real name. A new collaboration sits in the western skies, and very soon I will tell about it. This involves a very good drummer. A very smart, good drummer.

On an unrelated note, one of the loopermen(call DJ S1N), from looperman, put forth a series of tracks requesting vocals. I downloaded some of them, and one really called “Into The Darkness” really caught my attention- a raw hypnotic, industrial sounding track. I put a hard, carnal vocal track over this. DJ S1N was not over the moon about it, but allowed me to post it here. This is NOT appropriate for work, or those easily offended by cursing. Just so you know.

Into The Darkness, DJ S1N, Vocals by Kaer Trouz

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The Sky’s Pavane

I think everyone secretly wants to be a

Lisa Hannigan . She is the quiet, beautiful, tiny & ethereal singer who does did backing vocals for Damien Rice. Sometimes she sings so softly she’s like a cloud. I admire her, her former complicity with Mr. Rice and the lovely things they do did, but I am no Lisa Hannigan.

The good news is- more people are listening! Check this out- yup more people outside listening to me. Conscious this time. Unfortunately, they started urinating near my Volvo and I called the non-emergency police when they solicited money from me as I was taking a break from music to change the laundry. Honestly, shouldn’t they have been paying me?

My new song, The Sky’s Pavane was very difficult to execute. I was messing around with the warping functions of Ableton Live which only took me nine months to figure out! If you are unfamiliar with this program, it is the one that Blake Lewis, American Idol 2007 runner-up and beat-boxer of the masses, gave a shout-out to when asked where he came up with his original interpretation of “You Give Love a Bad Name” by Bon Jovi. Ableton is a great program although I have never tried to arrange a Bon Jovi cover on it. But I did do the Pavane at the top of the post, employing a few cool free loops from looperman’s excellent website, some analog drum kits and original midi lines for cello & piano. A Pavane is an old Italian dance from days gone by. I continue to struggle with mastering and compression, but it’s getting better, I think.

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