The Lakeside Bootlegs

Last year my brother and I started a tradition of taking off for a long weekend in May, just the boys. Our last foray was south and west to Oregon where we visited Portland and camped on the beach near Tillamook. It was a great trip, but this year we were looking for something with less driving. Our family has a rustic cabin in Gray Creek, BC that has the basics (electrical, fridge, stove, etc.) but excludes the comforts (tv, internet, even cell service is patchy in the area). This makes for a great relaxing time so we decided to head there for the weekend. The catch: We decided to transform the little cabin into a studio with our computers and recording software to spend an unprecedented 4 days experimenting with electronic tools. The following mp3s are some snippits of the tracks that were laid down in our ad hoc studio. » EVAPORATE (mp3) At first I had trouble with inspiration. The whole ‘staring at a blank canvas not sure what to paint’ thing. On the morning of day two I decided to dig up song I had written a few years ago but never recorded. I always liked the melody and thought it would be a good fit to some of the digital tools set before me. For the record this recording still has what I would consider a scratch vocal, but I like the textures, just need some punch in/outs to fix up some spots. » LAKESIDE REMIX (mp3) I have always liked some of the hip-hop artists that use beats that at first sound like they’re tripping and stumbling, but somehow they work them into a groove. I spent quite a bit of time just working this beat to get that effect, then added some melodic hooks and sounds for interest. It became clear that I also needed some lyrics, which I’ve never really written before for hip-hop, but after a bit I came up with something that could be considered placeholder for some real lyrics. I’ll have to get one of my hippidy-hop friends to write some like my pal Jesse from Paramedic could whip some up on the spot. » UNTITLED (mp3) This is the song Rob spent the last two days of his weekend working on. It’s an incredibly catchy electro-pop song complete with vocoder vocals. I keep catching myself humming the hook in my head. Download at your own risk. I love the way he has blended percussive electronic sounds with some real guitar and cymbal sounds. It is a rich textural experience that comes off very ‘up’ unlike my dirge-like emotional dredges. Also of note that we had a pretty good side-by-side comparison of Ableton Live and Logic 9 Studio. They both had their strengths, but both were definitely extremely competent platforms for recording. Ableton naturally leans towards putting together electronic music, storing loops and hooks for easy recall to put together in live situations. The Ableton interface comes off very utilitarian, but well organized and full of useful features. The Logic software is fancy, and polished, and everything has a beautiful skin. The guts are just as powerful as Ableton, but the interface seems to lend itself to more traditional recording environments. It makes it easy to automate your mix, add any number of software instruments from the library, or record your own and add effects from built in or external sources. Logic had a great drum sequencer that allowed for the creation of very complex beats, and everything could be run through a comprehensive synthesizer for processing one or all of the tones included. For those of you used to using GarageBand, this is a very worthwhile upgrade. Think of GarageBand but 100 times deeper and more powerful. For most people, either of these will be more software than anyone could need. This was not a paid advertisement for either… though we are open to sponsorship from Apple or Ableton 🙂 I’ll see if we can get a few more snippets together to post. Rock on!