Not A Blog™

[Continued from Friday]

The continuing saga of my compositional history continues. Today encompasses the period of music largely written in college. By now, I was comfortable in FruityLoops, my mixing improved, and the quality went up. This period I call the Midnight Fugue Era—after the song by the same name which I consider to be the epitome of this time. At one point, I had an album planned, which also would have been called Midnight Fugue, but I never quite got around to finishing enough songs that I liked to actually make the album. If I do anything now, it’s probably going to be altogether different from the stuff that’s here, seeing as how I have different software and my tastes have changed, so the Midnight Fugue album—if such a thing every had a chance—is no longer in the works.

Again, these are listed in alphabetical order for my convenience.

Alpha Wave 5.9mb

This was my attempt at imitating 80’s dance sounds, as might be heard from Information Society or Dead or Alive. I think I was actually successful in this. The galloping bass works, but I particularly like the delayed bass that is introduced at 0:42 and comes back throughout the song. It’s a little rough around the edges—some quality I can’t put my finger on. It’s possible that the leads are just too loud or harsh. But other than that, I like it.

Conquest of the Stars 7.8mb

This song was my downfall for quite some time. As I mentioned in the past, it just “came out of me”—I don’t know how else to describe it. The song just wrote itself. It single-handedly destroyed my belief in myself to write any more music, and it was about a year after I finished this that I even tried to take on another song. Eventually I got past it and did write some better songs, such as Midnight Fugue and Not of This Earth, but it took quite a while.

It’s very orchestral in tone—which is a reoccurring theme for me during this time. I’ve always been fascinated with the ways a conductor can structure an orchestra, and as I got better at FL, I started to try to emulate that electronically. This is still my goal today. If there is one complaint I have about this song, it’s that the techno drums are really not necessary at all—and, in fact, they take a lot away. I really wish I had saved this project so I could do a rendering without them. I think it would be much stronger. I also had a hard time with the ending, and it just sort of dies. Despite these shortcomings, it’s still a very emotional piece for me.

Cosmodrome 4.3mb

This is the first song I consider to be part of this time period. You can certainly tell how it straddles the older Einstein’s Conspiracy style, and the Midnight Fugue style. There’s nothing particularly wrong with it, but it doesn’t jump out at me, either. It’s a little repetitive for its length, but mostly it’s just a mediocre song.

Flight 10.3mb

There’s a funny story behind this song. Apparently it’s been passed around on the web, and was on YouTube at one point, before they cleaned house following a DMCA crackdown in 2006. While it was still online, one of my brother’s online friends found it, without realizing that the guy who wrote it was her friend’s brother. It was interesting when that came to light.

When I wrote this song, I liked it quite a bit, but I tended to downplay it because I didn’t think it was my best work. Over the years, though, this song has really grown on me, and now I think it’s one of my favorites in the list. It’s one of the few that I will actively seek out on my iPod, depending on my mood. It’s structured a little bit differently from “standard” songs. It has three main themes which switch off and intermix. Three seems to be a good number, because while they’re all basically the same each time they come up, the song is varied enough that—despite it being the longest song on the list—it doesn’t get boring.

Infiltrate 5.3mb

This is one of the two songs (the other being Strung Mutation) that I tried to write after Conquest of the Stars. Neither are my best work, but they’re not as bad as I thought before. The drum break in this one is weak. (Speaking of which, what is with me and weak drum breaks? You would think they’d be better, seeing as how I played drums for like eight years.) A few of the parts, such as the high melodies over a rumbling bass, sound pretty good. Not as punchy as it could be, perhaps, but a decent track.

Midnight Fugue 7.2mb

Now we’re getting to the good stuff. This track was originally written and named Midnight Fugue, without the associated production in mind. After we shot Midnight Fugue the short, I recut a one-minute version of this song to back the movie with. This is the original.

I don’t know what I did differently in this song vis à vis most of the others on the list. It’s really hard to pin down, but this one has some sort of extra quality that imbues it with life. The next one on the list, Not of This Earth is the same way. Needless to say, this is one of my favorites.

Not of This Earth 5.2mb

I like the way this one opens up at the beginning. I also like pretty much everything else about this song. The only thing that bothers me is that I think one of the pad sweeps gets too harsh. It cuts off right at the instant before it starts to make your ears bleed. I should have pulled it back before that point. Other than that, another favorite.

Not Quite Orchestral 1.2mb

This was written specifically as the background track for The TTT Presents: One Minute. The title comes from the fact that my first attempt was all orchestral, but it didn’t sound very good—but also, it didn’t fit the tone of the video. This one, being more techno-ish, worked much better. Since it’s more techno and less orchestral, it’s Not Quite Orchestral.

It’s only a minute, and it’s structured to match the action scenes and allow dialogue to fit, so it’s not really a song in the same sense that the rest of these are. For what it is, though, and the purpose it fulfills, I think it worked well.

Puzzled 4.2mb

The idea behind this song was that it was supposed to sound like the music for an old video game, like Marble Madness. In that respect, it was successful. As an actual song, however? I think it’s a little rough to listen to. It has some nice interplay between the melodies, harmonies and bass at some parts, but it’s unrefined. For what it’s worth, I’ve had a few people tell me this is one of their favorites. I suppose it depends on how much time you spent playing old-school video games.

Stab Fest 1.2mb

This is the Jam Session of the Midnight Fugue era. It’s a little sketch of a song, written in the style of the techno opera from The Fifth Element, without the opera part. It’s that orchestra hit. In the same way the slap bass had me enamored for a few months, so too was I obsessed with this orchestra hit for a spell. I had to write this to get it out of my system.

Strung Mutation 6.1mb

This is probably my least favorite song in the list. I never even bothered to give it a decent title. The name comes from the filename I gave it, based on the fact that the opening riff is played with some sort of stringed instrument that mutates in tone. The song itself actually sounds like the way I felt while trying to write it. I was kind of mad and depressed with myself for not being able to write music following the completion of Conquest. That manifested itself in these muddy, depressing bass lines which just plod around for a few minutes until I decided that enough was enough, and ended the song.

In fairness, as I’m sitting here listening to it now (not really—I either pause the track or wait until the end to write), it’s greatly improved from the mess that I remembered. Sure, it’s melancholy, but it works as a song. If you need to listen to something that starts glum, but grows hopeful by the end, this might be your track.

You Can’t Get There from Here 5.1mb

This song sounds great in headphones, but terrible on speakers. Aside from this, I really like it. It sets up a dark and moody techno atmosphere. The chorus is especially haunting. It’s also more orchestral than a lot of the earlier stuff, mixing different textures of instruments to achieve effect. I’m happy with it.

So where am I going from here? Well, I’ve only written a handful of songs since I graduated college and started the Not A Blog™. Part of it is time. I’ve got less of it free than in the past. Part of it is new software. I don’t have FruityLoops anymore, and I’m not very familiar with Reason. And part of it is inspiration. I’ve been listening to a lot of really fantastic music lately. The kind that makes me think, wow, if I were even one-tenth as good as these guys, I could just do that and retire.

Case in point: I finally bought Two Bit Pie’s album, Two Pie Island. They’re basically a direct offshoot from Fluke, but Two Pie Island has a number of guest artists who each have their own track. It’s harder than most of Fluke—somewhere between Fluke and Nine Inch Nails, I’d say. Anyway, it’s excellent—and it’s despiring. I need to go listen to some bad music, in order that I might be compelled to do a better job.

Since I’ve learned some piano, and I’ve been playing more and more with the theremin, and I’ve written a few tracks that are orchestral in nature, I’m clearly moving towards a more traditional sound. That said, I still like the harder electronic sound every now and again. I’m really interested in writing music that combines the two. My goal, at this point, is not ambitious—I just want to get one more new song done by the end of the year. But I want to try this orchestra-techno mix. If it works, that will probably be the direction I head.

-Ted