Here’s a mix tape I made for my brother Jim for his birthday, June 3 2010.
We used to exchange audio cassette tapes, way back in the day, with some new music we had found or made. then we moved on to doing likewise with CDs. this is just like that only different.
I figured if I sent him a cd, the first thing he would do with it anyway would be to rip it to play on his iPod, so why not skip a step, and just send him a usb drive?
I decided to construct it as an album, even though there’s no need for that format anymore. Its just a convention.
If this were an album, the cover art would be this pic of Anita laughing from many years ago. I think the original photo was from back in her college days. Its so heavily processed I don’t even remember what I did to it, because even that was years ago, when I was playing around with some image processing software. I raised the contrast, tweaked the color palette and overlaid an image texture of water.
“Surface Interval” is a term from diving. After a certain amount of time at a certain depth, you are required to return to the surface to allow the nitrogen in your bloodstream to dissipate, or you will get the bends. I think in this case the thought works on several levels, if you know what I mean.

a remark you made

the first piece is “a remark you made” by Zawinul. when I first heard this, on weather report’s heavy weather album, it completely blew me away, and made me a fan for life. its evocative and unusual in a number of respects. the construction is odd, and the lead subtly shifts from one instrument to another. you might note the bass takes the lead at several points. this was actually the left hand of the piano part. I cut that envelope out of the midi event list and pasted it into a new instrument with a string bass sample. one of the horn sounds is an analog synth, the other is a sample shaped with some effects processing added. they make an interesting juxtaposition. this take is too slow and lacks percussion. I’ll probably redo it some day. what do you think?

devils hornpipe

this original is probably Anita’s favorite. the title reference comes from the dissonant minor reel played by the fiddle against the flute. I’m not sure if its technically a tritone being played there, but I had in mind the Diabolus in Musica. the theme is one of contrast of the sweet and the bitter. this is also one of my first experiments with drum loops, and as such its very elementary, without any variation in the percussion track except for stopping and starting.

for monica

this is probably my most complex composition, but don’t ask me to play it, because I can’t. its based on something that just kind of came out of me one day after work. yeah, just like that. it happens from time to time, and its always a mystery: where did that come from? the piano is the Bösendorfer 290 sample from these maniacs at EastWest sound. insane, isn’t it? an instrument that good practically plays itself sometimes. I guess that’s what happened here.
this piece has the form it does because one time I took a break from work to have lunch with Monica downtown. it was a nice day, and we sat outside. I asked her what she was studying. we talked about the sonata form, and I took it into my mind to treat this riff as a theme and cut and paste it into something resembling sonata form, using ProTools, which she had given me previously.
I cut out some of the excesses, added a recapitulation and even fixed a couple of flubs. you can get an idea of all the cuts and edits in this thing by looking at the playlist:

if you look closely, you can also see something else: I had drawn her initial ‘M’ in the dynamics at a couple of points. you don’t really hear it at a conscious level, but it gives an interesting dynamic modulation that I think helps out in those places.

heres that rainy day

of course Jim suggested this song to me, and afterward I happened to find it in an old songbook we had laying around. coincidence? I think not. I don’t recall ever actually hearing this piece played or sung, although it seems to have been covered a hundred times. this interpretation is strictly from the page.

dry lightning

this cover of an obscure springsteen tune, is kind of a study in how far you can go using high tech means to simulate low fidelity sounds. the organ is a digital additive synth simulating an old b-3 complete with the pull stops and leslie rotary.
the guitar track is crisped using an emu 0404 and compressed using a software simulation of a thing called a tube compressor

I bought the 0404 on a whim, it was very reasonable, and I have found its effects processing capabilities to be stellar. it has this custom chip in there that does the work in hardware and the data paths are so clean, its amazing. but you won’t be able to detect any of that here, as the whole thing is fed through a crunch amp and a crackly speaker simulator. ironic, isn’t it?

remembering bill evans

this little piece is an experiment I did using white noise to try to simulate a brush snare.
I had in mind the classic bill evans from the miles davis quintet kind of blue era. but it came out as maybe the later bill evans from conversations with myself. if you haven’t heard either of these moose booms, stop what you’re doing right now and go out and listen to them. you will not be the same afterward.

the elysium theory

this original composition is kind of a train wreck. sorry. the very complex analog pad and horn solo are both done on the alesis qs8. the qs8 is probably about as far as an analog synth can go. it can generate some sounds that are warmer and more natural sounding even than some of the best samples. the twitchy triphop drum track is a download from looperman.com that I hashed even further. if you listen closely, you might hear the drum track echoing out of phase through the audio channel. oops. but I found I kind of liked the effect, and tried to work with it.

the great gazoo

this last undoctored improvisation brought to mind a magician, like a sad clown in a suit doing tricks, or a dream I might have had, being a metaphor about work. I don’ t know.
the title is a reference to a stream of thought from earlier that day that I had in my mind as I was playing. someone had made a remark that made me think of fred flintstone, with angel fred and devil fred on his shoulders giving him advice. and that made me think of that little martian character they introduced in their last season. I later looked him up. the character’s name was the great gazoo. and he had a really sad story. he had invented a doomsday button. just for the fun of it, no one was ever actually supposed to press the button. the other scientists from the future were so outraged at his carelessness that they banished him back to the stone age. I thought, what a tragic and lonely figure he would be. and what a weird plot line for a kid’s show in the 60’s.