Saturday 11 September 2004

A plug for some good music.

Writing about music is like dancing about architecture, so I shan't bother. And why would you need my vague and useless descriptions when you can listen to it and make up your own mind free of charge?

The song is called Condiment, improbably. It's by Squander Pilots. I co-wrote it and programmed all the drums and keyboards on it and produced it. Then Gum and their friendly engineer at Invocations remixed it rather brilliantly.

This is the link to the MP3. Click or right-click or whatever to download. Enjoy, and do please feel free to comment.

3 comments:

PooterGeek said...

It's not my sort of thing, but I enjoyed it anyway. That's high praise coming from me. What hardware/software do you use? (You can reply privately if you don't want to bore everyone else silly.)

Squander Two said...

Hey, if I didn't want to bore people, I wouldn't be blogging.

By the standards of bands who make the sort of music we make, we're pretty low-tech. I don't like software sequencers, so I use a Yamaha RM1x hardware sequencer, which is the bee's knees. It's great for playing live, 'cause you can improvise with it to a great extent. I have a Yamaha MU15 sound module plugged into it for extra sounds: it's one of those cheap modules the size of a VHS cassette than any proper techno kid looks down their nose at, but I love it. Using a Samson Mixpad mixing desk and a Zoom Studio 1204 effects unit, with the returning effects signal plugged into one of the desk's input channels rather than the effects return so that I can get effects feedback when I want it, especially on delays. Donna's microphone was a Sennheiser, I think, going through a JoeMeek VC3Q compressor/pre-amp. I use an Alesis NanoCompressor too, which is dirt cheap but very very nice. Alun uses a cheap but nice Telecaster copy going through a Zoom multi FX pedal and a wah and maybe sometimes a phaser or a trem. Recorded on an iMac (one of the old ones that looks like an airplane's nose) using eMagic MicroLogic AV, the most basic of the Logic apps but fine for our purposes. I've got a fine bunch of VST plugins that have one thing in common: they're all free to download. I particularly recommend the Prosoniq Northpole resonant filter, which I use a lot. Didn't use any proper digital-audio interfaces: just plugged everthing straight into the iMac's audio input jack.

I suspect that Gum and Invocations used a hell of a lot more technology remixing it than we did recording it. They added the string section, which sounds like expensive software to me, and they did something or other to the vocals.

Gary said...

Invocations has cubase (SX?) running on PCs, with lots of plugins such as SampleTank and various outboard stuff.