Dead Parakeet

I do continue to work on stuff for the upcoming album by "The Mush Orchestra". This tune is just another electronica number, a bit less ambient and a bit more pop. The video is just a few random shots of the subway here in Copenhagen. This song features non of the slicing techniques that I've been describing earlier on this blog. Actually it features no slicing at all whatsoever, I always try to work in different ways to keep from getting caught in creative circles.

In other news. The tune in the last post (Modus Operandi) has been reworked a bit adding another minute of music for being the soundtrack to a internal presentation for the Danish fashion label Rosemunde. The version below however is the one that will be on the album, although just a bit refined.

Modus Operandi

Work, work, work... The last couple of weeks been busy. I managed to get 15 tracks done for a video-production company and have been working on the "Nowhere to be and all day to get there"-album by The Mush Orchestra. I have also redesigned the website for KUF Records and prepared a graphic profile for the noise lab. And as we are heading into summer I have taken up on the habit of reading novels.

Anyway, the thing I share today is a tune from the album I'm working on and a video from a recent trip I did to Amsterdam. The music is produced using some of the techniques mentioned here earlier. And BTW, it is my first ever youtube-clip!

I hope you'll enjoy it.

Even more rhythmic FX

I am currently working on numberous things. One of them is a new version of the album "Back at Square One" (iTunes / Spotify). The new version will be named "Let's face it, the square's gone" and is a total overhaul of all 13 tracks. The one I'm working on now is called "A New Home" and is originally called "A Home" (iTunes / Spotify). This is the most popular track from the album according to websales and Spotify-statistics. So I wanted to make it different while still putting the story from the lyrics in the center.

Well, the original was a piano-piece with some cellos and lots of room for vocals. On the new version I dropped the piano, got some old beatbox-rhythm and a nice bassline on it. I also added some pads and noises - and finally the element that is so hard to get right - sampled digital-style choirs. I'm gonna show you two examples below of it.

First up is a progression on the track that features the raw sound of this choir in the mix:
(The choir is way up in amplitude compared to the final mix)

A new home - Unprocessed by Copenhagen Noise Lab

And here's the same progression but with some guitar-amp modelling and tremolo-FX on, it makes quite a big change to the track (IMO):
(The choir is way up in amplitude compared to the final mix)

A new home - Processed by Copenhagen Noise Lab

I hope you enjoy it. I sure love this track and I think the new arrangement gives it a whole new life.

(BTW, as some of you may have noticed I changed the top-image of this blog as I finally gotten time to design a logotype for CNL.)

Shit in - Shit out?!

I often find myself working in different ways. The other day I was lying on the couch with my girlfriend and noodled around on an acoustic guitar while she watched tv. I found an idea for a kind of "bossanova" chord structure and recorded it on a cheap field-recorder just to remember it. Anyway. When I started to work on it in the studio I started to sketch with the recording I had and managed to get it interesting enough to keep in the final tune. Eventhough the guitar-track I had sounded like crap I used some eq, delay and filter to cover it up. And after I sliced it up in Logic to put it in rhythm with everything else it started to sound rather nice.

The example below is first the guitar recording I had and then part of the song it is used in. The tune btw, is for the next album released under my own name "Rasmus Nyåker" and will feature some female vocals before it is done.

Guitar-CutUp-Example by Copenhagen Noise Lab

Rhythmic Processing

Right now I'm working on a tune that is supposed to be the first track on an album called "Nowhere to be and all day to get there" under the name "The Mush Orchestra". It is quite a huge ambient piece as the first sketch arrangements are only of the first half and around 7-8 minutes. So the final tune will be around 16 minutes I guess...

Anyway. I had a hard time getting a piano-part to sit well with the rest of the tune so I felt it needed some processing. To keep the nice harmonics and dynamics intact I decided to slice up a reverb I had put on a AUX-send instead of processing the piano itself. So I used a 100% wet-signal and put it out through my Boss SL-20 stompbox. I could have used my Nord Modular G2 for the same task, but I like to play with dedicated boxes once in a while as it is easier to try out multiple settings fast. It worked out pretty good and I also added some ambience noises I recorded through an open window in the studio and on top of that a bassline I made with the Studio-Electronics ATC-1 and a beatbox loop made with the Elektron Machinedrum-UW. What you hear in this example is the piano in its original recording first and after 8 measures I let you see the result of this processing.

Enjoy!

Piano-ReverbSlicing-Example by Copenhagen Noise Lab