music, art, programming, nature

I finally put in the effort to finish my new track, A Lasting Peace. I initially aimed to create another trance tune, but I’m not entirely sure what I ended up with… you be the judge. For now, I think it’s safe to say it falls under the broader electronica genre.

I had every section of the piece nearly complete months ago, but struggled to chain them together while maintaining flow. Flow is a tricky thing. You make a tiny change and spend the next few minutes listening to the track to see if the change makes sense in the grand scheme of things. It’s a time consuming process – one that frustrates yet rewards. I finally fell back to my most trusted ingredient… the plain old piano. I really wanted one with a more electric tone, but I couldn’t reproduce the sounds playing in my head. I settled for a heavily-reverbed acoustic piano and improvised five or six takes until playing the one you hear in the piece.

Without further ado, A Lasting Peace (beta mp3). Enjoy!

The music from LA Burning Man Decompression fueled my recent obsession with trance. As an experiment, I’m creating a solid half hour of trance, which I hope to submit to di.fm. So far, Decompression puts me at seven minutes. I’m now working on a piece tentatively called A Lasting Peace. I drew most of my inspiration for it from DJ Tatana’s Spring Breeze (Martin Roth Summer Style Remix). Since I won’t have any time to work on it next week, I’m giving you a sneak peak of the work-in-progress. It clearly needs polish and compressor and gain adjustments, but I’ll save that for the final mix. Hope you enjoy it.

I don’t have a fancy studio with tons of audio gadgetry for music production. Mixers, drum machines, and control surfaces are nice to have, but current generation audio production software is so good you can get away with simply a computer and a program like Logic Pro or FL Studio. Here’s what I use.

1. Headphones. Sony MDR-7506 headphones offer rich bass and crisp treble, and its euphoric sonic explosions of awesomeness cause me to lose track of time. I’d use a nice set of stereo speakers, but my neighbors would probably object. Not bad for 90 bucks.

Sony MDR 7506 Headphones

2. Mic. I thought I’d experiment with vocals and sound effects after inspiration from BT’s Emotional Technology, but, alas, I haven’t really taken advantage of this AKG Perception 200. Without sound-proof walls, cars and planes make recording tricky. If possible, record in the middle of the night.

AKG Perception 200

3. Audio interface. The Creative Labs EMU 404 USB audio/MIDI interface replaced my archaic MIDI-to-gameport adapter. It has built-in phantom power and preamp for condenser mics and is OSX and Windows compatible.

EMU404 Audio/MIDI Interface

4. MIDI keyboard. I bought a Yamaha P200 about decade ago as a college freshman. I’ve used and abused it, even dropped it a few times, and yet, it endures. Really, though, all you need is any MIDI keyboard you can rock out on, regardless of price. The keys merely facilitate the transfer of notes from your head to the computer.

5. Software. I recommend Logic Studio ($500). It’s expensive, but loaded with features, most of which I will probably never even discover. The hundreds of built-in software instruments are stunning. At the moment, I’m using an older version. I can’t justify the $200 upgrade until I’m comfortable with more features.

Yamaha P200 & Computer

And that’s it. To stress the importance of the software, I was able to make Gaia on a weekend visit to my parents with only Logic Studio. You really don’t need much to get started. Go forth and create.