The work never stops....

Now that the Aetherius keyboard tracks are done (give or take two solos), I can now focus on my own, personal music. I'm still in the process of mixing ThisIsNotASubliminalMessage which should be done by the end of this week. At the latest, Monday night. I have to turn it in for the Music Synthes Senior Showcase which will be next Wednesday, December 9th (one day after my birthday, yay!) The mix is about half way done, and I'd say about another 6-8 hours is all I need to finish it up, or at least get listenable for the Showcase.

I had to put Michael Silva's screamo stuff on the side for right now to focus on my 3 song demo, but he's pretty cool and his songs aren't near done anyway. He gave them to me early knowing that I'd have to get to them eventually.

I'm currently working on a song with a working title of Cosmic Furnace. Why Cosmic Furnace?

.....

shutup

.....

Anyway, Josh is helping me out with the lyrics and he's done a pretty good job with them. The song is finally written, but the bad news is I won't have time to track live drums. I'll have to stick with either DFH or Battery (haven't decided yet). I'm hoping Nick can do guitars again because he's such a solid guitar player. Anybody who can play ThisIsNotASubliminalMessage is good enough to use on anything. So we'll see. He's going through some stuff at his job and he might even go on tour, so he might have other stuff in mind.

So aside from the small drum details I need to fix now that I'm not using a real drummer, the lyrics and the music are done. I'll be recording Josh pretty soon (probably next week) and I'll certainly be mixing like a mad man in the coming days.

The third song on the this demo is simply going to be epic trailer music. All done digitally from my home studio (and maybe the MS labs... pretty sure I'll be using the MS labs).

Once the semester's done, I'll be working a website ready complete with my portfolio, this blog, links to my social networking accounts, my services (more on that later), and bio and all that rudimentary stuff. I'll also fix up my Myspace account to look a bit more presentable and put up all the new mixes of my music.

Nick's wife will be coming up with cool color themes for my website, though I already have a few things in mind. But anyway, I have to make a few emails and get back to mixing.

-Nate

It's Time To Celebrate!!

The keyboard tracking for Aetherius' new album is done!!!11!1! Woo Hoo!! It took 6 months, a ton of frustrations, hundreds of pop tarts, and a whole butt load of writing but it's done! I gotta' say, I'm very pleased with the result. This album is going to be unlike anything you've seen before. I won't post details about it until it's done, but I will be posting specs on my favorite patches, transcriptions of my solos and a few select passages and all the crazy plugins I used to make some of these wacky sounds.

Now that these are done, I feel it's time to maybe shave, get a haircut (look like a new rejuvenated man) and relax the rest of the weekend until I'm forced to go back to real life. When you're working on keyboards for 30 hours in three days, you sort of loose track of the real world. There are shows I need to keep up with, homework I need to finish and freelance projects I need to finish. AHHH!!! Real Life! Why must you be so cruel!?!?

All in all, it was an awesome experience to work on these Aetherius songs because I matured so much from it. I learned what I am and am not capable of (and really, there's very little I can't accomplish). The Aetherius album is proof of that. There are orchestral sections, electronic sections, metal sections, crazy fast solos, beautiful piano passages, "mad man" organ playing, noisy/buzzy sounds, and even STUTTER EDITING! And trust me, everything I left out is going in the next one.

I can't wait for this album to be done. I can't wait to hear the final result. The only things that are left to track are a few guitar parts, bass and vox. Then it's off to be mix and mastered (mastering will be done by Jens Bogren).

Now to relax for a few days and help my mom set up her facebook account... ::sighs::

-Nate

I love Jem Godfrey

that is all....

-Nate

Here we go....

So today's the day I start my quasi residency over at Sean's house (guitarist and main songwriter for Aetherius). I'm leaving today and won't be back in my apartment until, at the earliest, Saturday evening. The plan? To finally finish the keyboard tracking for this new album. We've been at this for a good while now and missed several of our deadlines. I've been pretty optimistic (cocky) about how fast I can get this done, but sho 'nuff I suck at deadlines. I was actually hoping to get the keyboards done by the end of the summer. Now my deadline is to get it done before 2010, which is creeping up on us like a cat who sees a dangly, jingly thingy.

So I'll get to eat Sean's food and get to spend Thanksgiving with his clan, at least dinner part of it. We'll be working from about noon to the wee hours into the night, which I'm okay with. The reason the recording is taking so long is because we write, then record which has brought about some very interesting keyboard parts.

Bit crusher, Distortion (phase, overdrive, clipping), real time modulation.... this album has become a synth project like none I've ever seen before. I'm doing things that you would probably only hear on an electronica and/or ambient album, but yet it fits so well. I guess you can say the album sort of mixes elements of Frost* and Chimp Spanner. At least for the keyboards anyway. I'll post specs on my favorite patches and transcriptions of my solos when the album is done. Oh Joy!

Well now I have to do a bit of laundry so I won't stink up Sean's house with my foul smelling pants that have a distinct oder in the butt area. Peace.

-Nate

The Mix went well....

Mixing for six hours seems like a long time, but the time flew in there. I finished four of seven sections of ThisIsNotASubliminalMessage, and I gotta' say, the song is sounding great! I know I said I would post the rest of the composition techniques, and I will. I'll probably do it tonight. As for right now, I'm going to add some synths, sounds, and keyboards to a track sent to me by Michael Silva. He's producing a band and hired me to do some keyboards. He's an old friend whom I lost touch with when I moved to Boston, but somehow, we got connected again and now we're working. Awesome! I'll post the rest of the TINASM stuff tonight. I gotta' go make some sounds.

-Nate

So There's This Song I'm working on....

First thing's first, I can't take full credit for this song (that's currently in the mixing
stage). My good buddy Nick came up with the concept after listening to some Ron Jarzombek tunes. Who's Ron Jarzombek you may ask?

Now I'm not a huge fan of the shredding style that's mostly associated with Ron (though I can't say that I'm not a fan at all), this particular tune had more prog elements than the shreddy kind, so I asked my buddy Nick if he'd let me produce/finish his piece. The name of his piece: ThisIsNotASubliminalMessage.

In a nutshell, the whole idea behind this tune is to say the phrase, "This is not a subliminal message" subliminally as many ways possible. It might sound silly at first, but this piece proved to be a very challenging piece to finish.

Here are some of the techniques utilized:

The first obstacle was to make this piece musical. As an electronic musician, this piece could have easily gone the way of an ambient, sonic element based piece and I didn't want that for this particular piece (though the intro is more of a sonic soundscape). So step one in achieving musicality is creating a main melody of some sort. This is what Nick came up with.

This is a transcription from the chart that I made for Nick. The idea here is that each letter in the phrase, "This is not a subliminal message" receives a note. Because of this you are confined to the order of letters in the phrase and of course it makes for a great melody. The rhythm was written by Nick and together, the rhythm and the melody make an awesome main melody.

The second genius technique brought to the table by Nick was implementing Morse code. It's a great way to be subliminal and rhythmic all at once. Here's how it's implemented.

The resulting figure resulted in a very rhythmic, METAL!!11!!, and proggy passage. The long tones in Morse Code are represented by the top staff and the short tones, of course, are represented by the bottom staff (lead and rhythm guitar respectively).

I'll post the rest of the techniques used either tonight or tomorrow. As for right now, I have a 6 hour mixing session, and I'm hoping to finish the mix of this tune by tonight. If not come extremely close.

-Nate

So...

Where do I begin?