Salty ear food.

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DigitalNematode
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Re: Salty ear food.

Post by DigitalNematode »

Just listened, favorited and reposted via Soundcloud. Great work.
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Saltbearer
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Re: Salty ear food.

Post by Saltbearer »

Thankous do of your you do you two.

Next time it won't be so easy.

WHAM! IT'S NEXT TIME.
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DigitalNematode
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Re: Salty ear food.

Post by DigitalNematode »

:crazy: My god, I love it! Reposted :D
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Re: Salty ear food.

Post by Saltbearer »

2X COMBO!

https://soundcloud.com/so-ing-machine/y ... makes-this

I just finished this after leaving it half baked for months. I feel like I didn't do enough with it, or the structure is weird, or the energy is unbalanced here and there, or something. but whatever I like it enough. Don't let the description fool you, this isn't the emotionally charged one.

That'd be this one: https://soundcloud.com/so-ing-machine/i ... e-with-any

I had a dream where everything was perfect. There was a specific moment where I felt intense dream-amplified euphoria. The happiest I'd ever felt. The happiest I've felt in the real world is several orders of magnitude below this. I've felt that rare happiness in dreams a few times now. I was very nearly able to recall the feeling throughout the following day, for long enough that I could funnel it into the groundwork for this song before sleeping, but it's mostly faded now. Which is good, because everyday contentedness is agonizing compared to that feeling.

The moment was immediately tinged with bitterness as my dream then used an old friend as a vessel to bring all of my personal flaws to my attention. They were disgusted with me for things I have little control over, and the real them would probably at least find those same things unsavory. The dream forced me to feel disgusted with myself. Extreme non-constructive self criticality. This too was amplified thanks to the stark contrast to the otherwise perfect world around me. I felt heartbroken for hours the night after and got lost in mostly pointless introspection.

Those aren't the full details obviously, but I think it's enough to get the idea. I think time was nonlinear on some level.

I was introduced to Le Knight Club - "Chérie D'Amoure" the night before the dream, and I think it's responsible. It touches upon the same chords within me.
Last edited by Saltbearer on Sun Oct 18, 2020 3:02 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Saltbearer
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Re: Salty ear food.

Post by Saltbearer »

https://soundcloud.com/so-ing-machine/who-needs-you

Wacky. Playful. Fun to impose meanings upon.

https://soundcloud.com/so-ing-machine/rainbow-acne

Deceptive. Squirky. Revived a melody that was trapped in an old custom WarioWare DIY record.

https://soundcloud.com/so-ing-machine/o ... difference

Cold. Open. It loops.

https://soundcloud.com/so-ing-machine/stab-taking

Best. Best. It's the best.
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Re: Salty ear food.

Post by Saltbearer »

I haven't posted in this here thread for almost a whole couple o' years. Why don't I just in this here thread for almost a whole couple o' years.

IILITBHWY - I made the ending first and assembled a bunch of sounds that would lead into such an ending. When I sent it to a friend after I finished, they said the ending didn't fit and seemed to come out of nowhere. 8)

The recurring atmospheric choppy laughter sounds were carved out of audio from Haibane Renmei, which I had just finished watching when I made this. I personally enjoyed it enough that I didn't really care to watch new things for months afterward, because I thought my judgment would be too warped.

The title stands for "It is literally impossible to be happy with you". I think I initialized it because I didn't want any of the more fragile people I had been talking to at the time thinking they had anything to do with it. The full title is deceptive anyway. I like that. Related, one project I didn't stick with was a sibling to "who needs you." called "There's always someone".

Trial Life-form - This thing sure an cool sounds, yep pep pep. I was more confident in it being good than most other things I'd made. I'd say it's a pretty decent representation of my capacity for sound wrangling.

Maybe one day I'll bother to improve old tracks and add some high-end stuff to balance out that odd tube uncapping sound. It's sort of unfitting as it is, and draws too much attention to itself.

• • •

After Trial Life-form, I started two Great! tracks that I should get back to eventually. I wanted two lines of vocals for one - just enough to sound like it could be an external sample. Someone said she'd do them for me. She never did. It was kind of a mess, too. Playback was killing my phone.

The other one was just boring for me to think about. I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to do, so it would involve a lot of inputting commands and not much creativity. And now I think it needs vocals - like, more than two lines. I have no idea how to finish them or who I could get to turn the lyrics into throat noises, whose voice would have the right qualities.

Hundred neat little doodles since then. Wish it were easier to share all of them.

Silly medium-effort mixes for a small mix get-together thing ate up a bunch of sound art time in 2016.

In 2017, I was physically able to use a computer from January to September. I played games and screwed around with my old friend, the demo version of Renoise. Then a combination of a severe toothache, heat exhaustion, gastrointestinal distress that involved about 9 days with very little food, additional discomfort from using too much quercetin to relieve toothache pain, and germs knocked me horizontal again. I still haven't really recovered quite enough to want to use my computer. But it forced me to turn to SunVox again for my own sanity, which is a good thing.

• • •

Nothing Hurts Too Much - Nice, simple, catchy li'l thing I knocked out in a few hours one nice, quiet night. I think the title was another intentionally misleading one based on imagining someone in a state of mind where they naïvely think no pain could be too much to bear.

Slightly Above Average Vision - SoundCloud description:

"For AOTY: http://pinkamenaparty.bandcamp.com/album/its-2018-bpm

Made in a few hours before east coast states fell into the new year. Though here on the west coast, I stopped working on it at 8:18 PM. 20:18 on a 24 hour clock. ',:D?

Also, because SunVox uses whole numbers up to 800 for BPM, I had to make a 2020 BPM track with the file BPM at 505 and make sure that it would be slowed by 2 BPM before being albumated."

It occurred to me later that I probably could've used an inline tempo command to have it run at 2018 BPM.

Izzle - I'm not sure where this came from. I just doodled, then something made me commit to that doodle in a way I hadn't committed to anything in a long time. I think I was primarily drawing inspiration from Tim Hecker and Oneohtrix Point Never. Someone else said Ben Frost, someone else said Actress.

Until Izzle, I hadn't created anything original longer than 5 minutes. Nothing else really seemed to warrant it.

I think I'm rightfully more proud of this than anything else I've made, but I've left it on as background noise enough that I'm becoming more critical of it. I've got a vague sense of there being too many untelegraphed melodic diversions, and turning up the volume makes some questionable mixing apparent. I could also extend certain sections. I rushed it a bit because I was determined to finish it before February Album Writing Month.

YEP, I attempted FAWM, thinking it might push me to do more music type things. Izzle planted the idea that I could finish things in my head. Standard FAWM goal is 14 songs in one month, because it's mostly able-bodied people with throats and guitars. Being a cripple who feels sick a lot of the time, likes to create everything from scratch on a phone, and barely finished anything in the year and a half prior, I went with a more reasonable personal goal of 10 songs. In spite of a bunch of distractions, sick days, and burnout, I made 7 thingies + contributed a song's worth of effort to an unrelated exquisite corpse + started another track I don't yet consider abandoned.

Scarred Neptunes - This was a vague idea I jotted down as a note a few days before FAWM. A fine warmup.

Title: … I thought of space and water, and their Neptunes receiving scars.

Six-Legged Canaries - A second idea I took note of to get me going. Some interesting textures and things. IIRC that metallic reverb knock thing in the last minute or so wasn't supposed to sound anything like it does, but it's cool that it does.

Title: I thought of flashes of swarms of various insects. It disturbs me that certain insects which used to be omnipresent in this area are now rare. Thaaaaat doesn't seem good.

Regrowth - My favorite of FAWM! I had the idea for Learner, but needed to give my brain some room to breathe before I started on it, so I doodled, and then I LOVED the doodle and made it my new focus. nyeahahah, filtersssss

There's a specific sort of reserved, yet high-energy dance music that I have running through my head sometimes. Two songs in particular. They have some swing to them, diverse sets of samples, decidedly lo-fi and rapid background noises, and melodies without many large steps between notes. This became an attempt to capture the feeling of that music. I didn't nail it, but THIS AIN'T A BAD RESULT. It came through in a fun odd-measured format, too!

When I first added the bass, it sounded amazing to me. Now it sounds kinda dead. Maybe my earbuds aren't in good enough shape right now. Turning up my volume helps with its timbre. Lowering the hat volume when it comes in might help it stand out.

It feels like it ends a bit too soon, but it practically wrote itself a very natural ending. The structure seems precariously perfect. What it probably needs is to be followed by a part 2 that stands as a second song.

Title: Mental imagery was of dense 3D cel-graphic plants growing from nothing.

(Unstable Mosaic Chunks of Rotting City Flicker Out Leaving Dust Outlines) - I felt sick immediately upon finishing Regrowth, for a couple days. Still didn't want to make Learner when I felt like getting back to beeswax. Made some disjointed and harsh ambient instead.

The harsh part seems too quiet. I didn't want to actually blast ears out (especially not the unsuspecting middle-aged acoustic noodlers of FAWM), but given that it sounds like it should, it leaves something to be desired.

Pairs well with Izzle - if I do make a legit album, I should mix the faintest whispers of their essences into each other.

Learner - Finally got around to the concept that had been hovering over my head for like a week.

The stabs are various layers of distorted amusement park crowd noises. It's in 11/8. Neat. Hmm.

No matter how I try, I can never get verticality in my stereo spirals. Also, that synth that's spiraling sounds terrible. Not what I was aiming for.

Title: It made me think of thoughtful dwelling or studying, as well as simpler, animalistic or infantile learning, particularly based on mistakes.

Romanticize the Bitter - I call it "drill-and-chill"! 'snice. Spawned from 1:32 - 1:42.

Slow part needs an entirely different set of percussion, end needs some extension / diversity / a different cap (as much as the hats are nice for looping). I was getting very tired of working on it and for my own sanity needed it to be done before I stopped for the day, period.

Title: Initial mental imagery was of generations of humans powering through things I'd find traumatic in order to survive, whether urgent or day-to-day. Things that they might not have thought anything of, and things that some people nowadays consider feats of true strength and willpower - not so much ingenuity. Not so much moral behavior…

Zombie Everything Twisted Inchworms - Squirpy horror cheese. Bit before quieter end part could be extended. Originally started before RtB, but then became more interested in making something like RtB for a bit.

Title: Something made me think of a nightmare I had where my backyard was full of various zombie animals moving like inchworms, with twisted bodies and stiff, unused limbs. Then I picked up a rat for some reason and it immediately tried to bite me. I shoved my thumbs in its mouth and squeezed so that it couldn't bite down. It made a comically-disturbing, high-pitched, humanlike vocalization like LEEDLEEDLEEDLEEDLEEDLEEDLE, intensifying until its head exploded.

So for the ending, I wanted to try to recreate that uncomfortable, quiet atmosphere being interrupted by a horrific, unnatural cry, but out of context, actually recreating that cry wouldn't sound anywhere near as disturbing as it was in my dream - it'd be straight comical. LEEDLEEDLEEDLE is the sound of Patrick failing to sound scary in that one episode of SpongeBob with the Flying Dutchman, and in my dream, it was even more cartoonish. It's not like I could stick in a clip of me saying "Heyyyyy I'm picking up this twisted zombie rat inching along the ground without the help of its limbs to get a good look at it, like a smmmyert person. Ohhh DEARIE ME, it's gonna bite! I'll shove my thumbs in its mouth to try to stop it, and when I do, it's gonna scream THIS:"

I decided to go with the synth sound I used, with a low, feedbacky, clashing pitch shift layer annnd a bunch of other stuff. I think the choppy LFO thing on it might detract from it. Maybe it needs a quicker onset, and a narrower, "squeezier" sound… cleaner, more resonant, maybe volume automation. It doesn't exactly send chills through you as it is. Maybe it does need to be partially made up of an actual vocalization, sped up, louder, with a low, rising drone under it to trigger that primal fear response to low, rising drones.

Anyway yeah that was FAWM for me. The last week of February was spent 50% on the exquisite corpse contribution and 50% on goofing off. Except I did start that one thing that still isn't done.

As far as putting the A in FAWM… iiiiit proved to me that I don't really operate in terms of albums. I'm not sure these fit together in an album just by virtue of having been made in rapid succession. They sorta maybe could be arranged in a way that kinda works? There's a very loose, emergent theme of survival and decay on the abstract conceptual side.

For the most part, I like to create unique tracks that don't really share any themes or stipulations. When I think of an album, I think of deliberate cohesion; clear connections beyond whatever touch from an artist permeates their collective work. I also think of polish and finalization. Tidying up already-made music feels like actual, tedious work to me. And I straight up do not trust anyone to do it the way I would. And I don't know how I would because I don't often attempt it. And I don't often attempt it because I don't have a reliable way of monitoring how things actually sound. I have earbuds that break every other month, a smartphone-tier sound card, and bassy Sennheisers that are too bulky for horizontal use. Plus I swear SunVox exports are somehow lossy. It seems like actual real-time playback always sounds best in ways I can't always place. Clearer, smoother. Maybe compressors are involved?

Also, that quote about how art is never finished, just abandoned, blah.

This month, I've mostly been letting myself goof off. But I've touched that unfinished FAWM track, started another that I got bored with because it involved a lot of repetition and I couldn't think of a compelling intro for it, doodled a lot, made a little SECRET song, and started another silly mix made from songs that my inner friend circle chose to represent themselves.

I mean, just in case you were wondering.
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