Creating Will There Be...?

Listen to Will There Be...? in the album Winged Visions
Will There Be...? is our signature track.   It captures from us what we are.
It started with the horn.   This is a patch for my Kurzweil 2500 to represent the horn used on Pink Floyd's Shine On You Crazy Diamond.  I was playing around with that horn and created the underlying horn sound throughout, as well as the higher pitched melodic pieces, the horn is the tying element.
The song is structured in very distinct mini-movements.   The first is etherial, horn hits, some background bass, and much drifting.   Love that.
Then a clear break to a crisp, crystalline section with plucked strings, then whoosh back into horn dominance.
Restate the the horn round, then back into a reprise of the first section, more horn, more stabs, more dreaming.
Then it all clears up.  Then the future comes, it's clear, it's there, and we fade everything away with a last embrace of the next thing that will be.

Added the environmental sounds after the horn and flute and organ were all in.  Then the bass.   Then the various plucked or strummed instruments to give more texture.

This is one of our more challenging pieces for casual listeners, we understand that.   But it's our vision.
Enjoy.

Influences

Who influenced musicians you like often gives you the opportunity to discover new music yourself.

Our influences?   Fundementally we're electronic musicians, and we have a saying here at Ravenware Music (publishers of Silver Prism et. al.);
"Morton made it.  Walter made it music.  Ralf and Florin  made it rock"
That sums it up.
Morton Subotnik led the way by taking electronic instrumentation out of the fringes of music and into a workable form for musicians, versus theorists, to hear how non-engineers could use electronics in their compositions.   By extension, his work taught synthesizer builders that there was a place for their work in the hands of working musicians, and creating instruments that could be used by non-engineers would sell.  Finding his albums in the public library lit our imaginations.
Walter/Wendy Carlos showed us that it could be music.  Switched n Bach, obviously, transformed listeners opinions of electronic music.  Perhaps more important, however, than Switched On Bach was the soundtrack to A Clockwork Orange.   Switched On Bach could be seen as a gimmick, a clever trick, nothing more.   But the original thematic music Carlos created for Orange brought the power of electronic music to be evocative and strongly thematic to a broad audience in a critically acclaimed film.
Then Ralf and Florin.  You know, Kraftwerk.  They broke the dam.   Autobahn meshed perfectly with burgeoning FM album-based stations, and being taken on a 20 minute rocking ride through Ralf and Florin's electronic highway vista.  Not everyone liked it, but very few people could stop their feet from tapping through the pulsating electronic bassline.  Now we felt in our bones how we could use electronics to get people on their feet.
Of course there are many others, the Musique concrète movement teased our ears, Louis and Bebe Barron brought the sounds to the masses in Forbidden Planet, but Morton, Walter/Wendy, and Ralf and Florin are the foundations of Ravenware Music's influences.

Creating Johan Says

Johan Says in the album Ripples of Light

Listen first (or along) as always.

Johan Says started with a new piece of gear, an EMU Audity 2000.   This quirky little box is marketed as a super-arppegiator, but it also comes stock with some sounds that suit my musical stylings (i.e., weird).

Two of them are prominently featured, we'll get to them.

The kick drum is a little muffled and small, I liked it.  Closed high-hats for additional rythm fit well with the muffled drum.   Again, bass is my Fender Jazzman, pretty simple bassline but I think it's effective.

Added the woodblock in for more rhythm without too much power.  Main lead line is just some mutated guitar patch from my Kurzweil.

At :36 the first sound from the Audity comes in.    Isn't that the coolest? Bah da dee dah,  du du du du daa da duh over and over.   Love it to death.  Take it up an octave.   Cool   Back down.  cooler .

1:45 brings in the second Audity patch as we come to the break.   Very spacy, and I sic'd Logics platinum reverb on it to really saturate.  Great climax to the break, then the thin lead, and the 3rd Audity sound starting at 2:45.   I love that sound, don't know if I'll ever make a sound that good again.   Lots of 'verb and a serious delay, space city, and vanishes into the air.

Then back to reprise the first Audity sounds and roll to the end.  Took it out with some excessive verb'ing.

Listened to it a few times, and added in the bongos to give it a little more percussion depth.  And added the Katolin strums at 2:30 just to prove it really is a C.K. composition.

I like the weirdness of this one a lot, always crank it up when it comes round on my iPod.   One listener described it a "psychedelic lobsters dancing around a beach fire on Jamaica", I'm comfortable with that.

And the title "Johan Says"?  OK, you listen to it and try and come up with a title, OK?

Enjoy

Creating Distant Fire

Distant Fire in the album Ripples of Light

I really like Distant Fire.   I wanted a pure chill out piece, and it came through in spades.

 This one started with a new piece of gear.   I bought a Fender Jazzman bass, and wanted to mess about.   I'm not much of a guitar player,  so fiddling with a bass like this is about as far as I can go.    So I sat and played the simple baseline you hear in this for about 20 minutes, making mistakes and sounding bad most of the time.  But I was recording the whole time, so was able to pull out 30-45 seconds of good stuff that I could loop and use.

Next was the minimal and subtle drum.   Didn't want much, this is to chill to, not to dance to.

 Then came the melody line.   This is played on my Microwave XT, a fantastic, and sadly out of production, wave table synth that in my opinion gives the best Space sounds of any synth on the planet .   Whomped up a nice sine heavy, reverb heavy lead sound.   Then played on top of the bass and drums.   The bass and drum lines are very regular and calm, the lead line with the Waldorf is different, it's slightly insistent , slightly tense.   Love that lead line.

 Then it was time to ornament. First came the woodblock/sticks accent throughout.   Makes both a supplemental rhythm and a good signal for break points on the song.

Added the tambourine to the 2nd half of the song for variety.

 Then, as I like to do, I added the heavily processed choir stabs throughout.  Humanizes things a bit, but they're so far from straight voices that they don't change the mood of the piece.

 And that's it.   Again, I really think this hits the chill vibe well, enjoy Distant Fire!

Creating Hazy Sunday

Hazy Sunday in the album Winged Vision

Hazy Sunday is one of our rare "normal" songs.

This one started with the organ, the "bah da, da dah dah" . I was digging playing this on my B-3 emulator, and recorded about 5 minutes of it.

Then we put the drums under it, and it was ready to have a song developed over it. The first melodic line was the Rhodes piano, which really didn't go all that well. It felt almost as rhythmic as the organ, after two minutes I wasn't really inspired by it. Kept it, but knew that something more was needed.

 Tried a bunch of instrumentation. When we started playing the trumpet, it just meshed really well with the organ, so we went with it. I really like the melody that emerged, it's upbeat while still maintaining a slightly haunting note to make things interesting.

Put the bassline in next, it's pretty subtle for most of the song, but the bit in the middle at the (small) break is very fun.

 Then it had to end. The convergency of the horn and the electric piano in the last 30 seconds is really sweet, and finishes up the piece very well.

 BTW, I'm really proud of the one cymbal hit in the middle!

 Enjoy Hazy Sunday!

Creating Der Glitters

Der Glitters in the album Winged Vision

Der Glitters is one of the few songs of ours with lyrics.

The title comes from a really bad direct-to-video film we rented once titled "Crazy Six", set in Eastern Europe after the fall of the Wall.   Bad, but at one point in the film the female lead applies thick eyeshadow with clumps of silver spangles in it.  The male lead asks what that stuff is, and she replies "Der Glitters" (they're glitters).

For whatever reason, the bleakness of a collapsed Eastern Europe and that heavily accented "Der Glitters" stuck in my head.  I wrote the lyrics first, a ambiguous mix of dark thoughts and hope.

Then the music.  First the rhythm track, industrial, hard, relentless drum, and a hard overplay cymbal.

Then it needed the synth lead and chording to continue the sense of alienation.  Then some voices, but not real, but synthy voices that you can't trust.

Then Karen laid down the vocals, doing an outstanding gothy reading.   I added a little reverb and a good bit of delay to hollow the voclas out even more, then sunk the vocal line into the mix so you have to strain to hear it amidst the clashing sounds.

Came out well, still love that track.

Enjoy.

Creating Carbon

Carbon in the album Winged Vision

Our songs generate from three starting points, a sound, a melody, or a bassline.

Carbon started with a sound.  I was messing about with piano sounds on my Kurzweil and created the double-strike piano that opens, and continues throughout the song.

It was an interesting instrument.  Since there is a perceptable delay between the first strike and the second, it's not a fast sound to play, you have to wait between keystrokes to get the full effect.   Then, interestingly, if you play it quickly the notes bend into each other, giving a very interesting effect.

That drove the tempo of the song, slow and deliberate.

I laid down the double-strike track on it's own, just letting it flow.

Then I filled in with a non-double-strike piano to carry a melody to tie the song together.

Sounded good, but needed more.   The gentle voices came next, providing a pulse and continuity throughout the song.

But the key then came.   I added a organ track, some organ hits throughout the song.  That did not work at all.  But I didn't erase the notes, I started spinning the instrument selection wheel.   When I hit the Mark Tree (chimes) instrument it totally completed the song.   It added a crystalline delicacy and fragility to the piece, really really complementing the double strike piano, taking the richness of that instrument and contrasting sharply with it.

Then I added a few strategic electronic ornaments and an occasional bass accent, and the song was done.  Then the name came naturally, the range of carbon from coal to glittering diamond.

Enjoy Carbon.