What, you say, track six?  There is no track five!  Well, hold your horses, there is a track five, but it needs some modifications before I'm ready to upload it.  Since "Road Rage" is all strings, and "Dance of the Directionless" ends with the strings, I'd like to keep the other track in between.  I'm almost certainly going to change the order when all the tracks are done anyway.  

SO, much as I expected when  I started out to record a "guitar-oriented rock" CD, I have already veered completely off course.  I am pretty impulsive when it comes to music, and my interests are all over the place.  This track has no guitar, and its association to rock music is tenuous at best.   It's a string quartet with drums and bass.  Of all the great music that's been using the format of string quartet plus drum and bass, there's... um, well, I can't think of anything.  Maybe somebody can tell me.  It actually seems like an ensemble that ought to be in the regular arsenal of the modern composer.  I like it.



Click here to download the MP3.

This is the track that the rock guitar people are going to be bored with, and various others will probably say, "oh, it sounds like soundtrack music, where the killer is waiting in the closet with the knife and a can of baked beans, and then he chases the protagonist across a field of wheat."   Believe me, I had no such specific thing in mind.  I love to write music like this, and I would love it if there were some practical application for it.  My question is, do people like music like this?  Is this something you'd want to hear more of, or is it just that in-between thing where you're waiting for the band to "kick in."  Please tell me your opinion. 

As I already told you, this music was inspired by an answering machine tape.  If I were a more normal variation of the obsessive/impulsive multi-instrumentalist that writes and records and likes to fool around with people's voices, the whole thing would have lasted about a minute, and would have been pretty funny.  It takes a certain disposition to take a goofball idea and work on it obsessively for a week and attempt to turn it into a "serious" composition.  I am of that disposition!  As you can hear, the voice on tape is long gone, but it gave me that seed of an idea I needed.  Mainly, it dictated some of the rhythms that I wouldn't have normally used.

This piece (I hate that word 'piece,' but it's not a song, so what do you call it?) is something like variations on a theme in something like B-flat minor.  I would surely be flunked from any music theory class for this music.  When I write music like this, I generally start by letting the various countermelodies just kind of happen according to what I'm hearing in my head, without applying any kind of reason to it.  This will sometimes result in some of the funny harmonies that you're hearing here.  Then after getting the basic stuff down, I will apply some knowledge about how music is supposed to work to fill in the gaps, and to try to figure out what the chords really were that I was hearing. 

The string sounds, once again, are Synful Orchestra.  I program the notes by placing them on the staff using Sonar as the sequencer.  Synful emulates the real string sounds by modeling the way each real instrument would handle the transition from one note at a certain pitch and velocity to another note at a certain pitch and velocity.  It's really cool (If I could turn this into some kind of endorsement for Synful and get free stuff, I would, but I already paid my big money for their one and only product!  Anyway, Synful, I love ya.)  In order to sound more realistic, I modify the relative velocity, duration, and start time of each note.  It obviously can't sound exactly like a real string quartet, but I feel like it's coming pretty close.   If I'm way off on this and it sounds like a cheesy Casio keyboard, please tell me!  The tricky part is how much reverb to apply.  With no reverb, Synful sounds like death on wheels, and with too much, it sounds like a keyboard.  I reduced the reverb after mixing it down the first time.  I think I got it right.

I wanted to go with mainly sustained notes on the bass, but I pretty much had to follow the existing cello line for certain parts, or the harmony would get too ugly.    The drums were recorded with four mikes, in a similar manner to the last song.  I think the snare sounds a lot better, though, because I threw away my old Remo Pinstripe head in favor of a new Evans "dry" coated head.   Kids, run out and buy this head for your snare, it's got a great "crack" to it (hey, Evans, send me some free drum heads!)  I used to put masking tape all over my snare head to get the right sound, and I didn't need any with this head.  I suspect my whole kit would sound better if I replaced all the heads, but it will take a while till I get around to it.

I seriously considered adding electric guitar to this, but in the end it didn't need it! Now, tell me what you think!