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The long story…
This project began to take shape in May, 2009 when Akai announced their new APC40 controller for Ableton Live. The initial plan had been to use only Ableton Live and it's Suite instruments controlled via the APC40, keeping everything in Live for ease of backup and reliability. I wanted a new live set, or at the very least a set up where I could perform an entire album in realtime.
After a few weeks of work however, I began to realize I really wanted to use the best synths I had. I decided to use Omnisphere and Stylus RMX for all the sounds, still controlled by Live. I actually did a huge chunk of work with this set up, to the point that I more or less had a set all mapped out and ready to perform. Unfortunately, some unforeseen control issues with how i had initially envisioned the set came up.
Hours of hair pulling later, I decided to scrap that idea, and just render everything to audio loops. By the end of August I had an audio file based live set ready to go, using all the sounds I had made in Stylus and Omnisphere earlier. Did a few trial runs of the set, and while I was more or less happy with it, the whole static nature of the loops I was using started to bug me. I had programmed a lot of variations, but there was still little I could do with them without getting into the glitchy side of things, which I wanted to avoid.
Frustrating because it would work, but just not as well as I really had wanted it to. The APC and Live were brilliant, best laptop-based combo I've used live in a long time. I just needed to have more flexibility in my set, and I missed the control of my initial MIDI only idea. I knew that I had a lot of good material in those loops, and it would be a waste to toss them and start over. So, I decided to use all the loops as the basis for a studio based album. Instead of separate songs though, I wanted it to be 1 continuous piece of music, as if I had played it live.
By this time it was early September 2009, and I was frankly just burned out on using Live. Great program, I just needed something different to look at while assembling and working on the album. Decided to revisit Logic 9, where all the files from my Live set ended up going, and what I used for the rest of the album.
In the end, pretty much all of my studio gear made an appearance however. The Elektron Machinedrum, Zebra2, Uhbik's, Polar TI2, both my acoustic and electric guitars, and even my DJ mixer's filters and EQ. While it is intended to be listened to as a whole piece, there are some sections where the tone or pace changes, so I've listed the times of the various movements below.
00:00 - In
02:14 - Movement 1
06:10 - Movement 2
10:40 - Movement 3
15:09 - Movement 4
19:05 - Movement 5
23:17 - Movement 6
28:37 - Movement 7
33:15 - Out
Peace and beats, I hope you enjoy the music.
Tarekith.com
Tarekith@Gmail.com
... now where'd I put those headphones...aaah yes there they are.