Woot your horn: YOUR best track of 2007

beats me · Post by **beats me** » Mon Dec 17, 2007 1:25 am

Since 2007 is moving towards an end I thought it would be cool if people linked their best track of this past year. This isn't a production competition with other members of the forum, just something you are particularly proud of.

DON'T JUST POST A LINK YOU LAZY BASTARD. Tell us a little about the song. Maybe the production is crap but it has a lot of meaning to you....which is? Maybe it's completely meaningless but you're proud of the production. Maybe you think it's complete shit but the public loves it and that makes you hate people. Maybe you overcame some huge studio or life catastrophe to pull it off. Maybe you applied some new technique you just learned. Maybe you produced the whole song in 2 hours.

Every song has a story. So spill it and link away.

I'll throw mine in the mix later.

rbmonosylabik · Post by **rbmonosylabik** » Mon Dec 17, 2007 3:32 am

I'm honestly not a fan of wooting my horn

I think the 2 things I've produced that I'm most proud of are:

Brake - I started this track along with some others when I took out my old iMac G3 and got Rebirth in it. It was a huge oddisey because someone stepped on my OS 9 installation CD, so I had to grab the Classic folder from another computer and figure out a way to get it in the iMac, and it turns out the Classic folder lacks some networking stuff and I think drivers for the CD-Rom

The track started with the bass line, and the original idea was to chop up a breakbeat and use it for the drums, but somewhere along the arrangement, I decided to try a 4 on the floor kick, then along came the electonic snare, and soon, the breakbeat was gone. That's where the name came from. Slammed the brake on the break.

The Acid Set - I love this thing because even when it's not sounding as awesome as I want it to yet, it's really simple, fun and changes radically every time I play it.

You can find both at my Virb: http://www.virb.com/monosylabik

forge · Post by **forge** » Mon Dec 17, 2007 4:28 am

you mean I'm actually supposed to have finished something this year?

beats me · Post by **beats me** » Mon Dec 17, 2007 4:37 am

rbmonosylabik wrote:I'm honestly not a fan of wooting my horn

I think the 2 things I've produced that I'm most proud of are:

Brake - I started this track along with some others when I took out my old iMac G3 and got Rebirth in it. It was a huge oddisey because someone stepped on my OS 9 installation CD, so I had to grab the Classic folder from another computer and figure out a way to get it in the iMac, and it turns out the Classic folder lacks some networking stuff and I think drivers for the CD-Rom

The track started with the bass line, and the original idea was to chop up a breakbeat and use it for the drums, but somewhere along the arrangement, I decided to try a 4 on the floor kick, then along came the electonic snare, and soon, the breakbeat was gone. That's where the name came from. Slammed the brake on the break.

The Acid Set - I love this thing because even when it's not sounding as awesome as I want it to yet, it's really simple, fun and changes radically every time I play it.

You can find both at my Virb: http://www.virb.com/monosylabik

Thanks for wooting your horn even though it goes against your nature

I could see how Brake could have easily turned into a breaks song but you're right that it also works as a house type song. I dig the bass groove. Slap some abusive sidechain compression on it and Ed Banger will come a-knockin.

Are you referring to the Live @ 13_10_2007 track as the Acid Set? Is that Rebirth, ABL, or something else you are using for the acid sound?

beats me · Post by **beats me** » Mon Dec 17, 2007 4:39 am

forge wrote:you mean I'm actually supposed to have finished something this year?

Your responsibility to the community excuses you from having to finish something. We finish our tracks so that you don't have to.

leedsquietman · Post by **leedsquietman** » Mon Dec 17, 2007 5:19 am

Completing my first CD release 'Extraterrestres' (recorded Sep 2006 - May 2007) , which I have recently made available for free at Jamendo (given that I only have a couple of CDs left from my limited run and don't intend on a 2nd pressing).

*will edit post to include the link later as Jamendo is down right now*

you can stream it from http://u-r.dmusic.com/music/

Tarekith · Post by **Tarekith** » Mon Dec 17, 2007 5:25 am

For me it was probably "Somwhere In Here" which I did a couple months ago. Mainly because it was doen entirely on my laptop using some shure e3's, while in the middle of a two month long move from Chicago to Seattle. It was a pretty stressful time, more so because my wife and I were bouncing from hotel to hotel the whole time, so I'm amazed I even finished it an was able to get it decent sounding at all.

download:

http://tarekith.com/mp3s/Somewhere.zip

preview:

http://tarekith.com/mp3s/previews/SomewherePreview.mp3

tricil · Post by **tricil** » Mon Dec 17, 2007 5:41 am

ok, good question... and now that I think about it, I'm not sure..

how about a top 5?

1. tricil - North Arc

My finest 5 minutes this year, but still not quite done... the piano needs more dirt.. i recently had good luck with the "buggy" tension replacing the EIC preset I originally used...

http://kobnet.net/~tricil/northarch_ecd ... ndered.mp3

released on Esoteric Drift

2: here's a different track called "So Long" with the same melodic motif as the end of north arc and taken from a live show

I was really depressed at the time and wanted to just hang it all up, so I called it my final show... never say never. Oddly, for such a depressing day, it was my one year sobriety date and i'm happy to report that I'm still going strong:

http://kobnet.net/~tricil/finalshow/01%20so%20long.mp3

3. Nerd Parade - Crude Polygonal Space Fighters

Written in one night on an all-nighter the night before the album was due for mastering. Someone made a video of the track to WoW (wtf... where's leeroy?!)

http://myspacetv.com/index.cfm?fuseacti ... d=13443416

4. tricil - You may notice you're on fire or possibly dead

One of the last tracks I wrote on my Inspiron 9300 before it was stolen out of my house in broad daylight (fuckers). I did this track right after doing a remix for Celldweller's frozen and kept the key and tempo the same (96bpm, Gm) but everything in this track came more from me being in the zone (infact, there's a mashup of the frozen vocals and this track I did). At the time, I was playing guitar for the indie rock band Nerd Parade and I sampled a snarerush from one of our live sets in it

all I have is a render: http://kobnet.net/~tricil/skeletons/somethingELSE.mp3

this track was released on "Esoteric Drift" at http://pelicandump.info (Free download)

5 - Celldweller - Frozen (Peachtree Industrial Remix)

So Celldweller's got this ongoing take it and break it remix competition. I did the first round as well (own little world but that was a. last year and b. not good). Frozen was/is my favorite CD track. Most Celldweller sounds like Linkin Park with a Reznor fixation, but I checked 'em out anyways after being an oldschool Circle of Dust fan. My remix made it to the 3CD set of remixes. I guess 2 cd's of remixes of the same song (see 2000's Headhunter by front 242) isn't enough.

Here's a stream link:

http://www.remix.celldweller.com/rnd2ar ... en2.php#14

Pitch Black · Post by **Pitch Black** » Mon Dec 17, 2007 6:19 am

"Bird Soul" off our album Rude Mechanicals released in September.

It's about a friend of ours who committed suicide by jumping off a building while we were recording the album. He had had a history of depression which no-one outside of his immediate family knew about. So its about our sadness for him, and also about him flying free of his pain. I suppose there's also some of our anger and dismay at losing him in there, too.

In Maori cosmology, the departed take on the forms of birds, hence the title.

http://www.myspace.com/pitchblacknz
(3rd track down in the player)

rbmonosylabik · Post by **rbmonosylabik** » Mon Dec 17, 2007 6:24 am

beats me wrote:Thanks for wooting your horn even though it goes against your nature

I could see how Brake could have easily turned into a breaks song but you're right that it also works as a house type song. I dig the bass groove. Slap some abusive sidechain compression on it and Ed Banger will come a-knockin.

Are you referring to the Live @ 13_10_2007 track as the Acid Set? Is that Rebirth, ABL, or something else you are using for the acid sound?

Yes, that's the one. The saw and square waveforms were generated in Automat and loaded into Simpler racks. Here's the full explanation on how the set was made:

The BCR's top knobs row has 4 pages, so you actually have 32 knobs up there. What I did was use Live's not really supported User Remote Scripts feature to program those as 4 separate automap scripts (in mac, go to ~/Library/Preferences/Ableton/Live(version)/User Remote Scripts/ for info on how to use it, it should be something similar in PC ). Then, I made the Impulse and Simplers into Racks, mapped as needed, and locked each one to an automap script. That way, in page one I can control drums, page 2 controls the bass, and page 3 and 4 control the other 2 simplers.

To launch drums and switch tracks, I made 2 of the 4 lower right buttons switch tracks up and down, made a 3rd button launch the synth's clips for that track, and made the 16 top buttons launch drum clips for the track. As the BCR doesn't update properly when changing presets, I had to do it by making a patch in puredata ( http://puredata.info/ ) that changes the MIDI channel that the button's CC's are sent through, and mapped each track's clips to it's own midi channel. There's an app called ControlAid that allows you to do the same, but I think it is Mac only.

The drum clips are divided in two. The top 8 row are clips tied to Live's Global Quantize, which was set to 1 bar. The bottom 8 are mostly copies, with fills and some variations, set to a Launch Quantize value of 1/16th and set to Legato mode. This way, I can launch one of the top clips reliably locked to Live's tempo, then use the bottom row to do fills and variations on the fly without losing sync and remaining musical.

Then, the rest of the encoders are midi mapped as a mixer. Each track has it's own Level, Filtered Delay Send Level and FX Dry/Wet for distortions and delays per track. This takes the left 4 columns, and I midi map the filtered delay to the bottom right 4 knobs for easy access.

That's about it.

It's awesome. The Project folder, including samples, automap scripts, the puredata file and some other stuff needed is less than 2 mb big. In the right circumstances, I could be lugging around just the bcr and a usb flash drive to play. w00t!

Pitch Black · Post by **Pitch Black** » Mon Dec 17, 2007 6:49 am

@mono: really liking Brake!

rbmonosylabik · Post by **rbmonosylabik** » Mon Dec 17, 2007 6:59 am

Thanks, that really means a lot.

I want to listen to your track, but myspace player is being gay as usual lately

.

Afro88 · Post by **Afro88** » Mon Dec 17, 2007 7:17 am

We just finished a new track last week, I think it's our best effort to date. It's very much on the breaks tip.... apparently breaks isn't fashionable anymore? I don't give a shit!!

1st track on the player: http://www.myspace.com/hyperionlive

pepezabala · Post by **pepezabala** » Mon Dec 17, 2007 7:28 am

This year was packed with live-sets. With Institut FATIMA we did a lot of improtronic jamsessions together with invited musicians (find some live-recordings here . Another highlight was that they invited us to the Sonar to display an installation we had made with ableton and reactivision (see a video of it here) .

But the track that I enjoyed producing was a song about the Poble Nou-neighbourhood that we produced together with the argentinian singer Agustín Claria. (Liste to it hereor on our myspace-site). Originally it was just him strumming the guitar and singing, and after trying numerous different remixes and live-versions I had this breaks-remix done. Loved to edit the hornsection, all brass samples come from the internet, but fit into it really nicely. In my liveset I have lots of clips separately at hand so I can do some wonderful dub-stuff with it.

aqua_tek · Post by **aqua_tek** » Mon Dec 17, 2007 8:03 am

Pitch Black wrote:@mono: really liking Brake!

seconded

Pretty good stuff from everyone

For me, I'd have to say
1. Pardon My French
My first foray into the non-dnb world. Changed my perspective on a lot of things. Funny story about this tune, I started it as a joke/bet.

I cant deny i was sort of anti-new wave/electro house/ed banger/boys noize/blog house/etc etc before I decided to make this.

I was teasing some friends about how I could come up with a half-decent tune of that sort in no time at all. I ended up betting them I could make it in 2 - 3 hours max.

It actually took me about 2 or 3 days to get the composition and all the edits done and it's probably some of the most fun 2 or 3 days i've spent making music in quite a while. I took it upon myself to do all the edits manually (cut/copy/paste/duplicate/etc) with some automation here and there, which made it a little more time consuming, i think. But I also think THAT is what made it sort of so fulfilling. For some reason everything just clicked with this tune. It really opened up my mind to trying new things musically. Very happy with the end result.

I decided to call it Pardon My French for 2 reasons:
one: I was aiming for that "signature french electro house sound" (whatever that means)
two: I dont know, I guess the edits in a way reminded me of someone who constantly blurts out curses and whatnot and then says something like "woops, pardon my french"

silly i know

2. Trunk Full of Junk
I just finished this one. This tune is sort of a "happy accident". I didnt really plan it. I was just playing around with a drum loop, Simple Delay, and Saturator, and the end result was this interesting, metallic, but somehow musically viable riff. So some ideas came from that. Then I expanded on it with a whole bunch of synth layers. I just like it's grittiness. it's so dirty and heavy, i think it'll be very effective on a dance-floor.

The name "Trunk Full of Junk" alludes to it's dirty, metallic vibe... AND to nice, round female rear ends grooving along to it on the dancefloor

Ahem... anyways you can check both tunes on either my MySpace or Virb profiles
http://www.myspace.com/n8vice
http://www.virb.com/backend/aquatek/