FOUR, by Kieron James

A little like Alcmene, this track came together pretty quickly and, as I mentioned on Twitter, it’s the first one I’ve composed for a long time which has been built on a completely linear timeline (i.e. no use of the Cubase arranger track). This doesn’t happen very often and when it does, it feels like the track has almost written itself.

The idea kicked off with a couple of bars sequenced up using iPad App from Korg, iElectribe which I’m hugely impressed with. You’ll hear the iElectribe very clearly at around 1:57. I then exported the pattern into Cubase and started to build the rest of the piece around those four bars. Adding sub bass first and then building some of the other synth parts, drums (glitched using Automaton from Audio Damage) and finally adding Marcus Hutton’s fabulous delivery of the Edgard Varèse quote.

I’m handing over to Pure Tone for some quick analysis (to see if he can spot any howlers), stepping away for a couple of days to watch the Spain v Germany World Cup Semi Final tonight and concentrate an Bootslam’s kick drum and I’ll work on the mix at the weekend.

idea by Kieron James

The track was born with one of the (several) bass lines – which, as usual, was created using my favourite bass VST/sequencer, SubBoomBass. It’s the one you hear first at around 0:30 – ba da da dada. As soon as I added that, I started think old skool house and so I wrote the piece with that in mind. It’s pretty vast in terms of instrumentation at 47 separate tracks(!)

Anyway, here you have it: Free Your Mind, with big thanks to BooSen and to @bubblesmusic for hooking us up.

Free Your Mind by kieronjames

This is what I have so far. Time to walk the dog and see what ideas come to mind.

[See post to listen to audio]

Dog walking complete and it all seems to have turned a bit dub. (Just drums as that bass line was too reminiscent of something I think Mass of Moments?)

[See post to listen to audio]

And after tea, a little bit more. Playing around with a couple of sequences in Massive and SubBoomBass which work quite nicely with the break beat.

[See post to listen to audio]

Update 4 – After a week away

Worked on the bass line and some of the drum sounds. I think I have enough to turn this into a track now. (And I’m really pleased with how it’s shaping up.)

Four (20100305) by kieronjames

Update 5 – Fun with SBB and PSP Nitro

Whatever becomes of this track, gotta say, I’m having great fun putting it together!

Four (20100306) by kieronjames

FOUR, by Kieron James

I’ve been working on this one for a while and I’m getting happier with the mix. Need to tweak the arrangement though – not sure about the first appearance of the guitar or its sound. I think that will be removed once I have the vocals. It seems incongruous early in the piece.

You can follow the history of work in progress as Johnny developed and the story of the track’s title on this post.

One thing which Pure Tone suggested, was some “girly vocals”. This set a train of thought in motion and I was looking around some movie sites last night. The track is pretty light and bouncy so I was after something with a touch of humour for some of the quiet sections. I thought these four lines would work well and I’m delighted with the way Salwa Azar has delivered them.

Johnny, is this true? ‘Cause if it is…

Good luck Johnny

Bye bye Johnny

Say kid, what do they call you?

…never should have picked a name like that. A name like that you gotta live up to.

Any last words Johnny?

Johnny by kieronjames

I posted a few days ago about my plan to release four albums this year and this week I started on the first track (not necessarily in terms of running order) for Four, which will be released under my own name. As mentioned in the last post, the other three will be produced under the Somió, Half-BIT and Blue Omen projects / collaborations.

So, here are twenty bars laying out some of the ideas I’ve been exploring for Four Track #1 (as yet untitled).

Once the track is complete, I’ll also post four bar samples of each of the stem files and select one sound for each of the “sibling” tracks on the other three albums.

Update: 22/01/2010

Hard to believe I spent three to four hours getting the sound on these four words and I’ve still not mixed or EQ’d the vocal track! Anyway, @groovecriminals was curious about what had taken me so long and whilst I’m sure it’ll be a disappointment, may as well put that work into the context of the piece:

Organised Sound (work in progress) by kieronjames

Update: 21/01/2010

Got a little more time on this. Have some doubts, but I’ll sit on it for a day and see what I think tomorrow / Saturday.

Four Track One (work in progress) by kieronjames

Update: 17/01/2010

Uploading the second update via Soundcloud as I’ve no FTP access today. May continue to do this as it makes it easier to annotate files. Might even consider upgrading to a paid Soundcloud account. Anyway, not had much time for this as I’ve been working on a track for Gavin Fisher (aka @bootslam. Added a bit of guitar (new melody) and some effects using PSP Nitro.

Four #1 by kieronjames

First Upload: 07/01/2010

[See post to listen to audio]