hello again! Firstly I am sorry for not responding to your comment earlier. To be honest writing comments became quite difficult to me last times and somehow it takes me much longer to construct anything consistent too. Also I promise to return to our private correspondence - at the moment all work commitments are simply too demanding and energy-consuming so I am glad I was able to make some new piece of music last days at least. I have some ambitious plans for this Summer regarding performing a series of organ concerts. That last one was a great success and I am really inspired now. Maybe I'll be recording music using organ and synthesizers in the space of church as well. This is all for the future summer months.
At the moment there is a project we need to finish before Eastern - hope I will be more in the condition of practising music when we finish this one. Hard winter here but there is a heating in the workshop so that's ok for making such kind of specific restoration work even.

Also would be great to make or at least try some another collaboration, if you're interested in making music with me at some point in the future.
Thank you for all your support and listening to my music!

hello

I apologize for a slow reaction - I am struggling currently with responding in time because of intense uploading rate and other things
that reffer to the real life (in opposite to my 'virtual' activity as being looperman composer promenade2239).

I am happy that you liked some experiments in here. Indeed vocal is a real lead of this track. Those few words were already processed but I added more depth playing it in reverse and at different speed which at the end gave a touch of something similar to throat chanting or maybe an aboriginal didgeridoo music. Not exactly of course but definitely there is something exotic about it. The literal message of the song is actually quite ridiculous but I had only those two sentences to develop the entire composition from. The same with drums. The idea was to play them applying different reverbs - only one of those drums is dry effects also the hihats are played double speed. There are many manipuations I've made here and it would be quite complicated to describe them. Basically I decided to place different 'sound events' in the imaginary 'space' using a reverb effect of a different amount as a tool.

There is another song that we are still somehow working on by exchanging ideas and audio files via email. It will be probably quite similar to this one but it is still hard to say to what it will turn in the end. We had a long correspondence last time and there was a lot to think for me about music and sound in general. It was interesting experience and opportunity to face many new ideas.

You're right about dance qualities of that bassline. Definitely Spivkurl's sound is strongly dance/electronic rooted which really inspired me to gravitate to electronic explorations those few last weeks. There was also a synth lead on the original project but I didn't use it. Instead I added my piano. It is a simple vst plugin 'Prova' played from simple midi keyboard. Very similar to the other little piano plugin that I really Iike called 'Jazz Baby'. Somehow I find them more useful than all those bombastic Kontakt sample based Grand Pianos because they are processor friendly and behave much more stable in a virtual environment therefore they are much more realistic under the fingers. Of course it all depends how they are actually played but here it's just a very simple thing - few chords setting the track in a concrete tonality.

Thank you for listening to my music. I truly appreciate that.
A.

thank you! To me the vocal is much more ethnic than simply weird - I played it much slower at parts. The track has some dub sound qualities as well, I think. We plan to make 2 other songs together in the near future. Thanks again for listening to this one and nice comment. It is appreciated.

Thank you Ed! I truly appreciate your nice comments. I just have listened to David Byrne&Talking Heads' 'Once in a Lifetime' and 'Girlfriend is Better' (that one with big suit). Interesting. I tried to get the idea of the band's general artistic message so I watched some of interviews with David Byrne as well and now I understand the comparision. Thanks for pointing this! I must say I wasn't going intentionally any specific direction like that though and there wasn't actually any 'scenario' of how music should sound at the fist place - I simply wrote this track directly on daw juggling Spivkurls vocals, drums and bassline. There are 2 other songs we are still working on, maybe I will post one soon.
Thank you again for listening!
Best to you, Alex

hey Pat! Thank you for the nice words! I am really happy you liked what I did with this song!
Probably my favourite thing about the original idea was the vocal section. It sounds simply great! I was a bit hesitant to go with that processing even further when writing the piece but it came out naturally as something quite eclectic and strange at the same time. My choice of sounds was selective of course: the piano is only slightly outlining presence of E Mixolydian mode over the E note sort of pedal point (sampled from synth bassline) and at this point I decided to keep everything minimal as possible within that single mode, reverbs on percussions are different for every single layer, it is a sort of spiritual space when combined with hypnotic vocals.
I truly appreciate the artistical openness and your willingness to share some great sounds allowing this unusual piece to appear. Thanks a lot for inspiring me!
Best greetings to you, Alex

hello Joe!

It is great to see you again on the site! Thanks a lot for the nice words, I truly appreciate that.

Yes, I was also thinking that some of reverbs on drums remind of reggae music. I didn't actually use any dub delays here (which are very typical to the genre) but thanks for pointing this. There is an interesting series of free 'Classic' effects http://www.freemusiciansresource.com/VST-detail/kjaerhus-audio-classic-series-fx-vst-bundle/ and I like in particular the one called Classic Reverb http://www.vst4free.com/free_vst.php?id=1872 There's is a preset in there called '80's snare' - I used it extensively on drums here modyfiying slightly some parameters. I think it is very useful plugin, especially when going for a specific old-styled sound.

I am glad that you enjoyed our experimental collaboration. Thank you again.

I am looking forward to work with you on some music as well!
Best to you, Alex

Thank you Wayne.

I am glad you liked this. It is a bit unusual indeed - it was meant to be a strictly electronic track actually at first but it came out quite experimental at the end, as expected haha. Spivkurl's drums and synths are very powerful and I really liked vocal part a lot. I am not sure about the stylistical qualities of the track, maybe 'ethnic' label will fit in here too. I have some difficulties with writing evolving pieces using daw functions only (I am mainly repeating same elements along the composition when building pieces).
I will be recording using old upright piano soon and will upload more live played music on Looperman. The piano requires some amount of technical preparation so this may take some time though - I whish I had more space for the music only at the moment.

Thank you again for listening and your nice comments.
I appreciate that.
Alex

Hello Steve
Thank you so much for listening to my music and reviewing. I much appreciate the nice words!
This is one from 3 songs in total with Spivkurl over last few weeks. The basic idea contained almost everything: drums, bassline, vocals, synth solo even. I transformed it adding piano layer ('Prova' vst plugin) and entirely re-arranged it. You're right, it is sort of minimal music, not evolvoing that much melodically or harmonically - I am mostly only looping and repeating elements here.
I managed to upload other version for this song on sc for you to see my first take or original Spivkurl's project stems https://soundcloud.com/promenade2239/whatsgoing1-with-spivkurl-first-version - I removed delayed piano and the main focus is on percussions and lead vocal on the last version. There are different reverbs applied - I tried to create as much space as possible.
Thank you again. I am happy you liked the song.
Best greetings, Alex