It’s been a a great few weeks for making music here at a7 headquarters, but not so good for writing. The arrival of a grown-up real (digital) piano in the studio has put a hold on other things – instead of programming drums, I’ve been playing Chopin and Brahms and Satie and working out theory problems. This is very good stuff, and I can’t wait to see how it feeds back into a7 when I get my composition hat on again.
Electronic music is powerful in that a producer can put everything exactly where they want it, and as digital editing becomes more and more powerful, we are seeing this trend in all sorts of music. The highly produced pop music on the radio doesn’t have a beat out of place.
There’s something gained from this, and something lost as well.
I wrote a bit about my process of sanding, but I didn’t mention that it was possible to sand too much. If you remove all the texture, you end up with something featureless. A little grippy-ness here and there isn’t a bad thing. Part of this can be achieved by the raw materials you use to begin with. If you start with a drum synthesizer and a drum kit played by a human being, you will have very different results, even if you polish the heck out them. If you mix materials together – a synthesizer and a piano, a precise drum pattern with a hand drum – then there is an interaction which has some potential. It doesn’t always work, but it puts you in a place where some magic could happen.
An example of some successful magic is DJ Krush’s collaboration with trumpeter Toshinori Kondo, Ki-Oku, which blends trip-hop and jazz, electronic and acoustic, controlled and wild, into something much more than the sum of its parts.
I was too hasty in saying I had all the tracks ready! After some more listening and a day full of reworking, I’ve decided one of the tracks on the EP just didn’t work well enough to include, both on its own and how it played with the rest of the songs. I’d rather take a bit longer and have the final result be superb.
The tracks of the new EP are finished. It’s 5 tracks, about 33 minutes in total, and offers more variety than I was expecting. Some other tracks I was thinking to have on the EP will be shelved until they fit a bit more with their surroundings.
Now begins the process of producing the final mixes. I listen obsessively to every track and remove small elements that catch my ear. Similarly I’ll add things that cry for something a little special. This is what I call “sanding” and “gilding.” It takes some time, but the result is that the ear can float from one thing to another without getting snagged up.
After that comes the final mixdown, making sure that it sounds good not only on my spiffy headphones but on a car stereo, an iPod, etc. Honestly, it will sound better in quieter environs due to the subject material, but it’s good to know what the damage is.
Hard at work on the first EP, which should be 5 or 6 tracks at this point.
Here’s a preview of a interim mix of one of the tracks, “Rainbow Bridge”
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Welcome to the new home of electronic music project Artemis Seven. We’ve got some new music coming soon and are very excited to be sharing it with you.
