Betaphats studio under construction
Bonafied Lovin' (Les Petits Pilous Remix)
(download)
Crazy Old School Electro Sounds !! Wu Oh Oh Oh~
Pocket Magik - Army Of Darkness
2 cans of Beer and 1/2 a bowl of hor fun later, Kurt and I found ourselves making probably one of the sickest beats we have heard in awhile. I must say this track really portrayed our peak of creativity and we have both brilliantly produced this track. I must say this is one of our proudest track to date! Do support us on soundcloud, follow us on twitter if you like our music! :)
I must say i am just glad to have studied in pointblank online and have Kurt as my music buddy and met so many great supporters out there! Thank you!
http://soundcloud.com/thepocketmagik/army-of-darkness
The XX Intro Cover thoughts
To learn a great tracks formula, I have to do a cover to understand the song deeper and it's always through covering I get to uncover more mysteries for myself!
<u>Technical Thoughts</u>
To understand this song further, I used my reverse engineering skill to once again break down the song into their basic elements and figure out it's BPM, get the basic structure up etc. ,this song is relatively easy to play, the only difficult thing is in selecting the right kind of sound and the arrangement is fairly simple all the way cept for the beats at the build up section, I never had so much fun deciphering the beats to this song since it has so many variation and since I suck at them, I learn to understand this in greater depth!
In the past I always thought making beats was easy, all you do is to get the basic rhythm and start mashing, I was partially right but what I didn't know was the subtleties, when to manual quantize to give a more human factor, when to apply swing in quantizing etc hear the claps to this song for example, notice the claps is slightly delayed after the snare, I would have thought it was just one sound for the clap+snare part in the past! There is still the hats! When do you use a close and when do you use an open hat? How do you program all that to make it sound real? How do you program an emotion? :)
Using only logic's instrument, I managed to achieve most of the sound. I find myself playing with logics amp and pedalboard to achieve the xx guitar effect by means of randomly playing.
For the cello I went ahead with ES2 and there was a preset that was readily available that sound close.
That leaves us with the beats! Surprisingly messing with ultrabeats presets, I found some sounds which I thought sounded pretty close to what I heard. Did you know that you can technically change the pitch to the beats? It's madness
All in all, today's exploration was fantastic experience for me I've learnt and relearn so many things and my workflow for arranging and making a track is getting better hopefully :)
I should be posting my cover as soon as I am done with it !
Inception After thoughts
Well, after much persuasion from two of my bros Andy and Bjorn, telling me how great and genius this movie is, I decided to watch it on my own. Initially I was reluctant as I felt there was too much hype over it and the fact that I didn't really like this kinda show. But when Andy said if i liked matrix, i probably would have liked this so I just watched it anyways.
Throughout the whole show I was relatively disorientated when the scene keeps cutting randomly and initially i thought it was kinda sloppy but later on i realized why the director had to film it this way. Also half of the time I don't really know whats going on, all i understood was they are trying to recreate the various levels of dreams which a person can go and how they can possibly escape the various levels and its implications. Throughout the whole show I only thought that was it, and finally they did escape. So what I didnt get was whats so complicated about that? Lol, in fact i was kinda worried for abit as everyone around me thought it was brilliant and mind fucking stuff like that when I thought it was pretty straight foward, it actually got me worried for awhile and I knew I might just have been too shallow to understand the film. (I'm pretty embarrassed)
In order to understand what all my friends and the smarter film students and critics understood, I did a little read up on it and it does help me understand the show better in depth with the terminologies and what the hell is the spinning totem thingy represented ( obviously i wasnt that attentive to the details lol ). In fact I didn't even understand who's dream was it and whats happening for most of the time and I finally got my answers that the 1st level was dreamt by the chemist, 2nd level was dreamt by that dude who did a gravityless fight scene with some other random dude in the elevator , and the 3rd level was dreamt by Earn ( whoever he is i dont remember ) , all this while i thought it was Fishers dream for all 3 levels and got extremely confuse as to why all of a sudden they will land up in Di Capros Dream for no reason.
I pretty much understand everything better now after reading about it. This glossary definitely helps
A Kick: By upsetting the equilibrium of a dreamer you can wake them from a dream and return them to reality. If you’re dreaming a dream within a dream, each level of the dream has to have its own Kick in order for the one on the higher level to work. So Arthur blew up the elevator to wake them up from the snow fortress dream so they could then be woken up by the car hitting the water. Limbo: A place where dreamers may end up if they go too deeply. It’s a place where time runs quickly and people seem to forget reality. We’re told a person flung there might burn out their mind, though somehow Saito, Cobb, and Mal all survive it and escape. Because of the drugs used in the dreamers in Inceptions final mission, we learn a dreamer can in this one instance also be flung into limbo if they’re killed in the dream. Inception: The practice of entering dreams and planting an idea in someone’s head. Normally Cobb and his team only invade dreams to steal secrets and they aren’t sure if Inception is really possible. The Architect: The person who constructs the dream world inside the mind of the Dreamer. In the final dream of Inception, Ariadne (as played by Ellen Page) is the architect. The Dreamer: The person whose dream you're actually in. When creating a dream within a dream, each level must have a different dreamer. In the final sequence, Yusuf dreams the first level, Arthur dreams the second one, and Eams dreams the third level with the snow fort. The Subject: The person whose subconcious is actually brought into the dream, usually for the purpose of extracting information from them or on rare occasions in order to plant an idea in their mind. In the final sequence, Fisher Jr. is the subject. Totem: An object constructed by someone who plans to invade a dream, whose exact weight and composition only they know. This object can be used to help verify whether you’re in the real world, or the dream world. Cobb uses a top which, when spun inside a dream never stops spinning. Ariadne constructs a chess piece, which she plans to use as her totem. Projection: A person created by the subconcious mind of the subject. Projections are not real. They function like white blood cells and should the subject begin to realize that the dream he's in isn't his, Projections respond violently and attempt to seek out the Dreamer and destroy him.
Source: http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Inception-Explained-Unraveling-The-Dream-Within-The-Dream-19615.html
Many questions were answered and I finally understand what the hype is all about. Well I would say its brilliant for sure and definitely worth a watch.
P.S
The only movie i genuinely hated is and always will be Watchman. It is the most fucked up show ever. Period.
Extreme emo karaokeism
Kurt invited both me and Hsuan Ya for the most impromptu karaoke session ! I was kinda reluctant as I didn't want to spend any more cash as I'm Jobless at the moment but Kurt said it was on him ! How do u reject free karaoke?
As soon as I got a job, It be on me !
The Saddest Comedy to myself.
"Do you know what it feels like to be the last one to know the lock on the door has changed."
Enrique Iglesias
Decoding Music Arrangement
What happened...
After intensive study with Point Blank Online, I came to a sudden halt a week back as I had almost no inspiration to sculpt my sound.. let alone working on the arrangement of the song structure.
See the thing with me is that when I started working with music, I started from a guitar which is a melodic instrument. I have totally no concept of working with beats, let alone musical arrangement. Therefore most of my songs are based on what i "feel" is right. And the only thing I know is how to come up with random Melodies based on a given chord structure and basic scales. Dance Music on the other hand is totally about build ups, slight variations, extreme layering, effects etc. Sure melody kicks in but it is not as technical like playing the right notes. It is not a skill based kinda complex tune where you try to fit the right notes to the right chords etc rather you develop a simple tune and work on its build ups and slight variations and FX. Its a whole new world for me to be extremely honest. Having listen to so many various random Dance Genres ( Electro, Dubstep, DNB, Lounge, Downtempo, Ambient, Nu Disco, Irritiating fuck up Noise, ) over the past 3 months or so, from an engineers perspective (my brain tend to function in that way when i totally don't understand shit) ; the main thing that would make or break your track would be in your arrangement and strong structure of your track. From the musician's perspective, It would be how you start to develop your groove and when you can bounce your head to your own track, you know its working! I can't express how much I've came to understand music in a whole new level! It has lead me to ask this question to all you readers, What do you look out for when you listen to a piece of music? Often we don't give that much thought we just know what's nice and what's not depending on our individual taste but do consider my question :) -----------//----------------Self Given Assignment
As I proceeded on to work on the last week of the course, there was a tutorial Video that caught my attention big time which is learning song structures. What I actually did was to take a song that I like ( In this case i picked one of the most complex trance track by BT called Rose of Jericho ) and reverse engineer how the song was being arranged. Surprisingly upon 2 hours into working on the structure, I've manage to discover something for myself and how subtle those minor little details are and yet it is in those subtlety that made the song so amazing. When to put the breaks, when to work its variation etc.
Technical After Thoughts
Upon laying just the inital beats to the track, I realized BT is one hell of a complex person when it comes to song structure, it's all in its subtleties especially when you start to hear the snares, when you start to hear the claps, when the claps suddenly dissapear and when to take away the beats in total.. I must say its pure genius !
I have not even mentioned his Sidechained Basslines and his Compressions and his extremely complex-almost-random-like-algorithmic automation which can be recreated by his recently made an app called Sonifi. ( stutter and random breaks )
I could shed a tear when I listen to his track and I never appreciated trance till I listened to BT seriously.
Nonetheless I do understand all those technical Jargons would make no sense to an average reader, Not everyone is a producer but I do hope I have expressed my heartfelt appreciation through those words. :P
Karaoke Compatibility Factor. KCF
I have came out with my Karaoke Compatibility Factor with my friends and here is the results!
Me & Andy KCF Level 100
Me & KL KCF Level 100
Me & Bjorn KCF Level 78
Me & Ling KCF Level 80
Me & Kurt KCF Level 50
Me & Raimi KCF Level 80
Me & Sophia KCF Level 100
Me & Mark KCF Level 60
Me & Sue KCF Level 60
Me & Daisy KCF Level 30
Me & Gwen KCF Level 0
Me & Janice KCF Level 80 Karaoke days~ Sigh
Inch Chua
If you like indie, songwriter, folkelectronica-styled kinda music as much as I do, Check out Inch's Wallflower album which can be downloaded free straight from the link provided below!
Listen to great music, always cause we all deserve that.
Melvin Ong
Nu Disco Freaker
