D-13

With yesterday’s production requiring a bit more time in the morning for finalizing, I didn’t get started on today’s track in earnest until the early evening. There were a couple of false starts, mostly because the lyrics were awful, and then I decided to go ahead and use the song prompt provided by a friend after hearing day 1: “I would like to hear how you destoy the enemy.”

Initially, the lyrics you hear were only going to be an introduction or chorus, and I’d planned on some kind of sarcastic take on Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals and other modern divide-and-conquer approaches to society that have made our world such a cesspool over the last 15 years. Everything I wrote, though, was heading straight into “screechy” (not to mention “blunt”), which I really dislike when I hear others do it. I pulled the proverbial plug on that and decided that the intro lyrics could probably do the job, I just had to find the right approach.

Last year’s track, Obverse View, made use of a cool plugin called Chipspeech. It models a lot of early voice synthesizers, and since one of the indelible memories of my high school years was being amazed at a game on my Commodore 64 actually saying, “destroy him, my robots,” I couldn’t get it out of my head. The repetition of the word “destroy” was just too powerful.

I would like to hear how you destoy the enemy.

Mary L.

I’d already set my project tempo at 128 and was planning on something a bit upbeat. With the robot voice now in play, it quickly became a dance track. This one is a great example of pantsing¹from the novel writing world, writing by the seat of one’s pants with no outline or plan – I had no plan, I was just auditioning sounds, fitting pieces together, moving things here and there, and basically building the clay up until it looked like something good.

After 4-5 hours, the clock had tolled midnight-thirty and both my ears and brain needed a break. I went to bed and started up again this morning with a cup of coffee. Only two additional sounds were added, and then it was time to record audio and do the mix. This all went pretty quickly.

This track makes heavy use of another new tool I recently acquired, UVI’s Falcon. I’m really impressed with it, so there will be more of it in the coming days. Falcon and Superior Drummer 3 were my primary acquisitions during the Black Friday sales, along with a couple of specific processing plug-ins that were too discounted to pass up. For the most part, though, I’m not having to screw around with learning too many new things – the studio is stable, and I’m trying to do more of the creative work instead of distracting myself with toys.

One of those creative things, especially in a repetitive track like this, is remembering to introduct variety. Instead of coming up with one synth lead and repeating it a couple of times, I’m using unique sounds and melodies throughout. There are a lot of synth parts, and some of them are only around for 4 or 8 measures,never showing themselves again. Even with that approach, it’s still a bit monotonous, though, and I could easily spend a week polishing this one up. Heck, I could probably spend an entire day just on the robots and another few days on the drums.

But this is Song-A-Day, and the clock never stops. It’s a fun track, thematically connected to the one before, and I’m pretty happy with the initial mix.

Lyrics

Divide, Dehumanize, Demean
Destroy

Degrade, Dismantle, Debase
Destroy

Demote, Denigrate. Disgrace
Destroy

Deprive, Disparage, Damage
Destroy


Copyright © Ray E. Toler, Jr. All rights reserved.

Colophon

Instruments & Samples

Omnisphere, Falcon, Plasmonic, XO, Chipspeech

Effects

Output Thermal, PanMan, Black Rooster Blue Ash, DS Tantra

Mix & Mastering

SSL 9000 J, Pro-C 2, Pro-L 2, Gullfoss

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Notes

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  from the novel writing world, writing by the seat of one’s pants with no outline or plan