Self-review continues with another installment of 4 tracks, composed and now critiqued by yours truely (not sic)! Digging through the back catalogue, we have…
 

» 8

#066 - recorded on 2004-02-24

The "8" here refers to 8-bit music and culture, like demoscenes. While the acute, resonant opening riff isn't done on an actual 8-bit instrument (like a SIDstation), it was very reminiscent. It's a somewhat-overdriven monophonic lead from a Roland JV-1010, and soon gets joined by other melodic lines to flesh out the counterpoint.

"8" was an improvisatory theme, inspired by too much time spent exploring castles and dungeons in NES RPGs like Final Fantasy (the very first one), Crystalis, and Dragon Warrior, which made a seminal impact on me because of how it came free, bundled with my Nintendo Power subscription. It even included a fold-out map showing the monsters of the game — what a super glance at my foes-to-be.
 

» ADSL

#064 - recorded on 2004-02-16

Done, geeked out, in celebration of having recently (in months before) and finally acquired broadband Internet. (Yes, I was on dial-up for a hideously long time.) While it doesn't sound like it, I was inspired by Future Sound of London's album, ISDN, and how they transmitted their music across cyberspace, eventually leading to the awesomely superb Dead Cities album, before suddenly going silent for a number of years.

This track has a lot of "squiggly things" and there's something in the left speaker which sounds like the "quock-quock!" of a strange bird (listen @ 2:34 for how it repeats in 16th-notes), but is probably a overdriven drum. Lots of beatrix, nothing too dramatic but just rhythmic variations to add flavor.

The distorted ostinato riff that begins @ 0:14 is inspired by James Holden's "Horizons", which, while more straightforward and not as structurally mature as later works like "A Break in the Clouds", wholesomely works on a mood level… it just puts you in a space and doesn't let you leave until it's over, and you're glad for it.

Lots of counterpoint here, I think I kept the frequency bandwidth sufficiently filled without being overly busy. Listen for the Alesis DM5 drums @ 1:35. Also uses one of the Alesis QS8's mono leads, I think it was Porta Lead. And yeah, leading up to the climax, the rather pointy melody @ 3:03 is inspired by that synth-pop classic, "Popcorn". As you can see — or hear, rather, I pay lots of tribute.
 

» A Better Place

#091 - recorded on 2004-03-28

This coulda been the soundtrack to one of those Flash animations with an anime girl + boy dancing with bunnies towards the sun, in a wide-open field with sakura-style leaves falling all over. In the present, the closest thing I can find is Mr. Zephos' Sakurama filter, which I'd love to see animated to a reading of "The Rainbow Bridge".

Fingersnaps, stabbed pulsewidth chords, and retro computer noises combine with a perky beat to drive the groove forward. As is a trademark of mine, you'll have to listen on headphones to pick up all the little details. And yeah, the pseudo-cymbal starting the new 8-bar section @ 2:49 was crafted by me in an emulated Commodore 64 SFX editor, sampled and put into the mix.

1:25 starts a synth guitar, which IIRC, was a physically-modelled riff from the Yamaha MU100R, which is a great box. Good cost, lots of simultaneous different effects, General MIDI (hehe), and of course, the VL section. Mine actually has a defect in which some of the drum sounds didn't play properly (I remember reading about others having the same prob, so it wasn't an isolated case), which I'm sure I'll be writing more about in tracks where I deliberately used those distorted sounds.

All in all, uplifting — indeed, a better place.
 

» A Boy An Umbrella and the Wind

#028 - recorded on 2003-06-10

This is the soundtrack to an animated film of the same name by Albert T.F. Magat, a good friend of my brother's, and later, of mine. Haven't talked to him in a long time, but we had some great fun. He mailed the rough cut to me, digitized as a QuickTime movie, and I used Opcode Studio Vision's — my favorite sequencer! — sync capabilities to nail it. Surprising how primitive it looks now, but how advanced it was then.

As such, "A Boy…" is a "style deviation" — I don't normally go for oboes! I'm especially proud of how I set the water drops to the tempo, as well as the very deep, realistic acoustic bass. There's sort of a 2 Stupid Dogs vibe present, not inherently limited to that cartoon, either, because a lot of great animated features have a shared "language" of comedy in sound.

I'm also pleased because while there are a number of loops (the insistent drumming), this is a very lively track. There's a lot of changes, variations in a classical style, and @ 2:10, just about everything changes, making room in the arrangement for my piano playing to come in. This was a decent sampled set I pulled into Propellerheads Reason, with spacious usage of the RV7000 reverb.

AND YES, THE ARPS @ 2:46 ARE A DIRECT NOD TO PHILIP GLASS'S SCORE FOR KOYAANISQATSI. SOME OBSESSIONS NEVER CHANGE!!!! =D