ArtificialDisco

Groovy stuff! Fun to watch too.

Is the dollar shave club still going strong? ? On a related note, you watch one music production video and suddenly it's ***bUy My MiDi ChOrD pAcK!!!*** fucking everywhere.

Still waiting for the beat to drop!

Ah, ok, I see how this works. I don't have much experience with Ableton, but you can basically use racks in parallel? In Reaper you'd have to copy the tracks or use sends I think.

That sounds kind of next level. Do you just make copies of the track and EQ them differently? Personally I've been getting a bit of mileage out of Valhalla Supermassive. But I also like to take any type of delay effect and automate the crap out of it. Like you can move the timing knob really fast and let your daw record it as an envelope. You can get all sorts of scratches, screams and boing type of sounds that way.

Why I reckon that's a red Persian.

I did go to what passes for a conservatory in Reykjavík to learn to play jazz trumpet. I went through about two years' worth of jazz harmonic theory. I don't know which channels are best to explore this. I can just vouch for the ones Brian recommended. I used to find Adam Neely really annoying, but I've been warming up to him. He did a very nice analysis of a Jimi Hendrix song which was both on point and sort of sensitive to the actual music, which I liked a lot. I also watched this recently: Very accurate and immediately practical. And deals with repetition as an important musical thing, which I don't see that often.

Haha! I was wondering about that actually!

Yes and it's an apt description. One way or another he is thinking in terms of tension / resolution and going from one place to another, and the ever-present cadence is all over the place, although it's hidden in chords that don't look like it. Whether the composer is doing this deliberately or is just kind of "feeling himself" through it doesn't matter that much, he's still operating off of nerve endings that are sensitive to harmonic tendencies, Besides, Squarepusher is definitely a theory geek. I've heard him namedrop everyone from Messiaen to Frank Zappa as being influences (and he pronounces it mess-eye-an, lol).

No, it's more like the sheer volume of it. Sometimes I read something by you and by the time I've finished mulling it over you've written three more posts, haha. I also think you are generally being way too hard on yourself. I don't remember reading anything by you that was blatantly wrong or misguided.

Cool chords. And I love the key change at around 1:17. It'll be interesting to hear where you take this, plus some mixing.

Not cringey at all, and most of it is on point. I think most people just have a hard time following along, myself included sometimes. Besides, I don't think I have much to add.

LOL! Yeah probably!

All right, I gave it a whirl: I took a couple of liberties, especially in the Ab11/Eb chord which doesn't have an Ab in it but I felt it had to be conveyed that it is a cadence with proper resolution. Also, just by listening to it, it's obvious that he's breaking some rule of regular old (jazz) harmony, so we might as well try to highlight that he's adding an 11 to a major (dominant) chord. Or at least it has the sound of what happens when you do that. I don't know if the musical notation helps... it helps me.

I guess the master mode would be C# aeolian? Something as aggressively chromatic as this is not going to stay in the mode at all though. It would make more sense to just say it's in the key of C# minor. Although I guess thinking in terms of a master mode helps to spot the unaltered scale degrees. The original C#m is then the I chord, the F#m (third chord) is the IV, the second chord is a C#7b9 in disguise (Dmin/maj7), resolving to that F#m. The first four chords could be understood as C#m - C#7b9/D - F#m - Ab7+/C (The last chords doesn't actually have a Ab in it - we could also just agree that Cmaj b5 resolves to C#m.) Or even more simplified it looks like C#m - C#7 - F#m - Ab7, which looks like pretty standard functional harmony. Interestingly enough, he uses these four by themselves, repeatedly, right after the intro, so they form a sort of an A section - So you do get to hear that tricky deceptive cadence resolve naturally.

Thanks!

I don't suppose you'd be willing to post the midi file? From the sound of it there are definite tendencies in there. If not actual dominant 7ths, then something that functions as such. I'm guessing a lot of the trickiness of this is from unresolved cadences. You could call them deceptive cadences I think. Like the fourth chord really wants to go somewhere, but is kind of left hanging. You call it C lydian augmented, so I guess it would be Cmaj7#5? You can check that it resolves back to the C#m at the beginning, so that sets up the expectation, which is then broken when it goes to Eb mixo.

Yeah, there's lots! There is Aphex Twin, Polygon Window, The Tuss, Expert Knob Twiddler, the list goes on! Like, the list literally goes on for like a couple more.

I'm thinking you could back off the bass drum just a bit? It sounded a little grating in my headphones at least and besides I'd like the rest of the music to shine through more. Otherwise it sound really nice, great melody, beautiful sounds and develops very naturally throughout. Maybe there's a bit of Air in there?

That is an incredibly cool instrument. I look forward to seeing it gaining some traction. In some way it is a very natural idea... just like a "fretless" saxophone or something. But I just cannot abide that name. It sound like a minor Harry Potter character. Glissotar the benevolent centaur that teaches Harry a valuable lesson about friendship and plays a small yet vital role in the battle of the Voldemorts. Or something. I haven't actually read Harry Potter. But this is exciting!

Yeah, I kind of wanted to hear that Messiaen quote actually! But I guess the microtonal one is number 5 on the album? https://comb.io/cqpuxN

I there any chance of hearing this? :) Lurking those old threads can sometimes be a little disappointing since so many tracks get removed.

Oh, my god you're right! I really had it fixed in my mind that it was Macy. Maybe it was his similarity to the character in Fargo.

On a date? My god I hope that went okay, haha. It's one of the most unromantic and depressing things I've ever seen. But it has both Phillip Seymour Hoffman and William H Macy doing their most sordid roles.

Fucking Phillip Seymour Hoffman steals every movie he even comes close to.