Edit: For those who have trouble with Rapidshare, I've added links for using MediaFire to download the songs.
Way back in the olden days - I don't know exactly when, but I was doing my MIDI sequencing on an Atari ST computer - some siblings-in-law, who were into amateur video making, asked me if I would provide some music for a video they were making about Don, another family member who was a competitive bass fisherman. Without having seen the footage, or having the first clue about making effective score music for that matter, I eventually tossed off a dozen or so tunes, gave them catchy titles like "No. 01", sequenced them for the drum machine and synths I had on hand, and recorded them straight to a cassette which I mailed to them. I don't remember if they actually used them.
Anyway, time passed and in 2008 I needed to get a file off the old Atari, leading to a few days spent recovering as much stuff as I could off the old dusty disks. I recovered most of the MIDI files from the Boat video and played them for the first time in years.
Boy, were they bad.
No, not all bad, but a lot of them sort of sounded the same: 120 beats per minute, bouncy synth bass, and (since I had just gotten a sample player that had decent horn sounds) lots of horns. It sounded like a bad marching band trying to play disco jazz.
Anyway, since I'm getting back into recording after a long hiatus, I thought it might be amusing (for me anyway) to take these songs and see if I can't make them sound very different, and also replace all those freakin' horn samples with, I dunno, guitars maybe? And so here are three of them, all MP3, 128kb.
Don's Boat Number One - 3.9MB
download from MediaFire or Rapidshare
I'd been messing around with a bit of quasi-Hawaiian slide playing, so I decided to slow this one way down and try to make it Hawaiian. Well, so much for that. I actually had it even slower than this, but I wanted a quick-and-dirty substitute for the bongo track I had sequenced, and I found a few bongo loops at this speed, so there you go.
Don's Boat Number Three - 4.3MB
download from MediaFire or Rapidshare
Well, this one had a very happy sound to it, so the logical response was, 'I wonder if it will still sound happy if I do it with super-overdriven guitars?' I believe the answer is Yes. And the cheesy resolve is still cheesy! Hooray! Longest fade ever.
Don's Boat Number Five - 4.6MB
download from MediaFire or Rapidshare
This one was all bouncy bass and trombones, with a muted-trumpet lead that was me trying to do a Miles Davis thing, although Miles would've used about 1/3 as many notes, and, you know, been good. Nothing to do but take the bounce out of the bass, ditch the trombones, and play the trumpet part on a guitar, even thought the notes don't really sound right on a guitar.
mood: spearmint
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
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