Tag Archives: music

Behind the curtain: Stochastic Resonance

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My first two Caustic Reverie albums have had a strong element of the improvisational rather than the tightly structured, step sequencer-based compositions that I have done as TheForgotton. Caustic Reverie has been a chance for me to break out of my writing ruts, and this album was to be an experiment in generative music.

For Stochastic Resonance, I used a program called FMusic as a skeleton for the tracks. It is a composition tool that uses fractals and cellular automata to pick the notes, durations, etc. for a song. I messed around with some scales and key changes until it gave me something I liked. FMusic spits out a midi file which I then imported into FL studio. For example, here is the midi used as a basis for In Vacuo.

I made some synth patches using vsts like the Cameleon 5000, Crystal, and a couple of Krakli synths including Karnage and Etequet. I put some fairly wild sounds for each patch and when I went to play it back, it was compete chaos. See below for what this part of the process sounded like.

I then dragged the tempo down and dumped each track individually, doing some additional time stretching using paulstretch with different edge-case settings for each to get some nice artifacts and glitches throughout.

The tracks were reassembled in Cubase and I started to mix it down. The mixing phase was interesting, as I was working with it more like a sculpture than a song, muting tracks here, and fading them and out there. I added some ambiance recorded at night on the dock near my place, some pitch shifted cymbals, and even a couple of household appliances here and there.

New music project: Caustic Reverie

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I’ve been messing around with some dark ambient and drone stuff and have started a new project called Caustic Reverie. I’ve released an album-length piece called Absent that is available to listen via streaming on last.fm. It takes a while to build, so I recommend putting it on in the background when you go read some Thomas Ligotti.

Music update

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I’m nearly finished with another TheForgotton song called Ganymede that’s based on a 12-tone matrix. There’s just a touch of spit and polish left as well as some sort of artwork I’d like to have before I release it. The possibility of a cohesive album has crossed my mind but there is still a lot more songwriting needed to be done.

I ended up staying up late last night working on a drone that ended up coming close to an album’s worth in one track! This song has lead me in a whole other direction than I’m used to, mainly that of dark ambient. I’m considering releasing some of this new stuff under the name Caustic Reverie. I also need to keep an eye out for a site that will host a 70 + minute song.

But Not Knowing Why reviewed

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Toxie from The Cynic’s Cache has reviewed one of my songs here. Here’s an excerpt carefully selected to make it sound almost positive:

This song is actually painful to listen to for a variety of reasons.

The most obvious is the fact that it’s so dreary. This song sounds like a seven year old sitting inside, staring out the window at a rain storm on the first day of summer. It sounds like a guy standing in the rain with a bouquet of flowers for his girlfriend that he just found murdered. This song sounds like…OK, you get the picture. It’s depressing.

Under the Sun/Moon

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I was working on the drum levels on my latest song when I realized that it was basically a completely different animal when I muted all the percussion. I’ve since split the song into two realizations: Sub Phoebus and Sub Luna.

Sub Phoebus is closest to the mixdown from the 14th with a working title of Panamaxing, though with more varied percussion and a touch more atmosphere. Sub Luna is an exercise in applied Frippertronics. There is more of an emphasis on space and texture and I’ve changed around the instrumentation. Both songs start and end basically the same but there is a drastic change in mood between them. I’ll post the final tracks when I’m happy with both mixes.

Work in progress for 7-14-08

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Here’s last night’s mix of a song I’ve been working on.

It started as an instrumental about the last years of the French construction of the Panama Canal but ended up as sort of a Frippertronic soundscape. I’m still working on tweaking the drums and percussion stuff but the song is basically in the form I want it to be.