BURNING LODGE

Managed to produce a mini-session this weekend (about 4 hours - 5 tracks) and will upload it shortly - just as soon as I’ve decided how to tag them. Is it a late BL-34 session or an early BL-35?  It is still May so perhaps I can squeeze it into BL-34, although technically it was produced after the 3rd Saturday of May so maybe that makes it BL-35.

All of which might seem rather pedantic and anal - except to point out that if this session is not counted as BL-34 then that will mean for the first time since the conception of the Burning Lodge, that a whole month has passed and not one of us was able to produce any music - which would be a terrible shame.

So anyway, any thoughts on the matter greatly appreciated.

As far as the session itself is concerned, I will let the music speak for itself. I’m enjoying playing the new Fender Strat a great deal, so that features a lot, as does Absynth 4.

Enjoy,

Brother Buffalo

Hi folks,

Did a session yesterday. The concept this month was that I wanted to get back to those classic 70s vinyl records where you had one long track on each side - a bit like Tangerine Dream’s “Richochet” or Fripp and Eno’s “No Pussyfooting”. So, therefore, rather than trying to do 20 songs, all efforts were directed towards making 2 tracks, each of which would be about the length of a side of vinyl - say 18 minutes or so.

I also, for the most part, used instrumentation similar to that which would have been available in the vinyl era (or recreations thereof). I was originally going to use backing tapes of processed environmental recordings, but a visit to Mersea Island on the Essex coast yielded half an hour of the sound of a microphone being buffeted by wind - and nothing more - so I was forced to use environmental recordings I’d downloaded from the internet instead.

70s vinyl records were often quite meticulous about listing what equipment had been used on what track, so for the record, here it is:

Side 1 (in order of appearance):

Native Instruments ‘Deep Transformations’ (as processor); GMedia MTron Pro; Native Instruments B4; slide guitar through Native Instruments Guitar Rig; Dave Smith Evolver; Korg MS10; Yamaha AN1X; Gibson Les Paul; Elettronix delay looper.

Side 2:

Dave Smith Evolver: SEQ303 MIDI sequencer program; Elettronic delay looper.

I was going to process the stereo masters through the lo-fi “vinyl crackle” setting on the Zoom 1201 effects processor for added authenticity but then thought, “nah, that’s just sad.”

Thanks also to Xtranormal for robot voices.

Love ya,

Bro Typewriter x

Just finished a half-sized session, which has yielded 8 tracks. A fairly high proportion of this session is instrumental - partlybecause I woke up this morning with quite a sore throat so decided to keep singing to a minimum.

Half-way through the session I decided it was time to resurrect the random cards - so there is a suite of 3 tracks for which the chord sequences were determined using the same process I used back in the day of BL session 6 - i.e. starting with 24 cards (for the 12 major and minor chords); randlomly selecting 8 cards for the first RCS (4 for the verse, 4 for the chorus), then another 8 from the remaining 16 for the next RCS, then the final remaining 8 for the 3rd RCS.

In case you’re interested the sequences that arose were:

RCS1:   D   Am   Bm  C#m  ;  Cm   C   B   Em

RCS2:  C#    E    Bflat m    G  ;   Eflat m   Fm   G#   Gm

RCS3:   Bflat   Eflat   F#m   G#m   ;   A   F    F#    Dm

Innovation for this session was that I did some ‘live drumming’ (on the keyboard) for one of the tracks instead of my usual approach of either using loops or clicking the beats onto the midi ‘piano roll’ score.  My timing is not that great, so a few notes needed to be quantized, but on the whole I thought it wasn’t bad.

Gear used was minimal - just a midi controller kbd playing the sounds incorporated in Ableton Live and an acoustic guitar with no effects pedals.  Simples.

Plus there’s a sample from the first LiveLodge in there somewhere.

Looking forward to hearing everything tonight.

BB

Hello all,About a year after getting Native Instrument’s ‘Komplete 5′ (their collection of all their synths in one package), I have finally deregistered my previously purchased editions of Reaktor 5 and Absynth 4 and they are surplus to requirements, so on Monday I would like to give them away to anyone in the Lodge who wants them. Absynth is a very abstract synth which offers pretty much infinite sound-creation capability - if you can be bothered! Reaktor literally is infinite - it’s an open-ended synth creation environment, with hundreds of instruments available on the Native Instruments support forum. These are the full retail versions with manuals.I will pull 2 names out of the hat on Monday - one for Absynth and one for Reaktor. Let me know if you want to be in the hat (you might have the software already or it might just not be your thing…) It’s gonna be a classic!LoveBT x

Just uploaded this month’s session. The first track is a collaborative effort between myself and Brother Sewing Machine, made possible via the magic of the World Wide Web. See if you can spot which bits are BSM and which are mine.

The rest of the session is a concept album. I’ve been very much inspired by some of the concept sessions that Brother Typewriter has produced in the past (particularly last month’s, BL27, and the credit crunch based session, BL14) so I set my sights on a themed session. Took me a while to come up with the theme, but then a conversation at work about various theories on thinking and the brain gave me the inspiration. Lyrical ideas are drawn particularly from some of the work of Edward de Bono and the guys behind ‘Brain Gym’.

As far as instruments go, the only thing that was different to my normal set-up was the use of an upright piano that I acquired along with the new house. Its tuning is somewhat interesting, giving rise to some quirky moments.

Hope you enjoy,

Brother Buffalo. x

A varied session for me this month, including a couple of up-tempo rockers, a couple of dancier tracks featuring lots of samples, a couple of random cards (with a new twist) tracks, a re-working of one of the BTSM New Year tracks and a bit of aimless cocking about at the start.

I have only managed 8 tracks this month, mainly because I spent absolutley ages engineering the ones with the samples - adjusting all the different samples to achieve the desired effect. Probably spent over half the session on these 2 tracks alone.  I do find guitar-and-vocal based rock so much quicker than this technical stuff.

A quick word one the 2 random card tracks, because the twist this month was that I used cards and dice. My basic idea was to use 12 cards to produce my 12-note row (melody) and then roll a die 12 times to generate a chord to accompany each note of the melody.  I used various sytems for this.  On the first iteration of the sequence, I interpreted the dice rolls as follows:

1 - the current melody note is the 1st note of the chord (major)

2 - the current melody note is the 1st note of the chord (minor)

3 - the current melody note is the 3rd note of the chord (major)

4 - the current melody note is the 3rd note of the chord (minor)

5 - the current melody note is the 5th note of the chord (major)

6 - the current melody note is the 5th note of the chord (minor)

I then adopted different approaches with each new iteration of the melody, so in some versions, rolls of 2, 4 or 6 would equate to the melody note being the 2nd (or 9th), 4th or 6th of the chord respectively.

I also (in Random Cards and Dice 2) varied it further to include the ‘inverse’ dice roll, so 1 becomes 6, 2 becomes 5 etc.  Suffice it to say, some of the chords ‘work’ better than others, butI think the results are interesting.

In terms of gear list, it’s all the usual stuff for me, plus some DVD sampling, an unintentional hairdryer and a special guest appearance by a neighbour’s cat.

Enjoy. x

I am currently salivating over the following:
http://www.korg.co.uk/products/software_controllers/nano/sc_nano.asp

The drum pads got 10/10 in last month’s Computer Music, so am particularly taken with them!

Brother Oak

All,

Have been talking with Mother Matches about how we’ll work the live sessions at OktoberLodge. My current plan is to keep things simple, to keep costs down for those who are already shelling out on travel. (I *had* been contemplating stuff like hiring an aircraft hanger, etc)

We’ve got at least two rooms that can be nicely segregated from the family/child living space, so I am *thinking* that what we’ll do is set up at least two studios, then people can jump around a bit. My garden studio is larger, so we’ll probably use that for simultaneous jam sessions. We’ll then set up the lounge for a more structured approach of ‘you do the beats, then I’ll do the bass, then he’ll sing.’

I think there’ll probably be too many of us just to all jam together, and I like the idea that each room might develop different atmospheres and work ethics, with people moving between as and when they feel like it.

There’s a possibility we can set up a third room for recording also. We’ll work out the finer details as we get closer to the date - very exciting though!

Brother Sewing Machines - thank you for your earlier musings on this subject - am hoping we can combine approaches and gear.

Fraternally,

Brother Oak

Check out this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AklKy2NDpqs