So I’m stuck at home, sick as anything with bronchitis.  But the good thing is that I get more time to work on my music.  This happened when I was working on Inside The Beat, and I remember making a lot of progress in between playing GTA4 and laying down.  Today was unusual in that I managed to complete an entire song in less than 24 hours.  This is really rare for me, but I’m attributing it to some new software and my more experimental approach to music lately.

I’ve also been organizing my tracks differently in Sonar lately.  Like with the drums, I’ve been splitting things up so that individual elements are on separate midi tracks.  So for example, I might have a track for high hats, one for the crash, one for other sounds, and one for the kick/snare beat.  Each track still points to a single instance of Battery (my drum machine software), but this lets me chose what elements I want to combine as I move blocks around.  I’ve also been doing this with MIDI control messages for synths, where I’ll make a separate MIDI track for drawing controller envelopes, while the note data remains in the original one.

The song I wrote today was heavily inspired by a group called Autechre.  They do cool experimental and IDM stuff where they mess with beats, rhythms, pitch, and just about anything else.  My song mainly drew from their unusual song structure and rhythms.  It also draws on some of my usual Kraftwerk influence.

To create the drum track I used this really interesting sequencer/sound generator in Reaktor called Newschool.  I say “interesting” because that’s just about the best way you can describe it.  The thing uses Conway’s Game of Life to drive its sequencer, which feeds into a tone generator that uses sine waves in conjunction with multiple forms of modulation.  So basically it’s a groove box designed around a simulated artificial organism.  Crazy sounding, isn’t it?  Here’s a screenshot:

So the grid on the left is where you draw the initial starting cells for the automaton.  When you run the thing, the cells follow the rules for Conway’s Game of Life and evolve over time, which is what you see in the grid on the right.  The Offset and Length control how many cycles the automaton goes through before looping back through (assuming it’s set to loop and not go on forever).  You can also change the step quantization (here set to a 16th note) to change how often the automaton cycles.

The tone generator is below.  The left side is where you set parameters for the eight voices like pitch and whatnot, as well as some modulation.  The right side has additional modulation options to really play with the sound.  Both sides can be controlled by their own independent LFOs.

So how does it make sound?  Well, see how the right grid has all those colored dots?  Those correspond to the voices below.  I’m not sure exactly how it figures out when to trigger a voice, but I think when a cell becomes active on a dot in a given cycle, it has a certain chance of triggering the voice, which I think is controlled with the “sens” knob (short for “Sensitivity”, I’m guessing).

Anyway, I used a custom patch in Newschool to create a drum track in my new song, which I then layered with some additional sounds from Battery to fill it all out.  To keep things sounding interesting I added some filter and other effects to both sets of drums, as well as a transient shaper on the Newschool drums to increase their bite.

I’m not sure the song is totally finished yet.  Usually what I do is I finish a song, do an initial test in my car (which has some pretty decent subwoofers), go a few days without listening to it, then test it again on a few different speaker systems.  This helps me determine if the song needs any change to its structure, or if there’s any mixing/mastering problems with it.

Now to decide on a title…

Just a warning, partition36.com will be going down for a little while.  I’m moving web hosts and doing some maintenance on the site itself.  I don’t foresee this taking longer than the weekend, but if things go wrong it could take a little longer.

So if you see that the site is down, don’t freak!  Partition 36 isn’t gone.

This blog will stay up since it’s hosted by Tumblr and not the same host as my website.

I’ve been doing some minor tweaking to that “/dev/music” song I finished recently to test out a new theory of mine and ended up with a much better sounding mixdown.  The theory was based on a simple question that I came up with: can you use a side-chained compressor to control the bass and keep things from getting too muddy?  Originally I wanted to test this using a side-chained multiband compressor, but sadly none of the ones I have have side-chaining capabilities, and the one I found that does is over $150 (*cough*support a poor musician*cough*).  So instead I settled on a normal compressor.

Actually wait… maybe I should explain what some of this is!  Here are the basics for those who aren’t familiar with the terms.  A compressor is something that affects dynamic range (the difference between the loud and soft parts of a signal).  When the volume of an audio signal goes above a certain threshold, the compressor is triggered and reduces the signal by a certain ratio.  When this happens, loud peaks get reduced, thereby reducing the dynamic range.

Here’s a screenshot of a compressor I use frequently:

The Input meter on the left shows the incoming audio signal’s level, as well as the threshold I’ve set (-12dB).  The middle shows that I’ve set the compressor to use a ratio of 9:1 (“if the signal is 9dB above the threshold, it gets reduced to 1dB”).  So basically, whenever the audio signal goes above -12dB, that signal is reduced by that 9:1 ratio.  The “GR” meter is “Gain Reduction” and just shows how much the signal is being reduced, so here it’s somewhere between 6dB and 9dB.  The Gain fader after that shows the “makeup gain”, which is how much the signal is re-amplified as it leaves the compressor.

Side-chaining is slightly different.  Rather than monitoring the original input signal, a side-chained compressor will monitor a second signal.  When that second one goes over the threshold, thefirstsignal gets reduced by a certain amount.  Ever notice how the music seems to automatically get quiet on the radio when the DJ starts talking?  That’s a side-chained compressor and their voice triggers the compression.  The only thing that you hear out of the compressor is the first signal though, so if you still want to hear the side-chained signal (and sometimes you might not!), you would have to send it to a second destination.

So, how was I using this in “/dev/music” to control the bass frequencies and keep things from getting all muddy?  Well, “/dev/music” has two separate bass sounds playing at once in most sections, while also having a powerful kick drum.  The most important bass sound is the synth bass that drives the chord progressions, and so this one I wanted to always have at full-strength.  The second was the bubbly bass sound that appears at the very beginning and exists all through the song.  This one needed to be ducked whenever too much bass was going through the signal path, and so a side-chained compressor worked beautifully here.  I simply routed both the main bass and (at a reduced level) the kick drum to the side-chained input, then applied the compressor to the bubbly bass.  After some tweaking you (mostly) couldn’t tell it was getting ducked, except that the bass end was suddenly a lot cleaner.

(Click to enlarge, or click here)

Here’s a shot of part of the console for “/dev/music”.  Notice how tracks 9, 19, and 21 have that “Send” going to the “Sonitus:fx” device active?  That’s the side-chaining; the actual side-chained compressor lives on bus 7 clear on the right.  So whenever one of these tracks have a sound passed through them, a copy of them (so to speak) gets sent to the compressor on bus 7.  Meanwhile the bubbly bass (here called “Bass Pings” on track 17” is being sent to this bus to get compressed.

As I mentioned, this wasn’t exactly what I wanted to do.  A normal compressor affects all frequencies and so the entire sound of the bubbly bass got ducked.  If it was a multiband compressor I could tweak it so that only the lower frequencies of the bubbly bass got ducked whenever the other bass sounds hit.

Anyway, I just wanted to share this.  It’s probably nothing big to those who do this for a living (and they probably have better ways of accomplishing this!).  But for someone like me who’s still learning and trying to make this her full-time job, it’s quite exciting to hear it work!

PS: Compressors are good tools when used properly.  Misusing them gives us unfortunate situations like the Loudness War.

I started my first “band” (actually a one-person act that never performed) in high school.  It was called IkeTech and, just like Partition 36, it was entirely synthesizer-based.  IkeTech came to an end in 2005 when I decided to take my music in a new direction.  I wanted it to sound more professional, warmer, darker, and analog.  I also wanted to incorporate slightly harsher sounds into the music.  This is when Partition 36 was born.

Lately I’ve been focusing on that “slightly harsher” sound by experimenting with EBM/industrial.  After all, it had been a goal of mine but I never really did much with it except for the title track on Inside The Beat.  But you know what?  I’m finding that, on a personal level, I really don’t get much out of writing music like that.  It’s just not the right direction for Partition 36.  Which is not to say I dislike EBM and industrial; it’s some of my favorite music to listen to.  But It’s not Partition 36.

Thus, expect less of it from me, and more of that real Partition 36 sound :)

Which brings me to the real point of this post… I got a new song finished!  The song is called “/dev/music” and is sort of a Kraftwerkian style song.  It’s built around a strong beat and a bubbly bass sound, with some vocoder action near the end.  This is just a short sample so you get an idea of what the song sounds like.

The song will appear on the new album, which is coming along quite nicely.  A few tracks I had written for it ended up getting cut since they just didn’t fit, which means the album’s release is pushed back a bit, but I think it’s for the best.  I’m still planning a two-disc release, with disc one being “normal” and disc two being “other”.

That’s about it for now.  I am so stupidly excited for the new album that I almost can’t sit still ^_^

The first version of “Occupy” didn’t turn out quite as well as I had hoped it would.  Something about its mix was bothering me.  Later on I finally nailed down the main problem areas and decided to rework the song to get it closer to how I originally envisioned it.  This is the result of my work ^_^

There honestly isn’t too much that’s different aside from a few swapped out background parts and some additional sounds added for ornamentation.  The biggest change is in the mixdown, which was completely redone from scratch using a different technique than before.  Things now sound more balanced and the rhythm section feels more driving, at least to my ears.

Anyways, enjoy!  Please reblog this to share it!  The lyrics are still available in my previous post.

So right now I have six songs that are basically finished as far as composition goes.  They are:

• Wired Jungle
• Midnight Highway
• Tweak
• Occupy
• Intro #1
• Emotions

Not that listing off their titles will do you any good, but bear with me here :)  There are also 2-3 other incomplete songs that may or may not develop into full compositions.

Anyway, as far as the album goes, I have a few problems developing that I’m trying to fix.  The first is that Emotions doesn’t fit with the other music.  Like, at all.  It just sounds like this weird crappy emo tune that doesn’t develop.  So do I remove it from the album, or do I continue to hack away at it?  Or should I go radical on it, fork what I have now, and completely rework things?

The second problem is that the mixes for Tweak and Occupy still don’t sound like I want them.  It’s something I tried fixing the other night but, much to my dismay, I actually made them worse.  So I’m not sure how to handle them right now.

The third problem is that I can’t seem to come up with anything really good lately.  Every time I try writing something it comes out sounding cheesy, super depressing/emo, or both.

Perhaps I just need to take a break from music for a few weeks :)

This is “Occupy”, a song I wrote in support of the Occupy movement, and a song off of the upcoming album, 63.  It’s more of an EBM-influenced song than some of the other stuff I’ve been writing, and as such it will appear on disc two of 63.

The song started life as an experiment to create a more “traditional” EBM bass sound and just sort of took off from there, with me just adding one harsh part to it after another.  Although I had been wanting to write a song about the Occupy movement, I didn’t originally intend to do that with this song.  But since Occupy seems to be so upset with the way the system is (at least that’s my view of it so far), this song just felt like it fit.

The lyrics are intentionally distorted almost to the point of being unrecognizable.  I’ve posted them below.

Enjoy!

Occupy
By Alexa Jones-Gonzales

Can’t get hired
No health care
Food or rent
Lose a home

Send it all
To the top
None for you
None for me

Laws that harm
Wars that kill
Markets that
Suck you dry

Uncle Sam
In on it
Welcome to the
Police state

They’ll kick you out
Seize your stuff
Don’t give up
Go back in

Show them who
Owns this place
Demand change
Occupy!

I didn’t expect this to happen quite this soon, but the new Partition 36 album is now about 25% finished.  This is the same one titled 63 that I mentioned in my last post.  With two CDs, intro tracks, and an accompanying art/writings book (yikes…), this album will likely be my most ambitious project yet.  And if the tracks I recently finished mixing down are any indicator, also my best sounding one.

The idea of the two CDs came about because of the thematic and stylistic differences between the tracks I have both written and planned.  Although Inside The Beat turned out really well, I was never all that happy with how it wasn’t that cohesive.  The title track was a banging industrial-inspired song, while the song right after it was influenced more by jazz, synthpop, and J-pop.  But by splitting the new album into two CDs, and throwing on a few extra tracks, things should sound like they belong together, and the overall theme will be much more apparent.

As far as releasing it goes, this one will definitely be available for purchase, but I’m debating if I should have both digital and physical releases.  If I do end up doing just a digital release, the art book would just be a downloadable PDF.  But I also like having that physical copy in my hands because then it feels that much more real.  I guess we’ll see how things go.

Last night I finished a new song that turned out… interesting.  It starts off moving in one direction, then takes on a different character once the melody comes in.  Yet all the parts work together to create a weird orchestral-synth vibe.  It’s nuts.  The song is titled “Emotion” (this might change) and will be on the new album.  I’m going to work on mixing it down today and giving it some tweaks.

Speaking of the new album, I forgot to mention that it now has a working title: 63.  I’ll leave it up to my listeners to decide the meaning behind it.

It’s been a while since I’ve given an update, so I thought I’d drop in and let everyone know what has been happening.

Work on the new album is progressing, but it’s been slow since I’ve been working on side project stuff in between writing new material for Partition 36.  The album also started to go off on a tangent where it was going to include tons of lyrics and have a more industrial sound to it.  But this isn’t where I want to take Partition 36.  I’ve been doing a lot of digging through my music collection lately and have been getting back to my original influences that inspired me to write music, like Enya (raise your hand if you’re surprised about that one) and classical music.  These have reminded me that Partition 36 is all about that dark synthpop sound combined with contemplative tracks to create interesting and beautiful electronic timbres.  Ok, maybe that’s a bit too artistic sounding, but whatever.  My point is, the new album is going to sound more cohesive and be the closest thing yet to how I envision Partition 36 to sound.  Also, don’t take this to mean my previous post mentioning whispered lyrics is now being thrown out the window.  It isn’t ;^)

I’m also looking at fixing up the Partition 36 website a bit to make it more minimal and clean.  The current site works but it just feels cluttered to me.  But I’m also no web designer by any means, so if you would like to volunteer some time to fix it up, please contact me.  I can’t offer you anything except maybe a signed copy of Inside The Beat and the upcoming album once it’s finished.