June 2008 – Aaron J. Trumm

Drums!

June 30, 2008 by Aaron

aaron j. trumm, drums, music, nquit, recording, snare

Man the hardest part about a production is the drums. Well, that is, if you want real drums. It really is HELL. Because you have to find a drummer that can do the job, find a kit (hopefully that drummer can do it), find the studio time at the right studio, book it, get it right. With money it’s easier, but really if you’re not in a normal “band”, the drum part of a production is simultaneously the most crucial-make-or-break part, and the hardest part to get right.

But with the net and digital audio and stuff, I’ve been experimenting with collaborating with people by sending them a rough mix and asking for a guitar part or whatnot, and recently I realized “there must be professional drummers with well equipped drum recording studios out there who will remotely collaborate!” and sure enough, I’ve found at least one that I’m trying out.

I don’t know if this remote collaboration trend is ENTIRELY healthy though. Not having to relate face to face and be together is yet another example of the computer “age” ruining our connectedness. But I’m doing it, partly because I fear people on occassion, and partly because fuck it let’s try. At least I’m not text messaging anymore. And I am going to do some collaborating with REAL people here in town.

Nevertheless it’s exciting to be able to collaborate this way. I have several tracks out there pending possible work from several friends who are spread out all over. I’ve gotten one back so far, a couple of tracks in the very newest Third Option project. My girlfriend is napping in my bed right now, perhaps I’ll set up a mic and wake her up and say “hey sing for me”.

If only she would learn screamin lead rock guitar…

Dance Uncle

June 29, 2008 by Aaron

dance uncle, third option

[sc_embed_player fileurl=”http://www.nquit.com/sounds/ThirdOption/FrostedMiniWheats/11ThirdOptionDanceUncle.mp3″] Dance Uncle by Third Option

Man I’m listening to this one on my new little studio monitors, which reveal a lot, and godDANG the bass is too much and too muddy. Well, to me anyway. You’ll still love it

I like this one because I have these samples from that same cassette tape of The Crucible and I always thought those women sounded so incredibly sexy. I imagine them as these svelt hotty dancer/actress types. Especially the evil chick. What a naughty hotty, to do a little rhyming. “SHUT IT!”

There’s a remix of this one where I replace once of the tracks with a fake saxophone, and it’s a line that’s probably impossible to play on a saxophone, so it sounds neat. I called that the Saxomophone 2000 Mix or something like that. 2000 is for the year.

The thing about this whole album is I recorded and mixed it all at home, and it’s the first thing I ever “released” where I did that. I only had one 8 track recorder so I did a lot of bouncing tracks back and forth (a LOT – in fact I had to be pretty inventive). The unfortunate thing about all this stuff is I have no way to recreate it – no multitracks, no MIDI sequences, I don’t have most of the synths I was using, nothing. So if ever there’s a big movie soundtrack that wants some remixed version, tough luck.

Imagine painstakingly trying to recreate the timbres and tones and lines of this stuff using different instruments and recording techniques. Wow what a job that would be.

Orson’s Groove

June 28, 2008 by Aaron

orson's groove, third option

[sc_embed_player fileurl=”http://www.nquit.com/sounds/ThirdOption/FrostedMiniWheats/12ThirdOptionOrsonsGroove.mp3″] Orson’s Groove by Third Option

Obviously this one’s called Orson’s Groove because of the Orson Wells sample. I think I got that sample from online somewhere. I’m not sure if it’s still the case, but used to be you could find almost anything in a .wav file archived on various websites. I used to just search and search. Had president Reagan saying “we’ve signed legislation to ban Russia forever, we begin bombing in five minutes” and I have Mayor Daly saying “gentlemen get the thing straight, the policeman isn’t there to create disorder, the policeman is there to preserve disorder”.

I went further with playing with the audio on this one than I had on previous stuff. I had stuff moving back and forth in the stereo field, and filtered and stuff. Manny Rettinger had always told me to do more to the audio. Dustin likes Orson’s Groove a lot – it’s very trancy. Sometimes trancy equates to boring to me, but Dustin likes this one a lot. I like the mix and the audio trickery.

I go away now!

Frosted Mini Wheats

June 27, 2008 by Aaron

frosted mini wheats, third option

[sc_embed_player fileurl=”http://www.nquit.com/sounds/ThirdOption/FrostedMiniWheats/13ThirdOptionFrostedMiniWheats.mp3″] Frosted Mini Wheats by Third Option

It’s a bit anticlimatic, I think, that this track is the title track. But still (at first I capitalized that, that’s funny) this one’s kinda fun and bouncy to me and I laugh because of the serious sounding essay text I’m reading where I’m talking about the Frosted Mini Wheats analogy to life. It’s silly but also totally truthful. *laugh*

I always used to like to telephone vocals. That’s where I take out a lot of the low end and a lot of the high end frequencies so it sounds like a telephone. This can make it sound purposeful when the full range recording wasn’t necessarily good. This is when I didn’t have the tools to record vocals very well. By tools I mean equipment but also skills, I think. Now I don’t telephone stuff as much anymore because I actually sometimes get recordings that I like the sound of.

I actually can’t wait to start posting newer stuff. You’ll be able to see (hear) the improvement I think. Still I’m enjoying posting these Frosted Mini Wheats tracks because they’re really creative in a lot of ways. I think I actually did stuff musically on this record that I might not have the balls to do now that I think people might be listening.

Oh man the end of this track has a huge mixing mistake. The next track overlaps with it so they can fade into eachother (all the tracks do that) but I forgot to manage the levels and all of a sudden it just gets WAY louder. Bad Aaron. Bad.

In the studio at Ubik Sound here in Albuquerque, way back when I first started, we used to talk about leaving mistakes in on purpose and having a contest for fans – “find the three mistakes in this CD, and you get a free one!” or free concert tickets or whatever.

Later I realized that maybe that could go awry because people would come back saying this is a mistake and that’s a mistake on stuff we didn’t notice or didn’t think was a mistake. So much room for debate there. Could be bad!

Buzzsaw

June 26, 2008 by Aaron

buzzsaw, third option

[sc_embed_player fileurl=”http://www.nquit.com/sounds/ThirdOption/FrostedMiniWheats/15ThirdOptionBuzzsaw.mp3″] Buzzsaw by Third Option

Well this one I called Buzzsaw just because I was using this buzz patch for the main “theme”. Obviously this one just doesn’t pick up from the previous song’s theme at ALL – it’s just a new thing. I remember liking how the drum mix came out on this one. Seemed balanced and tight and translatable system to system.

This one doesn’t have any sample or vocals or anything and I always thought of it as sort of boring, to tell the truth. Then again it’s dancy. Dancy music can be nice to dance to in a club but not as interesting to sit and listen to as if you were watching a show or something. I felt inventive, though, toward the end, when I set up the weird organ/sine wave thing to slowly change pitch and go down down down. I was just playing with things I guess.

Interlude 1: That Death Cat

June 26, 2008 by Aaron

interlude 1, m.c. murph, nquit music, that death cat

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“I’ve seen a figure in a cape…” *LAUGH* YEAH!!! This is just a lyricless interlude tune. Almost like having a skit (remember when every damn rap album had skits?), but music, not a skit. The drums are sampled again! They’re a sample from Fun Lovin Criminals, and it’s sped up. Again, fuck you RIAA. Then there’s samples from The Frighteners (one of the all time great cult classics! So fun!) and then a sample from Braveheart, just for cheese I guess.

The dumb thing on this is I don’t know what I was doing, if maybe I was too lazy or something, but I don’t fade the Braveheart sample out in a good spot or anything. There’s all the commotion of dudes talking and it just cuts off. I should have cut it off at “I go to make sure that they have it” but somehow I just didn’t do it. WTF? The Frighteners sample is that way too. Somehow I just left this extra bit in where the guy goes “i’ve studied the coroner’s reports from every d—” and i just cut him off mid word! The end of that sample was supposed to be, in my mind it was, in my artistic sense, the end of it for ME, is “you killed your wife!” “NO!!!”

But somehow I just let it go on. WHAT THE FUCK, AARON???

I actually convinced myself that the Braveheart sample fit the theme of the record at the time. I think the whole bit about squabbling for the scraps from the King’s table. But also, the part where he says “why? why is that impossible?” That’s basically my whole thing, and that’s what NQuit really means. Yes it’s “never never quit” but really the more important part of the never never quit philosophy to me is the idea that anything is possible. So that whole thing of him doing the impossible, that was verification that I wasn’t the only one trying to say that.

So I put it on the record, using some kind of twisted logic to tell me that that fit the theme. Actually the logic still makes sense to me, now that I think about it *mad scientist furrow*

Alladin’s Groove

June 25, 2008 by Aaron

alladin's groove, third option

[sc_embed_player fileurl=”http://www.nquit.com/sounds/ThirdOption/FrostedMiniWheats/16ThirdOptionAlladinsGroove.mp3″] Alladin’s Groove by Third Option

I really always loved the melody on this one. I think I was proud of the drum mix being tight and balanced too. I must have been getting better at that. But yeah I always thought this was pretty. It reminds me of nightmare before Christmas but I think that’s mostly because I was making this tune when we were playing that playstation game with the guy with the jack-o-lantern head, and THAT reminds me of nightmare before christmas.

There’s something very Albuquerque about that time. i get the feeling alot that Albuquerque definitely has a subset who are really really not seeking anything, especially any kind of glory or fame, but they’d rather find a niche working in IT someplace or repairing computers or something, and hunkering down with their girl/boyfriend playing playstation or WOW and really just be content. Be interested in D&D type stuff, swords, games, magick, and lay low. It’s a thing that I sometimes will long for, but doesn’t necessarily always satisfy me. But I think there’s really something valuable in it.

At any rate, that’s what this tune makes me think of. The lyrics, which are purposefully disguised just a little, are “alladin rubs his lamp and genie grants a wish, but now alladin has a greedy price to pay” and now that I type them, they seem pretty racist in a way, because the lyric is referring to Sadaam Hussein (back during the FIRST US/Iraq conflict – Daddy Bush vs. Sadaam). I thought I was referring to Sadaam being greedy and then having the U.S. come down on him, ’cause I was simple like that then. But now I read the lyric and think of Sadaam having dealings with the Bush family (something I didn’t know about back then – i really thought they were cut and dried enemies) and getting bitten by trying to be in bed with the evil superpower. Or some shit. But it sounds racist because I called Sadaam “Alladin” and that seems racist. To lump together all remotely middle eastern cultures and people from all areas of space and time, implying that Sadaam Hussein is the same as Alladin.

Then again, you don’t really get the lamp/genie analogy going by saying “Sadaam rubs his lamp”. You just sound like you’re talking about him masturbating.

Eyes Glazed Over

June 24, 2008 by Aaron

eyes glazed over, third option

[sc_embed_player fileurl=”http://www.nquit.com/sounds/ThirdOption/FrostedMiniWheats/17ThirdOptionEyesGlazedOver.mp3″] Eyes Glazed Over by Third Option

This one really IS boring, but it’s almost supposed to be. *LAUGH* It’s actually not as boring as I thought, listening to it now. Again I was gladder about the mix on this one than previous ones. I guess the process was improving. This is another one without words or samples. It’s sort of long too. I guess in this section of this record is when things die down.

Records do that a lot. I remember feeling like Moby’s “Play” got mellow and boring at the end. I didn’t do it that way on purpose. It’s almost like this universal tug toward making it like a party so that 40 minutes in, everybody’s drunk and high and mellow and wanting to die down, fall asleep, enter into the ether.

That reminds me of being at this one get together in Dallas with a bunch of wiccan friends who were also quite into the drug action, and being locked away in one of those bedrooms with the windows so dark and covered that no light ever enters, so you never know what time it might be (which is a great way to break out of boxes and enter into the primal pre-creation, nothing is real state). We were in there all night, of course, and everyone was getting higher and higher. I drank a beer or something, maybe one hard liquor drink, not enough to even buzz, really, and I didn’t do any drugs. I somehow didn’t feel comfortable doing it. There were a lot of people I didn’t know there. At some point they put on Third Option “Still”, which is a five track maxi-single – it’s the same song over and over. I mean it’s remixes, but it’s still the same song. And they had that on the stereo or boombox in this bedroom on repeat. It was piles of young, high bodies all over beds and floors, and we were all falling asleep with Still going over and over and over, guiding us into that ether. It was hyper surreal. It was especially hyper surreal to be carried into the spirit realm of sleep and dream and maliability by your own music.

Still Phase Motion Mix

June 21, 2008 by Aaron

mix, nquit, nquit music, phase motion, poetry, slam poetry, spoken word, still, tamara nicholl, techno, third option

“Still Phase Motion Mix” by Third Option.

It seems like I was probably moving from one mix to the next, tweaking the next one based on the last. But I don’t necessarily remember. Sure I do! I was! Dammit! :)0

Well what can I say about this version? It’s a little different. It’s – a …uhm. Here’s the thing, how about we just listen to it?

Now that we’ve done that, what do YOU have to say? I mean hit me up, you know? aarontrumm @ nquit . com – tell me what you hear here. Oooooh hear here!!

And as per the usual, I’d love to give you free stuff 🙂 So here’s some free stuff right in this link! 🙂

– Aaron

[purchase_link id=”1327″ text=”Download Still Here” style=”button” color=”blue”]

Still Murphurd’s Slow And Unrequited Love Mix

June 20, 2008 by Aaron

ambient, classical, fusion, murphurd's slow and unrequited love, poetry, spoken word, still, tamara nicholl, techno

Third Option’s “Still, Murphurd’s Slow And Unrequited Love Mix” is above…

Ok. Lot to explain on this one! First of all, Murphurd. For those of you who know me as Murph, Murph is actually short for Murphurd. I got the name Murphurd freshman year in high school, damn near the first day. I was new to town. I was in science class, I asked this dude Andrew (I think) if he had a pencil. I was mumbling. I mumbling often then. He said “murphurd?”, you know how people do where they repeat the gibberish you sound like you’re saying? You say “are you here for pizza?” and they say “what? hurforpeets?” Well “do you have a pencil?” was somehow “murphurd?”. Like three times in a row. Finally I just gave up and said “yeah, Murphurd”.

From that moment on, partly because the dude didn’t know my name anyway, he just started calling me Murphurd. He never knew I was asking for a pencil. He just thought I was being a weirdo, all the more reason to name me what I was saying. I often WAS being a weirdo like that, (still am), and so it made sense, even though ironically, weirdo I was not being that particular time.

Of course Murphurd quickly shortened to Murphurd, but the honors class kids I went through all of high school with would be just as likely to call me Murphurd. All you cats who came around AFTER high school, when M.C. Murph and then just Murph were my stage names, you wouldn’t call me Murphurd. But cats from high school, they certainly might.

On to the word “slow”. Well, I thought this was so cool. I took I think the whole mix of the original Still track, minus vocals and played it back with this hard drive recorder called the Darwin I was using. The Darwin had a shuttle wheel, where you could hold it and turn it to play or fast forward or rewind. You could hold the wheel in one spot and have your audio play back at 2 times the speed, or 4, or even slow. If you held it right in the right spot, you could play a whole song back at the same screwy speed. Nowadays you can just tell some software to slow down or speed up something, and you could then too, but the software and computers were more expensive, and all I had was this Darwin machine. So I was playing it back with the wheel and did it slow one time, and it sounded neat. So what I did was, I put another Darwin on record (ok ok I had two – and they were like 3 grand a piece I admit) – wait did I have two at that time? I put SOMETHING on record at regular speed, and then I held that shuttle wheel in the exact right spot for like 10 minutes and recorded this mega slow version of the tune. Well it just so happened that the speed was a perfect multiple – I think a quarter – of the original speed. So what I could do was, I could bring in the normal speed song later and have it be perfectly in sync. And I put vocals in different spots, re-recorded the poem with me saying it, etc. We used this mix (minus the vocals, ’cause we were performing them) to start our Third Option show most of the time, actually. I always thought it was a neat mysterious intro. It comes on slow so you could sort of start it early and come to the stage just in time.

Anyway the result is the Murphurd’s Slow And Unrequited Love Mix, and that slow down process is why it’s a 10 minute long version. I guess I felt like I should use the whole thing *eyeroll*.

Oh I didn’t explain the unrequited love part. Well, at that time, there was a Third Option act, and we hadn’t done the Cult Of Nice record yet, and we were in Albuquerque and going all around doing our shtick, and the act was a duo, me and Tamara. But at that time me and Tamara weren’t dating. There was this kind of 9 month period between the time me and my girlfriend before had broken up where I was all about the getting with Tamara but she wasn’t all about the getting with me.

I guess sometime during the creation of the Still EP, we finally started moving that direction. I actually remember the date when we first “went beyond friends” (to put it politely), but not exactly where we were in the production process.

The point is, eventually, I named this mix the Unrequited Love Mix – I think because I did the whole thing in a sort of all night binge of disturbed creativity that was disturbed due to the unrequited love situation.

So it was quite a bold thing to say, seeing as how the subject of disturbance was IN THE BAND. Sort of like a Mama’s and Papa’s story I heard once.

Last piece of trivia: If you were to buy the disc, there’s a typo ion the cd packaging. It says “Muphurd’s Slow And Unrequited Love Mix” (missing an r in Murphurd).

Love to y’all! Hey, here’s some free Third Option stuff, in case you didn’t get it yet 🙂