Cult Of Nice Archives - Aaron J. Trumm

Bodies (The “hidden” track)

September 2, 2008 by Aaron

This is the “hidden” track on Cult Of Nice. It’s not really hidden on the CD, per se. It’s just track 12 – but there’s a 13 second delay before it starts, and it’s not listed on the liner notes on the CD. But everywhere digital, it’s just there.

I did this one all by myself 🙂 – Meaning Tamara was out of town, and I did the whole thing in one night and surprised her with it. I used some outtakes of her going “sometimes silence is sexy” and did some weird feedback stuff where I set up this mic and had the speakers in the room on, and noticed it was making WEIRD feedback noises, so I recorded them!

Then I was putting together this track by myself and drinking a lot of beer. Then I sort of improv’d the poetry stuff live on the mic and such. It was very fun. I did some creative stuff that I was sort of proud of, like some tempo changes, including a sort of tempo fade, and also a sort of key change where the organ slowly morphs into a lower key. I did all that using MIDI techniques, not audio manipulation. It was neat.

Then I liked how it got all nutballs at the end and had the shaky strings going “wwwaaaahhh!!!” “brraarrwwww!!!” But my favorite thing about this track was always the bassline. It just always made me happy and sounded badass.

This one’s one to listen to all the way through because of all those strings and piano changes. It’s not a “chorus verse chorus” type of “song”. In fact I remember thinking that I was trying to write it in some sort of linear progression like classical music.

Oh that’s a trip. I never realized til just this second that standard pop music is actually circular. I never would have attributed a sort of Eastern way of doing things to an essentially Western art but there you go. Pop music is circular. Whereas classical music is linear. Not sure all classical music is linear, but some is, I guess.

Bye!

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Sitting Room

August 26, 2008 by Aaron

Cult Of Nice

sitting room, third option

Such sadness in this piano! Such sadness in the poem! I’m not even sure what the deal is with this poem – it totally sounds like a poem is dead poem, but Tamara’s mom isn’t dead. But it’s surely more complex than that. There was a time I understood more about this poem, but at least this morning I can’t remember.

I just remember playing the piano. Such sadness! But I think it’s so pretty! It’s so pretty!

doop doop doop dee dee dee deee dooo doo doo deeeeeeeee doo doo doo…

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Stones

August 24, 2008 by Aaron

Cult Of Nice

stones, third option

When we were doing this album, I felt like this one was the best mixed. I also feel like it has a different quality than the rest of the album. It seems more like one of those mellow electronica things I’ve heard. Or something. I also think it feels more light (i don’t mean as opposed to heavy, I mean as opposed to dark). But the words, I guess, really aren’t light. In fact they have another piece of that essay talking about “without our shadow” we only have half of ourselves to draw upon for strength and stuff.

There’s all these lines that weave in here that I forgot about like “rise and join us”. And I like the androgonous Tamara voice that I made by pitch shifting her down a little bit. There’s also a few lines in here that I wrote on the spot in the studio. So me and Tamara both wrote the words on this one.

I’m sort of surprised I made this song. I hear it and go “whoa, I did that?”

I’ve actually been really impressed with this album as I blog about it. I think it’s pretty dang good. There’s so much to it, too.

I REALLY love the message of this song. “Words that have weight are like stones. stones when dropped causes ripples in the pond of the world. we will drop them into the world until everything has changed”

are we still doing that?

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The World Awaits

August 21, 2008 by Aaron

Cult Of Nice

nquit music, the world awaits, third option

I was standing underneath the portal thing out front of my dad’s house watching the rain just pour it’s little ass off and soak our town. It reminded me of standing under the portal deal on the stage at the Wild West Show in Six Flags in Houston. Being Houston it would rain a lot of course, and so we did that plenty, standing there in our cowboy costumes not doing a show, watching the rain just pour. It was always a good break. So now I have this habit of just stopping and taking a break when it rains like that.

Well I was sitting there, thinking about how it’s the desert here in Albuquerque, and how it just doesn’t do that as often as Houston. But I thought, man we’re getting drenched right now. And that reminded me of the last line of this poem, “the last time the sky opened up and drenched her”.

It’s a badass poem, because of all its layers of meaning. There’s these layers of symbolism that are pretty clear, and even some maybe unintended but obvious stuff like environmentalism, and the wisdom of the desert, the wisdom of not wasting your tears, all kinds of neat stuff, but Tamara had told me what the poem was really written about. It was really written about a bunch of tough biker dudes that Tamara knew in AA. Fucked up Tamara’s anonymity there, but I know enough about Tamara to know she holds no secrets on that score.

So the poem is actually this big metaphor for these guys being real, feeling, emotional beings, despite their gruff exterior.

Do not think the desert is disinterested in water
because she holds no oceans
because no streams run through her
because she does not waste it in tears
beneath the surface
cleaved to damp inner spaces
is the rain
from the last time the sky opened up
and drenched her

It’s saying, hey, don’t think just because these guys are tough and seem gruff and whatnot that that means they don’t feel, or they’re not interested in sharing or caring or all that. Don’t assume they don’t want beauty or love. But at the same time, look how badass they are. Look how they thrive off the little love and tenderness they DO get. Look how they keep it safe in them. It’s all in there.

I think I’ll write the whole poem here:

The world awaits your touch
she has held herself open for centuries
golden valleys of brittle grass
awaiting touch
that brings forth life
from dead, withered stalks

do not think the desert is disinterested in water
because she holds no oceans
because no streams run through her
because she does not waste it in tears

beneath the surface
cleaved to damp inner spaces
is the rain
from the last time the sky opened up
and drenched her

Nice.

——————————-

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The People United

August 20, 2008 by Aaron

Cult Of Nice

the people united, third option

This one’s fun. I used samples of Tamara from the song “Possibility”, and made them link to a beat, and made them slightly higher in pitch, and put several versions of her so it was more than in one in spots. So it ends up just saying “Go on, go on, go on, go on” and “The people, united, the people, united, the people, united will never be defeated”

I remember we mixed this at night with Tamara there and I think her friend Rebecca was there, and maybe somebody else like Larry or another girl or somebody. It sounded awesome in the control room 🙂

This is the only song on this album that has a MIDI piano, because I couldn’t get the piano part right in the studio. It was just a little too fast and I wasn’t on the beat enough. I just couldn’t get it. So I used a different method 🙂

‘Ol Sue Lucas over at Skylimit Music, a licensing company here in Albuquerque, likes this one. She’s been shopping it to movie and TV people, I think.

I really like the sort of – little Mandolin? sounding thing in this tune. I always dug that. There’s also a cool buzz synth that I purposefully distorted in spots. That’s one of those very subtle things that no one will ever notice. But still fun!

Here’s your buy links for this one, which I’ll have to also add to the last few posts, as I was forgetting it.

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Woman’s Poem

August 19, 2008 by Aaron

Cult Of Nice

third option, woman's poem

Man I think this poem by Tamara is amazing. This was her A#1 Grade A Signature Slam Piece that she would always whoop ass with. I’ll never forget the picture of her downstairs in the Cantab in Boston, with the place so damn packed you could barely move, and her standing up straight and belting out lines, her hand shooting out forward perfectly paralell to the ground, almost screaming it out. Totally overdramatic in a way, but fuckin perfect.

The poem even makes me tear up on the page. There’s just something about it. She wrote it when she was 18 and it really IS every Woman’s Poem. This is the one that would make middle aged women come up to us crying everywhere we went. I remember a woman in Taos at the Poetry Circus slam coming up to her, and I remember a woman coming up to us in Taos (same tour?) at this little reading, where we’d done this song just like this. There was a tear still streaming down her face. It was really amazing.

There’s so much complexity in here too. “Tired of being strong, unyielding, unlovable.” That’s AMAZING shit. This poem truly shows the darkside of both the patriarchy AND the backlash. And poverty and struggle, and youth, and cities, and everything.

I also like the emotion in the music of this tune. I feel like I captured it. There are about a million of my voice doing this boppy singing. Between that and the strings and the 2 piano tracks and the club beat, and Tamara’s lines, I get this feeling of an epic telling of the whole human story.

I’ve never heard anything like this song. I always felt like it could be a single, but it’s totally poetry. But I never heard poetry/music like this. We really struggled to make it both completely a music track and completely a poem.

I remember we recorded piano tracks at Washburn Piano here in Albuquerque. We hired a guy that records the symphony sometimes, and he brought his gear and I brought what I needed to listen to the track, and we recorded real live pianos for the first time for this project. Immedietely after that we moved to Houston and the rest of the pianos for the album were recorded at Rock Romano’s.

I let Rock hear the mix of this one right as I was finishing it one morning. He just said “wow”. I wasn’t even sure what that meant. *laugh*

I used to go around to classrooms when we were doing this a lot, whenever I’d find myself near a chalkboard or a whiteboard, and write on it really big:

“There is power in giving away power”

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Flatlands

August 14, 2008 by Aaron

Cult Of Nice

flatlands, third option

This piano part is exactly the piano from a song I was doing long ago called Popcorn Dream – but I never actually put out that song. The poem, Flatlands, was one that Tamara used a lot in slams. This one was pretty easy to do live because it’s just me playing this relatively easy thing and her doing the poem.

I was always kind of amazed that she could write something so intimate about her parents.

Er. The thing about a music blog is, sometimes, I’m just gonna post music. So there. Listen to it 🙂

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Ash

August 13, 2008 by Aaron

Cult Of Nice

ash, third option

In this one, I have samples of these Buddhist guys, you can hear ’em real clearly! I actually got this sample approved and paid for it. Nice!

We took Tamara’s poem Ash, and also some of her reading from the Tibetan Book Of The Dead, **EDIT** – in which she uses the word “apathy” instead of the name that you would usually use – personifying apathy and then killing it off – she reminded me to say this **END EDIT** and I had a few takes of her on different tracks, and I weaved ’em in and out. It’s just these pieces of poetry coming in and out. But over the course of the tune, you do end up hearing the whole thing. But you hear a piece, and then you hear another piece, and then you hear a prievous piece, and so the time sequences is completely junked!

I had to do all this fading with four different faders using four fingers and stuff and weaving them up and down. It was skillz, baby. Skillz!

“I am here
with a handful of sky
and a promise
to be alive”

Boy that made me tear up just now. Wow that’s quite a poet, that Tamara chick.

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Yellow And White

August 11, 2008 by Aaron

Cult Of Nice

aaron trumm, amalia ortiz, bluebonnet poetry slam, conroe, san antonio poetry slam, shaggy, tamara nicholl, techno music, third option, yellow and white

Yellow And White, by Third Option

This was one of my slam poems that I used a lot. I ended up retiring it from slam as I got better in slam, because it actually doesn’t fit the form well enough to consistently get great scores. It doesn’t have the right rise and fall of energy pattern for slam.

But my ‘ol buddy Spec always really liked it. 🙂 We did it as a three voice poem at the National Poetry Slam in Providence, RI in 2000. It was me and Tamara Nicholl and Esther Griego. It worked alright but wasn’t great. It’s just not “slammy” enough.

I actually wrote the poem to this music, which is rare on this album. I had basically the whole track minus any vocals already done, and me and Tamara were travelling from Albuquerque to Houston in the middle of the night (maybe we left Albuquerque at 1AM or so). We were also going for some visiting I guess, but what I remember is that we were going to go to the Bluebonnet Poetry Slam in Conroe, TX. That was in the year 2000, I guess.

Tamara was sleeping and I kept playing the track over and over and over and over for about 5 hours while I “wrote” this poem by saying lines, memorizing, rearranging, memorizing. I had to just keep doing it over and over because there was no other way to write it down. And Tamara really would wake up barely enough every once in a while to randomly tell me to slow down and watch out for cops. For some reason she was really worried about getting stopped.

I considered trying to do the poem in the slam, but I wisely opted against using a new untested shaky piece. I actually blew up the spot with what I did do (not sure what it was in the first round – probably this year 2000 poem called No Apocalypse) and was the “flash point” poet. The first poet to get a really high score and blow up the room, but then everybody after that gets higher scores.

I remember they had it in this honky tonk bar type thing, with all these golden Christmas lights strewn about, which really gave the place a down home, cozy, yet glamorous, “i’m a superstar out in the world” type feel.

At that slam is where we met Amalia Ortiz and Shaggy, who were then married and the leaderz of the slam in San Antonio. They invited us to feature in the San Antonio slam, which we did. Later that summer, they brought the first team to come from San Antonio to Nationals, and they got 2nd place! It was amazing!

I was always proud of how tight the drum and bass mix in this song sounded. There’s also a spot in the middle where I had a distorted vocal that didn’t quite sound right, but I figured fuck it, I need to get done, and I cut that corner and left it. Well of COURSE Tamara noticed that VERY thing when she listened, which at that time was a VERY frustrating thing, because it meant going back for another 8 hour mix session, since we were using analog equipment – you can’t just recall a mix on an analog board. You try, by having photos of the knobs and notes galore, but it just doesn’t work that way.

Anyway, this is the song Yellow And White, available, of course, on the CD Cult Of Nice 🙂 – and obviously – there is still always free stuff available at www.thirdoption.com/free-music

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Possibility

August 8, 2008 by Aaron

Cult Of Nice

aaron j. trumm, abortion, cult of nice, news, nquit music, possibility, spoken word, tamara nicholl-smith, third option

Possibility, by Third Option

I may have talked a little about this one before. There was a licensing company called Raw42, and I was giving them tracks to shop to TV and movies and such, and they rejected this track because it violated the rule that said no samples.

So I wrote back and said there’s absolutely no samples in here, all original. To which they replied “no no, the newscast in the beginning”

To which I replied “ALL ORIGINAL. That’s Tamara’s poem, she’s performing it, and I told her to act like a newscaster, and I telephoned the vocals so it would sound like a newscast in a weird way. Man I guess we did a good job at it!

What an awesome poem. Possibility. We definitely did this song live a bunch, and of course Tamara would slam with this poem. She got all kinds of 10s and stuff. Once in Taos she made this woman cry and give her a 10 and come up to us. A lot of times, Tamara would make women in their 40s and 50s cry and come up to her. They would do stuff like give us 20 dollars for a 7 dollar CD and say keep the change.

The rhythm on this song as I listen to it makes me feel like we were piloting a train to revolution. But I also feel like at some point, we just got off the train for no reason. Did we give up?

I remember I did some of the synth parts on this with this little toy casio thing – literally a toy, with like 30 keys or something, that was in the studio. And I have two live drum parts on here, both of which I played. The part in the beginning was my first ever playing of drums on a recording. What’s funny is, the tempo of that section gradually speeds up (on purpose, by design). So my first ever drumming on a record, I had to speed up gradually along with the track! How advanced! 🙂

Another cool thing in here I may have talked about before is the “boop boop boop boop” echo things and such. They were done on the piano live. I took a mic, put it in the piano, and ran it through a bunch of guitar pedals, distortion, delay, a wah-wah pedal, stuff like that. Then I ran that through an amp and mic’d that and recorded that. I had to put that amp way in another room and it was STILL a feedback nightmare. But I ended up making this crazy stuff with that setup. Boop boop boop boop. Boop boop boop boop. Tee hee!

And of course then I also put plain live piano in there. All in all a very fun track to make.

So since we’ve been talking..why don’t you – my friend, my faithful reader, get you some free Third Option stuff by clicking here. 🙂

Good talkin to ya again 🙂

— Aaron

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