Frosted Mini Wheats

Kennedy’s Groove

July 6, 2008 by Aaron

[sc_embed_player fileurl=”http://www.nquit.com/sounds/ThirdOption/FrostedMiniWheats/02ThirdOptionKennedysGroove.mp3″] Kennedy’s Groove by Third Option

I didn’t know whether to be systematic or random all over the map in posting about this stuff. Today I guess I decided on systematic. This one, Kennedy’s Groove, is also from the first Third Option album, Frosted Mini Wheats, which, I’ll say again, isn’t for sale, because of the way the industry works. Years ago I actually sent the material off to the plant to print 1000 copies of this thing, and they wouldn’t print it because it had samples – not samples of music, but samples of lines from stuff. The funny thing is, a year before that, I pressed 1000 of Artistic Apocalypse, my second “hip-hop” (I use the term loosely) album, and it had movie samples all over it too. At that time, you could do that, and all you had to do was give credit on the liner notes, and no one could stop you. But in that year or two, everything changed drastically, and suddenly you couldn’t do that. You had to clear any sample, and probably pay for it, and fill out a lot of release forms, and sampling became such a hassle that now I avoid it like the plague.

It was even to the point where I was giving a song from a later Third Option album to a licensing firm, and they went back and forth with me for AGES, not allowing the song into the library even though they liked it, because they heard what they THOUGHT were samples, and I kept telling them, “NO YOU MORONS, that is ORIGINAL POETRY PERFORMED AND RECORDED BY US!!” But I had made Tamara sound like a newscaster and they just did not get it. So the whole sample freak out even effects original art, making you think twice about being creative with your vocal performance. Ultimately it’s really stupid, and I think based in an incredible idiotic fear. People running around so afraid of not having the rent and money for their diapers and boats and large house that they MUST claim some sort of ownership and get money every time something they did is heard, touched or breathed on. Another point of view might say that it’s not costing you money or time for that recording to be used.

I’m not sure which side I fall on, really, because I know that I’d rather all that stuff out there that I’ve done would bring me some income. Residual income is really something I would love. So I dunno *shrug*

Oh, here’s the song that those (out of business now) licensing dudes couldn’t get had no samples:

[sc_embed_player fileurl=”http://www.nquit.com/sounds/ThirdOption/CultOfNice/possibilityclip.mp3″] Possibility by Third Option

By the way, Kennedy’s Groove is called that simply because the sample that leads into it is Bobby Kennedy. I ripped the sample from a Michael Jackson CD (History II) where they sampled all kinds of stuff like that. I think maybe that old political speech stuff is in the public domain. Not sure. Michael Jackson probably owns tthe rights to it if it’s not.

Applemania

July 5, 2008 by Aaron

aaron j. trumm, applemainia, applemania, beatles, third option

[sc_embed_player fileurl=”http://www.nquit.com/sounds/ThirdOption/FrostedMiniWheats/18ThirdOptionApplemania.mp3″] Applemania by Third Option

I called this one Applemania because it has just an incredible amount of Beatles samples that I took off a vinyl record. Then there’s some samples from this vinyl record of whale song that I got from a national geographic magazine. It was all floppy. Because vinyl records could be all floppy.

I’m not even sure this is really any good, this tune. It always seemed a little boring to me. But sometimes I like it. The first rap verse is weird – it’s actually supposed to be the theme song to a movie that I had in my head. I would do that. I would think of a possible movie, and then record a theme song about it as if the movie was actually being made. It’s just so weird. Then I threw in a rap verse from an old song that never really made the cut or got finished. So basically I was lazy.

The thing that makes me want to post it, though, is that this “song” can’t really ever be released because of the samples. So it’s just this glaring example of the extreme limitation on what you can really hear, because of how the industry works.

Well at any rate, download free stuff from Third Option HERE 🙂

Halloween In Denver

July 4, 2008 by Aaron

aaron trumm, free music, free music download, frosted mini wheats, halloween in denver, third option

I kept thinking about this song this weekend:

[sc_embed_player fileurl=”http://www.nquit.com/sounds/ThirdOption/FrostedMiniWheats/14ThirdOptionHalloweenInDenver.mp3″] Halloween In Denver by Third Option

It’s from the first Third Option album, Frosted Mini Wheats. I thought of doing that album, and thus created that act, when I had been beatboxing for an hour straight on the drive home from hockey practice when I was playing for UNM. I noticed the beatbox tunes would change slowly over time. I thought I’d invented something and I told my buddy Dustin how I was gonna make an album where each song just morphed into the next, and he said “oh you mean a trance record?” Dammit. I had invented nothing!

But this Halloween In Denver song, it’s funny that such a marginal thing that I never really shared with anyone is the one that’s called Halloween In Denver. That title is a reference to me being diagnosed with CF when I was 8. It was at a hospital in Denver and it was Halloween. They gave me one of those plastic jack-o-lantern buckets and I was going from room to room getting little Snickers from people with it. That stupid night and that stupid diagnosis has defined my life ever since, really a lot more than any “disease” or “condition”. But I didn’t write a slam poem that I did in front of thousands of people, or even a rap song or anything. It’s just this short tune jammed in the middle of 60 minutes of album, and what’s more it’s not a highly charged big epic thing either, it’s just a pretty melody that I like. But what makes me think about it sometimes is that that melody doesn’t seem like me to me. It seems like something that comes from outside of me, or maybe it comes from my essence, whereas a lot of stuff comes from the ego and personality that I built on top of that essence, shrouding the essence. Ironically, I probably built a lot of that up in response to the diagnosis, so there’s this irony around having a song that comes from the essence, who’s title refers to the diagnosis.

It’s like a subtle, sleek victory. Poision in the night that the enemy general never even notices, let alone resists.

I win!! 🙂

And now you win too, because Third Option (us) is giving away free stuff! GO GET FREE STUFF! 🙂

Boycott The Record Shops

July 2, 2008 by Aaron

boycott the record shops, third option

[sc_embed_player fileurl=”http://www.nquit.com/sounds/ThirdOption/FrostedMiniWheats/10ThirdOptionBoycottTheRecordShops.mp3″] Boycott The Record Shops by Third Option

I remember being proud of something about the drum mix on this one. Something about the way it was compressed or tight or something.

The woman talking is an old old lady and she’s introducing Rage Against The Machine at this concert – I took if off the VCR, off a VHS tape of live Rage footage. It was pretty cool, I think I got the tape for free from Dustin who got it from some label person or promoter – I THINK. I also sampled the crowd noise but then I augmented it in the beginning with about a million tracks of me using different voices chanting “Murph! Murph! Murph! Murph!” Tee hee. Slick eh? It’s very subtle, but listen for it! Listen!

Woo!

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!

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.

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.