Frosted Mini Wheats – Page 2

Applemania

June 2, 2008 by Aaron

aaron trumm, applemania, free music download, frosted mini wheats, the beatles

This is the last actual tune on the Frosted Mini Wheats CD. It seems like I posted about this one before. No matter, I’m talking some more! Hmm. Little heavy on the low end in this one too. This is the one with the samples from the National Graphic floppy record of whale song. I have the guy saying “these are underwater sounds”. I also have strategic record noise, which I really kinda dig. Then I have a WHOLE SHITLOAD of Beatles samples, also from an actual vinyl record. The thing that was so novel about this song for me was that I was taking the turntable, recording pieces into an 8 track hard disk recorder/editor, then editing the stuff together using that very primitive interface. In places I felt like I was making it sound like an actual DJ cutup, but it wasn’t.

I have a very long bit of “happiness is a warm gun” and the only real reason is that I like the tune so much that I kept wanting to hear more of it.

I remember also that on the rap vocal at the end, there’s a point where I’m saying “attack it!” and that vocal is combining with a little hit from the record samples and making a sound like there’s a distorted guitar strum in there but there’s not. I loved that. I also was happy when the vocal sounded like it had reverb and was sitting in the mix nicely just with a little delay. That was before I really understood that reverb and delay are theorhetically the same thing. I notice now, though, that the vocal is a bit quiet. Mixing vocals is not easy for the vocalist to do, and the basic rule in recording is don’t do that.

Lately, however, I think I’ve been getting over myself or getting used to it all just enough that my vocal mixes aren’t too bad.

Well – you can be your own judge for freezies, breezies. Download free crap HERE 🙂

Halloween In Denver

May 23, 2008 by Aaron

free music, frosted mini wheats, halloween in denver, third option

Halloween In Denver by Third Option

I’m not sure the music has anything to do with title on this one. The title is interesting though. It’s a reference to being diagnosed with CF in Denver when I was 8 years old. It was Halloween and I lived in Taos, which is 3 hours or so away. It was nighttime, I remember – well I remember we were there a long time doing sweat tests and blood tests and bullshit. Then somebody gave me a plastic jackolantern bucket and I was going around trick or treating in the various rooms. I don’t remember where we stayed.

They were creating a monster. *laugh*

For some reason I wrote about this track twice. Here’s the other post.

Ok – as I say in the other post – want some free music? OK THEN GO HERE! 🙂

Boycott The Record Shops

May 12, 2008 by Aaron

boycott the record shops, frosted mini wheats, rage against the machine, third option

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!

You read this far – would you like some free music for your trouble? HERE GET SOME FREE MUSIC RIGHT HERE! 🙂

Amadeus

May 9, 2008 by Aaron

amadeus, frosted mini wheats, mozart, spoken word, techno music, third option

Amadeus by Third Option

Here’s the next track on Frosted Mini Wheats. I almost want to say it should be obvious why it’s called Amadeus, but maybe people won’t recognize the melody. I’m not even entirely sure it IS Mozart. But the strings line is, I think, a Mozart melody which then goes elsewhere of my own creation. I was all proud because I figured it out one day on the piano. The other thing I did with this tune is I figured, I don’t have real strings, so I won’t try to make ’em sound real, I’ll try to make ’em sound fucked up with all this reverb and extreme EQ, and I felt like they sounded much more real that way.

*shrug*

Woo!

WAIT! Don’t forget to go get a FREE THIRD OPTION TRACK or two! 🙂

Still

May 8, 2008 by Aaron

aaron j. trumm, frosted mini wheats, poetry, still, tamara nicholl, techno music, third option

Oh Still is very important in the realm of Third Option! Still was totally different and not as cool, but then I met the poet Tamara Nicholl, and she wanted to record some poems, so I said ok hey I’ll record you if you let me use the samples. I was working on Frosted Mini Wheats at the time, of course. So I recorded her, and put some samples of this short poem “Still” into the song that was then called – i don’t remember – something else ;). Then she listened and had a ton of suggestions and ideas about it. So I rearranged it with her and we had her do this singing, and I did some singing. So that eery vocal is multiple takes of both of us. The reason it’s so eery is because Tamara has a tin ear like nobody’s business. God bless ya, Tamara, love you, but goddamn that girl cannot sing. But somehow that’s exactly what the thing called for.

Ended up doing a maxi single of Still with 4 remixes. Sent some copy, either just Still or maybe the whole maxi-single, to Annie Nightingale of BBC Radio 1 in England. She’s like the premier techno/dance DJ in England. She broke Daft Punk is one thing she did. Well that was probably our biggest “success” as Third Option. She loved Still. She invited me to put together a 30 minute mix set, which I did, and it aired on BBC I in – June of 2002? Is that right? Something like that. Maybe 2001? I don’t know.

That was wicked fun. They called me up from London and everything. It didn’t turn us into superstars though. That’s one of the times that I learned that just having some airtime on a big radio show doesn’t really do anything for your “career” if you don’t have the rest of the infrastructure in place.

Now then – since you’ve been so kind as to read these little rants – why don’t you treat yourself to some free music? 🙂

Smooth Snippet Thief

May 7, 2008 by Aaron

frosted mini wheats, michael jackson, poetry, sampling, smooth snippet thief

Smooth Snippet Thief by Third Option

This one’s called Smooth Snippet Thief because it sounds to me like those vocal snippets are Michael Jackson (re: Smooth Criminal). I did the whole song on a totally different instrument than the others – I did it on an Ensoniq TS-12 which was in the audio lab at UNM. We called that “studio” The Boneyard because it was like an elephant boneyard. Old and dead and ancient relics piled around randomly. I actually rebuilt that whole studio and made it work for my purposes. More on that later maybe.

So all the samples in this one are legal – they were just part of the preset settings on the TS-12. It’s really just sort of this interlude piece, it doesn’t go anywhere really. I played the synth leads live and used the pitch wheel in my performance though! 🙂

Free? What you want something for free, just because I didn’t say much? Ok fine go here and get some free stuff.

Goody Proctor

May 6, 2008 by Aaron

aaron trumm, goody proctor, nquit music, techno music, third option, trance

Goody Proctor by Third Option

This was fun. I kept being moved by it. The samples I took from a cassette tape of an audio play – or maybe it was a recording of a theater production of The Crucible. I don’t really remember who it was that did it. I think it’s in the credits on the album cover.

LIFE, WOMAN! A lot of times in life nowadays I’ll randomly say “there is blood on my head! cannot you see the blood on my head???” and this is where I get that. It’s fun. “HUSH!”

I am innocent to a witch! I know not what a witch is! How do you know then that you are not a witch??

THAT is some McCarthy era shit right there. Or some now era shit! *laughs and laughs*

I don’t even know what a terrorist IS!! THEN HOW DO YOU KNOW YOU ARE NOT A TERRORIST???

How do YOU know, that you are not a terrorist?? – A message from Homeland Security

I wonder why I said terrorist and not communist…you be the judge! lol

ok when you’re done laughing (at me), get you some free music over at thirdoptionmusic.com 🙂

Over My Dead Blood

May 5, 2008 by Aaron

fusion, over my dead blood, poetry, techno/classical, third option, unm music

Over My Dead Blood by Third Option

There was this Playstation game back when – what was this, 98 or 99 or so? There was a couple I remember from that time, while I was doing Frosted Mini Wheats. Me and my then girlfriend would sit in our apartment and watch Xena Warrior Princess and play Playstation – one game we played a lot was this fighting/adventure thing where you were this guy with a jack-o-lantern head who had returned from the dead, having been killed in a battle in the middle ages, and you would go around fighting stuff.

Then we got into this game Overblood. It was crazy cool. At the beginning of the game, you wake up in a strange underground scientific facility, it’s all lonely, and the first thing that happens is this cut sequence where you say “how did I get here? i can’t remember. i can’t remember myself. my gosh i don’t even know who i am!”

And the rest of the game you try to get to the surface and find out who the hell you are. You fight these zombies and you meet and befriend a robot named Pipo, who dies and you say “noooo!!! PIIIIIIIIIIIIPPPPPPPPPOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO”

Oh man me and Larrisse laughed and laughed and laughed about that. PIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIPPPPPPPPPPPOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So I sampled the thing. I was so excited because the Playstation actually had normal stereo RCA outputs and you could just plug that thing into a mixing board or whatever and record it. You could also just record the video/audio outputs on a VCR. I did that a LOT. I recorded while I played the first Tomb Raider. I used to record my deaths too so I could show Larrisse ’cause it would freak her out to see ‘ol Lara Croft crack all her bones and such.

So I wrote this Over My Dead Blood tune using those samples, and I called it Over My Dead Blood as a probably obvious word play – “over my dead body!!”, Overblood, etc. You get it I’m sure.

Yep that’s that one.

And as usual, if you want some free tracks – YES FREE!! Then CLICK HERE FOR THE FREE STUFF!!! 🙂

It’s Been So Long

May 2, 2008 by Aaron

it hasn't been easy, manny rettinger, samples, spoken word, techno, third option

It Hasn’t Been Easy by Third Option

Welp this is the next track on Frosted Mini Wheats. What I like about this is the samples are legal in that they’re the voice of my first recording mentor, Manny Rettinger. At least I think it’s his voice – to tell the truth it doesn’t sound like his voice. But the story goes, he gave me an Ensoniq Mirage sampling keyboard. That beast is one of the very first samplers to come out, and it’s got a kind of famous gritty sound. I kinda wish I still had that thing, but in my move out of California, all things heavy like that had to go. Plus it was dead/dying.

ANYwho, Manny gave me that thing, along with all his disks. Well at some point he and some people had sampled that “it’s been so long” and “it hasn’t been easy” stuff for God knows WHAT project. I never have asked about that. So obviously I named the song after one of the samples. The cool fun part was on the Mirage (or any other sampling keyboard), you sample stuff and then you play it back with the keyboard. And of course you can change pitch by using a different key (one key will be designated as the key that plays the sample back at the normal pitch). So I played these voices and recorded it via MIDI, see, and then the MIDI sequencer played back…well you get the jist; I said I wouldn’t get too technical 🙂

Uhhh…it hasn’t been….easy. Jerk! Call her already!

If you want some FREE STUFF, btw, get some at www.thirdoptionmusic.com/free-music 🙂

Steam Dance Remembering

May 1, 2008 by Aaron

aaron j. trum, poetry, steam dance remembering, techno, third option

Steam Dance Remembering by Third Option

I’ll just stay with the systematic. That’ll keep me from having to think of a topic. I just go to the next track, and wam there’s the assignment. Steam Dance Remembering is called that because the high melody line that’s NOT piano is a patch on a synth called “Steam Bass”. I think I’ve used it in the low register as an actual bass before, but I used the high parts of it for this. I thought it sounded really dramatic or something. The themes in this tune are obvious variations on the Kennedy’s Groove themes, which was kind of the point of the project. I composed this project in track order, and it took some high number of months, what with being busy and such, so my process drifted a bit, and later in the album, there isn’t as much adherance to that plan of continue and vary the theme over time.

I remember was proud of myself for making the tempo slow down in the first few bars of this one. Ha!

Meanwhile there’s still free Third Option stuff available right here 🙂