The Four Hard Edges Of War

A Lifetime

February 8, 2016 by Aaron

a lifetime, andre de korvin, poetry, spoken word, world war II

Yet another one! Here is track 5 from The Four Hard Edges Of War, “A Lifetime”:

I remember this was was more dense in the beginning. It was really an improvement to make it more sparse to start. Space and silence really is your friend in music. I actually really hate wall of sound stuff, even though I think there are times when I do it. This is weird, as I listen, I almost forgot how there’s this drum track that’s all filtered and panning back and forth left and right over and over.

“As silence spread like fog, over the blood stained earth.” Every time I listen, I hear a line by Andre that gets me.

“Yes, no, yes, no…I was the blood that had never seen the outside light.”

I MEAN COME ON!!! 🙂

He’s talking about World War II, if I hadn’t told you (I think I did, here).

This record is so much more mellow than I really expected. To me, anyway. It sort of trances along, honoring the story of Andre’s words, and there are times, honestly, when I wish it would pump the hell up more. Sometimes I feel like it’s guitars that do that and when you’re alone in a studio in the deep of night and you don’t PLAY the guitar (or have one), then what you have to do is come up with something…usually it’s some kind of crazy distortion :)…

Who’s a fan of distortion? “WE ARE WE ARE WE ARE!!” 😉

Alright enough blabber for now – by now if you’ve been reading these you’ll know that you can actually pick up some free Third Option stuff, and I always leave you with that opportunity. So…Click THIS for free stuff 🙂

– Aaron

[purchase_link id=”1275″ text=”Download The Four Hard Edges Of War Here” style=”button” color=”blue”]

Trains Interlude

February 8, 2016 by Aaron

interlude, lin, option, piano, sandy, techno, the four hard edges of war, third, trains, violin

Ok – still going through Third Option’s The Four Hard Edges Of War.

Here is track 4, “Trains Interlude”:

This has no vocals, just music. I like it. It’s ..what’s the word? Reminiscent? Or something? I like the multiple violins. I wrote a simple violin line and a fellow student at Stanford, Sandy Lin, played it. She was really rusty so it was quite inconsistent, but that was actually perfect. I had her play it 7 times. Then I panned them around and added a fake violin playing the same line. I personally liked the result.

There’s all this cutting around, and in the surround sound version the stuff gets abruptly cut from one place to another – behind you, in front, etc. That was an accident that people in class liked, so I actually made the stereo version MORE abrupt to match what I accidentally did in the surround version.

It’s weird to listen to this stuff again, and try to talk about it in a way that other people might care about. You do something like this and you really hope it moves somebody other than you, but does it? Does it matter? (I think it does) Hmmm. Nostalgic? Is that what this song sounds like?

Well tell you what, if you happen to see this, shoot me and email and tell me what stuff YOU’D like to read about or hear about… 🙂 I’m at aarontrumm @ nquit .com for purposes of this. 🙂

Meanwhile you can grab some free stuff at www.thirdoptionmusic.com – just as a little thank you for even reading this 🙂

— Aaron

[purchase_link id=”1275″ text=”Download The Four Hard Edges Of War Here” style=”button” color=”blue”]

Two Trains

February 4, 2016 by Aaron

andre de korvin, music, nquit, piano, poetry, techno, third option, two trains

Hey! Still (slowly) writing little bits about tracks. Here is track 3 from the main The Four Hard Edges Of War:

I didn’t do it on purpose (except maybe subconsciously), but I can’t help but notice the beat is sort of like – well – a train chugging along. Chigga chigga chigga chigga – CHOO CHOO!

“I would like to sleep, oblivious of the thousand faces of corruption” – see it’s lines like that that just get me. Andre de Korvin is a badass poet!

What else can we say about this track that you might care about? Well there’s two piano tracks again. And there’s some crazy delay effects on them. There’s also several versions of the drum track that kind of get layered. I love when the beats just BREAK and for like a measure is JUST live piano – that sounds fantastic to me. I love contrast and I love natural instruments….oh and then it breaks again and he’s talking “and ivy grows from dolls with cut off heads…”

I’m not sure I actually love this song personally though…it’s so airy and ethereal in a way that I don’t enjoy, but hopefully other people. That’s something to note. A lot of times you just make the music that YOU want to hear…but sometimes the muse pulls you and you end up just playing, composing, doing something that you really don’t even care for as a listener, it’s not what you would have thought of, it’s just flowing through you. It’s not for you and it may not even be FROM you, if you believe in that sort of spiritual stuff. I think letting that happen is really very key. I think that’s a part of the right of passage of a creative person, especially a professional, to be able to follow the muse, and follow through and finish things, and let go and let it be for other people. I talk about it being for other people a lot. That’s why musicians seem to crave attention or fame, I think. Because they want to know that what they’re doing musically is affecting and moving other people. It’s this dream to think of gobs of people having a relationship with something you made…

I still like that thought…

Ok I got mixing to do…

The Far View

July 28, 2015 by Aaron

andre de korvin, poetry, techno, the four hard edges of war, third option

Here’s the second track on The Four Hard Edges Of War – The Far View.

What can I say here? As I listen I’m trying to remember how to play that piano part. It’s amazing how much you can forget. Oh there’s two piano parts. I do that a lot. Like a duet – only I’ll record in the same range – so it’s like two actual pianos rather than four hands one piano.

I love the line “..that emptiness starts to fill their space…”. I always found the poem/book (The Four Hard Edges Of War) so amazing because it’s so surreal but then if you look again at the language it’s SO plain. I think Andre’s a big ‘ol genius.

There’s all this scheme programming in this one I think. And multiple versions of the drum loop that are messed up in various ways.

“Awake and drifting through the water…”

“red faces of admirals flicker..”

That’s kind of how I hear poetry when it’s read, in these snippets surrounded by un-languaged energy swirling around. I hadn’t noticed that that’s how I then used the poem in this bunch of avante garde ass techno dance music. I was thinking of it like samples you might hear in a night club. We always thought of Third Option that way. You’d go to an underground club and hear the boom boom chi boom and then some snippet of a movie or something – it might say “danger danger go go go” or something and we wondered what it would be like if those snippets were actual poetry – and original. So here’s Andre doing this thing in snippets – and it’s much different – but hopefully honors, Andre’s meaning and energy in his original poem and reading. Of course we made the original reading available too, because HEY! 🙂 Here’s that:

Ha Ha when I hear him say stuff, I expect the beat to come in…and then it doesn’t! lol

Wow. “I would like to sleep, oblivious, of the thousand faces of corruption.” Yep.

HEY! Here’s a thing – you can now grab a couple FREE Third Option tracks – just click HERE and enjoy on me! 🙂

[purchase_link id=”1275″ text=”Download The Four Hard Edges Of War Here” style=”button” color=”blue”]

The View From Lighter Years Away

July 17, 2015 by Aaron

andre de korvin, nquit music, piano, poetry, spoken word, techno, the view from lighter years away, third option

HEY! For the first time in like…what? 10 years? I’m writing these little blog posts again! Linking to TUNEZ, sayin some STUFF. 🙂

Ok…I’m gonna start in on The Four Hard Edges Of War, which is the last Third Option album, made mostly at CCRMA at Stanford. It’s a collaboration between me and Andre de Korvin, a great great poet from Houston. So first of all, here’s the first track…

The View From Lighter Years Away

That title is his – see what we did is, there’s a book by him: The Four Hard Edges Of War which as you see, we’ve also re-released as a digital book…

We recorded him reading the book. Then years later, I cut up piece of that recording, and used it as inspiration and weaved it in to a bunch of avante garde techno/piano. The View From Lighter Years away is track 1, because it’s section 1 in the book. The book is four parts.

All of the music stuff on Four Hard was created in strange ways, as various homework assignments in the master’s program at CCRMA. There’s real pianos that I played, but there are also drum tracks written in linux using Hydrogen, there are noise pieces and riffs written by programs…yes I meant that. I would write programs that would write music. That was part of the course of study! Here’s a picture of the studio where a lot of this record was made:

That’s actually a picture from 2013 but it’s pretty same same.

Andre was recorded earlier – like in 2002 or so, in Houston at Rock Romano’s Red Shack.

So there you go – a short post, but a post none-the-less!

HEY! Here’s a thing – you can now grab a couple FREE Third Option tracks – just click HERE and enjoy on me! 🙂

– Aaron

[purchase_link id=”1275″ text=”Download The Four Hard Edges Of War Here” style=”button” color=”blue”]

Bahamas

The Four Hard Edges Of War

A Lifetime

Trains Interlude

Two Trains

The Far View

The View From Lighter Years Away