spoken word Archives - Aaron J. Trumm

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”]

The View From Lighter Years Away

July 17, 2015 by Aaron

The Four Hard Edges Of War

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”]

The Underground

September 3, 2013 by Aaron

Music Thoughts, Rants, Randomness

aaron trumm, artistic development, battle, blue dragon, free music, helios, nquit music, nuyroican, performer, poetry, slam poetry, spoken word, underground

I wanted to think about something. The roots of everything pretty are underground. I said this 8 or so years ago on my 2nd CD:

…deep underneath that crust of the earth
are animals that really have some girth to their worth
you’re growin up the flowers of commercialization
forever will the roots remain UNDER the nation…

This speaks the legitimacy of the underground.

But what of the underground? How long can a seed stay under the soil? Is it not the seed’s destiny to grow into a mighty oak or a beautimous bloom?

I could easily quote Howl now and make my point – I’ve seen the best minds of my generation – blah blah blah. Which is to say, we, the counter culture, we, the underground, are destroying ourselves. Sure, I imagine there are some that shall and should always be under, down, deep deep deep, feeding the rest, and some that never know the power of the earth, and that never realize that who THEY are, what THEY see, what THEY know to be “normal”, is always and necessarily the child of the underground.

The seed becomes the seed first, then it becomes the oak. Not the other way around. These places here, the Helios bar in Houston, the Nuyorican Cafe in New York, the Blue Dragon in Albuquerque, these are the places where we come from, where we cut our teeth, and where we owe our undying allegiance.

But a man child doesn’t stay at home with mommy when there’s a battle to be fought. Disregarding for a moment my notion that battle may not be the answer, I would say to those of us with fire in our bones, why are we still here, cowering in the underground, smoking weed and methamphetemines, drinking ourselves into obvlivion, when so many of us have grown into might oaken warriors and have always known it is our task to take these amazing new things that were born in the underground out into the overground and into the sky?

Why, if we are unsatisfied with our leaders in government, are we not running for offices? Why, if we are unsatisfied with our pop icons and movie stars, are we not replacing them?

We spend far too much time speaking harsh words against our brothers in the sky, when in truth, they are merely humans like us, only they have chosen to sprout. Sure, too many of them have sprouted, forgotten where they come from, and begun to choke the very nutrients out from under themselves. No, I do not think it is alright for George W. Bush to run around smiling and laughing taking golf vacations when some of us have three jobs and 11 grand of debt, and still others are begging for change under bridges. No, I am not surprised. This has always been the way it is. It’s not even necessarily wrong. But TOO MANY people are disatisfied and DOING NOTHING.

I’m not a politician. I’m an artist. I’m a performer. So what should I do? I was reminded last night of the concept of my circle of influence. Yes. I shall operate within my circle of influence. I shall perform. I shall create. And when someone who has been languishing underground for 2 or 5 or 15 years, a choking struggling oak tree pretending to be a seed, I will hand that mother fucker a shrink wrapped package with his name on it.

This is what I can do. Next, I will do more.

I’m not going to Baghdad to do nothing for no one. I’m not going to Taos to hide in the fucking mountains like a coward. I’m not going to hole up in Thailand making records, as if making random recordings for no one to hear had anything to do with anything. I’ll see you in L.A., the fray, New York, Washington, Houston, London. I’ll see you on the streets of Bangkok or on the front page of the Times. I’ll see you on Jay Leno and Windows Media Player. I’ll see you in the Helios throwing bags of cocaine into the street. I’ll see you SOMEWHERE, is the point.

Now I say, here’s the test, here’s where most people fail, where G.W. is failing, where Capital Records is failing, where all of us at the Helios are failing: Is this about me? Is this is a contest? Will I be preaching to the democrats and left wing whiskey drinking poets to stand up, fight for yourself, and win the battle? Fuck ’em all? You’re nothin if you don’t take care of number one? Wouldn’t I just be a conservative then? When will I flip over and become what I hate? Do I have to? Or can I dig myself out from under the earth, fly into the big pretty clouds and BACK again, and never become bitter, mean, cold and heartless? I’ve proven to all that I can win a damn contest. You don’t believe me, come throw a punch at me, see what happens. But what is the POINT of that? What is the point of being ALONE on Mount Olympus? I’m not here to take everyone out, for God’s sake. That would just be BORING.

This week I will be handing one of those packages out to somebody that said three times last night, “I will battle compassionate conservatism with compassion.”

Understand what that package is, my man. That’s the dirt coming off. That’s the seed pushing through the thawing ground, that’s the oak, that’s the bloom. Could be a new nation or a simple CD. Still an oak, still a bloom, still worth showing someone sometime.

See you in the fray.

Speaking of the fray – go get some free music from me before I change my mind! CLICK HERE FOR THAT.

Monkey Rhymes

September 22, 2008 by Aaron

Monkey Set

aaron j. trumm, monkey rhymes, monkey set, nquit music, poetry, spoken word, techno/classical, third option, trance

Monkey Rhymes, by Third Option

Quick song. I could barely get the link and the lyrics and the buy button pasted by the time it was over!

Yes this is the monkey rhymes one I talked of before that was so berated by some cat on Broadjam.com – here it is in all it’s glory!

i don’t know but i been told
that you want me to fold
i don’t know but i been told
that you want monkey to fold

monkey in my monkey zoo fuck you
but if you wanna look at me you must be true
and i ain’t lookin for nobody at the back of the room
you must get yourself up front if you want this tune
’cause i’m more than a skinny little lemur from burma
been to every other town down with every fraterni
tee! i’m a monkey hey! look at me
i think you need to look in a mirror
then you’ll see
hey hey! party people! look what ya see!
i guess ya didn’t realize that you’re just like me
now what you gonna say
when monkey come to play
for the last time on the last day
yeah
you won’t even look
’cause you way too shook
just like Peter when he caught Wendy with that Hook
but you don’t really need to worry when I’m stealin your curry
’cause every monkey in the jungle knows
i’m in a hurry!
to get back to the top of the food chain
keep ya monkeyin around til you go insane
yeah here we go for the last time look at me now
monkey see monkey do
breakin outta the zoo!

i don’t know but i been told
that you want me to fold
i don’t know but i been told
that you want monkey to fold

monkey
monkey see monkey do
monkey make money in the back of the santa monica zoo
monkey say the last word from the last man from the last mouth
from the last family monkey on the planet

monkey

won’t take this

anymore.

So there you have it! But hey – you still might want to get your FREE DOWNLOADS! CLICK HERE FOR THAT! 🙂

[purchase_link id=”1318″ text=”Download The Monkey Set Here” style=”button” color=”blue”]

Run

September 17, 2008 by Aaron

Monkey Set

aaron trumm, monkey set, music, run, spoken word, techno/classical/poetry fusion, third option

Run, by Third Option

Pretty sure I improv’d this whole piece of poem here to tape. I remember a few days later I did an improv based on this – or – wait – it could be – yes I think it is – I think it’s reversed. What really happened was I did an improv with this refrain “run out the door we don’t need no more plastic floors” at a youth/teen slam in Spring, TX which I was hosting. We had a little round of doing improv and they all wanted me to try, and something like this is what I said. I didn’t say monkeys, but I did use that run out the door thing. I remember that I did it much better at the slam, actually. I remember I kind of starting taking off and getting into this socio political shit about 7up bottles and plastic floors and it was really powerful and people were like “WOW! DAMN! AMAZING! HOLY SHIT!” and such.

Yeah, and then this time, I didn’t quite get the same badassness as at the slam, but I got somethin. 🙂

That reminds me of this one guy who used to slam around the nation. His name was Abraham and he was from the south somewhere. He had a really sort of huck finn/way spiritual vibe – not straight essay style easy to understand spoken word like they do in slam nowadays, but poetry stuff, but he’d really go off. And he was an amazing improv person. I saw him improv at the Taos Poetry Circus slam and the thing about him was, his improv, the stuff that just came to mind for him, was the same as his written poetry. He just thought and talked like that. I mean I guess he didn’t talk like that if you sat at coffee with him, but when he improv’d it was no less poetic and crafted and beautiful. He could probably improv and you wouldn’t be able to tell. But not like guys who write as if they were talking or writing a prose essay. Like a POET, which was really weird and amazing to watch. He would just launch into this spiritual flight immedietly. I really tried to take him into me and have his thing become a part of my style. He was fuckin amazing. I wonder whatever happened to that guy.

Anyway here’s what’s on the record as far as poem for “Run”:

run
run
run out the door
run out the door
we don’t need no more plastic floors
run
run
out the door
where the tree lined skies begin again
run
out the door
run out the door
we don’t need no more plastic floors
run out the door
run out the cage
run out the stage
run off the stage
run off this stage of monkey lies and monkey things
and monkey things we must not do run
out the door
run out the door
we don’t need no more plastic floors
we got dirt
we got soil
we got the red wet earth
run out the door
run out the door
we don’t need no more plastic floors
we don’t need no more plastic floors
we don’t need no more plastic floors
monkeys
belong
in trees
in jungles
in the earth
on the earth
on the red wet earth
we don’t need no more plastic floors
we don’t need no more
plastic floors

We don’t need plastic floors, but we DO need FREE STUFF! GET IT! 🙂

[purchase_link id=”1318″ text=”Download The Monkey Set Here” style=”button” color=”blue”]

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

[purchase_link id=”1325″ text=”Download Cult Of Nice Here” style=”button” color=”blue”]

Get the CD Here

Cult Of Nice!!!

August 6, 2008 by Aaron

Cult Of Nice

aaron j. trumm, cult of nice, nquit music, piano, poetry, spoken word, tamara nicholl, techno, third option

Well. I kinda got done with Artistic Apocalypse.

So I think I’ll move on to some Third Option.

So here is the title track/opening track to the Third Option album Cult Of Nice which me and Tamara (Nicholl) worked on at Rock Romano’s Red Shack in Houston.

The album is based on this essay that Tamara wrote in college about dark heroes and the cult of “nice”. It’s really an incredible piece of work, I think (the essay). There’s actually clips of her reading the essay in the album, in this track, in fact. She’s doing a poem called “Airborne” in the beginning. Then she reads from the essay. “we have cast what we have named as dark aside”

I love the end of the Airborne poem, when she goes “soon, we will not be accustomed, to Earth”, and the beat rips back in. FUCK that’s cool.

This song kicks ass I think. I like it. This is one of those songs that people have heard and said “why aren’t you famous” to which I replied, “because it doesn’t work like that” or “i dunno why don’t you go spread the word?” or something.

It seems like I’ve talked about the intro somewhere before. I left this space on the tape and improv’d the intro, knowing that I would have to stop sooner or later when the beat, which was already on tape, came in. My buddy Larry Lines was engineering, and we rolled, and I did the thing, first take. And I somehow knew exactly where to lay my last chord so that the beat came in perfect. No we did not slide that around or edit that. I just happened to land it perfectly the first time.

I came in to listen and we heard that and Larry got all excited and punched me right in the arm. Fuckin A!, he was saying! We loved it!!

Hey – thanks for reading this as always – feel free, my friends, to go get some FREE THIRD OPTION STUFF right HERE! 🙂

— Aaron

[purchase_link id=”1325″ text=”Download CUlt Of Nice Here” style=”button” color=”blue”]

Get the CD Here

Still Phase Motion Mix

June 21, 2008 by Aaron

Still

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

Still

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 🙂

– Aaron

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

Still Fade To Black Mix

June 6, 2008 by Aaron

Still

annie nightingale, bbc radio I, fade to black, piano, poetry, spoken word, still, tamara nicholl, techno

Something I really love that I might not expect someone like me to love, is remixes. I don’t mean somebody sampling somebody else’s song and turning it into some mashup. That’s a new thing that people are calling remixing but it’s not. Remixes, to my mind, are new versions of songs that take the original multitrack audio and make a different version of the mix. It’s not something you think about when you think about rock n roll live music and you think a recording is just a document of some player’s sound. But really nowadays, and for a long time, the mixdown is a key part of the creative process and there’s WAY WAY more variability there than one might think. You can even have a band play a song once, and totally change the character of the song, right down to actually changing the song.

You can do this without even rearranging by cutting, pasting, editing. But then when you DO start cutting, pasting, editing, you also start into the notion of rearranging, which is an old old concept. Arrangers in classical music are old-school remixers. They take the basic “themes” of a work and make an original arrangement of it. In some cases we have music from composers like Mozart or Beethoven or whoever and it’s not actually clear what the arrangement should be. So the arrangement is the arranger’s creative contribution. But it’s not a new song (or symphony or whatever). It’s still considered the same song. It still has the same title. But there may be a footnote “Mozart’s Lost Sonota, arranged by Johnny Applebaum”.

This is what I think of when I think of remix. The track I linked above is still “Still” (no pun intended) but it’s a different version. The Still EP is 5 of these, and I totally remember where I first learned of this concept of the “maxi-single” in electronic music. I was interning at KUNM 89.9 FM here in Albuquerque, and my job was to organize CDS and take home duplicates. Well there was one CD, I forget the act or title, that was just that: an electronica act with one song (which I presumed was a hit from their full length CD) remixed in various ways.

I loved how I became familiar with the original song, and then I was hearing the same song, but with this new take. All of the Still stuff is completely modeled after that CD, for example, where I’ve gone back to the MIDI file for the song, and for the Fade To Black Mix, all I’ve done is use different synth settings for some (but not all, which I think is key/neat) of the parts. Like the former piano line becomes a vibraphone. It gives the song this whole different character.

I also love the idea of DJs or big fans having access to these secret other versions of known stuff. And usually there’s a bunch of different versions of something laying around just because in mixdown, a lot of times you do different things and decide later which one makes the cut on the album. If the versions are different enough, releasing them as remixes seems like a great use for them and a great well of extra content. That’s where I wouldn’t think I’d like the concept, because I’m not necessarily into being so desperate for content that you dredge up the same stuff over and over (like greatest hits albums – which are really just artists who have a contract to fulfill and no more material). But since I like the discovery process in a remix/new arrangement, I do like it in this case.

Of course, the other cool thing is remixes are this great way to collaborate with other artists and reach new audiences, especially if you can get Big Name Electronica Artist or DJ X to do the “Still Paul Oakanfield Scratch My Back Mix”

Anyway I enjoy remixes.

Ok. I’ll do some remixes while you get your free Third Option stuff, click here to do that! 🙂

– Aaron

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

Bahamas

spoken-word

A Lifetime

The View From Lighter Years Away

The Underground

Monkey Rhymes

Run

Possibility

Cult Of Nice!!!

Still Phase Motion Mix

Still Murphurd’s Slow And Unrequited Love Mix

Still Fade To Black Mix