still Archives - Aaron J. Trumm

Still Phase Motion Mix

June 21, 2008 by Aaron

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 Telephone Mix

June 9, 2008 by Aaron

Still

bbc, music, nicholl, nightingale, poetry, spoken, still, tamara, techno, telephone mix, word

Well obviously I called this version the Telephone Mix because I “telephoned” Tamara’s voice. I used to LOVE to use that telephone effect (which is achieved simply by cutting most frequencies and boosting the ones that the telephone picks up). I felt like if I made it purposefully fucked up, didn’t let you hear the full spectrum of the original sound, then you wouldn’t be able to hear that it was originally a low quality recording. It’s a good little trick. 🙂

This one’s a good bit different now that I’m listening. It’s a bit more ethereal. That ahh ahh ooh thing brings back all kinds of memories but the weird thing is, not really memories of that session or that time, or that version of my little studio. It kind of makes me think of Austin. Maybe we were touring that summer with the slam team or something to Austin. I know we went to Austin at some point around then. We rehearsed poems in Barton Springs. Tamara peed on me in the water.

Well, enjoy.

in the cities of grey slate buildings
all night marquees
and flashing billboards of Virginia Slim and Camel Joe
we stuff our ears at the 24 hour 7 day a week diner of
fiber optic chatter
photographers take our pictures and people watch our lips go up and down on television and toast us as one of the new top ten up and coming
but we
we will not go to the desert
we will not take off our clothes
or bear our hearts
or shut our mouths

Oh and dudes(ettes!) get some free tracks right here 🙂

– 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”]

Still

June 5, 2008 by Aaron

Still

annie nightingale, bbc I, piano, poetry, still, tamara nicholl, techno, third option

Ok so I got done with Frosted Mini Wheats and now I’ll just move right on to Still.

So Still was just one of the songs on Frosted Mini Wheats, and I probably said before that it was vastly different before Tamara came along. It wasn’t called Still, for one, because Still is the name of the poem, and the poem wasn’t there. And actually it really was completely different, the song that was in that spot. Tamara had ideas, which gave me ideas, I wrote new baselines, rearranged, wrote new beats, had Tamara do the poem, did bits of the poem myself, cut up the vocals, had us both sing – goddang what DID I keep from the other version? God only knows and no mortal man will ever find out because all those MIDI sequences and audio files were destroyed or lost.

That’s really stupid and bad, actually, because now with that record, and Frosted Mini Wheats, AND Cult Of Nice, I don’t have multitracks, I have nothing. I have no way to recreate and do a version without vocals or any kind of tweaked version if somebody wants it. That’s stupid stupid stupid. Oh well.

Then. Well. I’ll use the next couple blog posts to chatter a bit about the remixes of Still.

Meantime, as always, if you haven’t gotten some free Third Option stuff, click here to do that! 🙂

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

Still

May 8, 2008 by Aaron

Frosted Mini Wheats

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? 🙂

Procedure for recording Third Option “Still” EP

November 11, 2006 by Aaron

Recording Procedures

recording, still

Basic Setup:

Initial Recording Format: 8 Track Darwin Harddisk
Mix Destination Format: DAT
Final Format: CD Master and Duplicated CD’s
Mixer: Mackie 12 Channel VLZ
Outboard Processing: Art SGE Mach II Efx Processor
Synths: Alesis S4, Yamaha TG100, Boss DR660
Mics: AKG D1000E
Mastering: TC Electronics Finalizer

Procedure:

Tracking: Most instrument tracks were tracked to Darwin through an Art tube-preamp.
Mixing: Still was done like Frosted Mini Wheats. If seperated, it would’ve been something like a 24 track mixdown. But I only had the 8 tracks of Darwin to work with. So I ping-ponged, trying to stay very careful along the way. The singing vocals were double and tripled up (there were four of Tamara and two of Aaron), and then a stereo mix was created of those tracks. The drums were made another stereo pair, and basses and synths made up other pairs, etc.Kick/snare/hats etc. were seperated, mixed on the Mackie, and run through the Art tube. The Art tube has only one channel so they would be transferred in sync one channel at a time. Interestingly, when you do this, it spreads the stereo spectrum out a bit. It’s a great effect, but sometimes it’s not good for things that you might rather feel very dead center (like kicks or bass or even vocals). I could listen to synth tracks “live” (played back by the sequencer) while mixing a couple of basses, for example, to make sure that in the context of the whole, things were coming out ok. Some pairs were mixed digitally inside Darwin to make room for this method.
Each remix was either a slight rearrange in the sequence and retrack and remix (maybe keeping audio tracks like drums from the main mix, always reusing vocals from the original tracks), or in the case of the Murphurd’s Slow and Unrequited Love Mix, it was a matter of taking the main mix and slowing it way down to a quarter of its original speed, and then laying drums from the Phase Motion mix on top of it. Since it was half of half the speed, they sync’d up beautifully. Then I layered back in a Tamara vocal track and retracked a vocal myself. This was the one remix that was a full blown audio remix, as opposed to a rearrange and start over. It had no newly recorded tracks. What was screwy about slowing it down is that Darwin has no DSP features. What I did was hold the jog wheel in one spot for over 20 minutes and dub the slow output to a DAT, then back to Darwin, sliding it into place so it would be in sync. Darwin also doesn’t show a wave, so that was a matter of listening, placing a marker in hopefully exactly the right spot, doing math, and doing a move function, and then moving it a frame, or a half a frame, or a 1000th of a frame at a time until it felt like it sounded right. You can’t just slide around in Darwin, you have to push “action”, “move” and tell it how far and in which direction to move.
Mastering/Editing: Mixes were transferred digitally through the Finalizer, back to Darwin, and eventually dubbed to tape. The Finalizer was borrowed; this and Frosted Mini Wheats was the first mixing/editing/mastering for release done in the NQuit studio.