Wall of Death

I've been looking through youtube to find videos from the ETF concert and I couldn't find any good quality Attack Attack! clips, so I'll just post the wall of death during ETF's set preceding the song "The Guillotine".



If you are interested, the youtube user ariaslucia posted the entire concert on her account.

Sickkk

I went to NYC last night for the Escape the Fate concert, supported by Black Tide, William Control and Attack Attack! It was a really sick show. Here is Escape the Fate performing "There's No Sympathy for the Dead" at the Fillmore at Irving Plaza, where the concert was held.



I'm going to try to tie in some stuff about electronic music in this post as well.

Unfortunately, when I finally got to the venue, Attack Attack! were already playing (there was a long line outside). As soon as youtube videos of their performance are posted I will add them to my blog.

I caught three of their songs--Dr. Shavargo Pt. 3, Catfish Soup, and The People's Elbow. As I mentioned before, there is a synth element to their post-hardcore sound. I wish I had gotten a better look at their synthesizer setup, but I believe it was two Korg synthesizers stacked on top of each other. Their clean vocals were done by one of their guitarists and were processed, something you don't usually see in live vocal performances. This effect was used to mirror the one they use on their album, and it is a type of distortion or light vocoder (effects we learned about in class). Attack Attack's sound was unbelievable, and the mix was great too. I thought that, along with Escape the Fate, they sounded the best last night.

Next up was someone I was not familiar with, William Control. His music consists of industrial dance beats (think NIN) and vocals. He also had a bass player with him on stage. While his style of music didn't really mesh with the rest of the lineup last night, I warmed to his sound by the end of his set.

Black Tide came on next. The crowd wasn't too alive during their set, but I was really happy when they busted out an old-school Metallica cover, "Hit the Lights". A huge circle pit formed during that song. I like their old-school thrash metal approach, and the whole band had tremendous stage presence as well as instrumental chops (especially the drummer and guitarists). However, their live performance didn't get the crowd too excited.

Escape the Fate was a different story. When they came on, all hell broke loose, as they say. Mosh pits started popping up everywhere, and pushing, swaying, singing, screaming, and crowd surfing all took place. Their set list, to the best of my memory, was:

The Flood
Reverse the Curse
There's No Sympathy for the Dead
Something
You Are So Beautiful
Not Good Enough for Truth In Cliché
On to the Next One
Ashley
The Guillotine
This War is Ours (The Guillotine II)
Situations

There was a wall of death for "The Guillotine" which is where the crowd splits down the middle and runs at each other when the song starts, basically creating a crowd-wide mosh pit. I got pretty close to the front row and had a blast the entire time. Escape the Fate, Black Tide, and Attack Attack! will all be on Warped Tour this summer, so check them out!

P.S. The clip below shows how crazy the show was during ETF's last song (and you can see me on the right side of the screen with glasses at the 0:21-0:22 mark)

Music

I thought I would post 3 tracks that I am playing on repeat (on youtube, ha) right now. The first one is in the trance genre--"Summer Rain" by ATB. I am discovering the elements to a good dance track, and this one has a good loop that starts it off. This loop is developed with percussion for a good minute and a half. Then vocals come in, and the loop comes back and hits the "drop". Not a lot of musical elements, but a lot of work in development and structure (things to keep in mind for me as Music 295b moves into the dance music phase).



Next up is "Shockwave" by Black Tide, another opener for Escape the Fate in NYC on Feb. 21. I really dig the riff in this song, but I've been having trouble playing it on guitar. I think it's in some weird tuning.

Last, but not least, I am including "Through Struggle" by my new favorite band, As I Lay Dying. I have to warn you that it is very hardcore (especially the vocals), so at least check out the beginning and the vicious breakdown at the end (3:32). As I Lay Dying will be opening, along with Children of Bodom (whom I saw live at Toad's Place in 2006), for Lamb of God this spring. Unfortunately, the NYC show is right in the middle of exams, so maybe I will catch them in Myrtle Beach when the Seniors invade?

RadiaL Dance Loops

For our second assignment, Professor Juraj had us working with yet another neat program, RadiaL. Even with a simple 2 second click audio file, you can come up with some pretty interesting results. The following are the 3 dance loops for my assignment.

For the first dance loop, I kept it simple and only put the click file on 1 turntable. I DJed by manipulating the pitch and the tempo.

Dance Loop 1

For the second loop, I put the click file on 3 turntables. For the second and third turntables I selected portions of the sample file, while I kept the entire file running on the first turntable. Again, I used pitch and tempo shift, and I added an effect to the beginning of the loop.

Dance Loop 2

For my last loop, I put the click file into 4 turntables, and selected small samples of the click for each table. Before recording, I positioned pitch and tempo to different locations and then played around with them again from there, trying to make it sound decent. I also added a small section of switching the turntables on and off briefly at the end.

Dance Loop 3

New Dance Track

Here is a more polished version of the third track.

New Dance Track

I have found that working in Logic is super fun and addictive.

Playing with Logic

I decided to play around with Logic a little during my free time. I watched a simple, yet helpful Logic tutorial on youtube, which gave me the knowledge to create the following three tracks. The second one is a rock/metal track, while I tried to create a dance track for the third one. I apologize for the starts and stops in the middle of the third track, but I really like how the end of it turned out.

Logic

Rock

Dance

Logic Pro is a very powerful program, and I look forward to learning more about it.

Attack Attack!

Some of the "rock" genre music that I have been listening to recently includes a group called Attack Attack! who list themselves on their myspace as "screamo/electro" under genre. Screamo is a form of post-hardcore, which is an offshoot of punk.

The genre features, as the name implies, screaming vocals (sometimes mixed with melodic vocals and done by different singers), and harmonized guitars--to speak generally. A song will typically feature a "breakdown" which consists of a highly rhythmic phrase that people mosh to--kind of like moving to a dance track, except more aggressive, and at times, violent.

Electro is a genre that I had heard mention of, but had no idea what it was. Here is the wikipedia entry on it.

Basically, what this group is trying to do is merge screamo with dance music. Their song "Stick Stickly" includes a dance beat merged with guitars near the end of the song (turn down your volumes a little for the first vid, kids).



They have also done a dance/screamo cover of Katy Perry's popular song "I Kissed a Girl".



I think this band is really neat.



P.S. Attack Attack! will be opening for Escape the Fate in NYC on Feb. 21. Hope to see you there...

Soundscape Ringtones

Our first assignment was to craft ringtones in the style of soundscape, or in other words, to use daily sounds around us. For my first ringtone, I recorded the sound of my shoes walking (and crushing) icy snow in the stone courtyard of Saybrook, where I live. The recording for my second ringtone was of my keys jingling on a carabiner, with a heater providing background noise. I processed the ringtones using Logic Pro. The effects that I used were fade in and fade out, reverse, inverse, and pitch and tempo shifting.

Ringtone 1 (mp3)
Ringtone 1 (aiff)

Ringtone 2(mp3)
Ringtone 2(aiff)