bv52 - kemon1sta

recommended tracks: kemokemo, bugs in my skin, shredder, cute fangs

note! this album already has a blog post found here: posty posty hehe

as such, this will be more about the choices i stuck with and the techniques i employed while making this thing. probably will be uninteresting, as i don't think i was doin' anything all that cool, but it's fun to rehash this stuff. so back out now if you want!

bass bonanza

one thing that can be noticed, especially on headphones or speakers... the bass has very little emphasis on tonality. there's maybe 3 or 4 songs whose bass line changes pitch, even just once, out of, like, 15 total? ... lol. yeah.

i don't quite remember why this was appealing to me at the time, and in hindsight i don't think i used it to its fullest potential. but i definitely had a thing for it! at its best, it had this full-body effect that literally forced me into the rhythm. at its worst, it can be lacking, ironically, a heavy hitting punch to emphasize moments and produce a forceful push-pull of rhythm, all while muddying the low end into soup. learning, learning, learning!

the main way i did this was placing kick samples on audio tracks, saturating or egregiously eq'ing their low frequencies up, playing with the pitches, or stretching and reversing them out to fuck. a lot of droning bass sounds and the more in-your-throat bass palette were created by doing this. there was no putting these samples into a sampler vst or instrument, they were just placed onto the audio track and processed there directly. i'd definitely like to return to this approach sometime

another way was by doubling or adding multiple tracks to serve as a bass element. very counterintuitive to mixing best practice, but i am giga brian so i must resist. kidding, if it wasn't obvious... anyways, i was also learning ableton and what having functional sidechaining was like. i did use it, but maybe not as ~professionally~ as i could have. oh well!

i couldn't sit still...

i didn't tend to end up enforcing any particular song structures either. once again, to varying degrees of proficiency. i tend to like songs that meander around or introduce little ideas here and there as accents. i love the little details, how sounds interact and stack and subtract, the way they align temporally or timbrally to synergize before falling out of alignment, waiting for a new moment to take its place

i am not saying i was consciously trying to do much of this; there's a ginormous gap in capability between myself and the people i look up to most regarding this. but the parts i ended up liking the most of this did involve pulling this off properly...

but really, i just found myself really struggling to package things into a pop structure, or even just something more traditional. i think the most i repeat a particular section is maybe... twice a song? yeah. not very focused, but also i think it makes sense in a way. i was in an entirely new place, feeling so free as i grew into myself as a person. new things everywhere, all of them exciting. i want to go all over!

sampling philosophy

the last thing i will mention is the use of samples and synths. i redefined how i use samples from first principles. a big change for me, and one that is still in progress!

samples took on a pointed meaning and purpose to me through this album, rather than just being something of sonic interest. all of the vocal samples were collected from daily life, and i wanted to use them to indicate the feeling that daily life had begun to feel like an adventure. most importantly, these are expressions of joy and happiness to be in the current time and current place. whether with groups of friends, exploring new places with my gato, or simply spending idle time alone, this feeling that daily life had become exciting and rich was something i'd never quite had before!

by using these samples, i closed a loop of expression. i was beginning to feel like me, free and whole and joyous. the samples were realtime evidence, capturing the moments and people and places that gave me this. they were able to breathe an extra thematic life into these songs that were reflections on how blessed and engaged i felt during this period

i've continued to diligently record and document my life as a result. my handy little zoom recorder has been an amazing purchase

and more, for later!

and that's about all i have to say on these. there's more i learned and took away, of course, but that will show up in later songs... yippee!