Category: Music

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Sign of affection

A screen shot of UAD's PolyMAX synthesizer plugin

This is not a happy song. I had the initial ideas for it in about 2010, writing the lyrics of the first verse and chorus, and a vague idea of how I wanted the synths to sound in the chorus. I had a few attempts at singing and recording it, but nothing really came out how I wanted it, so I sat on it for 15 years. It’s really the complete antithesis of my recent song Pair Programming, presenting the perspective of someone stuck in a long-term relationship that seems to be slowly fading into indifference, making them feel lost and unwanted. I told you it wasn’t happy!

After discovering the amazing abilities of synthetic vocals a couple of years ago, I set about resurrecting and completing this song. I had always wanted it to have a Depeche Mode “Shake the disease” vibe, with perhaps a bit of Front 242 aggression. I recently got UAD’s PolyMAX synth plugin in a free offer, and it’s a really great synth, much simpler than impOSCar3 that I used in Dancing By Myself, but still sounds fantastic, particularly its unison and per-voice stereo panning features. It provides the primary “Zeow” in the chorus, the jingly verse chords, a pad in the second chorus, and the “jets” noise bursts. I used Logic’s ES2 for the sharp, metallic melody in the verse, Alchemy for the stabs and the awesomely violent bass in the chorus. The bass in the verse is a venerable Korg Wavestation, one of my all-time favourite synths.

Two instances of Logic’s drummer players provided drums using Logic’s Drum Machine Designer instrument and the “Heavy Industry” kit.

It’s harmonically curious. There are only really two chords, B♭ major and B minor, with a little Asus2 at one point; they are all very close together, and not really in any particular key.

The vocals are as usual provided by Synthesizer V. The lead is Noa HEX, and the backing vocals are Solaria II. SV has improved a lot in version 2, but I ended up not really using any automation of voice parameters; per-group voice settings were enough, as the style is pretty consistent all the way through the song. Solaria still sounds great; I particularly like the slow melody on the backing vocals in the second verse, and the somewhat discordant and unexpected harmonies in the second chorus.

The a capella section in the middle provides a dramatic contrast in its isolated vocals and hopeful message. This was quite fun to construct, but it was quite hard to stop the voices sounding a bit artificial, especially the lower one.

I used Logic’s lovely sounding Quantec Room Simulator for the main reverb, lots of bitcrushing and distortion on the “zeow” and chorus bass, sonible smart:EQ4 to handle masking and balance, and Logic’s mastering module placed after an instance of the famous SSL bus compressor.

All in all, I wanted aggression, discordance, and discomfort from this very depressing song, and I think it delivers them quite effectively.

[Verse]
We’ve been together forever, never apart.
But it seems like you’re a long way from my heart.
And though I’m beside you, it’s as if I’m not there.
Wanna feel your arms around me, your hands in my hair.
We’ve made so many memories, right from the start.  
Yet now it feels like we’re worlds apart.  
Though we walk side by side, I sense a divide.  
Need the warmth of your love, you back on my side

[Chorus]
Why aren’t you close when you are near?
Where are the words that I’m longing to hear?
How can I reach you when it’s you I can’t touch?
Is a sign of affection just asking too much?
How can you hide when you’re standing so near?
Is this isolation the thing that I fear?
How can I reach you when it’s you I can’t touch?
Is a sign of affection just asking too much?

[A capella break]
Even as our love descends
I want our fairy tale to have a happy end
Even as our love descends
I want our fairy tale to have a happy end
Even as our love descends
I want our fairy tale to have a happy end
Even as our love descends
I want our fairy tale to have a happy ending

[Verse]
You’re lying beside me when we’re going to sleep
but I wake and you’re gone, leaving cold, empty sheets.
No kisses or hugs, no touch of a hand;
None of this is going the way that I planned.
We used to share dreams, our futures combined
now silence fills the air, and I wonder why.
The laughter we had, the love we once knew,
is fading away and I don’t know what to do.

[Chorus]
So why aren’t you close when you are near?
Where are the words that I’m longing to hear?
How can I reach you when it’s you I can’t touch?
Is a sign of affection just asking too much?
How can you hide when you’re standing so near?
Is this isolation the thing that I fear?
How can I reach you when it’s you I can’t touch?
Is a sign of affection just asking too much?

If you like this song, please consider supporting me by buying my albums on Bandcamp, and sharing links to my music on your socials.

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JBL Control 25 ceiling mount adapters

This is an extremely boring thing to write about, but hopefully it will save someone some annoyance. JBL’s Control 25 and 28 speakers come with a neat, simple plate-and-stick “Invisiball” mounting system, designed to mount the speakers on vertical walls. They also sell an adapter to attach them to the ceiling instead, where the “stick” of the normal adapter is replaced by a longer, offset stick enabling vertical mounting. These adapters require that you have the original wall plates, but the used speakers I bought were missing them, and new ones cost more than I paid for the speakers, so I wanted to figure out how to mount them some other way.

For the search engines among you, the ceiling adapters are part number MTC-2825CM, and the original wall mounts are 179-00002-00 and 179-00002-01, in white and black respectively.

The ceiling mounts I had came with an extra cone-shaped, dual-threaded adapter that I couldn’t find a spec for:

I found a spec sheet for the ceiling mounts, which tells me that the end of the mounting rod has an imperial 7/16″, 20tpi thread (really??). But the one on the blunt end of the cone was a mystery that didn’t fit any of the bolts I had (which were mostly for bikes, so all too small). I took some measurements and guessed that it might be a 3/8, 16tpi, given that the other threads were all imperial so I ordered some nuts… which were wrong. I remeasured and popped to my local DIY store, where I verified that it is actually standard metric 10mm thread. So we have a revolting combination of imperial and metric units. Blech. At least it looks neat!

That finally screwed down, I designed (in Autodesk Fusion) a ceiling mount that this threaded end could fit into that I could 3D print. It looks much nicer than the stock mounting plate, and the screw holes are designed to take nice stainless steel Allen bolts. Because it’s designed to mount vertically and bolted to the ceiling, the plastic will be mostly in compression, a direction that’s nice and strong for printed parts, though the speakers only weigh 3kg each. I printed it with a generic white PLA Meta filament that only took 70 mins to print two of my design on my Bambu P1S and feels really strong even with only a 15% infill (though with 5 walls). You can find the model on Thingiverse and Makerworld.

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God speed (Student Union remix)

Fadr and SoundCloud sent me a somewhat spammy email inviting me to take part in a remix event for the song “God speed” by Erin LeCount. I gave in, built a track, and submitted it. Listen and vote on the event site.

I’d never heard of Erin before, but this is a great song, with a very impressive vocal performance. I’ve not done much in the way of remixing, but I have done many cover versions, so I decided to combine aspects of both. Working in Apple’s Logic Pro X as usual, I kept the song’s original structure and vocals, but completely replaced the backing track. Much of the marketing pitch for this event was about using Fadr’s “AI remix” tools, but I’m not really very interested in that.

I made two main edits to the vocals: picking the “god speed” line from later in the song and using it as the opening line, then overlaying the opening verse on top of the final one. The first verse is longer than the second, so there were some vocals left over to make a new ending. While the event provided stems, broken out into 18 tracks, these were not completely isolated. For example, the first half of the main vocal track is quite dry, but the second half has a ton of reverb on it, making it harder to reprocess. This was quite convenient though as the dry vocal made for a better ending. It’s very nice working with such good, real vocals, but they are much harder work to edit, and I can’t randomly change the lyrics and melody like I can with Synthesizer V!

I replaced each instrumental track in turn with my own version, and I found some good equivalents to the existing tracks, though some of the odder sounds like bow screeches were difficult to emulate, so I either left them or dropped them.

The keyboard part had some chord voicings I couldn’t figure out, so ended up using Excite Audio’s VISION 4X plugin (a very detailed audio spectrum analyser!) to figure out what notes and harmonics I needed by trial and error!

I replayed the electric guitar part, and really liked the recording, so I added more of it elsewhere in the track. Then I wanted a line that would hold everything together, for which I added a full-length acoustic guitar track using UJAM’s Amber2. Drums are played by Logic’s player with manual patterns, using the “Detroit Garage” kit with some modifications, notably a pitched-up snare, and a 40% “pull” on the feel. Bass and sub-bass tracks use Apple’s Alchemy synth. The electric and toy pianos, harp, and reverse synth hit are Logic sampler patches, a second electric piano uses Kontakt 8. Reverbs are all Logic Space Designer patches.

Overall it has come out sounding like something a college band would play at a student union gig, hence the choice of title.

This was a fun exercise. Some of the other remixes were rather more ambitious in rearranging, changing pace, or transforming it into other styles (like disco and breakbeat), but I’m pretty happy with what I produced.

If you like this song, please consider supporting me by buying my albums on Bandcamp, and sharing links to my music on your socials.

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Dancing by myself

A screen shot of GForce impOSCar version 3, showing the bass patch used in this song.

No, this isn’t about me; no, this isn’t a cover of a similarly named Billy Idol track. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s talk about what this is: a full-blooded, unapologetic dance track that’s not going to require you to understand some odd geeky concept, like several of my other songs do…

I feel lucky to have had this song included in the second album in “The Four Seasons of Bonk Wave” series, entitled “A Midsummer Bonk’s Dream (1)“.

The inspiration for this song, in my usual feel requirements, is something along the lines of one of Shingo Nakamura’s oeuvres. Lots of synths, bass with a bit of oomph, satisfying, but somewhat predicable, chord progressions, and some sweet but essentially meaningless lyrics. This is head-down, late-night boppy stuff, no thinking required.

As for the sounds, well, I’ve long owned GForce’s impOSCar virtual synth, having played with an original OSC Oscar synth in a music shop in Oxford back when it first appeared in the early 80s. However, I’d not really paid it much attention (yes, having too many synth plugins is a problem). GForce released version 3, a very nice upgrade that grabbed my attention. Its arpeggiator, filters, polyphony, built-in effects, and all-round gnarliness just needed to be unleashed in lavish quantities, so here we are.

impOSCar3 is responsible for the bass, two pads, and a twinkly arpeggiator. The strummy guitar is by UJAM’s Amber2 virtual guitarist that I also used on “Pair programming”.

Bass and Drums are played by Logic’s usual players, with some manual overrides. Vocals are by Synthesizer V, as usual, but using the basic “Mai” voice database, which I used on “AI Girlfriend” for its wonderful squeaky artificiality. I’ve toned that down by pitching it lower and pushing the gender and tension sliders around appropriately. The repeat of the chorus has the more believable Solaria II voice on the backing vocal.

I came up with the main chord progression while just noodling about, and then asked Claude to suggest some alternative sections. There’s not a great deal of variation, but no worries, we’re just out to make a bangin’ choon.

To keep things interesting, I learned all about Logic’s Remix FX. This plugin has some fairly basic controls for filtering, repeating, gating, bitcrushing that are individually outdone by other plugins, but they are all in one place, are very easy to use and to automate, making things very dynamic.

Screen shot of Logic's Remix FX, showing it in action during the ending, using a high-pass filter and bit crushing effects.
Remix FX in action during the ending, using a high-pass filter and bitcrushing effects.

There is a lot of automation in this song: filter sweeps, pans, levels, reverb sends, plus all the swirly goodness that the Remix FX plugin provides. This is squarely in the genre of BT’s “Movement in Still Life”, which has production values I can only aspire to, but it’s all just for fun. Now go boogie, by yourself or otherwise!

It doesn’t mean I’m lonely
when I’m dancing by myself.
I’m happy when I’m dancing,
I don’t need your help.
My night-times are for dancing;
you can’t take that away.
Dancing is for everyone,
but you don’t have to stay.

If you like this song, please consider supporting me by buying my albums on Bandcamp, and sharing links to my music on your socials.