[Music] Pushing some buttons

~Hakurei Shrine~ > Alice's Art Atelier

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Humming Humbucker:
Woah, I just checked out your recent track, and it's pretty good. I listened through some of your other works, and you can hear the significant improvement. I noticed you've begun using more extensive harmonies. Also, I noticed we probably suffer from the same syndrome, in that I can't help but make lengthy songs. It's hard to keep it under 6-minutes; it always feels like you can add more, but it's all good.

With that in mind, I'm kind of curious as to what sort of influences you might have. That Dreamscape song gave me a DnB-esque/drone vibe. Do you perchance listen to ambient or drone music, perhaps such as that of Boris or Earth? They often do stuff in that ambient, progressive style that you did in that track, where they take a repeated motif and build on it progressively through the song. With respect to chords, they often use chord inversions and especially seventh-chords to achieve a spacey, jazzy sound, and then layer more harmonies as the song progresses, creating a quiet-loud dynamic built-in to the song structure, as opposed to the instruments alone. I was kind of reminded of that style while listening to your song.

Also, I've been getting a bit of a video-game-ish vibe from some of your more "trance-y" songs. Your song Wormhole kind of gave me that vibe. Not sure if you've played it, but it kind of reminded of some of the background music in Ar no Surge. It had that futuristic, jumpy feel.

Sapz:

--- Quote from: Humming Humbucker on May 20, 2015, 03:31:35 AM ---Woah, I just checked out your recent track, and it's pretty good. I listened through some of your other works, and you can hear the significant improvement. I noticed you've begun using more extensive harmonies. Also, I noticed we probably suffer from the same syndrome, in that I can't help but make lengthy songs. It's hard to keep it under 6-minutes; it always feels like you can add more, but it's all good.
--- End quote ---
Haha, thank you! Glad to hear you liked it and that the improvement is evident. Re: long song syndrome, yeah, definitely - as a matter of fact I'm working on a track right now and I don't think it's getting any shorter than 8:30. :V

--- Quote ---With that in mind, I'm kind of curious as to what sort of influences you might have. That Dreamscape song gave me a DnB-esque/drone vibe. Do you perchance listen to ambient or drone music, perhaps such as that of Boris or Earth? They often do stuff in that ambient, progressive style that you did in that track, where they take a repeated motif and build on it progressively through the song. With respect to chords, they often use chord inversions and especially seventh-chords to achieve a spacey, jazzy sound, and then layer more harmonies as the song progresses, creating a quiet-loud dynamic built-in to the song structure, as opposed to the instruments alone. I was kind of reminded of that style while listening to your song.
--- End quote ---
I never got around to checking out those guys in particular, but I'm pretty into some similar stuff - Agalloch and Isis in particular are bands I adore, and then there's also spacey black metal stuff like Darkspace or Wolves in the Throne Room, and doomy stuff like Sleep, Electric Wizard, and Om. Outside of that I guess metal in general is a big influence often despite trying to make things in a more traditionally 'electronic' style - I feel like being in a guitar riff mindset while making things in trance/DnBish style winds up with things sounding a little like video game music, which is a comment I've been getting a lot. There's also the Japanese electronic music scene of course, but that's something I've only been into for a year or two so far.

--- Quote ---Also, I've been getting a bit of a video-game-ish vibe from some of your more "trance-y" songs. Your song Wormhole kind of gave me that vibe. Not sure if you've played it, but it kind of reminded of some of the background music in Ar no Surge. It had that futuristic, jumpy feel.

--- End quote ---
I actually have been meaning to play that sometime, looked pretty interesting. I'll get on that someday and see what you mean.

Thanks for the in-depth comment, really interesting to read!

Humming Humbucker:
Woah, those are some really cool influences. Sleep's "Holy Mountain" is just a dreamy wall of sound, and I especially love "Funerapolis" by Electric Wizard. It's also great to see Om getting some love, as they are so underrated, with "At Giza" being such a sonic journey. It's cool to see someone who's more on that end of the musical spectrum, which is kind of from where I started out. I can definitely see some of that progressive, groovy, and often ambient influence in your work.

Also, guitar riffs are kind of interesting and can be useful when thinking about bass lines. I noticed that your bass lines tend not to be strictly harmonic, in the sense that they do not merely serve to provide the foundation for the chord progression. Instead, they often contain elements resembling guitar riffs, providing a balance between both harmonic elements and rhythmic elements. With respect to doom bands, they often tend to use blues scales for their riffs. Given that they derive heavily influence from Black Sabbath, who popularized the use of tri-tones in rock music, they often use the hexatonic blues scale, which is the same as a pentatonic blues scale, only including the flat-five, often using it as a passing note. Of course, these riffs tend to be more "bass-y," using the thicker strings of a guitar and are often mirrored by the bass, creating a wall of sound, produce by the resonance of the octaves.

Sapz:

--- Quote from: Humming Humbucker on May 24, 2015, 05:37:49 AM ---Woah, those are some really cool influences. Sleep's "Holy Mountain" is just a dreamy wall of sound, and I especially love "Funerapolis" by Electric Wizard. It's also great to see Om getting some love, as they are so underrated, with "At Giza" being such a sonic journey. It's cool to see someone who's more on that end of the musical spectrum, which is kind of from where I started out. I can definitely see some of that progressive, groovy, and often ambient influence in your work.

Also, guitar riffs are kind of interesting and can be useful when thinking about bass lines. I noticed that your bass lines tend not to be strictly harmonic, in the sense that they do not merely serve to provide the foundation for the chord progression. Instead, they often contain elements resembling guitar riffs, providing a balance between both harmonic elements and rhythmic elements. With respect to doom bands, they often tend to use blues scales for their riffs. Given that they derive heavily influence from Black Sabbath, who popularized the use of tri-tones in rock music, they often use the hexatonic blues scale, which is the same as a pentatonic blues scale, only including the flat-five, often using it as a passing note. Of course, these riffs tend to be more "bass-y," using the thicker strings of a guitar and are often mirrored by the bass, creating a wall of sound, produce by the resonance of the octaves.

--- End quote ---
Haha, yes! Funeralopolis feels unbelievably massive, as does that whole album in general. I'm also quite a fan of their Witchcult Today album; the sound/production is pretty different but the riffs and the grooves are too good.

Re: bass, yeah, you hit the nail on the head - for me at least, bass is the glue that sticks the percussion and the melodies together, and I've found it works for me best when it's dancing around the drums while backing up the other instruments.

On a side note, I now need to check out your stuff in more detail and see if I can recognize any influences myself. :V

Anywho, new track finished!

Point Of No Return.

Wound up 9 minutes or so, far darker than I originally intended but went to some places I thought were pretty interesting. As always, hope someone enjoys it, and feedback is greatly appreciated. :D

Sapz:
It's been a while, but here's a new track I was supposed to get finished in June.

Forest In Snow.

I got super stuck with this one in a big cycle of second guessing myself and endlessly rearranging things until, after taking a break for a while, some nice piano melodies floated into my head. I wound up re-reworking the track around those and finally got a finished version out. It's pretty different once again to previous stuff, and I'm not really sure what genre it comes under - not trance, not ambient, not DnB, but electronic with breakbeats and heavy piano use... any suggestions? :V

Regardless, hope someone enjoys, and any feedback greatly appreciated as always.

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