What are your favorite songs featuring 808s?

THRU THE WIRES
WEDNESDAY MAY 28TH 2007

9PM-2AM
$5 @ the door / 21+ (sorry kids)

@ THE LOFT
420 South Mill Avenue / Tempe AZ 85281 (map)

PARKING: In the lot on Ash & 5th (west of the venue, same side of the street)
PROMOTER: Adam Stranieri (480) 200-0661
LOAD IN: Artists between 8:30-9:00pm
TENTATIVE LINEUP (listed in order of appearance)

Chop/Shoppe
ANgR MgMT
Menagam
Modem
RamenBoy
Chop/Shoppe

HI SWEETIES,

Molly_eskonitron is a name that I gave to the type of work I was doing in that range of a year and a half. The older stuff (2002-2004) all had the name of vale_eskonitron. It’s a hard thing to try to describe certain period of life where you have a range of ideas and expressions that reflect those ideas, so I just give these periods names when the word sounds like it fits the ideas. These songs have a similar kind of idea as the vale_eskonitron period, but their differences are more audible to me than their similarities. It’s hard to explain, so I won’t bother. This is collection of songs I usually play live but have never actually released (aside from that one live cd… but that doesn’t count). Most of them are Nintendo-oriented and such. Here’s a bit about how they came about…

“The Robot and Unicorn Festival” was written in october of 2005 with the help of a now deceased modified speak & math. It was originally a 56-second slower song done for a compilation that never came out. I couldn’t stop writing and adding to it, and it ended up being over 4 minutes long… halfway thanks to the obnoxious acid solo that only comes out descently when played live

“1986 Peepees and Weewees” is a rip off of the Beastie Boys song “Girls!”, but it happened halfway by accident. The intro and main chord progression of the song was originally 3 1/2 steps higher and had slight timing variations. When I was messing around and trying to come up with parts for new songs, I had a keyboard hooked up to my Nintendo and would just record stuff while playing. Most of these songs came out of this one recording-while-messing-around session. This loop ended up getting stuck in my head so I developed it into a full loop with drums and backing synths before trying to write it out as a full song. When half of the full song was done, I was like “aww man! this is that Beastie Boys song!!” Then I was like “Who gives a shit!” and finished it. The drums are all overprocessed NES sounds I recorded while doing the initial recording tests and stuff. The higher-up synths in the later parts of the song are from my Nintendo as well. They were sequenced for this album, but usually get played live.

“Alfred Chicken” is a cover of the ending song from the Nintendo game by the same name. The original is simply one of the baddest, most ill-taco, hydrochloric neptune jams ever. period. Not THE baddest though… that’s “Tendance Part 5″ by Patrick Peters. Anyway, even the Alfred Chicken ending song done for Super Nintendo was awesome because it used a voice “ahh” for the main synth. Just awesome.

“Hawaii Of Course” came from an entire group of parts that were written for the song “Jackie (The Ending Song)”. They didn’t quite fit in anywhere, so they all got their own song. Parts of the drums come from my Casio VL-Tone, a Nintendo, and 800 other trinkets. If I remember right, the slight voice sound heard throughout the song is my voice run through a George Foreman grill.

“Jackie (The Ending Song)” sounds like… um… and ending song. Something like the ending of the Pee-Wee Herman Show. The main part came from that recording mentioned earlier, but was then sequenced and transposed. Then I learned to play it on the guitar. Then I messed around playing it, tabbed what I played, then resequenced that. It seems like a ridiculous process. It is.

“The Legend of Jack Burton” is entirely Nintendo. No modifying samples, no processing, no nothing. Just Nintendo. I think we know who it’s named for. If not, it’s a character in this movie I watched every other day between the ages of 3 and 4.

A few songs got cut out of this cd, including a cover of a Guardian Legend song. I figured one cover (and one sound-alike) were quite enough.

Have fun with this cd.

Terminator 8: Return Of My Keys,

-captainmarmalade

p.s. Really, I can’t find them.

When I (ramen) worked at Borders at Fiesta Mall in Mesa, Arizona (Hi, Kai! Hi, Nick!), someone would always get on the PA around closing time and announce, “Borders Books and Music will be closing in 10 short minutes…”. I found this to be completely absurd, and would often complain, “no wonder it takes me so long to do all these dishes–they only give me short minutes…”.

This album is about not having time to finish. Most of the tracks are under a minute long. Some are longer. Others are finished. For the most part, this is what you get when life hands you the short minutes. The track list might grow if we can find the time to not finish more tracks, so watch this space! (What does that even mean? Watch space? WTF?)

I’d like to take this time to

The RPG-8 Monophonic Arpeggiator is an instrument that controls another instrument by repeating sequences of notes in a particular order. Though arpeggiators are primarily used with synthesizers and other melodic instruments, you can also arpeggiate a drum beat. It’s not obvious how to do this, however; if you just connect the RPG-8 to a REX device, it doesn’t do anything useful. This tutorial explains how to pull it off.

First, you’ll want to find a REX loop that is evenly sliced. You can also get interesting effects with unevenly-sliced loops, but it’s easier to control the effect with a set of uniformly-spaced slices. Create the REX instrument, then right-click it and select “Combine”.

Now that you have the REX loop inside of a Combinator, it’s a snap to hook up an arpeggiator and have it “do the right thing”. Right-click on the Combinator instrument and select “Create -> RPG-8 Monophonic Arpeggiator”.

This is where the fun starts. If you select the RPG-8 and hold down a few notes on your keyboard, it will start playing a beat. Depending on which keys you hold down, you’ll get a different beat pattern. If you hold down four keys, you’ll usually get a 2-beat, and if you hold down eight keys you’ll get a 4-beat. If you hold down any other number, you’ll start getting odd time signatures and lots of other unexpected consequences. You can set the arpeggiator to go down instead of up, or play the notes randomly, and you’ll start to really mutate the original loop.

Once you have a beat you like, you can record it to the piano roll. It’ll look pretty weird, since it’s basically recording the fact that you held down the same block of keys for an entire measure. You can draw it in instead if that’s easier. If you cut-and-paste the patterns and move a few notes around, and you’ll get fills and other beat variations. It’s a great way to keep the drums live-sounding and add a human touch. Try it!

Until next time,
ramen/[sp00]

If the world were to end today, this album would be its theme for doing so. Complete with beams of judgment, this album depicts the world ending the way it should be done: beautifully, and finally. Each original track was created from the ashes of a major crisis or other world-shattering event, and both remixes are completely annihilated versions of the originals. Enjoy, and remember to watch the show from a safe location: the edge of the solar system.

‘Nikmis and the Mystery of the Blue-Blooded Wendigo, Which Had Undergone Musk Gland Enhancement Surgery, at The Expense of €599, in Order To Achieve Success With Members of the Opposite Sex. His name were Edward, and In Life He Had Been a Trained Ventriloquist, Although He Had Never Been to The Ocean’,

or ‘Nikmis and the Mystery of the Blue-Blooded Wendigo’ for short, is Nikmis’ second full-length release on spoomusic, or anywhere for that matter! Artwork by Randy Green!

‘Nikmis and the Mystery of the Blue-Blooded Wendigo’ tells a story, concerning the mysterious ‘Blue-Blooded Wendigo’, which is apparently a giant mushroom near the ocean. Nikmis is shocked to see it, while stick figures dance in the sky. Nikmis must race against the clock to defeat the evil giant spider of death, who is an interesting fellow! Also, there is music, of the electronic/classical variety. Its sort of like Wendy Carlos except the music is not as good as Bach, and the synthesizers are not as smart as the Moog Modular. Not that Nikmis means to put himself down, thats just the truth. Track 11 is by a cover from guest artists, The Sideshow Brothers, who did an A Capella Version of Elo (track 8).. This is a mystery even Nikmis can’t solve. Can you? No, you can’t. Or can you?

“Its fantastic! Its so awesome, people will be sending him vast quantities of money. They will be selling their cars, stealing them back, and driving the sold and stolen vehicles to wherever it is that Nikmis lives, and giving the cars and money as offerings to him. Nikmis will be much too magnanimous to accept such petty gifts, and instead will only accept their unwavering servitude. As a result, Nikmis shall rule the world. However, one day yeti partisans will discover that ‘Nikmis and the Mystery of the Blue-Blooded Wendigo’ wasn’t half as good as ‘Eine Kleine Nekopanmusik’, and the revolutionaries will be victorious, curse their furry hides. Nikmis will die as he lived, cold and alone on the frozen plains of Canada, while drinking tea. It will be oolong tea, of the tung ting variety.” - an impartial review by someone who isn’t Nikmis

Nikmis on myspace!

The Sideshow Brothers (who did track 11)

A Nikmis Fansite, if you can believe it

sexy photograph;

Cheers,
ramen/sp00

p.s. i stole that image

The redesign is afoot! Woohoo! I’m so excited.