When Did You Know

I had an idea for a sort of epic slow-build, slow-burn song but I didn't have time to work out an appropriately epic-in-length arrangement so this is a little under two minutes long instead.

Another songfight entry, and another not-enough-time situation with real life being super distracting right now, but I did at least take the time to mix this one a bit yesterday morning.

Intro and outro features some self-referential material from the middle of the song churned through PaulStretch. Not sure the results are 100% successful here, but the idea at least seems to work. I had ideas for a more complicated set of layers of differently-stretched bits (stuff recorded appropriately slowly or quickly and then pulled out to 1/2, 1/4, 1/8 speed, etc) but just lacked time to make it happen.

I only realized when I was too far in that the tempo is way more sluggish than I had in mind. Vocals are ambling where they should have been sort of brassy and urgent as a result. Oops.

First line of vox owes a phrasal debt to both Kimya Dawson and The Exciters.

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posted by cortex (4 comments total)

Lyrics:

When did you know
That you don't know nothing
When did you get
That you spend your life bluffin'
When did you know
When did you know

When'd'ya finally figure out
That you were flying blind
When'd'ya finally realize
That the stuff in your mind
Was all just

Shadows on the
Wall of a
Cave in an
Allegory
posted by cortex at 8:17 AM on August 27, 2010

As far as running the same sample looped at different rates, I find the results of the 1/4 and 1/2 speed are far less interesting to me than more asynchronous rates. I tended to really like a 3/5 or 5/3 ratio for compressing or stretching a longer sample. The beginning and end of the samples match up less periodically and it tended to feel like more of a resolution when they did match up.

I had a song I did back when I messed around with Fruity Loops that was based on using loops that were stretched to lengths that were all based on fractions with prime numbers (2/1,3/2, 5/3,7/5 ...) and resolved when they reached the first common multiple. The kind of neat thing about that song was that you could just plug a different starting loop into the same pattern and the song would sound different but have a structure that could be recognized.
posted by jefeweiss at 9:05 AM on August 27, 2010

This is an awesome sound, cortex. I was trying to figure out what those "waves" were at the beginning, at first I thought they were samples of actual waves! Then I thought it was some kind of non-linear pre-delay type effect. When I read your description the PaulStretch explanation made perfect sense.

I also love the bass sound your getting here, punchy but deep, and focused, and the guitar and piano are mixed together very well. Very epic indeed. The ending is really tight too, and crisp, where everything ends on "allegory" but the vocals are just a bit longer so the word rings last. That's just the way to do it.

Is that a three part vocal harmony too? Awesome. A whole lot packed intunder two minutes.
posted by abc123xyzinfinity at 10:32 PM on August 27, 2010

How did I miss this? I really like this. A lot.
posted by spiderskull at 9:26 PM on October 19, 2010