Fax n snax!

March in march in april game night that was really a music night

Re: Got the MBOX 2 hooked up last night...

Ok this is violating the "No Alleluias during Lent" rule but you need to know it in case your church sings it this Sunday... it is an Easter classic, and I happen to have figured out an arrangement it for guitar a couple years ago ... It kind of reminds me of Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changing"

 

The RAW version was recorded first and then I created the LR version by basically re-recording everything (partial transliteration using the 'raw' track as a baseline!!!!)  but with new harmony vocals to the right, new guitar to the center, and a new main vocal to the right.

 

Ok, maybe I need to record some mourning tracks for Good Friday. We don't want to get ahead of ourselves!

 

 

Re: Got the MBOX 2 hooked up last night...

Ok first of all, y'all don't know what you're missing... I could have sent you this super weird half completed caucophony of terrible drum beats over top of this obscure Holy-week hymn (that I never heard until tonight when I found it on page 284 of the Rejoice in the Lord Hymnal), but good sense got the better of me and I mixed down a nice and calm ooh ooh ooh version.

 

Secondly, after recording, I googled the hymn and found out from wikipedia  that "English rock band Coldplay has a song entitled 'A Message', the lyrics and melody of which were inspired by this hymn"

 

so naturally, I am obliged now to include the lyrics of both the 17th century lyrics and the Coldplay tune ...and allow you to either compare them and/ or sing along with the track I have provided.

 

 

If nothing else you now have a fun fact about the song "the Message" by Coldplay. (youtube link for people like me who did not know this song)

 

 Enjoy!

 

 

 

My Song Is Love Unknown (by Samuel Crossman)

My song is love unknown,
my Saviour's love to me;
love to the loveless shown,
that they might lovely be.
O who am I, that for my sake
my Lord should take frail flesh, and die?

He came from His blest throne
salvation to bestow;
but men made strange, and none
the longed-for Christ would know:
But, O, my Friend, my Friend indeed,
who at my need His life did spend!

Sometimes they strew His way,
and His sweet praises sing;
resounding all the day
Hosannas to their King:
Then "Crucify!" is all their breath,
and for His death they thirst and cry.

Why, what hath my Lord done?
What makes this rage and spite?
He made the lame to run,
he gave the blind their sight,
Sweet injuries! Yet they at these
themselves displease, and 'gainst Him rise.

They rise and needs will have
my dear Lord made away;
a murderer they save,
the Prince of life they slay.
Yet cheerful He to suffering goes,
that He His foes from thence might free.

In life, no house, no home
my Lord on earth might have;
iIn death no friendly tomb
 but what a stranger gave.
  What may I say?  Heav'n was His home;
  but mine the tomb wherein He lay.

Here might I stay and sing,
no story so divine;
never was love, dear King!
never was grief like Thine.
this is my Friend, in whose sweet praise
I all my days would gladly spend.

 

A Message (Coldplay)

My song is love
Love to the loveless shown
And it goes up
You don't have to be alone
Your heavy heart
Is made of stone
And it's so hard to see you clearly
You don't have to be on your own
You don't have to be on your own

And I'm not gonna take it back
And I'm not gonna say I don't mean that
You're the target that I'm aiming at
Got to get that message home

My song is love
My song is love, unknown
But I'm on fire for you, clearly
You don't have to be alone
You don't have to be on your own

And I'm not gonna take it back
And I'm not gonna say I don't mean that
You're the target that I'm aiming at
And I'm nothing on my own
Got to get that message home

And I'm not gonna stand and wait
Not gonna leave it until it's much too late
On a platform I'm gonna stand and say
That I'm nothing on my own
And I love you, please come home

My song is love, is love unknown
And I've got to get that message home

 

Re: Got the MBOX 2 hooked up last night...

The background: Yesterday, I received a suggestion to come up with an original song... so I found a chord progression and then had to come up with lyrics. I improvisationally mumbled into the microphone on a couple tracks and then I wrote down what I thought I was saying on a word document.

 

then I edited the lyrics to have them  make sense.

 

This A-mazing process resulted in a triple entendre song loosely based on Bachelor angst.

 

The other cool thing is that I stripped out the beat track and so now it is theoretically playable by two people at a cafe.

Re: Got the MBOX 2 hooked up last night...

 

Ok I was gone this weekend...

 

so I am sending this Ukropia remix

 

 

a new day in Ukropia

the day has come and gone

the salad bar and my guitar

they softly sing this song

Take my rainbow cookies back

don't know where I'm gonna snack

Am -- C G

mrs fearnow will always be here now,

You, Ukropia

are burned in memory

You, Ukropia

will always be with me

　

Richmond wil never be the same

You, Ukropia

have made it what it is today!!!!!

You Ukropia

what else do I have to say?

outro

Re: Got the MBOX 2 hooked up last night...

haha this is all concept... I did not put a lot of thought into the lyrics but you get the point... this is just the MBOX Boom module and two audio tracks... I HAD to add the cheesy hype upfront.

 

I can just imagine the video for this one as one of those kit-kat commercials where everyone is doing the "new dance" that is so dumb.

 

 

 

Re: Got the MBOX 2 hooked up last night...

Ok I felt it was time for another hymn... as basic as it sounds, I am excited that I can do what I am doing in this track. I don't usually know the exact harmony parts for these old hymns, but I can read music ... and thus encode the hymnal four part piano harmony into protools on a MIDI piano track ... After learning and practicing with the computer I just eventually record myself singing the parts and then strip out the piano altogether. I can do as many takes as I like until it is 95% right...

 

I added some reverb (echo chamber) to cover my voice up a little.

 

-M

 

Re: Got the MBOX 2 hooked up last night...

Ok I have to admit I recorded this Sunday night... but I did some tinkering with it tonight. Basically this is an original from the vault ... I cover of myself (if you willl)... and it embodies my old triple entendre style of writing a song about (1) a spiritual theme (2)  some "facts of love" and (3) stuff in there to throw you off as obfuscation / wisdom / nonsense / word play.

 

I like the guitar riff and I tried to strip it down because there is so much I could do with it but I like the ethos of keep it austerely simple.

 

It is long because it is supposed to go on forever but obviously that would be a big mp3.

 

Enjoy!

Re: Got the MBOX 2 hooked up last night...

This is the one that I recorded video for... not sure if it will ever pan out but I thought this would be a good one for the children's album. This may actually be the first song I performed in public (with my fam)

 

Learning point was that protools does not have video editing capability but I can open a video file and mix the soundtrack for the video and then save it as a video again.

 

 

Re: Got the MBOX 2 hooked up last night...

Ok so I am recovering from a cold, but I think I did this one justice.

 

Let's see what did I learn? I learned that I am not a piano player. I learned that the key of E has 4 sharps. I learned that Jeremy Camp likes to do silly things with MIDI instruments.  I learned that protools stores all my bad takes on my hard drive.

 

Re: Got the MBOX 2 hooked up last night...

It's request week at NewDominionStudios.com

 

Robin wanted this one.  Any other requests?

 

NERDY PROTOOLS LEARNING POINTS: Note well, the fading of all tracks at once at the end. I used the fading tool. Also I learned how to overdub without recording over previous tracks.

 

 

 

Re: Got the MBOX 2 hooked up last night...

Another old fave... I played around with mixing the volume of a midi  organ part in and out. It's ahrd to explain but you can adjudt the volume of the track without using faders.

 

 I wrestled for like 5 seconds about whether to send y'all just the experimental track (=wierd) or the more normal base track... but then decided to send both because why not right?

 

 

Re: Got the MBOX 2 hooked up last night...

This is an old one. Aaron requested it.

 

I think Sundays can be "from the Vault" days.

 

This was back in 2007 when I first said "I could do this" with respect to making raps. I performed it at game nite. Aarons was there, but he has never heard the rap single that I produced.

 

 

Re: Got the MBOX 2 hooked up last night...

 this is a wierd track... I have been tinkering with this chord progression (code named ACOBASS) for about 5 years.

 

Today it gets the phaser treatment.... I have to admit today's is a little more angry/wierd than I expected it to be.

 

All I did was play ACOBASS on the keyboard and then mess around with which midi voices I thought were cool... there are literally hundreds of voices to choose from. I spent most of tonight's sesison playing around with the different voices I can use. what you are getting are the ones that MARVAA could theoretically remix and/or rap over.

 

btw I did BOOM drums and some backing ahhh vocals behind it.

 

 

Re: Got the MBOX 2 hooked up last night...

Haha this is beautiful.

 

I picked this one because I like the lyrics  and the potential use in Vespers type services. It is in  4 flats as well as 6/4 time, so it was the perfect candidate for MIDI-fying to find out what it really sounds like.

 

What is totally hilarious is that as I was playing around with different MIDI voices I decided to continue my theme of dance music... I added a "beat" to it even though it is basically in a  three count... so now we have two MP3's of the day ... REEEEMIIIIXXXXXX!!!!!!!

 

Day is dying in the west;
Heaven is touching earth with rest:
Wait and worship while the night
Sets her evening lamps alight
Through all the sky.

Chorus--
Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Hosts!
Heaven and earth are full of Thee!
Heaven and earth are praising Thee,
Our Lord most high!
...

When forever from Thy sight
Pass the stars, the day, the night,
Lord of angels, on our eyes
Let eternal morning rise
And shadows end.

 

(Chorus)

Re: Got the MBOX 2 hooked up last night...

The trick to this one was improvising vocally what I wanted to score musically. I can explain it best by telling you the order of tracks made

 

TRACK 1: PERCUSSION = record my voice making a high hat sound (as a click track) chhh ch-ch ...chhhh ch-ch...etc

TRACK 2 = VOCAL = sing the tune from elementary school

TRACK 3 = improvisationally sing what I think a trombone part ought to sound like

TRACK 4 = improvisationally  sing what I think a counterpoint clarinet ought to sound like (then I realized it was new orleans jazzy)

TRACK 5 = MIDI trombone  = click on the virtual piano keys to encode what I was singing for the trombone (track 3) into notes

TRACK 6 = MIDI clarinet = same thing as track 5 but I struggled to turn track 4 into something useable. ... then I made it it up and scored two clarinets in the same track

 

When I mixed it down I muted tracks 3 and 4.

 

I just realized Aaron's sister is 5 foot two eyes of blue. WHOOOOAAAAAAAH

Re: Got the MBOX 2 hooked up last night...

aa, I would call this EP "dance tunes from the aughts and the 1800s"

 

I think I hit a wrong button and so I lost some of what I was doing... I have to stop somewhere... I was unable to clean this one up to my usual high standard of editing... kind of makes me mad at the machine for being confusing... so WARNING: THE END IS KINDA WIERD

 

the learning point today is that I can use midi to do trumpets... and I got better at editing harmony within MIDI.  

 

also shoutout to vancouver olympics!!!!!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Re: Got the MBOX 2 hooked up last night...

My uncle in Raleigh- Durham has a book of Civil War tunes ... he had this one bookmarked just for me... "We Are Marching on to Richmond" ... so this is a Northern tune.

 

 

It is super hard to sight read because it is in four flats (the key of Ab) and has wierd Civil War rhythms (dotted eigth notes etc)

 

Computers make things easier ...  I entered it in and then sang over top. May not be that beautiful but I learned something about how to enter each note into the computer via the computer mouse.

 

 

=======================

 

We Are Marching On To Richmond

Music and lyrics by E.W. Locke

Our knapsacks sling
And blithely sing,
We're marching on to Richmond
With weapons bright
And hearts so light
We're marching on to Richmond
Each weary mile
With song beguile
We're marching on to Richmond
The roads are rough
But smooth enough
To take us safe to Richmond!

chorus:
Then.......tramp away
While the bugles play
We're marching on to Richmond
Our flag shall gleam in the morning beam
From many a spire in Richmond

 Our foes are near
Their drums we hear
They're camped about in Richmond
With pickets out
To tell the route
Our army takes to Richmond
We've crafty foes
To meet our blows
No doubt they'll fight for Richmond
The brave may die
But never fly
We'll cut our way to Richmond
(chorus)

But yesterday
In murd'rous fray
While marching on to Richmond
We parted here
From comrades dear
While marching on to Richmond
With manly sighs
And tearful eyes
While marching on to Richmond
We laid the braves
In peaceful graves
And started on for Richmond
(chorus)

Our friends away
Are sad today
Because we march to Richmond
With loving fears
They shrink to hear
About our march to Richmond
The pen shall tell
That they who fell
While marching on to Richmond
Had hearts aglow
And face to foe
While marching on to Richmond
(chorus)

Our thoughts shall roam
To scenes of home
While marching on to Richmond
The vacant chair
That's waiting there
While we march on to Richmond
'Twill not be long
Till shout and song
We'll raise aloud in Richmond
And war's rude blast
Will soon be past
And we'll go home from Richmond
(chorus)

Re: Got the MBOX 2 hooked up last night...

Ok... a dance tune... basically the learning point is that I was able to get the keyboard hooked up via MIDI and thus I can do all sorts of stuff that doesn't require microphones.

I discovered the protools BOOM module, which is a basic but powerful a beat sequencer... so I can tell it to make a bass drum on 1-2-3-4 and snare on 2 and 4.... and way more complex sounds as well.

so I put the MIDI keyboard functionality together with the BOOM beat functionality... added some vocals... and created this little ditty... MARVAA yall ... PS the rap haha