An album I wrote in High School

I used to have a Fusion band, and we decided it would be cool to do an album of electronic versions of our music. I wound up writing this entire album of music, based on the main ideas of each of our tunes.

MaximumEtcetera - Stage.FM


None of these are really mixed at all. The one that is, Destruction of Beefeaters, is poorly so. My laptop couldn't handle doing anything so I never got to listen to stuff and take care of it. It's almost two years out now, and I probalby won't ever get a chance to fix them. So I might as well just throw it out there.

You guys could totally check this out if you wanted to...

I checked out the first one, and it was pretty cool. I liked the semi-random stuff going around in the background, as well as the general production style with - though during the more exposed parts of the piece, the piece starts feeling more generic-ish. Also liked that metric modulation you did near the end. I don't hear anything really messed up about the mixing actually, just small things like bringing up the drums and bass a bit during the fuller sections. I'll give the other ones a check out later, too - any in particular you'd recommen d?

I like Green Bean Tide quite a bit.

I listened to Green Bean Tide. Pretty cool stuff. Lots of sexy rhythms. It is indeed in need of a better mix. Mostly, however, what bothers me about it is that the sounds are very tinny and weak, like video game music. Was that an intentional effect? If not, that is definitely my main criticism. Sound color is a very important part of electronic music. Try adding some chorus, reverb, unison, etc., to richen your sounds.

I write about some of the ones that catch my eye as I listen to them here...

New Shoes - it's got some nice melodic stuff going on, but it is pretty repetitive. I know that it's supposed to be about the groove and build, but the groove and build isn't exactly interesting enough to hold that same vamp over and over. Very nice rhythmic modulation. You say this was based on music you did as a band in high school? Very nice writing there.

Joyride - Nice, kind of island-y sounding. I liked the little vocal work at the end.

Destruction of Beefeaters - Greensleeves? Nice little quote there, not sure if it was intentional or not. Not so keen on the vox this time though, prettu cheesy sounding. I mean, if you were going for that, more power to you, but not really my cup o' tea baby.

Green Bean Tide - Interesting use of 7/4, and nice alleviation of it during the B-section. It's a nice and welcomed change to the cut sounding 7/4 and has some nice melodic work going on. The two-beat deal at the end gets kind of monotonous, and the vox are again kind of odd. Overall enjoyable to listen to.

Passion in Fire - I liked how the drums were sparse at the beginning, I think it almost would have been kind of cool for them to be as sparse later on, only accenting certain parts of it. Though it might have worked a bit differently live, so of course there's a different kind of impact with trying to do things like that electronically. The bell/piano/synth kind of section with the little melodic things going here and there are pretty nice.

Alright, I think that'll do for now, maybe I'll give the rest a listen some time later. Overall, you write well. Are you still writing? What did you use to make the recordings?

I did use a lot of NES soundfonts for this album, so the video game effect was intentional. Most of the time, anyway. I think there were some things I was oblivious to a lot of the time.
Regarding the vocals, a lot of this is just for fun. The vocals were often a stream of consciousness type thing. If you think GBT is weird, check out Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

I've grown a lot as a composer since I did this album. This was never really intended to be released, it was just a fun project, but I still enjoy listening to it, maybe cause it reminds me of my band.