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HackettFan View Drop Down

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Posted: September 01 2015 at 22:18

That's interesting. I never imagined having the instructions written out. I like especially because it gives a nice little glimpse behind the scenes, something we're all always looking for. I listened to Low Hope again. That call and answer pairing of vocals in Low Hopes is really effective. Season's End - Innocence is definitely as you described it, astounding!

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Posted: September 01 2015 at 05:11

HackettFan wrote:

Hey, thanks for posting these because I was getting curious. I listened to them last night before sleep overcame me. I detected an Irish feel. I also thought it reflected your own sensibilities well, having heard a handful of your other pieces. It sounded profoundly like your creation irrespctive of it not being your voice. I really liked the first one the best right off because it worked so well in meshing with the wash of atmosphere you laid out. I recall liking how the male vocal was positioned in the stereo space. I could imagine a very specific spot in front of me where he seemed to be standing. I have to listen them both again. Many hours have passed.

The "Irish feel" has been noted before, especially in Becki's singing, but to me it is quintessentially English it's just that we're more familiar with that kind of semi-classical/traditional singing voice in Celtic music than in English rock/pop music. Other English female singers have that same quality (Maddy Prior, June Tabor, Julianne Regan et al) and I guess that reflects the common brythonic-language heritage of English and Irish diction and phrasing.

Incidentally, these were the instructions I gave to each singer with the music and lyrics to give some idea of how I envisioned the vocals to go (I've redacted the names of two of the singers):

in my instructions to the singers I wrote:

Notes on the vocals:
'Edge' is an ethereal-industrial album. The vocals are clean and sung in English with definitely no vibrato. I've recorded the vocal lines using a choir sample to show were they go - these will be replaced by the proper vocals in the final mix.
The tunes and phrasings are not cast in stone - some of them are a little naïve and 'sing-songy' and don't have particularly good breathing places (in my head I don't have to breathe). Feel free to alter them so they sound less naïve and so you don't asphyxiate :.

1. The First Cut : vocals *** - I like the idea of this being sung the 2nd person singular, because it is rarely used and still quite personal…
2. Low Hopes : vocals Becki & Dave(?) - variation on a call-and-answer duet.
3. Corporeal Reflection : all (choir)- A litany/chant/coral thing - the idea is for everyone to sing the words separately, then I'll cut them up and put them back together.
4. Let It Be : vocals L*** : spoken word Dean - my 3rd attempt at not sounding like Delerium : - I want to record the vocals at 75 bpm for the album and at 120 bpm so we can do a club-bunny re-mix.
5. Staring Into The Sun : vocals Becki & *** - The 'centre piece' of the album, with switching between male & female vocals mid-phrase and even during words. It's going to be tricky to sing but I think it will sound great if we can pull it off.
6. Haemogoblin - was 'Pivotal' - now not.
7. I Don't Want Your Pity : vocals ??? - any volunteers?
8. Sanguine Reflection : all (choir)- companion piece to Corporeal Reflection
9. Cast A Long Shadow : vocals Becki - companion piece to Staring Into The Sun - an uplifting lament with multi-tracking of Becki's vocals.
10. When The Bleeding Stops : vocals Becki & *** - the finale. Even though this version has the last verse sung linearly, I would like the male & female lines to overlap.
11. The Last Cut : male & female spoken word - the epilogue.

As you can see I intended to use the vocals as instruments in their own right. In "Staring Into The Sun" my plan was to have the both singers sing all the verses but record them singing each line as alternate words so when mixing them together on the DAW they would become polyphonic rather than just multi-tracked. [The female spoken word in The Last Cut was/is Gloria Swanson's monologue from Sunset Boulevard just before she speaks the memorable "All right, Mr. Demille, I'm ready for my close-up" line].

"Low Hopes" was the first time Dave had used his natural voice when singing, up until then on stage he'd only sang death growls and it was the first time the pair of them had sung lead together on a track. I had an inkling that their voices would work well together and that's why I wrote that lyric to be a call-and-response duet with loads of layering and harmony and why I asked him to sing them. At that time the band they were in was having personality clashes with the lead singer (they only sang backing at that time) so when he quit the band Becki stepped up to lead vocals and David adopted a second-lead role - and that all worked out rather well truth be told.

One unfortunate thing that happened when layering the vocal tracks on "Cast A Long Shadow" was a 'sh' sibilant from a harmony track preceded an 'it' in the lead track with amusing consequences. It took some judicious editing of the harmony track to remove that. LOL

I don't know how other people compose/construct songs but I generally have a clear idea of an arrangement before I start recording anything. The following year Dave and I set out to record the band's first album with me acting as sound engineer/producer and him as producer/arranger. On one track he had this idea for a song that they'd never actually played as a group or even rehearsed so I hadn't a clue how it sounded or fitted together. We recorded the drums for the second half of the song, then piano, cello and guitar for the first half and pieced them together in the "studio" so we could record the remaining instruments and Becki's vocals. The result was (in my opinion) astounding:

(edit: there are at least six vocal tracks on that song - the lead is double-tracked and there are two double-tracked backing harmonies.)

HackettFan wrote:

BTW, would it work for you to get double tracking after the fact by recording the output of a vocal track into the the input of another track? I've only started recording stuff, but this sort of thing is supposed to work with the multi-track looper that I use.

Possibly but I prefer to use separate takes, it sounds more natural to me like that (edit: see above).

Edited by Dean - September 01 2015 at 05:34

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HackettFan View Drop Down

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Posted: August 31 2015 at 14:26

Hey, thanks for posting these because I was getting curious. I listened to them last night before sleep overcame me. I detected an Irish feel. I also thought it reflected your own sensibilities well, having heard a handful of your other pieces. It sounded profoundly like your creation irrespctive of it not being your voice. I really liked the first one the best right off because it worked so well in meshing with the wash of atmosphere you laid out. I recall liking how the male vocal was positioned in the stereo space. I could imagine a very specific spot in front of me where he seemed to be standing. I have to listen them both again. Many hours have passed.

BTW, would it work for you to get double tracking after the fact by recording the output of a vocal track into the the input of another track? I've only started recording stuff, but this sort of thing is supposed to work with the multi-track looper that I use.

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Posted: August 31 2015 at 07:41

I like the music and the concept. I really aprecciate this kind of work, since my project Esmectatons is totally ignored and I recorded tons of albums (there are already 10 on bandcamp and some previews of upcoming stuff on the thread i did post here). I love the sci-fi feeling and I can hear some raw goth influence somehow on your works. Gonna check Centaur then.

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Posted: August 30 2015 at 21:34

To accompany the posts I've made in Todd's "Are you a lyricist?" thread I present for your entertainment two cacophony of light tracks that contain vocals that thus far have not been released on album.

The music on these tracks is unlike any other CoL music that I have released in that it is sort of industrial electronic noise with little in the way of melody other than what the singers are singing

disclaimer: these are presented in demo form as neither track was ever finished - the mix is a bit off and there's way too much reverb on the vocals - in an ideal world I would have double-tracked the lead vocals and rerecorded the harmonies with more space between them.

note: there is no video in these YouTube clips, I've only used mp4 because I can't embed mp3 audio into a post.

The first is a male/female duet sung by two singers who I shall call "Becki" and "Dave":

The second is a solo piece by "Becki". While I was playing-back some of the vocal takes "Dave" picked up my Kramer guitar and began noodling in the background, so I DI'd him straight into the DAW and recorded him as well.

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Posted: August 29 2015 at 05:56

Well... all praise the power of advertising your latest album in your forum signature. Wink

Centaur has now clocked-up 222 downloads from Mediafire, which is over seven times more than its nearest rival and way above the average for all my downloadables. This (of course) doesn't make it my most popular or successful effort, just a reflection of people's passing curiosity.

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Posted: March 25 2015 at 03:51

infocat wrote:

No bandcamp?

Wink

Not yet.

At this moment in time I don't believe that Bandcamp is the right "market" for me. Bluntly speaking I don't think that my music is good enough to shine in that environment (the low ratings this thread is attracting are not unwarranted either).

Also, having uploaded three albums to Soundcloud I have 38 minutes left and don't have any more short albums to upload, so I have reached my limit without going "Pro".

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Posted: March 24 2015 at 23:58

No bandcamp?

Wink

Listening now.

--
Frank Swarbrick
Belief is not Truth.

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Posted: March 24 2015 at 03:42

Last night I remembered I have a Soundclod account, so here it is with three albums for you to stream, download or ignore:

stream & download Oligarch: soundcloud.com/the-cacophony-of-light/sets/oligarch

stream & download Centaur: soundcloud.com/the-cacophony-of-light/sets/centaur

stream & download Pilgrim: soundcloud.com/the-cacophony-of-light/sets/pilgrim

Edited by Dean - March 25 2015 at 03:53

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Posted: March 23 2015 at 06:44

Lovely music Dean Thumbs Up

It made me smile on a Monday morning at work, so it's pretty good Tongue

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Posted: March 23 2015 at 05:42

centaur - 2015

Another Minor Planets Suite

After a ten year hiatus I have returned to making music and over the past two weeks I have created the 52nd album under the moniker of the cacophony of light. What surprised me was how quickly I fell back into the routine of putting one note after another into the semblance of melody & harmony, and how familiar it all seemed in a relatively short space of time. It is as if the past decade never happened, but of course it did and while the music may not seem that fresh or new, since to my ears at least it sounds very "cacophony of light", my approach certainly is refreshed and renewed and perhaps that does show in the music. [As my wife remarked the other day - this new music seems a lot "happier" than my earlier albums].

The music is completely new but it didn't happen without a seed, and that seed was an ambient piece called 'Oort' from the original 2005 version of Oligarch. Relying heavily on the addition of my favourite "string-quartet" combination (violin, viola, cello and double bass) the track is now 2¼ times longer and considerably less ambient, so (hopefully) it is now unrecognisable under its new title of 'Chariklo'. The companion piece in the suite to 'Chariklo' is 'Chiron' and this is 100% new and was written to compliment the first 'movement'.

As is my habit of doing things in threes, there may be a third "Minor Planet" album in the future (though maybe not after another ten years this time), one encompassing the Asteroid belt minor planet 'Ceres'. However, I have no plans for that at the moment as I am considering revisiting an album that I failed to complete from 2002 called 'Edge' [I listened to it the other evening and think it is too good to just forget about, but needs a lot of work to make it stand-alone without the missing vocals]. Anyway: back to Centaur:

1. Chariklo
18:20
2. Chiron
18:01

total playing time: 36:21

In astronomy Chariklo and Chiron are called "Centaurs" (hence the album title) - these are minor planets that can be found orbiting between Saturn and Uranus so are not part of the TNO group of minor planets. It is suspected that the centaurs (and there are more than the two I have picked here) are related to comets and may have originated in the Oort cloud (which is why I chose to partly base Chariklo on my previous attempt at Oort). The Centaurs are named after the centaurs of mythology and in that mythology Chariklo is the wife of Chiron. What is curious about both these objects is that there is strong evidence they may possibly have rings, which tickles my humour-centre a little (husband and wife: wedding rings Wink

Once again, more details on the centaurs as minor planets and mythological creatures can be found through Google if you wish to know more.

If you haven't heard my music before, only sampled a small selection, or haven't listened to it for a long while then please download this (and Oligarch) - they are slightly different to anything I've done previously, while till not being "Prog Rock" they are getting a lot closer...

Unlike other downloads, this one does not include full artwork (because I haven't created the full artwork for it), but only carries the album cover and one side of the CD insert.

download: SOD052CD - Centaur: www.mediafire.com/?472ldpaulazjtuc - 51Mb

Edited by Dean - March 23 2015 at 07:28

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Posted: March 14 2015 at 14:44

Dean wrote:

Following on from a post or two I've made in my one-star rated Prog Blog, Please Self-Release Me, Let Me Go, (gee thanks for the 2 one-stars ... nice to know that the Prog world isn't immune from mean-spirited spite.), I've put together a short video that sort of shows a history of making home-made CDs for the cacophony of light and tries out a 'nice-to-own' idea of adding value to what is essentially a valueless product.

<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: left;">Note: apart from the Humdrum CD from CreateSpace, none of the items in the video are for sale - if someone would like a copy of either of the photobooks we can come to some kind of arrangement, but be warned, they are not cheap. Wink

Nice. Reminds me of Human - Un Certain Pays. There's a sort of maturity in things of yours that I've heard that's rather appealing. I like the timbres you come up with. The visual art is spectacular too.

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Posted: March 07 2015 at 13:07

Star_Song_Age_Less wrote:

^I can't tell you how happy this post makes me. It does so on two levels: I agree with you about attempts to re-do Holst's music. I am always excited about them at first, but they never live up to my expectations. And... your track list on Oligarch is not quite identical, but very similar to the dwarf planet list that was on my white board in class a few days ago. Very interested to hear this one!

For me Holst's Plants are as much about Holst as they are the astrological/mythological meaning of the planets. Music written to augment his suite is meaningless since it cannot be based upon his interpretation of the influence of those missing planets on the psyche.

I purposely limited my selection to TransNeptune Objects so dwarf and minor planets not found in this region of the solar system such as Ceres and Chiron are omitted. I also chose not to include Charon since currently it is designated a moon of Pluto even though I suspect that a more accurate designation would be to cal them binary-pair of minor planets.

Star_Song_Age_Less wrote:

^^Surprised that anyone would rate your blog one star. It's a good topic, certainly directly relevant to me.

I am deeply opinionated with quite a mouth on me - making enemies is inevitable. *shrug* I'm big enough and ugly enough to live with that. LOL

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Posted: March 07 2015 at 12:21

^I can't tell you how happy this post makes me. It does so on two levels: I agree with you about attempts to re-do Holst's music. I am always excited about them at first, but they never live up to my expectations. And... your track list on Oligarch is not quite identical, but very similar to the dwarf planet list that was on my white board in class a few days ago. Very interested to hear this one!

^^Surprised that anyone would rate your blog one star. It's a good topic, certainly directly relevant to me.

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Posted: March 05 2015 at 07:57

oligarch - 2005

A Minor Planets Suite

remixed and remastered - a.k.a. the vinyl version

Over the years many people have tried to amend Holst's planet suite with the 'missing' planets (Earth and Pluto, and sometimes even The Asteroids), aside from the impertinence of this, I think it misses the point of his magnus opus. Oligarch is not such an attempt, but borrows heavily from the basic premise.

Trans-Neptune Rocks!

When I produced this album back in 2005, a new object had just been discovered in the outer solar system that appeared to be as large as Pluto. Initial speculation that this was the tenth planet and it was often referred to as Planet-X and more popularly as Xena, after the TV series staring Lucy Lawless. This then raised doubts over Pluto's classification and the following year the IAU (International Astronomical Union) re-classified Pluto as a Minor Planet and gave this new discovery the name Eris (in mythology Eris is an alternative name for Pluto). Since then several other objects in orbit around the sun have been classified as minor planets and most of them are what is known as Trans-Neptune Objects (TNOs) as they occupy the region of space beyond Neptune known as the Kuiper Belt. At the time of writing I titled the tracks after the then known TNO bodies, and since then many more have been discovered and added to the list of Minor Planets, so in this remixed and remastered version I have re-titled some of those tracks to reflect the current known status of nine of the largest of these Minor Planets.

A1. Eris strife and disorder 06:39
A2. Quaoar creation 05:01
A3. Varda stars 02:02
A4. Orcus oaths 06:37
B1. Sedna sea 05:52
B2. Haumea childbirth 04:33
B3. Makemake fertility 04:16
B4. Salacia salt water 00:16
B5. Pluto afterlife 05:41
total playing time: 40:57

All of these tracks are written in minor keys, obviously, and unlike other cacophony of light albums, this one kind of rocks... in an ambient sort of way. I have split the album into an A-side and a B-side and mastered them as if they were to be cut into vinyl (though without RIAA pre-emphasis), hence the subtitle: the vinyl version. The download includes artwork for a CD jewel case and LP sleeve.

If you want to know more about either these Minor Planets or the mythological characters they are named after, Google and Wikipedia is your friend.

download: SOD049CD - Oligarch: www.mediafire.com/?rl8l6kt9288h8yr - 61Mb

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Posted: March 04 2015 at 11:23

Following on from a post or two I've made in my one-star rated Prog Blog, Please Self-Release Me, Let Me Go, (gee thanks for the 2 one-stars ... nice to know that the Prog world isn't immune from mean-spirited spite.), I've put together a short video that sort of shows a history of making home-made CDs for the cacophony of light and tries out a 'nice-to-own' idea of adding value to what is essentially a valueless product.

Note: apart from the Humdrum CD from CreateSpace, none of the items in the video are for sale - if someone would like a copy of either of the photobooks we can come to some kind of arrangement, but be warned, they are not cheap. Wink

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Posted: February 12 2015 at 23:11

Dean wrote:

Star_Song_Age_Less wrote:

Wow. I just started listening to Landscapes.

How did you manage to produce so much music? And did I understand right that this was all basically done in a three year period? This is amazing. Epic ambient, as you said.

Edit: Oh dear. I might have to stop because it's night, everyone else is asleep, and beltane is scaring me half to death. I need to listen to this one in the daylight, otherwise I think I'm in Silent Hill. (Speaking of which, this would make a phenomenal horror game soundtrack).

Gosh. Erm. Sorry. First my music gives Rob nightmares and now it's scary...

I still recall the dream and the experience. Although I've never given Carousel a go in the waking hours, so maybe a bit of daylight might help. Tongue

Edited by Epignosis - February 12 2015 at 23:13

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Posted: February 12 2015 at 21:56

Dean wrote:

Gosh. Erm. Sorry. First my music gives Rob nightmares and now it's scary... I feared that an album that basically begins with 25 minutes of ambient noise would scare people off. LOL

If I recall correctly the "music" on that album doesn't start until about halfway through beltane, I think from then on it calms down a lot once "spring" blossoms into "summer". (well, a bit). Wink

You've picked a tough one as your first taste of the cacophony of light, others are much more musical and less ambient.

2004 was a productive year, 25 albums is roughly one every two weeks from the initial idea to the completed album and cover art. At the time, it didn't seem that excessive (though perhaps my wife would beg to differ) - I am a night owl so most of it was produced in the hours between 10pm and 2am so in a 14 day period that's 56 hours of noodling on the keyboard and PC.

I've never found writing/composing/constructing the kind of music I create to be particularly difficult. As I am prone to say, if you can hum, whistle or vocalise a tune then you can create melodies of your own invention easy enough. I think it is because I'm not a musician (if that doesn't sound too contradictory) so I can just put notes together and then play around with them, the instrumentation and the arrangement to construct the soundscape I'm aiming for. If it sounds right to me then I'm usually happy with it.

As I noted in the OP, a musician friend of mine often remarked that my music could be good if I spent more time on it (and to their credit, some of my friends were usually quick to defend me whenever he said it) - I'd just grin and bear his comments and carry on regardless. Long after I stopped making these albums I asked him what he meant and he replied "you know, make them into proper songs", meaning of course, standard verse-chorus arrangements.

Don't misunderstand me - scary is a complement. Emotionally effective! It was just a bad time for me to be experiencing the fear. I will be slowly digesting your music over the course of the next few months, I think. :) This is exactly why being on progarchives is so awesome, you get to hear all these things that otherwise wouldn't make it to your ears.

As far as making them into "proper" verse-chorus songs... no way. Some people cling to that mode so fiercely. It's there for a reason, it can be very effective and it's relatively easy for an average person to digest. They don't have to listen too hard to it to "get it." I myself write plenty of verse-chorus style songs. But to try and force all music to do that is like saying all poetry should be in limerick form. Prog... is like The Odyssey.

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Posted: February 12 2015 at 03:39

Gosh. Erm. Sorry. First my music gives Rob nightmares and now it's scary... I feared that an album that basically begins with 25 minutes of ambient noise would scare people off. LOL

If I recall correctly the "music" on that album doesn't start until about halfway through beltane, I think from then on it calms down a lot once "spring" blossoms into "summer". (well, a bit). Wink

You've picked a tough one as your first taste of the cacophony of light, others are much more musical and less ambient.

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Posted: February 11 2015 at 23:56

Wow. I just started listening to Landscapes.

How did you manage to produce so much music? And did I understand right that this was all basically done in a three year period? This is amazing. Epic ambient, as you said.

Edit: Oh dear. I might have to stop because it's night, everyone else is asleep, and beltane is scaring me half to death. I need to listen to this one in the daylight, otherwise I think I'm in Silent Hill. (Speaking of which, this would make a phenomenal horror game soundtrack).

Edited by Star_Song_Age_Less - February 12 2015 at 00:07

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