let's go make some noise

so, getting back to the world-rocking mute math concert i went to at the top of this month, i heard darren king say something that sent my wheels buzzing. this girl was asking him when they were going to record their next album and he commented that the next month or two was going to be set aside just to recording some new music. and i believe i heard him say verbatim, "man, i can't wait to get into the studio and just make some noise!"

noise, huh? that's how all of that brilliant music starts out? you don't sit down expecting to great a masterpiece that people will want to enjoy over and over again and tell all of their friends about? you just wanna go make noise? i'd just gotten "enlightenment" from, young as he is, a musical mentor of mine. this was absolutely amazing to me. it's like you told me to eat my pizza crust-first. and he was so eager and enthusiastic when he said it. the fire lit right then. the idea of order arising from chaos... wow. fascinating, 'cause lemme tell you. i've got plenty of chaos to work with. i looked at my floor this morning and i wasn't sure what was carpet and what was clothing and papers.

i think the coolest thing about this mini-epiphany though is that i know what he's talking about. one of the sound designers who helped me with my last album liked nothing better than to sit and synthesize sound waves out of nothing. either that or take an existing song and then twist and contort it until it was unrecognizable. you would never know that the loop that makes my song "if you listen" listenable started out as some eric b. & rakim song from paid in full and then came out of a chain of filters as some curiously funky marine-like aural entity. i want to do that now! i want to go throw caution (and engrained classical piano training rules) to the wind and see if i can come up with something that makes my own jaws drop. something good enough to make other people stare at me in amazement like i do for so many others like the guys in mute math.

i've been so long away from the ability to make music that it's really about all i want to do these days. i'm using a program called Reason Adapted Express (which is the light version of Reason Adapted, which is the light version of Reason). one of the newer pieces of music synthesis software for precisely "making noise". i can't wait to get the full version of Reason 3.0 so that i can really dig into the functionality of it, but in the meantime, i'm taking the two-instrument, one-drum-patch limit, and maximizing it. i've begun rough ideas for about 8 or 9 songs, and right quickly too. it's like there's gridlock in my head with all of these songs trying to crowd out the door at once. you'da thought somebody yelled "fire" inside a packed theatre. the more the merrier though. everybody out. ;)