LED Festival 2011

A few of us saw this and had to get tickets. The main three to see were Deadmau5, Skrillex & Nero. But Foreign Beggars showed up. Spectacular. Commence photos.

 

More shows to come. Tellison tomorrow, Amon Tobin on Friday. xx

Darphesh (RIP Room 253)

Did someone say new project? Room 253 is dead. Here begins dubstep.

This was the result of a long Logic session this afternoon. The mix is messy as fuck, but I didn't actually have any stems of the original, just a decent MP3. Lots of side chaining, heavy vocoding and a remarkable amount of work with the scissor tool. More details to come.

I hope this doesn't offend those who like the original. xx

District Sleeps Alone Tonight.

I did me a cover.



As the SoundCloud description states, it's almost entirely acoustic guitar samples played with in production.

Here's what the sampler looked like by the end of all the recording. Bear in mind this excludes other acoustic loops and one off takes that were used.

Most of the lower notes are hits, taps and strums which went into sequencing most of the beat. There are also a couple of 'ch' and 's' noises I made with my very own teeth.

As it works up the scale, the opening drone samples appear followed by the hard panned staccato stuff.

The beats were pretty tricky to emulate. The original features some pretty intense programming thanks to the genius of Mr. James Tamborello and his Elektron sequencers.

The kick drum is a finger tapping the body of the guitar with sub bass added and a rather complicated EQ.

The first 'snare' you hear is a pick tap. A downwards strum is added in the second verse.

To make life a bit easier, everything sampled is independently tracked.

The opening drone appears here with a rather ridiculous amount of compression to obtain a synthlike sound.

The manipulation doesn't stop there. There are some seriously heavy EQ settings on most of the tracks.

Another plugin that got some serious attention was Logic's own SubBass plugin. Very useful on the opening drone and kick sound.

However, accepting the limitations of the number of frequencies you can reliably source from an acoustic guitar recorded with a dynamic mic, some synths had to go in.

Early mixes sounded very mushy and indistinct, mainly in the lows. A bass synth replaces some of the lower notes from the drone for a better overall aesthetic and warmth.

The final chorus and ending was quite a challenge. I had no idea how to end it for quite a while. Fiddling with the loops I had and some filtering seemed to give a nice result.

Vocals were one take with a small, healthy dose of pitch correction. The hawk-eyed and bat-eared among you will also notice a vocoder across some of the harmonies.

Mastering was another aspect of this project I took very seriously. Checked the mix everywhere I could to make sure it worked.

I hope people like this post. Comments, opinions and questions are the best. xx

CV 2011.

Yup, just thought I'd stick a copy up here. Why not? I called this blog "Gordi wants to work for you" for a reason after all...

Very exciting few months ahead. Should have some genuine interesting posts soon, it's all work in progress right now. x

Oh. It's January again.

Very busy Christmas, lots of updates and plenty of exciting new projects coming up in the new year.

Here's some stuff that's already happened.

Will return soon for further updatings. January is so exciting. xx

Swedish Daft Mafia.

New little tune I've been slotting into my DJ sets lately.




I'm also appearing on Spiral FM tomorrow (Wednesday 24/11) night, a lovely little Surrey internet radio station. The show starts at 7:30pm tomorrow night, tune in here.

Lalala. xx

New Native Tongue Website.

Just finished up the new website for Native Tongue EC1, the new London venue I will be helping create. Have a wee look at http://www.nativetongue.co.uk/.

I also put together a little play on how Dyson are like the Apple of hoovers.

Bestival photos next time. xx