I just completed a musical project with Muffy St. Bernard.  Muffy gave me a single track that was mostly ambient drones with some sampler stuff and some drum loops.  I layered over it with some electric guitars, cello and synth.

I had quite a bit of fun with the vocoder too, it’s such an amusing toy.  A vocoder has two inputs.  Through modulation, one input adopts the tonal characteristics of the other. So if you feed in some distorted electric guitar, and modulate it with the sounds of your own voice, you get that classic robotic Cylon Raider sound from Night Flight To Venus.

I also was inspired to play some real instruments rather than just sequence MIDI on the synth.  I had the electric guitar out in three difference configurations.  And I played cello for a couple of tracks too.  (My cello skills are not improving…but that’s clearly because I don’t practise.)  I feel sloppy when I play the analog instruments by themselves, but all mixed together, many mistakes are much less obvious or hidden altogether.  But I was up for the challenge.  I found playing Rock Band for an hour or so beforehand got me warmed up to play but didn’t tire me out.

The video is just fluff - just something to watch while you’re listening on youtube.  I had grand visions for a music video, but it’s just too much work and I only wanted to invest a couple of hours in it.  Nevertheless, the video is kind of trippy and it conjures up images of some kind of laser light show at a rave.

I kept saying that I wasn’t going to be finished with this track until I incorporated a didgeridoo track into it somehow, but alas…it never happened.  Next time!

Watch this video on YouTube:

Roadbird 109 (3 min 38 sec)

Special thanks to Muffy St. Bernard!