[triphop] Way up high

[maleek]

Hi folks,

I have practically finiched my first ep hopefully to be released on a scene-label later. To celebrate I uploaded a old track that I finiched three years ago, that will definetly not be part of the EP but signified a break from my musical style back then.

Production wise it's not by any means perfect, but I like it despite the not so perfect loops, twists, stuttered beats and lack of proper mastering. I tried to communicate the blues as I saw it back then, sampled all kinds of jazz and hip hop records, and this was one of the (short) results. And maybe, it is because it's not perfect that I like it, that the "flaws" make it special, to me. It signified a period of personal musical growth, even tough my self critical side almost always got the best of me, a perfectionist as I was, and made me never release it.

So, here it is today. All Modplug.

Suecae sounds - Way up high

[Sam_Zen]

The first link worked.
A nice playing with the sounds, but I wouldn't call it some hop, because no steady beat.
I see it more as a scene, or an atmosphere.

[maleek]

Thanks for your kind words Sam_Zen. Well, you are probably right. Defining my music into genres have never been my thing. I listened to a lot of DJ Shadow at the time of writing this. Funny thing is that he never liked the term trip-hop, he preferred to call his music hip hop. But like anything else, it is highly subjective. But no matter the tags we put on our music, it is hopefully unique.

[kit beats]

no links worked for me..

[maleek]

Samplekit:

Strange. I tried the first link today and it seemed fine. But I know archive.org have had some trouble with their servers... :/

[kit beats]

yes, sorry first link is fine. tought it was a download but there is a player.

The sound is a nice atmosphere, like the piano parts.
Im allways into nice piano pieces..the voices in the song are also quiet nice.

Peacefull

[xincbox]

hmm i don't really associate this style with trip hop, because when i think of that genre it's more Portishead/Massive Attack/Lamb, stuff that does have more of a 'hop' beat.. just like Sam said

how much of this is sample and how much was made in the tracker?

[maleek]

How much of this is sample(s) and how much is tracker. Well, most of the stuff goes back to samples, "sample-collaging" as some hip-hop artists prefer to call it.

Anyway: I arranged all of the drums from individual hits, same with some of the orchestra part, and the analouge bass. That is all more basic tracked parts, even though the samples are clearly not electronic... Same with some of the female voice hits that come with the introduction of the beat, they are micro-samples all arranged as rythmic hits in the tracker.

+ I used short clipped piano loops from different vinyl-records, which makes the original songs if not impossible to spot, at least something completely different. Most are clips no longer then 3, 4 seconds long. Plus I control the VSTI:s via modplug, to alter mainly the piano and horn parts.  I used bidi-loops to loop to infinity with some vst-effects to create ambience.

I arranged everything in the tracker. Probably forgot to mention many things, but now you get a picture of how I worked for this specific track.

edit:
I forgot to mention that the singing 1:10 that hits the track for a couple of seconds are an old track by Ella Fitzgerald (if I remember correctly). All the other arrangement are from other sources. Kind of nice to pull that one off.

[Sam_Zen]

It's Ella allright.