The Story of Aeon

[Harbinger]

The question was asked here about the setup we use to write our music. People feel more connected with a story behind the people, so i thought i'd share...

First off, music i upload under the name Aeon is a collaborative effort, but music i give you under the name Harbinger is more-or-less a solo project by myself. (Aeon is the name of not so much a "band" but just the title of the collaboration between its "members," which has changed over the years -- more about that later.)

Before i moved to Florida i lived in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I had nearly started a band called firstBorn but was too poor to get any equipment, and did not have enough members to form a band. But i still wrote music for it, if only by piano or guitar. But in '91 i got my first keyboard, and shortly thereafter i met Yjana after i left college (pursuing a major in electronic music). She was an angry teenager who loved drums and violence, but she dressed everyday like a Sunday School sweetheart, pretty clothes, dainty makeup, and a demure attitude. But when she played drums, she'd don black leather and steel accessories and played like a demon. You'd look at her on a normal day, and you'd never guess this cute little brunette could work a drumset like she was firing at enemies in a first-person shooter! I immediately took a fondness for her because of how unusual she was.
Over time i met Loth, our bass player (from a rare church invitation), Pheng our keyboardist (friend of a friend), and Christopher (after placing an ad for an electric guitarist). Now we were Aeon. We all shared two common ideals: one, we loved techno and rock, and two, we wanted our music to be art as opposed to product. We had no illusions that the style we were going to create was even marketable, but it would still sound good. Minneapolis at the time had a vibrant music scene full of all kinds of eclectic and alternative music, and this naturally catered to our inspirations.
Before we could get anything really going (as far as a coming out), but AFTER we had composed an album's worth of music, we found that dreaded Real Life sucking us away from what we wanted to do. I wanted to leave Minneapolis (it just never felt like home), Pheng was pursuing a heavy degree, Christopher was involved with a girl, and we all just found ourselves not being able to get together. After i lost the lease to the studio, we pretty much drifted apart, but Yjana and i were still very good friends. Late '92 i left for Florida.
A couple years later, though, Yjana moved down to my city as well (perhaps from not having any true friends and hating the cold weather). We clearly knew how to get the best out of each other's talents, and so fortunately, even though we had no way of making music (she and i both had to sell our instruments to make the long-distance move), we remained friends and saved up eventually till we each got instruments again. Shortly after that i was sequencing again and it wasn't long before we were putting things on tape (not all of it good quality). Over time we've met various people to include on singular projects, but none had really been a good match (until Dustin our new bassist).

So, our original vband members were: myself on vocals (back when i could sing), Yjana on drums, Loth on bass, Pheng Xiang on keyboards, and Christopher Matthews on electric guitar. Yjana is still with me, Loth was killed in 1995, Pheng last we heard earned a PhD in Geological Engineering or some such thing, and i believe Christopher is still playing guitar in a band (under a stage name). But it's been over 15 years since our inception, and so much has changed. There was no "uploading" music back then, music composition software was never free much less "open-sourced," and you couldn't share your music with people in other countries (i should say we actually dubbed about a dozen or so cassette tapes for VERY local friends and family back then!). But we still just do this for the sound and the art, trying our best to stay out of the business and commerce of music, which all of us had once agreed would corrupt the art. It's funny, though, because that's the only idealism we have anymore; Yjana and i have both gotten much more conservative as we've gotten older

As far as how our music comes to be, generally Yjana is just the drummer, and i'm the idea man. Occasionally she'll come up with either excellent riffs she'd like to play, or an idea she thinks would be a good subject for a song, vocals or not. Most of the musical inspiration, however, comes from myself, generally in the form of an idea for an excellent cadence, but just as often as an inspired artistic perspective of "things" as they are or how they may become (a message to put music to).
Unforunately, i don't have a synth anymore (i started with a KORG M1 back in the early 90s, then went to an Alesis QS6 in 1997, then a KORG Triton in 2001), as i've had to pawn them during periods of unemployment. Now, until i can save up to get another synth, i rely on MPT to put music together, using samples and VSTi's as substitutes for a real keyboard. Yjana does have her own set of drums, and Dustin, our newest contributor, does have his own bass guitar, but i basically hafta use a skeleton setup to record anything acoustic. But i do have some excellent software to make up for the low-budget audio. I'm almost as good at production as i am composition, but better at both than i am a keyboard player.

Now as far as how we put together our songs that you can download, this is the general process:
1. Starting with an idea, i will assemble the song under MPT with a very basic drum track. This creative process, i imagine, is the same as any of you my colleagues when you compose with MPT.

2. Then i give a copy of this rough draft to Yjana. We work mostly independently of each other on the song, enhancing it according to what we like to hear and can do. Occasionally she or i will want to insert refrains, bridges, or other sections, or make other layout changes, in which case we notify each other and exchange the files again with the changes. Sometimes i will nix a requested change because i have a certain vision for the song, but i generally develop any good idea first to see if it's beneficial.

3. While i assemble the timbral movement by computer, Yjana will work on the drum track. If she really wants to play drums for a song she'll record an acoustic track into .wav, then cut-and-paste it into the patterns. She sometimes has to spruce up the drum riffs and cymbals, so she'll splice the samples into those patterns. She's almost as comfortable with MPT as i am, and you can hear she does a pretty good job.

4. Then we get back together in my "studio" (which everyone else calls a living room -- or some of you may say "sitting room"), and use MPT to put together the final cut. Once i decide it's what i wanted for the music, it's ready to engineer. We save it as a .wav file always under 16-bit 44.1K rate. Then i use a couple of Mac applications to trim the file and engineer the EQ bands. Then the audio file is archived and a copy is translated to .mp3 for us few folks to listen to.

Now with Dustin contributing to our music, he will have input as well as output. But he doesn't own a computer and does a lot of things outside of music. He will probably just come in at my request (but at his convenience) for projects that require a real bass line, as he did for "Processing You."

By the way, folks, all the instrumental stuff you guys have been downloading by Aeon, is not our usual style. We're more of an industrial techno art-rock sound, sort of a cross between Yes, Nine inch Nails, and Herbie Hancock(!). When we first started making music back in the 90s, i called it Futurock, because most of the themes were post-Apocalyptic. As a matter of fact, this was on the liner of our first tape:

Sound: blending and mixture of hard-rock, classical symphonic, and New-Age music with noise, futuristic sounds and monotones in various old and new harmonies: Futurock.

(I had to dig thru some old papers to find that!)

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Aeon:
Original members---

Nathaniel (aka Harbinger) = Composer, Producer, Vocals, Synths
Yjana = Drums & Acoustic Percussion
Kumanu Latthan (aka Loth) = Bass Guitar
Pheng Xiang = Synths, vocals
Christopher Matthews = Electric Guitar, Synths, Vocals, Programming

Short Bios of current members:

Myself: 40-something gray-hairing Southern-American white guy of North-European descent, college dropout, major prude and judgment-passer, outspoken but never heard, delusions of anti-grandeur, classically-studied but not trained, can play acoustic guitar, keyboards, violin

Yjana: nearly-30 Bosnian refugee girl with a clean mouth but a murderous glare, agnostic but not a religion-hater, minimal training in music theory and self-taught on the drums, prone to wear pretty dresses and ribbons for no reason, plays only drums (it reminds her of the bombs dropping in her homeland -- her words)

Dustin: nice-looking clean-cut introverted teenager with too many quirks to list, keeps busy volunteering and working at his church, friendly but not very pensive, plays bass and acoustic guitar

Past members:

Loth: tall, very-dark Zulu with a deep bass voice and a fondness for beetles, big Clinton-basher and easy to debate with, extensive training on guitars of all kinds and music theory (both Western and South African), extremely lucky man except for one night in a convenience store in Minneapolis....rest be thy comfort, Loth -- your vocal and bass rumbling is sorely missed!!

Pheng (pronounced ping): teenage clean-cut Hmong who was classically trained but mathematically inclined, spoke 3 languages and typically had an eye for the girls (race not important), steeped in liberalism and political innocence, but always challenging his own ideas, could play keyboards of all kinds

Christopher: average "Swedish-American" with constant calluses and new picks, learned electric guitar by playing along with Zeppelin and AC/DC (in his parent's basement), good Lutheran who never challenged authority and so was destined for normalcy, played electric and acoustic guitar

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Thanks to local friends for being the audience (if only by iPod): Chrys, Jonathon, Kenneth, Raquel, Lanford, Sue, and Robyn (and for the last time, Robyn, we're not selling it!;)

[psishock]

A very good idea you had there, to share this with us!
You got quite a story behind your life, and the story is not even near finished.
I wish even third of things like these happened to me, i don't really travel anywhere because life is quite miserable here in the balcans, and people are mostly unconcerned and cold, you will not find anybody with a slightest musical intention here (only some "hip-hopper" wannabe guys and folk music lovers).

[Harbinger]

Well, when you condense 15 years down to a blurb, it may seem exciting but believe me, most of this time was spent alone and bored, with moments of "connection." Fortunately nowadays we homebodies have the internet to connect not only with locals but with our friends across the Pond. As sinister as i've often thought the internet is, it can also keep us from feeling disconnected from others of our kind, no?  :wink:

[psishock]

As sinister as i've often thought the internet is, it can also keep us from feeling disconnected from others of our kind, no?

Indeed. I would definitely feel flustrated without the net. It's a part of my life now.

most of this time was spent alone and bored

ah, sounds like an average day of mine. =)

[uncloned]

Thanks for the insight!

[Sam_Zen]

Nice to share this with us, Harbinger.