Tripecac - Tripico

So here we go with reggae song #1.

Except it doesn't really sounds like reggae. It's more like cheesy, canned music for a car wash commercial.

Oh well. A little suds won't kill anyone!

I came up with the general idea for this song in the shower, and managed to hum it into my camera. The recording might not have been good, but I still remembered the idea the next day, and started working on it.

Unfortunately, the resulting song never matched the idea in my head. I ended up fiddling with too many instruments while trying to come up with the perfect sound. For each instrument, I kept adding different solos and melodies which, when I listened to them days later, I didn't like. So I muted the bad ideas instead of deleting them, and added more instruments. Later, not wanting to lose anything, I unmuted the "bad" tracks and tried to fit them into the new ideas. And it didn't really work.

Does this sound more like "real" reggae than the last song? I don't know. It definitely has a darker sound. But it still is too jazzy, too complex. Hopefully the next song will be simpler and less confused.

The title comes from the cliche of having a face half shadowed. This song has a "heavy" part and a "light" part. Light and dark.

I wanted something rhythmic and dubby, with not too many instruments (since the last 2 songs felt cluttery).

To prevent the song from sounding overly simplistic, I added lots of effects on the drums. I randomly found a effect that muffled them, and found I liked it. I then overdubbed a non-muffled hi-hat on top, so it wasn't complete mud. The hat gets a bit tedious at times, but I think the overall feel of the song is decent.

Is it reggae?

Well, not really.

Knoware close.

I decided to see if using Cakewalk's synths would give me more luck with finding that reggae feel.

The rhythm section does indeed seem to be more genuine, but the melodies sound a bit too jazzy/new-age/cheesy. And it feels a bit slow.

Is this an improvement over the last three songs? I don't know.

Is is shorter? Yes!

Well, at least it has that going for it. :)

I wanted this song to be faster than the previous ones. Hence the name.

Well, it's faster. But is it reggae? Not really. Yes, there's "skanking" on 2 and 4, but the overall vibe is much more [empty-headed] dance/techno than reggae.

The morale of the story is: 2 and 4 do not a reggae song make.

Inspired by seeing some real reggae musicians in a reggae documentary playing piano on the off-beats, I decided to try a piano sound for the "skank". Fake piano, of course. Everything's fake.

I also tried to make the drums denser, with more ghost notes. Hopefully it sounds more like a real drummer and less like a canned rhythm.

For some reason, this experiment worked better than the others. Perhaps it's because there's some melodies in there, and a rough verse/chorus/bridge structure. Or maybe the tempo is nice and lively, without deviating from the reggae feel. Or maybe I just got lucky.

Luck and fakery, that's the secret. Fake luck. F---. Ha!

More pseudo-reggae. Or rather, pseudo-reggae-tinged jazz. Pseudo-jazz. So much pseudo, I should start a meth lab! ;)

This song attempted to use heavy effects (primarily on the drums) to give it a processed, "trippy" feel. It doesn't really work. There were just too many parts in the same sonic range, often playing the same thing, which made this hard to mix. And the actual song idea was too flimsy for me to retain my interest long enough to figure out how to mix it properly.

Oh well. On to the next disposable "test" song!

This album felt like it was taking forever to finish, so I wanted to make a nice long song. I also decided to restrict the melodic instruments to the freebie AAS Player. Just for fun. Yep, fun.

So what happened to the fun?

Well, the "fun" part was creating the initial EP groove, which had a cool sound and ended up being a long, rambly improv. There was no consistent melody or chord pattern, but I liked the sound so much I decided to keep it. All of it.

I then layered some simple reggae-ish drums on top, which sounded pretty cool. But that's where the fun ended.

I tried to find a nice bass part to fit the rest of the groove, but the "best" bass sound the AAS Player had to offer was the horrible distorted crunchy thing. Guitar Rig helped give it some depth, but it still sounds overly loud and annoying. And the thing about the AAS Player is that you cannot edit sound properties! So we're stuck with the yucky distorted crunch. Ugh.

Then came the plucky string sample. More ugh. Despite sounding way too wimpy in the mix, it still distorts for some reason. What's with all the distortion, AAS???

And then the worst of all, the shrieky reed thing which acted as my "lead" instrument. Mega-ugh! It's one horrid monophonic mess.

Except for the cool EP part, my conclusion is this: the AAS Player needs another S in the name.

This is about as "reggae" as I am stoic.

It's actually more like slightly funky elevator music. Where you're stuck on the elevator with someone really sweaty. And you can't get off, because there's luggage carts blocking your way. And the music keeps getting louder and more annoying...

Yep, that's right. Welcome to the elevator of dread!

Get it?

Before I even started this one, I knew I wouldn't be able to come up with anything that sounded reggae, so I figured I might as well name it appropriately. My reasoning was: if I can't get the style right, then at least I can get the label right.

Predictably, it ended up sound like typical Tripecac. Not horrible, not great, just kinda middlin'.

It might not be reggae, and it might not be good, but at least it was fun to create. At times. So in the context of a hobby, it was a success.

The sax part still bothers me, though. Perhaps that's because it keeps playing an E while the key is C minor. Gotta get me a better sax player!

The name is a combination of "spliff" and "laugh". The real joke is that it took almost 3 months to finish it.

Well, there was a gap of more than 2 months in the middle, due to a move. But still... This does not sound like I spent more than an hour or two working on it.

It also does not sound like reggae.

It's somewhat interesting when the faster bass line kicks in. But then it digresses. Oh yes, it digresses. Boy, does it digress.

I recently upgraded to Sonar X3. For this song I decided to only use the newly added instruments and effects.

The time signature is a bit weird, and there's not really a reggae feel, but I think we've pretty much given on that, haven't we?

On my second day with this song, I was feeing whimsical and added some vocals. Yes, vocals! And man are they impressive!

The title is a horrible mangling of "Caribbean".

The music isn't nearly as mangly. It's actually pretty straight. So straight that you barely notice it's there.

Except the ending. You'll notice that. The ending is, to put it euphemistically, poo.

Scrambled monster. Much better than sunny side up monster. Or soft boiled monster. Or poached monster.

Unfortunately, the music is about as muddled and unappetizing as that first paragraph.

We could blame it on my rush to finish the album by the end of the year. Or my fatigue with the reggae album idea. Or my dwindling patience with Sonar's annoying interface issues. Or the lack of creative energy due to feeling overworked at my US-based job.

But the truth is, that yucky TV-dinner taste comes from all of the above.

Scrambled together.

I started this song on Boxing Day. I knew I only had enough time to finish one more song this year. Since I felt that 59 minutes was "too short", but didn't want the album to span multiple years, I decided to make one last song which would push the album over the one hour mark.

I initially named this "Long Tail", in hopes that it would be a really long song. But it ended up being average length, so I renamed it "Wrong Tail".

It's not really reggae, but I gave up on that quest many songs ago. True reggae eludes my composing and production skills... as does post-punk, dance, and just about every genre other than the long-established Tripecac formula of light, jazzy, funky, reggae muzak.

Oh well.