Tripecac - Battle of the E-Bands

It took me forever to finish this song because I kept losing Mondays to school holidays and sick girls. By the time I finally found time, I'd lost any interest in polishing it, so it comes out a bit rough. At least it's short. And it's supposed to sound "live" and amateurish. So I guess it's not a complete disaster.

2024 UPDATE: If I thought it took "forever" to finish this song, the album was even worse!!! I didn't start the final song until 2023, by which point I had changed computers, software, and sample locations. So when it was time to "touch up" the older songs (like this one) for release on CD, I found myself spending a lot of time locating samples and trying to get the soft synths to sound the same as in the original mix. And I didn't even like the original mix, for most of the songs. So I decided to remix the entire album.

Is it better now?

Don't know. Don't care. But at least it's using the correct sample paths.

And the ending is LOUDER! That's always a good thing.

Right?

Since the first song was the introductory theme music, this one represents the first "band" to participate in the "battle".

It's pretty bad.

I'd like to pretend that the lameness is intentional (...and in fact, I added references to the organ player being deaf...) But it's not.

I just had interruption after interruption and never got a decent idea together. It took almost 3 months to finish it. Not that it shows.

2024 UPDATE: This one was painful to revisit. The vocals are annoying, and there's so little actual music that I didn't know where to start in terms of "fixing" it. So I just tweaked some volumes here and there, but that's about it.

Let's just pretend this was the "junior" band. :)

This sounds like some forgettable test from 15+ years ago. I tried to make it sound like the Anchovies but it completely flopped. Oh well. Flops are all part of the "plot" of this album, right? So it's justified. Right???

2024 UPDATE: This was another difficult one to "fix". The drums were annoying, the bass was annoying, the alto sax sounded fake... I got very tired whenever I started to work on it again, so ended up "call it a day" pretty early in the remix process.

How do you make rotten pizza taste "better"? You can't. It's rotten. Don't blame the anchovies.

I tried to make this jazzy instrumental sound like a wild live version of IPECAC. The energy is good but it lacks polish. And writing. And the sax solo was so sloppy I ended up naming this after a certain other sax player! ;)

2024 UPDATE: I enjoyed revisiting this one, and added some more peppy bits while tightening up the mix. Of the four songs up to this point, this one's my favorite. Maybe it's because there's no singing? :)

Here it is December and I'm nowhere close to done with the album. So I need something long. And something I can finish off quickly. This means the old standby: jazzy reggae groove. Yep, I'm keeping it simple, stupid.

I thought it was going to be a dud when I named it. But it ended up not as bad as I thought. Or did it? It's all a whirlwind in my head right now, since I finished it in 2 days.

I need to give it some time to evaluate it properly. So do you. A few dozen listens oughta do it.

2024 UPDATE: Man, this song takes a long time to get going! Those rim taps are *really* annoying, and they dominate the first few minutes. I must've been listening to The Stranglers a lot when I started it, because the initial bass line rips off "Peaches". Eventually it morphs into something less cliche, but man, "eventually" is, like, "evennnnnntttttuuuuaaaaalllllyy!!!"

It's obvious that I was desperately trying to fill up the rest of the CD as quickly as possible by the end of the year. I ultimately didn't even come close, but I didn't know that when I recorded this song. So it's bloat city.

After about 8 minutes (!), the song finally starts to improve. But that's a looong time to wait for something interesting to happen.

When I remixed it in 2024, I added more solos and textures throughout the song, and removed much of the annoying drums. I also overhauled the effects on both the drums and the bass.

So hopefully it's listenable now. Or at least almost listenable. Which is better than it was before.

Denali had a dream last night about people throwing glasses at each other. Someone refered to it as a "glass battle".

I liked the name.

So I took the name.

Whatcha gonna do about it?

You wanna fight me?

I got a whole stack of glass right here.

2024 UPDATE: Now this is a cool song! I love the Middle-Eastern flavour. It was a pleasure to revisit. I didn't change much, because it was pretty good originally, and I didn't want to ruin the magic.

If I had ended the album here, it would've been on a good note. Unfortunately, there was less than an hour of music by that point, and since Tripecac albums are usually 70 minutes or more, I decided not to finish the album here, but instead push on, when ended up extending the album into a second year. And then a third... And then a fourth...

Time ran out for this one.

I started in December 2021, but I was too busy to finish it by the end of the year. This was the first year since 2000 that I didn't finish an album. Oh well.

I didn't resume work on the song until I got a new computer in March 2022. And that was just to get the instrument sorted. I didn't really start doing any editing until April. So sheesh, it took almost 5 months to finish this song!

Was it worth the wait?

Ha. Very funny.

2024 UPDATE: Not good. This one's barely a song. It's basically an annoying beat with un-thought-out stuff layered on top. No real groove, or melody, or anything memorable.

I found it so lifeless that for the remix I added a really weird phasing effect to the drums. It doesn't sound "good", but at least it's more interesting that what was there before.

Fortunately, the song is pretty short (for Tripecac).

Don't laugh, but this song took me more than 7 months to finish! Well, it's not like I worked on it every day. Or every month.

But, well... at least it's done. An 8 minute jam, somewhat aimless and poorly mixed, but with hopefully some nice moments. Like all my music!

Technical note: this is the first song I finished with Cakewalk by BandLab (the free successor to Sonar), and the first with Kontakt 7 (which came with Komplete 14). Not that it made any difference to the quality!

Nothing does, except luck! Well, that and practice. But who has time for that???

2024 UPDATE: This one's sluggish and clunky at the start, but picks up. The mix was horribly boomy and sludgy, so my focus was mostly on cleaning that up, although I did make many edits along the way.

I completely changed the drum sound, making it less cavernous and more like a nearby drum kit. Maybe it doesn't sound like it's on stage, but it least sounds more human.

I also lowered the bass, which was overwhelming. As for the organ (yuck) and keyboards, I mostly left those alone.

Rusty.

Get it?

Yeah, the music is about that clever too.

The one salvation is the horn part, which I added as an afterthought.

Actually most of my music is an afterthought.

Or an afterwhim.

Or an aftermistake.

Take your pick!

Anyway, I've now finished 2 songs this year, which is already more than last year! Hooray!

2024 UPDATE: There wasn't too much to do here. Not that it was "perfect" (ha!) but more like the mix wasn't dragging the song down. Must've been all that "hard work" I put into it last year. (Double ha!)

I changed the drum kit preset, and made one of the keyboards sound more like a guitar (since they were overlapping each other sound-wise). I also fleshed out some of the sparser sections.

Overall, I think it sounds okay now, given the simplistic source material. Not great, but not horrible. Just sort of "there". Like 99.9% of Tripecac!

This song was a bit of a mess, starting as a vocal improv and then turning into a solo-ridden jam. It was so long that I decided to have it be the closer for the (ahem) "concert". So I added the announcer at the end (bookending the first song). The announcer thanks the audience and then tells them they can leave. And then, at the very end, there's a twist...

2024 UPDATE: There wasn't too much to do here mix-wise, probably because it's relatively recent (less than a year old) and my tastes and ears are about the same. Most of the fixing was centered on the bass, although I also did lots of little corrections here and there. There were still lots of mistakes in it, which is not surprising since it's 11 minutes long and I didn't spend much time on it.

Anyway, it's here. It's done. One song left!

I started this back when I was also working on "Back At It". I think I was getting tired of the other song and decided to start a peppier one, which I decided would be the "encore" so that the album could finish on an uplifting note.

So here it is, the final song in the album that took me 2.5 years to finish! Wayyy too long IMO, but at least I'm done and can move on from it.

2024 UPDATE: This was the easiest song to "fix" since it was only a few months old. Also, it's pretty short, and the mix was simple, with little effort into making it sound "live". That's because it's supposed to be something the announcer played (with a drum machine) after everyone left. How he got the brass sounds in there I don't know. Poetic license!