[RELEASE] June Themed Comp : Songs by MB Members!

[Guybrush]

June Theme Comp : Songs by MB Members!




tracklist (v2)

1. DF - Saving and Enslaving the World (from Mr. Dave)
2. Dave, Evan and Jef - sail to the sun (from Mr. Dave)
3. Panda Go Panda - Rather Warm, But Wet (from Mr. Dave)
4. Unchained Ballad - Somber Ways
5. Unchained Ballad - The Wanderer
6. Unchained Ballad - Whale
7. Vatos Locos Guitarristas - Los Caballeros del san Mondell (from Tore)
8. Mette Marit - Flammenes Regent (from Tore)
9. Milo - Going Home (from Tore)
10. Space is the Place - Life Metal (from +81)
11. Space is the Place - The Coral Sea (from +81)
12. Space is the Place - Blood & Milk (from +81)
13. Stone Birds - A Breeze On the Sea
14. Stone Birds - Flying Machines
15. Stone Birds - Saviour
16. Krill-Whale-Human - Boardroom (from Janszoon)
17. Krill-Whale-Human - Mega-Awesome Dragon (from Janszoon)
18. Vegangelica - Evergreen
19. Vegangelica - Free
20. Vegangelica - Isle
21. The Disintegration Tapes - Identity Song [Demo] (from Rickenbacker)
22. The Bullet - Out 2 Haunt U (from The Bullet)
23. AFDEX16 - Funkology (from Antonio)
24. AFDEX16 - House of Dead (from Antonio)
25. AFDEX16 - Warhead_Weapon of Mass Destruction (from Antonio)
26. Lawn Chronicles - Negating Expectations (from wolverinewolfweiselpigeon)
27. Freebase Dali - 1up
28. Freebase Dali - Caesura

Aaaight, listen up yo! This month's theme, as voted forth by you guys, was songs by MB Members. Members of our highly musical community had until june the 20th to send up to 3 songs for this mixtape.

The plan now is of course to give it a listen! It would be nice if people would write a bit about the different tracks or artists, at least some that they think stand out or just want to comment. Some of us are hoping for constructive comments so that we can improve. Those who contributed songs should also do a little write-up about the songs they put on the mixtape. For example, what was your inspiration? Was it made for something particular? How old is it? I'm sure you can think of something.

So, to summarize, listen to, comment and also write a bit about your own tracks on the comp if you have any. Above all, enjoy!

Get it yo! PS! V2 now available below! Comp was reuploaded to fix some problems.



Some specifics about the comp; Files have replay gain written in them to compensate for differences in volume between tracks, but I'm not sure what programs outside of Foobar supports it. I've tried to figure out artists as best I can where it's not the same as you guys' usernames. When it's not appearant from artist name, the contributors username is in parantheses in the filename.

To figure out the order of the tracks, I asked my girlfriend to give me random numbers so you all got a random number assigned to you Your tracks were then put in that place, likely in alphabetical order. That's pretty much it!

edit : Oh, and sorry about the pasta album art. I only have paint on this office computer!

[The Bullet]

Downloading right now, can't wait.

So, here's my little write-up

Out 2 Haunt U

Well, I guess multiple things influenced this, but it was mostly things that I read, not heard. For example, I read of how The Beatles recorded that one song for a rave (I forget the name). They basically went around a room and hit stuff for a whole recording session. I did the same thing, execpt I was one person, so I had to use heavy Sony ACID editing so it would seem like multiple people (there's HEAVY, HEAVY editing on this track). Also, I read that guitarbizarre made an experimental track with only his vocals. TBH, I've never heard it (sorry GB), but just the fact that it was made inspired me to do something like that. Execpt, there was no way I could do something all-vocals, but I could do something equally as experimental. My biggest inspiration was boredom. I wanted to record a bunch of sounds forwards and backwards and see where it went because I had WAY too much time on my hands. I had no clue where I was going.
I would usually listen to the few seconds of the song to get the beat (which I TRIED to write is in 4/4 with the execption of a few parts), then record my new sound. Opening a door, kicking an amp, waving a piece of paper, it's all here, forwards and backwards. I also remember that the guitar solo took around two takes. It was complete improv. I liked the second take alot more than the first, though I can't remember if I pieced together multiple tracks on the solo (I don't think I did). I remember showing this to a couple of my then-"bandmates" who were convinced I was going off the edge.
They interpreted a part where I hit something and grunted (something that made a chain-like sound), as sex. I thought it sounded like choping a tree (although I really didn't know). A teacher at my school thought it was hitting someone. Just one of the many examples of how someone can come to different interpretations of this track. Even I only have an interpretation.
Dispite the wierdness, there IS a story to this track. Someone is warned not to go to a graveyard, but he goes anyway, and he gets haunted (or something like that, it's been... seven months since I recorded this? I don't remember everything.) And... that's about it. Well, enjoy

[Janszoon]

I’m excited to hear these! Here’s my little write up for mine:

Krill>Whale>Human was a band I was in with one other guy from 2006-2008. We never officially released anything by we recorded a lot of music on our own on my laptop. These are two of those songs.

“Boardroom” has me on vocals, lead keyboard and percussion (which is all samples of mouth and hand sounds from yours truly sequenced as a drum kit in Reason). My bandmate played the other keyboards and bass on this track.

“Mega-Awesome Dragon” was an interesting form of collaboration for us. My bandmate came up with the piano and drum pattern that you hear in the first few measures of the song. Then I took that and built on it—adding, subtracting and doing variations from those initial patterns with both the percussion and piano, as well as adding the electric piano part. Next I recorded myself playing a wooden recorder type of flute and him playing trumpet, chopped them up and created loops from them. And finally we both had a good time adding the shouts over the top of everything.

[Guybrush]

I have to go shopping with the GF in a bit so I'll save the detailed comments for a bit later (with 28 tracks, I'd have to split that up anyways) and just start off with presenting my own few tracks on there.

They're all made sometime in the period of 18 to 21 years old, so it's a while ago.


Vatos Locos Guitarristas - Los Caballeros Del San Mondell

We had a studio in a school that we were playing around with. We had so many different band projects at the time and one of them was this mexican Ennio Morricone / Mariachi Band inspired quartet called Vatos Locos Guitarristas which was part parody of a norwegian guitar band with 4 famous (here) guitarists. The only recorded song is this one, Los Caballeros Del San Mondell. None of us actually know spanish, so we were just hoping it would somehow make sense. The recording itself is amateurish and even slightly out of tune I'm sure, but I still think it's charming. Especially after the modulation towards the end!

My contributions here are mainly in the songwriting, the vocals, the horse cloppety clop and all the various (stolen) sound effects .. Oh, and the whistling is all me of course! I'm pretty sure I don't play guitar on this one even if it's a role I would fill in the band were we ever to do anything today. I just recently wrote a song for this band, actually .. Hmm ..


Mette Marit - Flammenes Regent

This one is all me although our band Mette Marit technically has another member as well. I was into EBM and various kinds of mid to late 90s electronica. There was gonna be a local festival and we were asked if we wanted to play. Our old band which we played with the year before was sort of inactive, but me and a friend said "yeah, sure!" and we just figured we could make something new. I started tracking in trusty old Fasttracker 2 (brilliant mod tracker from 1993) and after about a week, I'd made an EP of sorts called "Hail to the King, Baby!". We called our industrial electronica duo "Mette Marit" because it's also the name of the norwegian crown princess and she was hot stuff in the media at the time, so we figured we could get some attention using that name.

I could've picked almost any song from this EP, but Flammenes Regent is the first one I made and sort of showcases what I was going for then. The title is completely random and means "Regent of the Flames". It of course features some stolen samples from here and there, but nothing that dominates the overall sound very much. I don't think anyone would mind.


Milo - Going Home

I was also musician in a demo crew back here using the nick "Milo" which was a bit of a joke on my expense involving a curly hairdo and a product for washing wool. We had one almost ambitious project about making a platform game where you play a girl who has to rescue her kidnapped friends from an evil professor with an army of animated toys. Sounds original? Okay, maybe not. anyways, I took the project perhaps more seriously than anyone and made a small heap of tunes for the game. Back then, it came pretty easy to me and I could easily make one a day because I enjoyed it a lot. I put "Going Home" on this comp which is a tune intended for somewhere near the end of the game when everything is all right and our heroes can return home to the village. It's choice was fairly random to be honest, but there you go!

The song - and just about all the others I made for this game - are made to loop, so .. when the song ends, in the game - well, t wouldn't, it would just skip back to an earlier place in the song. As an mp3 or ogg file, it ends a bit abruptly.

The game was never completed, so my tunes are pretty much what remains. If anyone wants to use them for anything, you could send me a PM.

[Freebase Dali]

Originally Posted by tore

Some specifics about the comp; Files have replay gain written in them to compensate for differences in volume between tracks, but I'm not sure what programs outside of Foobar supports it. I've tried to figure out artists as best I can where it's not the same as you guys' usernames. When it's not appearant from artist name, the contributors username is in parantheses in the filename.

Does the replay gain bring tracks up to a certain level, or down from a certain level? I'm asking because when I master my tracks, I run them through a limiter at the end of the chain and I peak out at no higher than -0.1 decibels and average around -4, which is pretty much commercial gain.
Will tracks as loud as mine be brought down, or other tracks brought up?

[Guybrush]

Originally Posted by Freebase Dali

Does the replay gain bring tracks up to a certain level, or down from a certain level? I'm asking because when I master my tracks, I run them through a limiter at the end of the chain and I peak out at no higher than -0.1 decibels and average around -4, which is pretty much commercial gain.
Will tracks as loud as mine be brought down, or other tracks brought up?

Your tracks have been brought down a bit. Most have, to varying degrees. A few have been brought up. One important point, though, is that this replay gain is not written to the mp3 in any other way than the equivalent of a tag. It makes no real change to the sounds stored in the mp3 file. In foobar, you can choose in the settings whether or not you want the program to read and adjust for replay gain information. I'm guessing most media players don't even have this option and so most here will probably have to adjust volume on their own!

[Stone Birds]

A Breeze On the Sea - a simple upbeat folktronica song written for the summer (ironically written in the winter) has ocean samples, ukulele, strings, keyboard, all the works

Flying Machines - this song was an experiment using a bow on my guitar it turned into this indie-rockish tune please enjoy

Saviour - one of my newer songs contains an awesome mono dance synth in the beggining, folk guitar, glockenspiel, all the works (influenced slightly by freelance whales)... P.s. this song is not related to christianity

[VEGANGELICA]

Thanks, Tore (and your girlfriend), for setting up the comp. I'm downloading now and look forward to hearing everyone's music. Here's a write-up about my songs:

Evergreen - I made this song for AwwSugar as part of a joke, and just added the drums several days ago. The song is based on a corny chorus that I wrote and sent to AwwSugar last year to try to lure her back to my songwriting thread ("Ya don't come round no more. It just ain't like before. Ya didn't even say goodbye...just left me askin' why."). She said the chorus made her cry, and not in a good way. So then I decided to write her a serious song using that chorus to try to make her cry...but in a good way.

Free - The song is about my wish for the people to be free from the addictions that hurt them. I wrote this song soon after joining MB to cater to people's desire for shorter lyrics. These are my shortest ever! I was inspired to write the song after reading about an MB member who smokes, drinks, and uses (other) drugs, too, which made me worry for that member, since I have seen the longterm, very negative health effects of smoking and drinking on older relatives and acquaintainces.

Isle - about flirtatious friendship. I based the song on the saying, "No man is an island." My joke about the song is that no man is an island, not even when his "palm tree" makes him think he is.

[Freebase Dali]

Here's my write-up for my tunes:
(both songs produced in Sonar 8.5 PE)

1up
This began as just a little project I was toying with, trying to mix different genre elements and such. (Nintendo-Fi?, IDM, Dubstep, and some classical violins)
There isn't much to write about, except that it's just a short, random experiment that happened to be recent enough for me to include in this comp. No backstory or hidden meaning. Just fun in the studio. The vocal clip came from some random philosophy MP3.

Caesura
I did this specifically for the comp and had a lot of fun with it. The pianos were played by me via MIDI controller with TruePianos, which is an amazing simple yet realistic piece of software. I'm not a piano player, so I definitely had to fix some things and timing, but I'm pleased with the result.
In the drop, I really highlighted my love for Hoover-esque basslines and there's a lot of layering going on there. I used a sampler and a synth for the bassline, sampler for the beat with some chops, another synth for atmos, some sound clips, a cut here, cut there, chop chop mangletits. Same general story for any standard Electronic song.

The song itself, as an entity, wasn't really inspired by anything and I didn't go into it with any expectations other than experimenting and seeing where it went. After playing on the piano for ages, the piano line emerged and the progression into the Trip-Hop'ish meat of the song was more a result of me getting sick of hearing the pianos... and eventually I found a way to make the two elements work together.
I'm almost embarrased to admit that it sorta sounds like something that would be played on a House episode or something, but I thought it came out well and I liked the atmosphere of it and how it seems to exist between two different emotions simultaneously.


Anyway, hope you enjoy.

[Stone Birds]

oh dear god i just realized i submitted a wrong file of "A Breeze On the Sea" apparently the file i sent is the demo (without samples) and the correct file is here: Stone Birds - A Breeze On the Sea (Correct Version)