Sunday, August 27, 2006

Music Mix Scores









Jim Cole (from Spectral Voices) e-mailed me to suggest that I put time codes in the tracklisting for Tea Time at Brian Eno’s House and The Stars My Destination so people could tell where pieces start and end. I wrote back to explain that my “mixups” truly mix songs up with pieces starting and stopping in the middle of the song and sometimes starting again. Others may start in the middle and sometimes there are several layers of things being played simultaneously. So, putting in exact timecodes would be difficult.

Instead I decided to do a screen capture of the “score” of those two mixes. I use Acoustica MP3 Audio Mixer to do most of my mixes which allows multi-tack mixing and the adjustment of volume levels within tracks. On the top of the score you will see the timeline. The rectangles are the music tracks. The “line graphs” within each piece show the sound levels as the piece progresses. So, by viewing the capture you should be able to see what is playing at various points in the mix. I’ll try and publish the scores with future mixes as well. I hope they are helpful. I have jpegs of the scores available for download below.

Downloads (right click, save link as):

Tea Time at Brian Eno’s House Score

The Stars My Destination Score

Posted by nrvnet at 4:18 PM 5 comments

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

The Stars My Destination

L o s t L a k e S t o r i e s 2 0 0 6

This 2006 collection of Nrv Net mixups was inspired by the writings of Jack Kerouac (who could have guessed?). After having read several of his books over the past year I decided to use a literary theme as a central core for these four mixes. The titles come from three Kerouac novels and a book by Alfred Bester. The mixes themselves range from straightforward linear mixes to multi-level mixups, with sometimes as many as six different sound files being played simultaneously. Each mix has a story accompanying it that gives a “soundword” description of the mix. I tried to channel Kerouc in the writing style. The first mixup, The Stars My Destination, is an ambient drift mix meant to be played while stargazing. There is more multi-level mixing going on in this one. With apologies and respect to Jack Kerouac I hope you enjoy the Lost Lake Stories...

L o s t L a k e S t o r i e s C h a p t e r 1: The Stars My Destination

Countdown to celestial fireburn in soulburst flight and the Stars My Destination. Blue move streak melts into inkblack veil of infinity. Starshine in a speck of life absorbs all that was the memorycore being. Mind dissolves, touching gravity wells of mechanical move. Chromosphere dreams float past ecliptic worlds of heliocentric desire. Lightyears pass in glistening spikeshards of spacetime. Softspun cores of hydrogen cloudlight move past binary bursts of quasar prominence. Redshift suns stream, holding a billion thoughts of singular sound vibrating through the silent expanse of zodiac radiance. Arms of sparkling starlight stretch toward the singularity of firelife. Traveling through the infinite core of drifting starsound, eyes open to see a sea of lights against darkblack sky as galactic whispers fade into endless night.

Downloads (right click, save link as):

MP3 [68:55m] (95 mb)

Cover Art (zip)

Stream:

Please leave a comment if you like the mix.

T R A C K L I S T I N G

  1. August Stars – The Twilight Turns From Amethyst to Deep and Deeper Blue
  2. Steve Roach and Loren Nerell - Ecopoiesis
  3. Various Apollo Sound Files
  4. Manual - September Swell
  5. Amir Baghiri - Triton
  6. Loscil - Windless
  7. Diatonis - Corona
  8. James Johnson - Ma Ja Le - Methane Sea
  9. Diatonis - Clouds and Mirrors
  10. Milieu - Lazy Days on our Hillside
  11. Amir Baghiri - Sleep Well (Part Six)
  12. Oophoi - Hymns to a Silent Sky
  13. August Stars - Reflection of the Bridge of Sighs
  14. Cliff Martinez - We Don't Have To Think Like That Anymore
  15. Manual - Bajamar
  16. Milieu - Inside the Majestic Hand of God
  17. Manual - Reminiscence
  18. Oophoi - Ism-el Azam (Birth and Death of Sound)
  19. Steve Roach - Truth in Passing
  20. Jim Cole and Spectral Voices - Celestial Tides
  21. Dialogue from 2001: A Space Odyssey
  22. Gyorgi Ligeti - Lux Aeterna
  23. Genesis - Silent Sorrow in Empty Boats
  24. Jon Jenkins – Calling
  25. Yellow Magic Orchestra - Loom
  26. August Stars - Two Queerly Placed Melancholy Windows
  27. Hammock - You May Emerge From This More Dead Than Alive
  28. Milieu - Parasol
  29. Milieu - Lazy Days on our Hillside
  30. Chase Smith - A Curse of Beauty
  31. Dean de Benedictis - The Mocking of Consequence
  32. James Johnson - Drift
  33. Steve Roach - The Passing Time
  34. Harold Budd & Brian Eno - An Echo of Night

Posted by nrvnet at 9:04 PM 1 comments

A Perfect Rainy Day Thinking of Old Memories


Here is a straightforward mix I did last year. Something to listen to on rainy days...

And what does the rain say at night in a small town, what does the rain have to say? Who walks beneath dripping melancholy branches listening to the rain?
-Jack Kerouac

Downloads (right click, save link as):

MP3 [73:54m] (102 mb)

Cover Art (zip)

Stream:

T R A C K L I S T I N G
  1. INTERLUDE 1 Rain (0:14)
  2. Sigur Ros – Untitled (2:45)
  3. Trembling Blue Stars – The Far Too Simple Beauty (3:29)
  4. World Standard – Snowflakes (7:49)
  5. Goldmund – Pahelia (6:04)
  6. Sylvian Chauveau – Minéral (2:56)
  7. Idaho – Levitate Pt. 2 (4:21)
  8. Harold Budd – Avalon Sutra (3:37)
  9. INTERLUDE 2 Rain (0:30)
  10. RF – Spring (7:59)
  11. Goldmund – Anomolie Loop (1960 – 1969) (6:59)
  12. Sigur Ros – Untitled (2:34)
  13. Helios – Sunes Christmas (3:57)
  14. George Winston – Black Stallion (3:48)
  15. Broken Social Scene – Guilty Cubicles (3:02)
  16. Talk Talk – I Believe In You (6:15)
  17. Muse – Blackout (4:17)
  18. INTERLUDE 3 Rain (0:15)
  19. Vangelis – Tears In Rain (2:51)

Posted by nrvnet at 8:42 PM 10 comments

Tea Time at Brian Eno's House

Here is the very first true "mixup" I did last year and previously posted on Low Light Mixes. Tea Time at Brian Eno's House is based on an idea of being invited to tea at Brian Eno's house and what one might hear from his in-house sound installation. I tried to approach the mix in an “Eno-esque” fashion, building track upon track. The foundation of the mix is made up of long-form Eno cuts (Neroli, Thursday Afternoon, etc.) that play at very low levels throughout the mix. On top of that are Quiet American field recordings that fade in and out. On top of that are various Eno and other artist tracks mixed end to end and sometimes together. So, at any point in the mix, there are 2-5 things playing at the same time.

The Eno speaking parts are from a long interview with him. I cut 2-10 second pieces at random from the track. I then assembled bunches of those pieces together, somewhat at random, at various points throughout the mix. So, you get Eno speaking in “nonsense words” that weirdly make sense in a way. I hope you enjoy it.

Downloads (right click, save link as):

MP3 [79:53m] (192k) (109 mb)

Cover Art (zip)

Stream:

Please leave a comment if you like the mix.

T R A C K L I S T I N G

  1. An interview with Brian Eno - Eno Speaks
  2. Brian Eno - Neroli
  3. The Golden Oaks - Candles Dangling from Boxwood Branches
  4. The Quiet American - 3 Trains
  5. Helios - Easy Days
  6. Brian Eno - Thursday Afternoon
  7. John Fox, Harold Budd - Adult
  8. Robert Rich - Weightless Morning
  9. Brian Eno - IKEBUKURO
  10. The Quiet American - Short Train
  11. Shuttle358 - Chessa
  12. Clickits - Weirdloop
  13. Kiln - Season
  14. Brian Eno - Chamber Lightness
  15. Clickits - Riverfolk
  16. Brian Eno - Caught Between
  17. The Remote Viewer - Listening to Ballad of the Band
  18. The Quiet American - Waking
  19. Broken Social Scene - I Slept With The Bonhomme At The CBC
  20. Amute - A l'ombre de 12000 medias
  21. Brian Eno - A Long Way Down
  22. Brian Eno - Drift Study
  23. Brian Eno - Soft Dawn
  24. Brian Eno - Discreet Music
  25. The Quiet American - First Light
  26. Helios - Mulier
  27. Brian Eno - Lantern Marsh
  28. Alva Note + Ryuichi Sakamoto - Uoon I.mp3

Posted by nrvnet at 1:58 PM 12 comments

Monday, August 21, 2006

The Hydrogen Café

Earlier this year my best friend Dave started his own blog called Low Light Mixes to host some ambient music mixes he had put together. It’s a great site and I encourage you to visit it. Since Low Light Mixes began, Dave has kindly posted several of my own mixes. As I have put together more mixes he has been bugging me about starting my own blog.

I’d like to present The Hydrogen Café. I’ll be posting my own music mixes and maybe a few other things as well. Why “Hydrogen Café?” I’m a coffee fanatic so I liked the idea of a café—a place to come and sit a while, have a cup and listen to some music. And hydrogen is an element that is both simple and minimal yet underlies everything—kind of like ambient music and music in my life. So, welcome to the Hydrogen Café. I hope you’ll sit and stay a while. Most of the mixes will be ambient or quiet in nature but I do have a few that cross into jazz, classical and folk. I hope you’ll enjoy them.

I also have recently “discovered” the writings of Jack Kerouac and have become a huge fan, burning through several of his books this year. I tried to channel Jack, as you will see, with a few of my more recent mixes, with apologies to my own meager talents. So to close my first post on my first blog I’d like to leave you with Jack:

...the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!'

- Jack Kerouac

Posted by nrvnet at 1:06 PM 5 comments

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)