Click below to listen to a track off my debut album "Sound of a Blunt Instrument" out recently on Notional Promotions, my independent label.
As you have probably gathered by now, I make music. It is influenced by film music and lo fi breakbeat like Portishead and DJ Vadim. The lo fi element is not purpously put on, like most of the popular lo fi acts, but arises directly from the low quality gear I have to use.
I use a Mac PowerPC6500/275. All the software I use was either free or I have ripped off somehow. I gather most of my sounds using a basic sampling programme called SoundEffects. It is very easy to use and it's free. My sources include films, TV, CDs, radio, my guitar, and things I can download from the web. Once I have them in SoundEffects I can use the range of effects - mostly this is about pitching the sound to match others I have, and smoothing out any bad hisses or crackles. For drums, I use this programme to chop up loops into their component parts (kick, snare, hi hat etc) and save them seperately, so I can resequence them later in Cubasis. I use Cubasis AV, the budget version of Cubase, to sequence my sounds. It is very basic but it more or less suits the purpose. It is mostly designed for midi, but has 8 audio channels. I don't use midi at all, because it is too complicated to faff around all the time with parameters and stuff, and anyway, it sounds robotic and clinical. Instead, I do everything with audio samples.
My tracks are mostly pretty sombre, lonely affairs, very simple but beautiful. They would be really good for film - any filmmakers who are interested, get in touch with me.
I would also be interested in working with a vocalist. Such are the wonders of the web that we need not ever meet - if you like this idea, get in touch. (The singing bit, not the never meeting bit.)
If you produce music in a similar style to me, let me hear it. I am especially interested in appreciating other people's music who are in a similar situation to me.