Tag Archives: Keyboard

Jan 06 2012
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Music, Visual Arts

The Last Throwback December: Livin on the West Coast and YarraY

This December/January throwback series has been a look back to the early days of our creativity. We thank everybody that has been riding with us, and we hope that other artists might want to look back on their collections and see their Reflection and Response in progression.

Livin on the West Coast, made earlier than YarraY, was from late 2005. Livin starts with a wah-wah guitar intro with V’s signature driving keyboard elements and baseline and goes into a lead section with some distortion. We toy with using different pickup settings on the guitar for the chorus, with the first part of the chorus sounding more muffled and bassy then the full pickup second half. The track then turns into a synth string mash-up with distorted guitar, a style that appears on other tracks (see taquito). This track shows how we were incorporating various styles, including but not limited to hip-hop and rock, into our arrangements.

Livin on the West Coast

YarraY was an initial foray into sampling. One of our favorite artists ais Ray Charles. For the first part of the track, we took the chord structure and melody from Ray’s Unchain My Heart. While the first half of our track follows a bluesy vibe, we change it up when we bring in  Don’t Set Me Free and throw some synth and 808-drums. We then slow it down at the end of the track as it fades into the future.

YarraY

 

Reflection and Response.

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Jan 04 2012
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Music, Visual Arts

Throwback December: A Sample of the Late Garageband Period

These three tracks come from the later garageband period. We still worked at Monterey Market, the produce market down the street from Peter’s parents house, where we recorded. On off days or after work we’d work these tunes out.

 

Shades of Green started as a jam over the guitar effect heard at the beginning and then revolves around a chord progression: E minor, F major, D minor. There’s a bridge on A major and some strings provided by V that finish the track up.

Shades of Green

 

taquito-hoope-sweesh-donke is a four piece track with various elements coming together to form our arrangement. We were messing with the idea of mixing distorted electric guitar and synth strings and brass which comes out around 1:40. We threw in some slide guitar to mix it up after that section to mix it up.

 

taquito-hoope-sweesh-donke

 

Complete Darkness comes from a chord progression that we wrote before the garageband days. This track has most of the components of this period of growth: guitar solos by P while the bass, keys, and synth strings are held down by V.

 

Complete Darkness

 

-Reflection and Response (even in progression)

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