Album Retrospective: A Few Good Bloops

A Few Good Bloops was the first of my albums that I released widely (i.e. on music streaming platforms like Spotify, and Bandcamp). It was mostly a collection of random pieces of music I had made and released on my Soundcloud up to that point, connected by their shared bloopiness.

The title is not so much a reference to A Few Good Men (the movie or the play), as it is a fun way to say there are some bloops in this album.

Panflute

Panflute was made in SunVox (version 1.9.4c), a free virtual synthesiser/music tracking software by NightRadio. Like a lot of my SunVox music, it started out as a failed attempt to create a very specific sounding instrument and deviated to something completely different. In this case I was attempting to create a bass sound which then eventually became a breathy panflute sound.

My usual method for these sorts of tracks is to create a loop with one instrument (a background arpeggio), then layer other instruments on top (drums and keys). I’ll then layer the instruments so they’re introduced one at a time, perhaps create some alternate loops for parts of the song for some instruments, and then layer an improvised melody on top (panflute).

This does make the process of creating a complete piece of music very quick, sometimes only a few hours between opening the software and exporting the final song, but it means the songs are structurally very simple. It also makes it very difficult to do things like a verse-chorus-verse-bridge etc. structure.

Overall I think this piece makes for a chill piece of background music, but I wouldn’t consider it my magnum opus.

The Good Ship Baunss

This one is a bit more fun, although it’s very messy. I used a Casio SA-76 keyboard piped through a Korg Monotron Delay for the drums, and layered a Yamaha Reface CS over it.

Firstly, the drums are a preset drum pattern from the Casio SA-76 learning keyboard. I added some fills with the tom buttons, and fed the whole thing through the tiny Korg Monotron Delay, which crunched the sound down and added some effects. It also gave me some knobs to turn to play with the filter.

On top of that, I added several layers using the Yamaha Reface CS, which is a small synthesiser keyboard with virtual analogue generators. The keyboard is an homage to the historic CS-80 from 1977.

Structurally, the piece mostly bounces its way up a continuous crescendo until it explodes near the end with an upwards octave swoop courtesy of the Reface CS. Theoretically the way it was all recorded meant I could have used the opportunity to make something through-composed, with chord structure changes throughout, but to be honest I was making it up as I went along and it’s fun enough as is.

The feel of the track was inspired partly by the soundtrack of the video game Flinthook (by Patrice Bourgeault), which is similarly bouncy. While making the piece I kept thinking I’d go back and listen to Flinthook and realise I’d essentially ripped off one of its tracks in its entirety. Luckily The Good Ship Baunss turned into its own thing, and I still quite enjoy listening to it.

We’re Here Again (But This Time I’m Ok)

Another SunVox (1.9.4c) track, this time very slow and contemplative.

The track title came when I realised this piece was very similar in tone to one I’d made years and years earlier in Fruity Loops (Misery, on my “album” Ancient Journeys from 2010). The original piece had come from an emotionally low point. This time, however, I was in an emotionally content state of mind.

This is one of my more complex SunVox pieces. I think I’m most proud of the melody, which I think communicates a lost-ness and a resigned melancholy.

I’m not sure what more I can say about this one, except that it might be fun to re-record it with better balance between the instruments, and a real bass guitar.

Lament to Disaster

Another SunVox (1.9.4c) track, this one a tribute to Disasterpeace, in particular tracks Beacon, Compass and Memory from the FEZ soundtrack, as well as the Hyper Light Drifter soundtrack.

I wanted to capture the simplicity of these tracks, and how complex chords could mix with a raw overpowered digital synthesiser sound, crunched through a bitcrusher, to create something that feels anything but digital.

I think I succeeded in capturing this feeling somewhat, although the space could be explored further.

Something I admire about Disasterpeace’s music is his willingness to push a sound past the point of breaking, so that it sounds like something’s gone wrong with the mix, but it’s intentional. I sometimes find myself pulling back on pushing my music too loud or too gritty out of fear that it’ll just sound like I’m a bad musician, or that I don’t know how to use a compressor.

There’s a hint of pushing to breaking point in Lament to Disaster, but it could be pushed further.

DARK

More SunVox. This was one of the earliest pieces I made in SunVox, and really I think it was built around two main things: A drum kit with a fun delay; and a menacing bass.

Being one of my earlier pieces in the software, I don’t think there’s much else to mention on this one. It’s still fun, but I think I’ve done all the best elements of this piece better in later music.

What If I’m The One

The single piece of music that I can actually call a song in this album!

Sometimes I like to pare back all the instruments and complexity, and challenge myself to make something simple. If I remember correctly this piece started when I found a nice pad sound on the Yamaha Reface CS, and some melancholic chords suitable to be have melancholic singing sung over them.

The words are from a poem I wrote during an emotionally not-great time when I was convinced I was the villain in everybody else’s stories.

I made a (not great) music video for this piece, playing with filming at double speed and slowing down the footage.

As with quite a few of my other singing pieces, I think I’m most proud of the harmonies in this song.

I also like the slow fade of the melody into a filter, implying the ‘villain’ is slowly moving further from the microphone (or perhaps the listeners are walking away).

Phantastic

Wow, a seven minute-long piece of music!

I believe this one was just made out of live-played layers of the Yamaha Reface CS, including a half-arpeggio type beepy bloop that speeds up as the song goes on, and a few nice synth pads.

I used this piece as the background music for a satirical instructional video about making up names for fantasy story characters, the Patently Un-patentable Lacheye Method of Creating Awesome Fantasy Names.

I think Phantastic might be the most bloopy of all the bloops in A Few Good Bloops.

Siddhartha

Some more SunVox, this time in a tribute to Siddhartha Barnhoorn, and the Antichamber soundtrack. I think there might be a bit of Portal 2 in there too, a touch of Tangerine Dream, and a generous helping of Terry Riley’s A Rainbow in Curved Air.

I was playing with loops in different instruments with different time signatures, meaning that the loops don’t match up with each other, and it creates some sort of ordered chaos that sounds like you should be able to nod your head to it, but you’ll be nodding differently depending on which instrument you’re listening to.

Djeurney

Another track made with the Yamaha Reface CS, playing with the delay effect and the in-built looper.

I put this track at the end of the album because it gets a little bit messy by the end, and if that puts anybody off, then you’ve already made it all the way through the album so that’s ok!

Thanks for reading! A Few Good Bloops can be found on various platforms including Spotify and Youtube, and you can buy the album on Bandcamp.