MSE solo record #1

MoreSpaceEcho · Post by **MoreSpaceEcho** » Tue Mar 31, 2015 9:29 am

https://morespaceecho.bandcamp.com/releases

i love repetition. i hate static loops.
i like simple harmony. i don't like steely dan style Maj7m6#4b5sus2add9 chords
i don't like (and aren't capable of) overly flashy playing. i do like complex mixes of simple playing.

so this sounds like that. everything takes a minute to get going and two to wind down. some shit happens in the middle.

what the critics say:

ms morespace: "these are more like paintings than songs"

my mom: "it sounds like stick figures doing aerobics"

lyman · Post by **lyman** » Tue Mar 31, 2015 1:10 pm

To me it sounds like the dark parts of the city I rarely visit, and never think about.

I really enjoyed it, it was the perfect soundtrack to the short story I'm working on as I listened (quasi-futuristic). Man, those drums in the middle of "Sea" are absolutely crushed.

MoreSpaceEcho · Post by **MoreSpaceEcho** » Tue Mar 31, 2015 1:14 pm

thank you!

those drums were through....i think....a dod gonkulator and a phaser...

mwerden · Post by **mwerden** » Wed Apr 01, 2015 11:54 am

Sounds really, really great. I also loved the levee style drums in "Sea", the stereo tremolo stuff is awesome, and I really dig the bass. What kind of bass rig were you using?

Was also wondering about creative process - did you play everything? It's interesting that this type of music came from more of a solo record approach as opposed to a group of musicians jamming.

Nicely done!

JWL · Post by **JWL** » Wed Apr 01, 2015 1:25 pm

Fabulous! I love stuff like this, cool instrumental music, as earbud background when I'm reading or writing. Drowns out the coffeeshop din.

MoreSpaceEcho · Post by **MoreSpaceEcho** » Wed Apr 01, 2015 1:29 pm

hey thanks!

bass rig was nothing fancy at all....either a really cheap, awful sounding j bass or a good sounding p bass...direct. some ITB eq and compressed with either the blockfish or a drawmer 1968. reamped on a couple songs through either an old polytone or a fender deluxe.

process....most of this was recorded way back in 2001. i made a bunch of beats in reason and rebirth and then just starting piling shit on. it quickly grew impossibly complicated, everything was 20 minutes long and a big formless mess. and at the time i didn't really know what to do with it. i abandoned it when i got started with another project.

it sat on a shelf for a decade.

sometime in 2011, i found one of the guitar tracks in the depths of my computer, and i was like "oh yeah....THAT record....i wonder what it sounds like...."

dumped everything back in, and surprisingly i still liked it, and with the benefit of another 10 years experience (and having heard talk talk's 'spirit of eden' and 'laughingstock' in the meanwhile), now i sort of knew what to do with it.

so whenever i've had some free time the last few years i've just been picking at it bit by bit. recorded some new stuff, mostly drums on the last 4 songs, but mainly just spent a lot of time editing and mixing.

it's all improvised....i just record a few tracks of whatever instrument, and then go through and take out most of it, just leaving the nice notes. the only things that are sort of worked out are the basslines, i felt like since most of this is kind of...amorphous...the bass needed to be sort of solid, as that's the only thing really holding these songs together.

it's 95% all me. but one of the things i love most is listening to the interplay amongst instruments, so i really tried to make it interesting on that level. i always imagine it as a band where the singer failed to show for the gig, so the rhythm section just shares a fatty and proceeds to freak out and amuse themselves for a half hour or so.

it ended up sounding more or less like i heard it in my head all along, but holy shit did it take a lot of work to make what was coming out of the speakers match the sound in my head.

MoreSpaceEcho · Post by **MoreSpaceEcho** » Wed Apr 01, 2015 1:33 pm

and JWL, i tried to make it the sort of thing that would be rewarding if anyone was actually inclined to sit there and pay attention to it, but also work as nice background music, just sort of droning away pleasantly whilst you're cleaning the house or whatever.

DrummerMan · Post by **DrummerMan** » Wed Apr 01, 2015 1:48 pm

I don't have any cool metaphors to describe it and I haven't been able to listen it completely or on anything other than laptop speakers but I'm really enjoying it so far!

Definitely agree that it has a metamorphosing quality that suggests people playing and discovering ideas together. I am also curious whether that was part of how it was done.

Nicely done!

DrummerMan · Post by **DrummerMan** » Wed Apr 01, 2015 1:51 pm

I see you were writing while I was writing.

MoreSpaceEcho · Post by **MoreSpaceEcho** » Wed Apr 01, 2015 2:15 pm

thank you! you gotta listen on something besides a laptop. it doesn't make any sense at all if you can't hear the bass! and i can't hear the bass at all on my laptop speakers, which led to considerable pre-release heart attacks, but in the end i just gave up.

boid · Post by **boid** » Fri Apr 03, 2015 5:48 am

ms morespace: "these are more like paintings than songs"

Ha, I can see that.

I'm not through all tracks yet but nice work, Scott!

MoreSpaceEcho · Post by **MoreSpaceEcho** » Fri Apr 03, 2015 9:27 am

thanks!

JWL · Post by **JWL** » Fri Apr 03, 2015 9:55 am

MoreSpaceEcho wrote:and JWL, i tried to make it the sort of thing that would be rewarding if anyone was actually inclined to sit there and pay attention to it, but also work as nice background music, just sort of droning away pleasantly whilst you're cleaning the house or whatever.

Totally. Listened again, there is definitely good depth to it.

SpencerMartin · Post by **SpencerMartin** » Fri Apr 03, 2015 12:42 pm

Man, I love it! Forgive me if I'm way off, but I'm hearing some Radiohead (but less uptight), some Godspeed You! Black Emperor (but more funky and sonically tighter), some Air (but less French), and maybe some RJD2 (but less sampled/pasted). I really dig the organic trip-hop vibe and could definitely see these in a film setting.

How often do you do your own solo projects?

Also, the drum ambiance is terrific. How much of that is from distant mic placement in a bigger room and how much is from reverb use?

MoreSpaceEcho · Post by **MoreSpaceEcho** » Fri Apr 03, 2015 1:46 pm

i've never listened to GYBE or Air, but i did used to date a french lady from montreal, maybe that counts. i like the RJD2 stuff i've heard, he's amazing at what he does....but for me, i've never been too into sampling/cut n paste...it's just much quicker and easier for me to go out and play a beat than to try and assemble something from samples...and other people do that much better than i could anyway.

i will definitely take less uptight than radiohead as a compliment! i love ok computer but the rest of their stuff leaves me cold. i try and make stuff that has a little bit of a sense of humor to it.

i've been making this sort of stuff forever, just messing around when i have some free time. i have two more records almost ready to go, that are similarly spacey and droney but stylistically they're pretty different from this one.

the drums....it's all just compressed room mics. tracks 2 and 5 were done out in my living room, which is big. the room mics are probably about 80% of the drum sound. just enough kick and overhead in there for definition and attack.

drums on 3 and 4 were done in the mastering studio, just kick and overhead. there might be a teeny tiny bit of fake reverb on #4, i don't remember. if there is it's barely audible. i think there's a little 1/8 note delay on that one too, again barely audible.

the drums on the first song were the only ones from the original recordings i did back in 2001. i only had a stereo mix to work with and it was ALL HIHAT. if i wrote out all the ridiculous bullshit i had to do just to make it sound like a reasonable representation of a dude playing drums in a room....you'd all fall asleep before i got to the end.

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