Benjamin Santiago's AKA$HIC RECORDINGS

beat of the week no.014. Abandoned in the ROM

This beat used the same chord organ for the background chords, then I built the melody and bass line to go with it. The drums were meant to be like one of those cheesy organs that has drum accompaniment. You’ve probably found one being thrown away in your town and tried to rescue it from oblivion.

Since the melody sounded kind of Gameboy-esque to me I picked a video game related title. Sometimes when people snoop around the ROM chips that video game cartridges were burned onto, they find unused graphics (the easiest to detect). I chose the title imagining the song was from an unused bonus stage or something in a Wario Land or Wario Land-like game.

This beat was composed exclusively with Ableton Live.

beat of the week no.009. Hand Emerging from the Rubble

Wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with this one. I had a completely different idea and it became this. I had an idea while I was walking but lost it and hoped it would come back. No dice. The name doesn’t have any real meaning except a lot of post rock-ish stuff sounds to me like stuff rising. Like a Shredder’s hand out of the rubble.

This beat was made with Ableton Live and Guitar Rig. yup.

beat of the week no. 007, Dog Trapped in a Hot Car

This is the final beat of April! I started making this one with the guitar part that ends the current incarnation of the track. It sounded very Radiohead-y OK Computer era (particularly Let Down one of my favorites from that album). I tried to fight the impulse to make it more “Radiohead-y” and also tried to produce something quickly without over analyzing it.

The track name comes from the Radiohead song All I Need from In Rainbows. 

This beat was made with the synthesizers of Ableton Live for all the sounds that are not guitars, and Guitar Rig in VST form to create the guitar sounds.

(Please stay tuned, project files/stems/better album art coming soon)

beat of the week no.005, Winmark

Not much to say about where I got the idea for this one. I was just walking and got the idea for the guitar part that ends the song and built the rest around it. Not really too enthused about the distortion level on the main melody, but like the rhythm of it. There’s also something to be desired about all the “let one thing play by itself and then go into a new part” things I did. 

This was done in Abelton Live using synths internal to Abelton Live, Tapeworm, and Guitar Rig.

beat of the week no.004, Urf Werk

This one is clearly inspired by Earth. I’ve been listening to a lot of their latter stuff and initially had a different intention with this track, but just let it ride when it started coming out. Nothing really intellectualized beyond that.

This beat was made using synths and samples native to Ableton Live, except for the Tapeworm VST (which is free) and Guitar Rig (which is not free)

beat of the week no.003, Recontextual Eyes.

Not much to talk about here. I just wanted to use the way you can randomize clip playback in Ableton Live. It ended up coming out a bit Dan Deacon-y. I’ll probably play with it again. 

This beat was made with Ableton Live. You’ll need Guitar Rig for the guitar sounds. The rest is just audio I recorded and synths native to Ableton.

beat of the week no.002, Yes Pussyfooting.

No real inspiration here, I just wanted to play more with the low-tuned (I just dropped the low E string further down to C) guitar I had in 001. I also wanted to play with the warping capabilities in Ableton Live. The title is a dumb play on the Brian Eno/Robert Fripp album No Pussyfootingbecause the Dub Trio (users of lower tunings) album Another Sound is Dying has cats on the cover. This is how low my humor stoops. 

This beat was made in Ableton Live. It uses Guitar Rig for the guitar part, but otherwise the synths and samples are internal to Ableton.

beat of the week no. 001. Vherm in Your Head. 

In the documentary Kraftwerk and the Electronic Revolution (watch part of it here → www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vqlx_8MtoSk), Conrad Schnitzler describes hippie music as having flute melodies that are like “worms in your head.” The track uses the free VST tapeworm (download it here → www.tweakbench.com/tapeworm), a software version of a mellotron, which uses samples of various instruments including a flute. This track uses the string samples. Kraftwerk often used mellotrons and similar digital sample based keyboards (the Orchestron) during their career. 

This beat was made with Ableton Live, Guitar Rig 4 (for the guitar) and the aforementioned tapeworm VST. The rest were vsts/samples internal to Ableton Live.

beat of the week no.000. In a Desert Fashion. 

The track name comes from the book/movie Dune. In it, the character Liet Kynes remarks that Paul Atreides has his stillsuit fitted “desert fashion”. I can’t remember if the exact quote is both in the book and movie, but it definitely happens in both. The Dune reference is because the main melodies sound kind of cornily “desert” ish. The voice that starts the track out sounded like some kind of watery jug thing, and water is super important in Dune. 

This beat was made entirely with synths internal to Ableton Live.