Benjamin Santiago's AKA$HIC RECORDINGS

beat of the week no.025. Crystal Healer

The name of this one is because it sounds a little cheese to me, but not in a bad or ironic way. I think it is mainly the delayed 808. It just sounds like a dude who is into crystals trying to be relevant. In particular, I remember hearing at one point that on one of Yes’ latter tours Jon Anderson reserved a special tent that was full of crystals and he could absorb their energy.

The guitar part came from another one that had the same chords but a different feel. That one sounded more like a Dave Matthews Band song (Satellite). The one present here is more of a bad Allan Holdsworth impression. The lead part I am actually pretty proud of, it was a different line, that I cute up into little bits, and triggered the parts individually (kind of in an MPC style). The sound I got is from taking a reverb turning up the decay/time of the reverb and then placing it in front of the amp and a distortion pedal (in this case it was Guitar Rig’s facsimile of a ProCo Rat).

This beat was made with Ableton Live and Native Instruments Guitar Rig.

beat of the week no.22. (F)LOWBEE

The name of this track is just a (dumb) play on words. In an effort to play guitar parts in a lower register without getting a baritone, 7 or 8 String guitar, I just tune the low E string down to B. This creates a fortuitous situation if you are playing in a B-related key (In this case B Minor…I guess relative to D, but there isn’t much else going on so it doesn’t really matter). Another thing I have been doing is randomizing several parts to create more dynamic sequences out of simpler sets of parts. Here I basically take a relatively simple drum track, duplicate and freeze it and then use the resulting audio file to warp it and create a bunch fills/noise. These are randomly launched and gives the feeling like there is much more going on.

This beat was created with Ableton Live and Native Instruments’ Guitar Rig.

beat of the week no.021. Monte Cristo

A Monte Cristo (sandwich) is too much. It represents crossing the border into excess. It is also delicious. Lately I’ve been experimenting a lot with double tracking the guitars and drums and it has been a pain to actually mix it together in a way that doesn’t sound like d00d00. It also tends to hinder me a bit with the very rare awkwardness of switching between composing and arranging in Ableton Live (if you’re familiar with Live, what I mean is that I will often start writing something, be satisfied and make a second or third part. I then have to arrange them together and I might create a basic arrangement. If I go in and add another part that maybe requires a slight variation I will often have to go back and change the arrangement, which is not a terrible hassle but a little counter intuitive at times)

One of the things I’ve been wanting to do is to take one phrase and then just alter the voices performing the melody and background. This is kind of what Zappa does in Peaches en Regalia, which is probably where I got the idea. I also wanted to have the different parts a little more refined since there would not be a “B part” that had different chords or a significantly different dynamic. I did this by making a few variations on the melody and drum parts and then had them be randomly selected in Live.

This beat was made in Ableton Live with the synths and samples internal to it and Native Instruments’ awesome VST plugin Guitar Rig.

beat of the week no.017. Battle Squadron

Wanted to do some more guitar-centric beats this week, and work with that weird god-like voice sample I had last week. I like how it loops at different times depending on the pitch. Used the Harmonic Synthesizer in Guitar Rig to do that heavy bass sound in this. 

The title of this beat comes from the Sega Genesis game of the same name. Something about the voice sample I am using reminded me of the sounds used for one of the weapons in that game.

beat of the week no.011. Twinklin’ ’n’ Puffin’

This beat was mainly an attempt to have the melody split across two instruments. I wanted it to have a Grandaddy-type sound as it started to develop, but the drums wouldn’t let that happen. I’m going to try some more dynamic drum experiments in the future, as I’m starting to get tired of playing with 4 on the floor type stuff.

This beat was made with Ableton Live for everything except the guitar sounds which were made with Native Instruments’ awesome tool Guitar Rig.

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.006, Hard Body

Pretty happy with this one. Originally wanted to do a more static Kraftwerk-style thing, but ended up with something that sounded like a really bad, newer NIN song. Didn’t really think about where it came from too much, just kind of let it happen.

This beat was made with Ableton Live with samples and synths internal to it. The guitar sounds were made with Native Instruments Guitar Rig.

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.