Benjamin Santiago's AKA$HIC RECORDINGS

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.019. Little Umbrellas

Not too much of a story, this one just evolved out of sitting down and setting aside time to work on some music. I kind of am addicted to the dumb little “doggy bark” sampler instrument I made. I also am getting pretty accustomed to the instruments in Live. The analog one is quite robust.

I called it Little Umbrellas after the little paper things they usually serve with drinks. THAS WHAT IT SOUN LIKE.

This beat was made with Ableton Live and using synths internal to it.

Beat of the week no.018. Mysterious Passageway.

Just wanted to do another guitar-heavy beat this week and keep the actual music simple. The only thing not guitar is the bass line which is done with Operator, Ableton’s FM synthesizer.

The beat just sounded mysterious dude. 

This beat was made with Ableton Live and used Native Instruments’ Guitar Rig for the guitar sounds.

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.016. Intrastellar

This was another beat that was based on a melody that came to me while I was walking. It was kind of a bitch to make in Ableton Live because it is 3 measures of 4 and then one measure of five (and there is no sense of “17-ness” so I didn’t give it an odd time signature). I added one more note to the measure of 5 and then made it in 6/4, which I guess is kind of interesting.

The title is mainly a dumb play on words, but comes from Isao Tomita, who is probably best known for his version of Debussy’s Arabesque no.1, as it was used for the theme song for Star Gazers which I saw on public television as a kid. My dad was also into Tomita and I remember his version of Holst’s The Planets as well. I bring this up because I was kind of trying to imitate his ethereal synth voices. However, I also think it is kind of ingrained into my approach to additive synthesizers (ie Moog-like ones). The same way I’m usually trying to imitate Sega Genesis sound effects when I play with an FM synthesizer (the Genesis sound chip was made by Yamaha, it was similar to the one at the heart of the DX7, a very iconic FM synth).

This beat was made with Ableton Live and guitar processing in Native Instruments’ awesome, but unfortunately named program Guitar Rig.