Benjamin Santiago's AKA$HIC RECORDINGS

beat of the week no.015, Beware of Daschund.

This beat was derived from a melody I had while taking a walk. I tried to build around it but found it kind of lame. The only way I found it acceptable was to add the dumb vocal sample and retriggering each part in a staccato fashion.

The vocal sample sounds like a dog, at least in the first part…to me anyway hence the title.

This beat was made with the synths and samples available in Abelton Live. The only other unusual thing I did was process the bass and main melody synthesizer through Guitar Rig.

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.013. Sad Baguette

My guitar is currently in need of repairs so I initially wanted to see what I could do without it (and no audio recording). I stumbled on the piano sounding part from freezing and warping an existing arpeggio (for the uninitiated, you can change the timing of an audio file in Ableton Live using the Warp tool/option). I played two warped pieces together and downpitched them to get that rhythmic interplay. Then I thought of the melody and played it using this chord organ I got from mah boy Max. Then did some dumb vocals on top of that.

It sounds like a sad baguette, hopefully I don’t need to explain this.

This beat was made using Ableton Live exclusively.

beat of the week no.012. The Palace Gates. 

My main starting point for this guy was just to do percussion that wasn’t based entirely on an existing drum kit in Ableton Live. The beat just kind of evolved from there and is somewhat standard fare as far as what I’ve been doing lately (high arpeggiator, downtuned really distorted guitar, little if any chord progression).

My main impetus for the name was that the beat ended up sounding like something that might appear in an illfated post-Jake Gyllenhaal incarnation of Prince of Persia (game or movie).

This beat was created with Ableton live for all the synthesizer and percussion sounds and used Guitar Rig (in VST form) for all the guitar sounds.

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.010. You Dun Goofed 

The Cyber Police have deemed this one the official background music to all looping gifs on the internet. If you don’t know what it means to have dun goofed, enlighten yourself here.

Everything in this beat except the vocal thing was done with Ableton Live. I used a microphone for that. durr.

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.008, The Right Kind of Tweed

The main impetus behind this beat was just to do an odd time signature that was basically truncating a 4/4 beat. This was what came out. I started with the guitar and built the drums/bass/keyboard parts around that. The drums are doing a thing where I take two different drum sets and split them left and right (in this case they aren’t hard panned). The bass part is my impression of The Whisper Song.

The name of the song is from an interview with Frank Zappa (sadly it was really close to his death), where he talked about meeting Nicholas Sloniminsky and how he was exactly what Zappa expected, part of it being that he had “The right kind of tweed…rumpled…worn for a thousand years.” Once I added the non palm-muted guitar it sounded like an old dude from the 19th Century rollin’ deep on his bicycle with the big wheel in the front, hence the tweed/old composer dude connection.

This beat was made with synths internal to Ableton Live except for the guitar, which was done with Guitar Rig. 

Ya heard?