Benjamin Santiago's AKA$HIC RECORDINGS

beat of the week no.027. Cinq Alive

The name of this beat comes from the fact that it is in 5/4. Nothing too crazy, but I generally think in odd time signatures. The actual phrase is from a skit on SNL where southern ladies ask for Five Alive in France (I can’t find it on youtube, but Wikipedia confirms it exists).

I originally wanted to do a drum sound made from the instrument in Live called Tension (which simulates stringed instruments), but later just added some more regular drums into the mix. 

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

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.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.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.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.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.