Bite The Watermelon suite

[na_th_an]

Long story short: back in 1995, my band (Scumm) an I recorded our nth EP, an 7 song set callend "Bite The Watermelon". We were 16 or 17 at the time, and this was more a game than anything else. We used a quite nice tape deck to record everything live in one take: drum machine, keyboard, electric guitar, bass and vocals. Since then, this was my absolutely favourite recording of ours from the good ol' teenage times.

Last year, when lurking this very site, and after a couple of attempts at mastering my MBR, I had the idea of a "big" project: putting all those songs together and turning the EP into a suite. But with a twist: I would make a symphony of toy instruments. Most of them were monophonic, so I built my virtual orchestra in sections:

• The stylophoners: 4 stylphones, 1 set in bass, 2 in middle and 3 in high melody: first and second stylphone.
  
• The minicasio players: 3 monophonic Casio PT-31s.
  
• Winds: 1 Hohner melodica, 1 toy recorder, 1 harmonica.
  
• String/extra: 1 toy electric guitar with built-in amp, 1 modified acoustic with bass strings. Extra stuff included a glockenspiel and some other stuff I found around my house.
  
• Percussion: the beatbox built in the PT-31 keyboard mentioned above.
  

Recording was exhausting. As the tempo varied, I decided to record each of the 8 sections sepparately. It took one afternoon for each section to be completed.

I used complete sets of four tracks in the MBR to record each sections. Then panned them and bounced them to a pair of stereo virtual tracks. I usually worked this way:

• Recorded a guide track with me and an acoustic to T4V1 and copied it to T3V1. To lay any track in this list, I used one of these tracks as a guide.
• T1V2, T2V2, T3V2 and T4V2 for the stylophones. Bounced to T12V8.
• T1V3, T3V3, T3V3 for the Casios. Bounced to T34V8.
• T1V4, T2V4, T3V4 and T4V4 for the wind section, doubling as needed. Bounced to T12V7.
• T2V5, T2V5, T3V5 and T4V5 for the guitars section. Bounced to T34V7
• Recorded extra stuff, such as the glockenspiel and a korg monotron (used in the 4th section) got in the T12V7 or T34V7 mix, depending on the section.

Then I transfered the four stereo bounces to the computer and mixed everything together, joining the sections and adding the rythm track (I used loops sampled from the Casio PT-31).

This was painstacking, specially in some sections where I used the PT-31 as a piano and I have to record the chords and stuff in 4 times (it is monophonic).

I hope you all like it. A vocal track was intended, but I didn't have the time. My friends like it instrumental. I don't know what to do :-)

It's very long (16:33) so I can upload here. Here's a link to soundcloud.

Sections are:
00:00 - Alfombra (Carpet)
02:19 - El Accidente (The Accident)
04:26 - Caja de Música (Music Box)
05:59 - Me muero (I'm dying) <- this is my fave :-) If you are short of time, skip to this.
08:50 - Marcianos (Martians)
10:58 - Lluvia (Rain)
14:10 - Vaca (Cow)

Enjoy! And thanks for your time

[Farrell Jackson]

This quite creative......I did enjoy the listen but you are right, it's bit long for a casual listen at 16 plus minutes. Cool work!

Farrell

[Bluesberry]

I love this, such a happy fun sound you have crafted here.  Joy in musical form.  Well done na_an man.

[launched]

An exceptionally well crafted and performed mini instrument masterpiece!

Sweeeeeeeet!!

[na_th_an]

Thank you It was fun to be the director of the orchestra, albeit a toy orchestra

[cuthbert]

Stylophones, Casio, and Korg Monotron...what's not to like?

I listened to Me muero and Marcianos - very upbeat little pocket symphonies! I then found myself hooked to the end!

[na_th_an]

I'm glad you like it.

I'm in a band and we usually make good use of toy instruments. They simply rock People usually enjoy when we display the plethora of tiny boxes in our gigs, but we are usually a nightmare to mix. We are just three fellas but use up to 16 channels live! XD