Ironic Minor - a Chapperz original

[chapperz66]

This started with me playing with the "poor-man's Bach" melodic minor bit using a new Arturia soft synth called Pigments that I got at an introductory price.  Anyway I quite liked it so I turned it into a slightly longer piece.  I wasn't going to put any guitar on it but decided to do a bit of strummy acoustic.


Hope you like it.

Paul Chapman

[Pete C]

A nice piece of music Paul !  I'd love to be able to use musical software but I always find it too complicated.

Pete

[Flash Harry]

Ironic Bach - it was ever thus. Brilliant nevertheless.

What did you use for the drums, they're fab.

[Blooby]

There were a couple moments that sounded like Tull. And naturally I am imagining you composing this in tights and a codpiece. Which reminds me, I have to remove that fork from my eye later.

The way this is orchestrated has me practically giddy.

Bloody hell, I'll limp away back to an attempt at Chuck Berry now.

Blooby

[Redler]

Another winner! Cool synth proggy music. Fine job on each way. I'm interested in, too how you did the drum track?

Have you ever heard Pekka Pohjola, a bassist and multi-instrumentalist (RIP) from Finland? You may like his music....


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-65Ee58UCQw

[chapperz66]

Thanks for your kind words! I really appreciate it.

Parts of the drums took me a while to do.  The drums on the opening riff section are some multi-track loops called "Heavy Hitter" that I got from the Presonus website.  You get short sections of individually miced drum kits, snare top and bottom, kick inside and out, Hihat, toms, overheads, room and ambient mics.  The advantage is that since they are individual tracks you can mix them as you prefer, compress this, add reverb to that, eq indiscriminately ad nauseam and generally faff about which I find great fun (although my wife loses the will to live)! I guess the disadvantage is that you can't really change the loops much so you have to write music to fit the drums rather than the other way round. None of the loops were right for the rest of the song, particularly the Bach style bits which have a few time signature changes in them, so I "played" these myself using one-shot drum hits which came with the heavy hitter loops. To start with I played them on a midi keyboard with the keys mapped to individual drums but then I decided to buy a pad controller, a Presonus Atom, which makes it much easier although it still takes me some time to do. Clearly you really have to use a DAW to use this approach since the track count gets a bit serious.


I hadn't heard of Pekka Pohjola previously but I like the Youtube video so I will check out some more.


As it happens I think I look quite cool in tights and codpiece - only slightly more ridiculous than Ian Anderson!  This may well be a bit too much information.   

Be warned, I have got a few more tunes in the pipeline so keep your heads down!

Paul

[cuthbert]

Fascinating and intricate piece of music - love the clockwork-style arpeggios, drums, and the overall proggy atmosphere. Lots to hold one's interest and I certainly enjoyed listening!

[Farrell Jackson]

That was great Paul! You are a real proggy monster......I really enjoyed this one!

Farrell

[Mike_S]

Damn, a great journey Paul... this is great, a little bit reminiscent of some Yes material (later work)

Mike

[Ferryman_1957]

Wow, it sounds like Yes, Gentle Giant and the Yellow Magic Orchestra had a massive mash up! Great stuff Paul, very cleverly put together but never at the expense of musicality. Lots of great twists and turns and you did a really good job of using drum loops without it sounding like you had to force the music to fit them.

And despite me saying it sounds like other things, it doesn't really. You've got your own unique take on things and that shines through.