I saved this on my phone from the original forum many, many, many years ago with the intent to read it properly. I’m so glad I did that, because the old forum was nuked. I figured it was appropriate to dust off and display here. It’s worth reading and is worth listening to 043 if you haven’t yet. @RFJ
Originally Posted by RFJ
This is the best thing I can come up with to say thanks…
I’m glad these questions have been posed because It gives me an opportunity to talk about what went into all of this from a technical standpoint. I’m always curious about the process, influence, and ethos of others so hopefully all of you will find interest in mine. I’ve also always wanted to read something like this from many other artists in the catalog and the below is born out of that desire.
Many of you, by nature of your membership here, are already aware of many of the things I’ll touch on. But, being as this is a learning community, maybe one day the wayward music maker will run across this and find some answers as to what it is that might be wrong…
First off, influence. It’s nearly impossible to make something that has never before been heard. We can try but the fact is we can’t, or I can’t at least, ignore influence. There exists, however a clear cut difference in influence and copy. Down through the years I’ve been influenced by many on the musical front. From The Cure to Autechre and pretty much everything in between. But, with that said, my primary influence in making this came from right here in the IDMf catalog. If you like what I have done and possess an open mind, chances are, you’ll love this:
IDMf037 μ-metik - Paths
As far as making something that’s never been heard I think, if you click that link, you’ll hear something that’s about as close to totally original as you can get. I’m not just saying that because he posted in here either, it’s because it’s the truth. While our albums are vastly different in nature I think you can hear the influence of his record dripping all throughout mine.
Originally Posted by UCoB
what was your relationship to music during all these years? was there a soundtrack to your madness? i don’t know when you started messing around with production, but if it was while all of that was going on, how much importance (if any) did you give it?
Originally Posted by RFJ
I started listening to electronic music in 1997. I was introduced to Aphex / AE / BoC / etc. right out of the gate, in Oklahoma of all places. I didn’t start trying to make it though until 2006. One would think that after 8 years of doing something that I’d have much more material than a five track and a couple of one offs. I grabbed a copy of FL Studio the Christmas I was married and quickly found out that just because I liked what I had heard through the years, and that I knew how to use a computer, that did not mean making it would come easy at all.
So, I piddled around for a few years, with numerous stops and restarts, until one day I saw a video for the MPC2500 and I was convinced that would be the thing that would cure all of my production woes. Soon after that I nabbed one off of eBay and was quickly disappointed when I couldn’t use it straight away and, being as I didn’t really want to have to sit there and learn anything, found the process of trying to sample anything on my own to be far too arduous. I decided the best thing to do would be to sell it for something else, like a synth maybe or anything that came with sounds because then I knew it would get much, much easier.
That’s when I found this place and the only reason I registered was to ask what I should trade my MPC for and leave. I’ve learned since then the folly in questions of that nature exists in the simple fact that one can make great music on anything provided they’re willing to sit there and learn. I learned that both by staying here and via my own experience.
The drugs and alcohol were in full swing shortly after I became a member here and from that point on,I hate to admit this, but my reasons for acquiring new gear and trying to make tracks was, primarily, to impress you people. Obviously I loved music, and had always wanted to make it on one level or another, but when I saw what was possible via the internet I was instantly driven, not by the process but, by trying to hurry up and get some shit on a release somewhere. Quickly my soundcloud was filled with whatever shitty jam I had done the night before.
By this time I had gone from the MPC, to a Yamaha RS7000 an Alesis Micron, some shitty box from E Mu called the Mo-Phatt, yes the Mo-Phatt, and the all time worse piece of gear I’ve ever owned the Roland Mc-303. Again, the drugs were present and I still had no desire to sit there and learn anything, so any experimentation that I was doing was very dishonestly motivated due to the primary reason being to impress as mentioned earlier.
To make a long part of this story short I finally landed on an Elektron Monomachine and the fabled Korg MS-2000r. I guess at this point I was learning a few things because you can’t help but pick up a trick or two by reading a forum of this nature on the daily. But I still, by and large, refused to dig in all the way. These were the pieces of gear I had in my possession upon checking into treatment and these are the pieces of gear I had when I got out.
I’ll tie in the rest of this answer here in a second but…
Originally Posted by UCoB
just curious if you ever got the urge to mess around with any music making while you were drunk/high and what kind of results that lead to.
Originally Posted by RFJ
Yes the urge was there but as stated before the motivation was totally dishonest so any and all experimentation led nowhere. It’s my experience that the primary trap with dishonest motivation is everything that comes out sounds like a bad copy of something that came before it, simple as that. I’ll never be Autechre. When I try to be it will never sound right. Even if one day it would, what’s the point anyway because it’s already been done, and probably been done much better.
Originally Posted by Muse-ic
I would like to hear about your musical journey as well. For example you mentioned you had a guitar, did you play in any bands, make anything?
Originally Posted by RFJ
The first band I played in I played saxaphone in the sixth grade jazz band at my Jr. High.
Music and the making of music on one level or another has always been present as long as I can remember. I’ve played in highschool band, rock bands, punk bands, tried to be a singer songwriter in my own band but none of it ever worked. Not to beat a dead horse here but the point I’m trying to drive home here is it didn’t work because, at the end of the day, it was never about the music. It was always about someone else and what they thought of me. Maybe some people can “make it” that way, and I’m pretty sure there are some who have but, it was an impossible thing for me.
Originally Posted by Wetty Bhite
This truly is a remarkable album and Ben, You did an amazing mastering job on this, so hats off to the both of you.
Originally Posted by RFJ
Thanks for your comments on the album Jhon, and yes you are correct, Benwaa really knocked those masters out of the park.
Originally Posted by Wetty Bhite
So I’m curious, what are the samples of the small child?
Originally Posted by RFJ
The samples of my daughter were collected over a three month period from January of 2012 to March of the same year. Tying this in with a previous answer leads me to the sale of my Monomachine and the MS-2000 roughly 8 months post treatment. What lead me to that decision was the track that I made for IDMf039 -Sounds for Skeletons.
What happened was I banged out a crappy track on the Monomachine in hopes of getting something finally on one of these IDMf releases. The original source material for that track was horrendous. I knew this and was resigned to not even turn it in at one point in time during the composition phase. So I took everything I had, dumped it all in to the copy of Ableton Live Lite that I had been using to record bits of hardware over the previous “x” amount of years and instantly learned probably the most valuable lesson I’ve learned in all these years trying to do this. The lesson learned was something you see people say but never fully understand until it
happens…
It’s not what you use that matters but how much you’re willing to sit there and learn that does.
Sounds like hyperbole but I can tell you it’s the 100% truth. I began cutting, resampling, and resequencing the loops I made on the Elektron Box and was made quickly aware that over the years of unsuccessfully fiddling with the hardware I had also been learning, by default, how to use Live. That realization came like a slap in the face because for years I was convinced that if I could just find the right setup I’d be able to make it work. Looking back, I know now, that I was so wrong. So I sold all the gear to fund an upgrade to Live 9 and with the remaining funds purchased an Audio Technica Condenser Microphone and that’s what I used to make what we have here.
I spent a large amount of time recording anything and everything I could find but struck gold when I set the mic up in the bathroom one night while I was giving the kids their bath. As a result of that session I then began recording anything I could of my daughter. Many times I would set the mic up in her room and walk away. I recorded her talking, I recorded her reading to me, I recorded her reading her own stories she had written at school, and I recorded her playing. That left me with several hours of raw audio which I listened through over a period of time. I cut out the best bits and organized them into folders and the end result / “lyric sheet” is as follows:
Track 1 - White Flags
A light burned in the window…
Maybe they can help us…
You guys should go home after dark.
Track 2 - Contemplation
The king of all wild things was lonley…
And he wanted to be…
Where someone loved him best of all.
Track 3 - The Last Analysis
Magic trick
She could freeze to death, I have to find her
He struggled to unbuckle his briefcase but his fingers felt frozen
Magic trick
Jack
Jack tried to stay calm he took a few breaths
Ahmad-a-call-a-moda-bhast (Think, magic words)
Magic trick
Track 4 - A Narrow Escape
Look Out!
They’re going to capture you
You…can’t…get us.
Track 5 - Morning
Out of the storm…
Eager for another glimpse…
Out of the storm…
I’m a butterfly! - IFJ
Out of the storm.
Some of these things she said directly and other things I cut and pasted
together to make them say what you hear in the context of the track.
First off I was very excited to see this. It’s an odd thing
reading something like this about something you have made. I was nervous
but also very pleased when it was all said and done…obviously. I’ll
respond to a few points to try and bring some additional clarity then be
done…
Originally Posted by dajwxp
RFJ - Of Storybook and Sound Track-by-Track Review
The album begins with White Flags, which opens with a surreal filtered choir
Originally Posted by RFJ
Anything you hear on the record, that even remotely sounds like a
human voice, tribal chant, or choir, is the voice of my daughter as were
many of the sounds that don’t. The things one can do with a simple
piece of audio via layering, resampling, and cutting are literally
endless. Unless you’re looking for some “phat” analogue bass, these days
the source of the sound secondary to what you do with it after it’s
captured.
Originally Posted by dajwxp
The drums enter, masterfully paralleled to the atmosphere; I think it’s necessary to state somewhere
that one of the highlights in this album is the masterful use of drums.
Originally Posted by RFJ
It’s interesting your use of the word masterful. It’s interesting
because, let’s face it, there are many more albums out there that pull
off many more fancy tricks than what you hear here. I think the main
thing I could say about drums is the most important thing one can do is
take the additional time to manually adjust the velocity of the drum
track per hit. That’s really what brings whatever mastery you hear in my
work. It takes time but bringing the most human feel possible can take a
very standard drum beat to a totally new place.
Originally Posted by dajwxp
A Narrow Escape is clearly the highlight of this album - detuned piano juxtaposed skilfully with fragments of the girl’s voice; fragments of drum beats.
Originally Posted by RFJ
That detuned piano was recorded with the mic I mentioned earlier on an old upright my wife and I picked up last year for $100.00. It cost more to have the damn thing moved across town than it did to buy it. Piano lessons for my daughter is the intention and, at the time I recorded it, we had yet to have it tuned.
I picked this to specifically reply to because of your use of the word “highlight.” This track, as with all of the others, was pulled back from the brink of full on suck about 3/4ths of the way through composition. I wanted to note this so I could point out that it’s of vital importance, both on the global level of ones production and on a track by track basis, to not give up before it gets there. It’s easy to scrap a project and move on. But my “best” results have always been born from something that is going nowhere but not abandoned.
Originally Posted by dajwxp
From the beginning of the album, artist RFJ carves out a soundscape that cannot be described using the “genres” which we define music by. Because an album of such honest, of such genuine sincerity, takes you on a sixteen-and-a-half minute journey to the honest realities of life. I’m not the guy to put scores on albums, but this album doesn’t deserve a score - it falls into a category so unexplored by modern music that it’s impossible to judge it the same way.
Originally Posted by RFJ
You’re too kind, really, too kind. But if what you say here is
true it’s because of what I was talking about earlier. When I began
planning this collection of songs I began by thinking about what I
wanted to communicate and the feelings I wanted to get across. It wasn’t
about “them”, or what fancy tricks I could pull to try and impress a
listener. It was about the music and the music alone. Sure I had a
desire to get it out there but that desire at no point in time trumped
the desire to just speak honestly through the tracks and to try as hard
as I could to be true to what I can do as an “artist.” When we strive to
achieve these things it leaves little room for trying to sound like
artist “x” and makes way for something that has the potential of
striking a chord with the listener.
If we can figure out a way to communicate with another human being via
our chosen medium the results will follow. The results might not come in
the form of a contract or a paycheck but when “success” is measured in
terms like that it begins the viscous cycle that I’ve been talking about
since the beginning. There’s nothing wrong with making a buck or two.
But, in my humble opinion, if that is the primary goal of the chase,
chances are you will wind up with frustration, and chances are after
that the desire to communicate will be crippled.
Thanks be to you and everyone else for the kind words and support. I never expected anything like this.