Project 7: Do it yourself (or with friends)
We switched things up for Project 7. Rather than a recording covers, Project 7 was all about making something of your own. We just made something and shared it. The key to this was to share something created within February.
So here’s how it went:
Contributors created something of their own and recorded in Feb of 2021.
They shared it to Dropbox or just emailed Neil and included a pic to post with it on the website and a brief write-up about it.
Neil posted them here.
Last day to submit stuff was Sunday, February 28.
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON THIS PROJECT AT THE BASEMENT BLOG HERE!
Barrett’s song for Project 7
Passive Aggressor
This track was written less as a song but more as a score, maybe for a fictitious true crime podcast or a menacing driving thriller. I started this track a while ago as a means of experimenting with the arpeggiator features in GarageBand. It was a drawn out basic minimal piece for a long time. To offset the lead synth, I started adding in more ominous layers — backwards organ chords, synth swells and piano lines to get it to have a more sinister someone following you vibe.
The biggest challenge that I had was getting the exported mix to sound like it did in the software, I figured out that GarageBand has an auto-normalize function that is meant to make exporting quick ideas sound better but it was making the output much quieter, this has been my biggest frustration with all my mixes so far.
Things used on this track - GarageBand, Tyrell N6 for the big synth swells, Felt Instruments’ Lekko Piano, Kotakt Hybrid Keys for piano layers, Analog Lab Jupiter 8, Drawbar Organ, various drum machines and lots of Valhalla plugins.
-B
Noah’s song for Project 7
Sensational Plant
I’ve been listening to a podcast on Spotify called Welcome To Your Fantasy. It chronicles the birth of the Chippendales exotic dance empire in the 80’s. The show plays clips of Donahue interviewing an audience member who reacts to Chippendales by declaring, “Satan is the great deceiver.” This fundamentalist’s fashion choices fascinated me. This led me down a Phil Donahue rabbit hole, and I stumbled upon one of his biggest moments- when several of his audience members started to faint on his show, one-by-one. They stop the show and evacuated the studio for fear of a gas leak. Later it was revealed to be a hoax organized by a man named Alan Abel, who was an Andy Kaufman-like prankster.
Long way of saying I really like Phil Donahue, his show ran for nearly 30 years and he deserves a song. As you can hear, it’s just a basic demo, with a malfunctioning cheap ukulele I have that glows in the dark.
I channeled some Michael Stipe/soul coughing vibes. Paul Simon-esque lyrics- although I assure you I am nowhere near their genius.
Here’s the youtube clip that kind of inspired the song: https://youtu.be/gFrRvMmMA7c
Randy Dever’s song for Project 7
Macho Jam 4
I made this one this afternoon and hereby submit right before the deadline. It was an old idea I rehashed. It is just four notes phrased three ways over a drum beat.
Fresh jams did not come easily this time around.
Samples from a Boss DR-110 drum machine and a recording of a blender played back through the Elektron Digitakt. Korg Poly-61 and DSI Evolver for synths. Melodica is also played. I tried to add some heavy guitar in there but it sounded stupid.
-Randy
Welcome Colby Heston to basement sketches and check out his song for Project 7
Undo
This song started as an idea on guitar. I used my akai 25 key midi controller and came up with an electric piano part and built it off of those two components. Everything was recorded in GarageBand with a Focusrite audio interface.
-Colby
Welcome Jeff Mooridian to basement sketches and check out his song for Project 7
Underworld Gradient
I've written a lot of music this month, but mostly monkeying around. I think I'm going to use this particular track for a soundtrack project. I think. This tune came about by experimenting with arpeggiators in Logic. You can get some weird "overtones" and other phenomena (for lack of better description) using this feature especially when you link them with other instruments/tracks. Basically I'm saying this is a happy accident.
My synth work is limited to a CZ-101 as the MIDI controller and Logic Pro. It's definitely enough to tool around with and have fun. I also use a phone app called Auxy sometimes, but recently they got "wise" and started charging up the ying-yang for things, soooooo. Nevertheless, their sounds are really great. Too bad.
When listening to this track, imagine being in a van with 6 people tooling around the jungles of Indonesia. Seriously. Anyway, enjoy the fruits of my wandering, serendipity and naivete.
Best regards and maximum love,
Jeff
Jeff Kearns’ song for Project 7
Grace In Each Other
This tune came last December. The fatigue of trying to square the crazy might have been the catalyst. The takeaway image for me (rather than problematic toxicity) was of that feeling when you look down from a plane over the ocean and see that pattern of waves. How badass they are. The crazy loses its grip.
Thanks as always!
Jeff
Welcome Mike Brady to basement sketches and check out his song for Project 7
Talk-Singer
All month, this riff was the only thing I would play every time I picked up the guitar. I forced myself to turn it into a song but finding a structure and writing lyrics took several attempts before it felt like it was something. Recorded on my phone using the built-in mic, the mic on the ear buds and a multi-track app.
- Mike Brady
Welcome Bill Fricke to basement sketches and check out his song for Project 7
Feb Psyche
Here is my first submission to the group. Several days ago, I came up with a simple chord progression and had ambitions of making it kind of psychedelic. It turned into a country song. So, I came up with something different.
This one became more of what I was going for, or was it?
Had fun playing with the guitar sounds and trying to sing.
Recorded in Garageband using GB drum pattern that I messed with.
The rest are guitars in various forms, plus bass, and mellotron from GB.
Looking forward to doing more.
Enjoy!
Bill
Andrew Charon’s songs for Project 7
Step On Me
When Neil announced that Project 7 was to create an original song, I had a rough idea of what I wanted to do with this project. As always, I wasn’t really certain where I was going to end up, however I knew what my starting point was.
I’m submitting three variations of the same song. They are a series of sketches/prototypes that are based on a song that was written when I was back in high school in 1988 by a band I was in called Jennifer's Veil. Fast forward to 2015, my friend Phil (the singer/songwriter) and I decided it’d be fun to re-record some of our old songs and ended up wrapping up 2 tracks at the time. We didn’t really do anything with those recordings but our big accomplishment was to have recorded together. Now it’s 2021 and this opportunity came up to continue to work on the songs. Though Phil was on board with creating some updated tracks it unfortunately didn’t logistically work out for him to create new vocal content so I was able to “appropriate” some of the vocal tracks from the 2015 recording session.
In 1988 the original Jennifer's Veil recordings were on a Tascam 4 track and I remember there were many alternate mixes to some of the songs, so I thought I’d carry the spirit of that along to these tracks. It’s interesting to me working with MIDI, synths, etc because it’s easy to swap patches to create a different feel to the music. Once the structure of the song is created, it’s simple to clone it, swap and manipulate sounds, move things around a little bit in the sequencer and come up with a completely different variation of the same song. I’m curious if that’s a common thing for composers to do who create in MIDI with multiple devices.
The first was the pulverizer mix (I ran a couple of channels though a “Pulverizer Demolition” filter in this track). Phil and I had recorded multiple layers of vocals and all were utilized in this version. After this version was complete, I wanted to do something more minimal so I created more of an ambient mix. While working on this, I decided the final version would be called the “bleep” mix and designed the song around that concept. The vocals ended up being more of a whisper in this one. Also, included was the original 1988 track. Though I remember playing the song live on my Gibson Ripper bass, I’m not sure if I actually played bass on this recording or not.
Stay healthy and safe.
Andrew
Tom Stromsodt’s songs for Project 7
Average Ordinary Life
I struggled a little bit with how to approach this one. Write a specific song for the project? Submit everything from February? In the end, I just submitted the first thing that got "done".
Lyrics are hard. I tend to write better under a specific construct or theme. Currently, I'm working on a series of songs about the banality of self destruction. Or, as Randy so eloquently put it, "life". Hence this song.
I don't always work in the "bad metal" genre but it is a big part of my DNA so I'm not afraid of it. I'm an old dude writing songs for an audience of three. It is what it is.
Let's see. Gear. The Peavey "Rage" is featured prominently on this track. One of the bass tracks, the lead guitar, and one of the vocals all went through it. I used the mic that comes with the wii U to record all three. The song started as a drum beat based loosely on a Glenn Kotche sticking from his Instagram feed. Karl Q. gave me some Bonham samples 15 years ago. These were mapped onto the midi from the Roland kit. It's all soft synths using the free LABS plugin, which everyone should download.
Very Truly Yours,
t.
Bonus song…
Eric “Czahr” Scott’s song for Project 7
Be
This song came out of nowhere roughly one week ago. Up until then I had no ideas for Project 7 and was considering being a hack and dusting off an old song. During work one day a melody popped into my head, accompanied by words. One of those moments where a song drops out of the void almost fully formed. I scrambled to write down the words and record the melody before it left my brain, as these things do.
It turned into a bit of a cursed song, as all of my attempts to make any kind of reasonably well recorded track were foiled by one thing or another. Strings broke that I had no replacements on hand for, kids screamed, cats scratched and hammered on closed doors, and then finally my USB mic decided it wanted to crackle more than it wanted to record. In the interest of getting a song up, I decided I was OK working with what I had and ended up growing kind of fond of the scrappy quality. It is a sketch after all.
Maybe I'll put more work into some day, or maybe this is all it'll ever be. Whatever the case, I like it. It's an upbeat folky thing about trying not to overthink things and just enjoy life as it happens. The lyrics fit the nature of the recording I suppose. There's absolutely no fancy gear used, although if you listen closely you might hear my old Buddha Machine burbling away in the background.
-Eric “Czahr” Scott
Neil’s song for Project 7
Old Eyes Open
I’ll be the first to admit that this isn’t one of my better songs, but the point of basement sketches is not to wait for perfection but rather to share progress. It is in that spirit that I submit this tune that I created over the past week or so.
As you will likely be able to tell from listening to it, I have basically tried a series of experiments and strung them together into a song. I played around with using the Moog iPad app with GarageBand for iPad and then transferring into a GarageBand session on my laptop. I did some experimentation with different ukuleles and vocal layering. In the end, I viewed the process as a helpful experience for me in terms of learning new approaches and playing around with ways to more effectively use audio apps.
Hopefully, this will be encouraging to anyone who might be inhibited to share their songs. Clearly, I didn’t overthink nor overproduce this one. This submission should make anyone feel at ease about sharing their own ideas, no matter how imperfect you might believe them to be. It is intended to be a sketch after all.
-Neil
My initial submission of Old Eyes Open is so bad, primarily because I left in the cheesy beat throughout the entire song. Please review the “Better Mix” version.