Project 29: Creative Collaboration
For Project 29, the assignment is to create an original composition based on the theme of "smoke," but the constraint is that you have to create your submission in collaboration with another Basement Sketches contributor. It's up to you and the person with whom you collaborate to determine how you will work together. The only rule is that you can't do it alone.
Songs are due Saturday night, January 6.
Cloak of Smoke
By Brian Eveslage & Randy Dever
We originally started with a different riff but had a really hard time to try and go anywhere with it. Randy suggested a different rhythm which evolved into the main synth riff. Then we just sort of built off that. Just a short, sweet jam... Makes me think of an 80's cop / detective drama or maybe it's just a pop goth song...
Thanks to Chris Mueller and Tom Stromsodt for the cigarette sample and introducing Josie D on the saxophone.
Smoke, and Nothing Else
By Mike Bettison and Andrew Charon
Mike
This project was so great. And I really want to thank Andrew for his creativity, hard work and generous spirit! I just loved collaborating with him. We started with some vague inspiration from the Dust Brothers and my interest in continuing to explore Andrew's Celebration of the Lizard voice. Then Andrew pulled out the writings of Baruch Spinoza and suggested we replace every reference to God with the word "Smoke" to create the lyrics! Freakin' brilliant!!!
I had the most fun messing with some out of control guitar sounds and delays and simply messing with the form of this piece along with all the different transitions.
I also loved working in Andrew's studio and with Logic Pro. It was interesting to see all the similarities and differences between Ableton and Logic.
Finally, I love the emotional arc of this piece and how it ends with an epic and tragic jam. I feel like it would work in a soundtrack for the ending scene in Planet of the Apes with Charlton Heston pounding sand.
Andrew
I had so much fun collaborating on this project with Mike, and also feel fortunate that he was open to some of my weird ideas along the way. We had never written music together in the past and with him using Ableton and me using Logic we initially weren’t really sure how this was going to take form, but the song really came to life organically over time. We met up together four times to work on the song, talk progress and evolve the song. It was great. For the first sitting Mike came in with some ideas and we latched onto them. Then we decided to work in Logic. Mike really challenged me to dig into some automations, synths, effects, arpeggiators, etc. right away, inspiring me to dig into some of the deep capabilities of Logic that I had typically avoided. I was able to make some progress between our meetings and we worked out many of the details and direction of the song face-to-face. I fully appreciated Mike’s attention to detail, especially when it came to the final mastering. I really learned so much.
The song itself is three parts: the first part is where Mike and I were really working through the details together which was the most enjoyable part of creating this song. But after our second sitting I was listening to a Pink Floyd song and was like, “I should appropriate a small part of this particular chord progression into the end of the song”, so I just put it in and built off of it. And, as we were refining, we were able to take Mike's initial sketch for inspiration and incorporate it into the middle…kind of reminds me of a cross between the soundtrack for the movie Pi, and The Dust Brothers. The three parts of the song were then seamlessly combined into this final opus.
We “appropriated” some of Baruch Spinoza’s writing as inspiration of how divine the concept of smoke is. In Spinoza’s lens, the smoke unfolds. It’s a revelation. I hope you enjoy.
Peat Fire Smoke
By Kelly Duclos & Neil Fasen & Elsa Duclus
This song was started by messing around on a 3/4 size steel string acoustic guitar with the strings swapped around and tuned sort of like a ukulele. The lyrics refer to a peat fire that burned and smoked for weeks near the house I grew up in back in the late 1980's. Neil added bass and some harmony vocals. My daughter, Elsa, joined in with a violin part. Thanks for the beautiful contributions, Neil and Elsa. It was a lot of fun making this with you.
Smokey's Lament (New Year Mix)
By Noah Warren & Neil Fasen
Noah and I got together and wrote this song one Saturday night. The process was a lot of fun. We came up with some chord progressions and a smoke theme for the song. Noah focused on lyric writing, while I worked on recording instruments. I was playing the song over and over, laying in tracks as Noah listened and refined the lyrics and melody. We captured the basics and got together later on for some quick vocal recording sessions. Noah is so incredibly creative and spontaneous; he's a joy to collaborate with. It's amazing what he can create almost instantaneously.
Found Fire
By Tom Stromsodt & J DeMars
J and I did what we always do. I am eager to try this challenge again when I have more time to do a more integral collaboration.
The Cloud Machine
By Bill Fricke & Grant Eull
Grant invited Bill to collaborate on the “Smoke” themed project and we quickly found an idea that they both could get behind. Their shared love of Gary Numan kickstarted the process with the idea of a “Cloud Machine” overseeing humans through the use of haze, obfuscation, deception and lies, etc. (i.e. smoke). That gave them a jumping off point.
Over the course of a couple of Zoom planning sessions, demos and mixes went back and forth via Drop Box. Bill learned how to make music stems to share for Grant’s DAW. Lyrics were done via Google Doc with both contributing to the content.
Bill did some of the initial musical ideas and vocals. Grant whipped them into shape with some very cool production/mixing, as well as refining of structure. He also added the Vocoder/robot vocals to demonstrate the takeover of the Cloud Machine vs. Man.
Overall, it was a pretty quick and efficient project and process. It was a pleasure to work with someone else. If you are looking for a collaborator in the future, I heartily recommend Grant!
Cory's Got Cigarettes (work:life mix)
By Neil Fasen & Tom Stromsodt
These are snippets of stories from my youth and my relationship with smoke. For creative purposes, some of the names have been misplaced with the events described, but they're all grounded in real events. Tom is such an incredible musician that anything he touches turns to gold. This was a pretty basic tune before I got his guitar and drum love added to it.
Charcoal, Ash & Vapor
By The Adequate Grippers
feat. Kelly Duclos, Brian Eveslage and Colby Heston
Adequate Gripper is a printing reference. Since all three of us are in that field, it seemed well,
adequate to name our collaboration as such. We all agreed that we should at least get together once but that we could also use the Signal app to share files and discuss our project.
Brian came up with the main riff. I took that and added a bassline, some guitars and a simple
drum pattern to work off of. We met up at Kelly’s house to jam it out and finalize the basic song structure. Kelly then wrote the lyrics and vocal melody and from there, we took turns adding parts and deciding what to keep and what to get rid of.
There’re many references within the song to smoke. A house on fire, Canadian wildfires, a
clouded mind…they’re all fairly vague but are in there if you listen.