Electronic Technique

Artist: Spectral Mornings

2008-08-19T22:51:00.000-07:00

Spectral Mornings consists of Dan Streeting and Treavor Edmonds. The duo resides in Grand Rapids Michigan and play around the area fairly often. Whether in a club, gallery, or bowling alley they are said to rock the house with their drum machines, laptop, synths, and instruments. Although Spectral Mornings only has one EP available online (through their own Square Root Records. check it out at: (http://www.squarerootmusic.com/) they have also released several titles under their solo projects: Cantilever (Dan), Chauceworth Aif (Treavor), and Conifer Rock (also Treavor).

Download the Spectral Mornings: 2007 EP zip

Can you tell us how you guys started Spectral Mornings?

We actually met in sixth grade in 1994 in Essexvlle, Michigan. We went to the same high school, and then we both went to Northern Michigan Unversity, where we actually started making music.

I (Dan) had started playing around with electronic music production after graduating from high school, while Trevor had spent a couple years in school playing in a garage rock band. In 2003, we played in a band called Metropolis with two of our other friends, and that was where we started working out how to incorporate electronic elements into a live band. After that band split up in late 2003, we decided to keep working as Spectral Mornings.

What is some gear that you guys use? Anything that you particularly enjoy?

We started with a Korg Poly-800 synth and a laptop, and our gear list has grown since then to include a couple more synths, guitar and bass, some drum machines, etc. We tend to go through phases in terms of equipment. Most of our early work centered around laptop percussion and one melody instrument. We spent about a year making more elaborate shoe gaze-esque stuff when we had a third member, incorporating more traditional guitar and drum arrangements. Now we're focusing on simpler synth-pop music, based mainly on drum machines and synth or bass.

How do you guys start a new Spectral Mornings track?

We rarely bring completed song ideas to each other. We usually just sit down and improvise for a while until something interesting happens, and then we build the song around that. Every situation is different. Almost everything we write is done together; we hardly ever create things for Spectral Mornings independently. Once we have something we like, we get into the details of song structure, specific instruments, timing, and so on, and then it's just a matter of playing it over and over again until it feels right. Usually playing a song to a live audience is really important to our writing process, too. There's usually a point after playing a song half a dozen times where everything seems to click together.

We tend to write a block of songs at a time, and create a live set based on that block of songs that we play for a few months. Then we practically discard those songs and move onto something new. That's happened a few distinct times over the years, and it breaks the "career" of our band up into separate phases. For example, the songs we're playing now were almost all written since the beginning of 2008, and we hardly ever go into our "back catalog" for live sets.

Dan, you are a graphic designer by trade. I've seen your website (streetingdesign.com) and think it's great. Do you feel like your visual art and music have any effect on each other?

I definitely think that the way I create visual art is similar to the way I create music. My visual work is based on trying to evoke some strong emotion or to create some kind of mythology or narrative, and I work with a lot of texture and meticulous detail. I always find myself tweaking some tiny aspect of my design work or adding another little thing that people might not immediately. I also seem to have an obsession with the idea of transitions or borders in my work -- I spend a lot of time dealing with what happens when two different elements meet. I definitely approach my music in the same ways. I could spend hours creating percussion noises and loops, and I often feel kind of unsatisfied if I don't mess with sounds and layer noises to create texture. I'm endlessly fascinated by the interaction between different sounds and by the way one sound changes into another. Sometimes I'm not sure if working at that level of detail is particularly important, but that's the kind of music I want to listen to, so that's why I do it.

I also enjoy the challenge of expressing the same theme or emotion in two different mediums, which is why I love the idea of creating album covers, concert posters, etc.

Trevor, you have a whole lot of work online with your Chauceworth Aif and Conifer Rock music. You also play drums for the folky, post-rockin' Tokyo Morose. How do you make all of this music and have time for Spectral Mornings?

Well, as a rule of sorts, Spectral Mornings takes precedence over all of my other musical avenues of output. Dan and I started this before I began taking my personal musical endeavours seriously. My other projects are enjoyable because they allow me to do things that wouldn't work within the Spectral frame of mind. That's more or less the point, really, of doing such things. To soften the blow a bit, Chauceworth Aif and Conifer Rock are the same thing. The Chauceworth Aif was my initial solo moniker which then transformed into Confer Rock, simply because I thought the name worked a little better for what I was doing. No one really knows what a Chauceworth Aif is anyway. And they wouldn't. It doesn't exist at all. To get back on track, I do think that what I do outside of Spectral Mornings has a rather large impact on Spectral Mornings. Just from a technical standpoint, the fact that I am working musically outside of what Dan and I do helps keep me in shape and sharp creatively and musically, in a sense, when it comes to actually performing and writing music. As you pointed out, I do play drums, as well as other instruments, in Tokyo Morose. I play drums in Spectral Mornings, as well. Time behind the drum kit, or any with other instrument for that matter, is always going to help out, be it as a form of filtering the good and bad bits or just trying new things out, or experimenting within yourself. Don't get me wrong. I enjoy what Dan and I do a lot, but having other outlets for other ideas is always very nice, too. Probably essential.

I remember reading somewhere that you guys are changing your style a bit. Would you like to comment on that?

We've changed our style a few times since we formed the band, as a result of new interests, new influences, new equipment, and so on. Our most recent change was out of necessity, really. After playing as a duo for a couple of years, we decided to expand our sound and added Chad McKinney to the band in early 2007. He played with us for a year before moving back to his home town of Marquette. Before Chad joined, our music had been moving towards longer, sectional songs -- an attempt to incorporate some of the tension/release ideas of post-rock into our electronic sound. As a three-piece, we were able to explore this sound even further. Chad played bass on a lot of songs, as well as drums and trumpet, giving our music a fuller, more organic sound. This period is when we recorded the three-song EP available on the Square Root Records website.

When Chad left the band at the end of 2007, we were basically forced to reconfigure our sound and go back to being a duo. Instead of trying to rearrange our recent material for two people, we decided to create a whole new set of music. We took it as an opportunity to try something new, and we started focusing on shorter, pop-influenced songs, basically moving in the opposite direction from what we had been doing previously. Our songs before that had been pushing the ten-minute mark -- now they're closer to three or four. We've also simplified our instrumentation, limiting most songs to a percussion source and two melody instruments. We've moved away from laptop percussion in a lot of the songs, incorporating drum machines instead, which has been very interesting. In a way, we've gone back to the simplicity of our earliest music, but we've been able to apply all the ideas and techniques that we've learned in the interim. But we still miss Chad...

Around 3:25 on "Robot Group" you guys break into this killer rock groove with bass, drums, and guitar. It comes out of nowhere but works insanely well. Where did the idea come from and how do you treat that section live?

We actually wrote "Robot Group" about four years ago, and for a long time it was completely electronic -- industrial-sounding laptop percussion and a circuit-bent toy keyboard. The song changed radically when Chad joined the band. The three of us spent a large amount of time listening to post-punk, and the new "rock" ending came out of that. We were retooling our songs for a show we were playing at the Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit in April 2007, and it just sort of happened. I find it to be pretty poignant, actually, because it was the first song we played live as a three-piece, and it introduced this new incarnation of the band to people who had only heard us previously as a synth duo.

When we played that song live in 2007, the first part is all laptop and circuit-bent keyboard, and the second part featured Chad on drums, Trevor on bass, and Dan making industrial whirring noises with a Roland sampler. We haven't played it live since going back to being a duo, because we couldn't recreate it with just two people.

Can you tell us a little about your netlabel, Square Root Records?

We started Square Root Records in 2005 with Warren Zimostrad, Pat Yagiela, and some other friends. Initially, it wasn't a net label -- we wanted to put out CDs and vinyl. We actually released a compilation CD called Catalog, which featured two songs from seven different bands and artists, including Spectral Mornings (an early version of "Robot Group," in its completely electronic incarnation, appears on the compilation). It became apparent that releasing music on CD was not particularly financially viable, and we became a net label out of necessity. We'd still like to release everything on CD or vinyl, but it seems like no one wants to buy it, and we haven't thought of any other good ways to release our music, so we put it on our website for free...

Do you have any net-music that you would recommend to our readers?

We're not actually very well-versed in the net label phenomenon, to be honest, but we would like to direct your attention to our sister label, Andras Klang, run by our good friend Sean Patrick. He releases his musical creations at an alarming rate, and it's always a treat to hear what he's put together.

Can we expect another release on Square Root anytime soon? Perhaps some live performances?

We're working on a few new releases at the moment. We have an EP by Tokyo Morose lined up, which should appear sometime in October. After that, we're going to have some new music from Conifer Rock and Cantilever. Hopefully, we'll also finish our Spectral Mornings album by the end of the year. We'd definitely like to look into releasing some live tracks or video footage, too. We've started making a few short films to accompany different releases, which can downloaded along with the music from our website, squarerootmusic.com.

Artist: The Strait of Anain

2008-07-29T14:16:00.000-07:00

I am still developing the process for this blog, so to kick things off I thought I would avoid bringing another person into this mess and write in the third person.

The featured artist for today hails from Seattle, WA and goes by The Strait of Anain. You can download "The Strait of Anain EP" from the now defunct Kikapu Netlabel.

Can you tell us a little about your past experiences with music?

I began playing trumpet in the 5th grade. I didn't really care much for it but I stuck with it until I was in the 7th grade. At that point I had a new band teacher who taught me to really love playing music. Threw out High School I played trumpet in every possible opportunity. For example, there were days when I would get to school at 6:30am for jazz band, play in the concert band during the school day, and stay after school for a few hours for the stage musical rehearsal where I played in the pit orchestra. I also started to pick up other instruments like guitar, bass, and hand drums. I also purchased a Boss Digital 4-track recorded and played with Sonic Foundry's Acid software.
After graduating high school I played less music but got into audio recording. I bought a Pro Tools LE system that came with Reason Adapted (a striped down version of Reason) and started a project that I called Architect. It was pretty lame music, but it taught me a lot about building music from nothing to a completed recording.

When did you record "The Strait of Anain EP"?

I did the EP in 2005 when I was studying audio recording at the Conservatory of Recording Arts and Sciences in Arizona. "Be Pleased My God" was recorded after I graduated and I tacked it onto the release. I'm not a huge fan of that version of "Be Pleased My God" so I'm re releasing it under my Speed Chess music.

How would you describe the EP?

I like to tell people that it's electronic music without the synths. The entire EP was recorded into Pro Tools and was really influenced by the digital workstation format. I think this allowed me to work like an electronic musician because even though I was playing guitars and trumpets, everything was free game to chop up, move around, and rerecord when I had a better idea how I wanted things. I used the redrum in reason adapted and a few synths, but for the most part it was guitars, bass, and trumpet. So, electronic with more organic instruments.

Can you list some of the equipment you used?

I was at an audio recording school so I got to use all kinds of great stuff. I don't remember all that I used but here's some of it:

-Various Pro Tools HD and LE systems (some mobile some studios)
-Reason Adapted
-Rode NTK tube microphone (I love this mic on trumpet because it has the clarity and body of a large diaphragm condenser but the tube mellows it out nicely)
-Boss' big Digital Delay pedal that a friend let me borrow, I don't remember what it's called

The first track, "Aspiration" has a really choppy drum n' bass feel to it. How did you go about doing the drums.

The Drums on "Aspiration" (except the bass drum that's heard at the beginning) was a two measure drum loop from Sony's Futurist Drum n' Bass CD that I bought when I was starting using acid (the software, not the drug.) I chopped the loop and moved things around to make it a similar but different 2 measure loop. I then took that loop, cut it, and time expanded/compressed as the drums for the whole track. It took a while but I think I started doing it because I was bored.

If you want to get started with this kind of sound set your DAW on a grid mode and just start playing by cutting and pasting. It's also fun to process your cuts with reverses, delays, reverbs, time expansion/compression, and whatever else you can think of to further ruin your original audio.

You used a commercial loop on the album, how do you feel about using loops?

I don't use many license free loops in my music but I occasionally take little pieces from a collection of Chinese instruments that I paid for. There are plenty of artists who look down on using commercial loops because they are generic and not truly your work. I think that this can be true but I like to take a generic loop that someone else made and make it my own. I think "cut and paste" art is really popular right now, and just because everything that appears in a piece of work isn't dictated by the artist it can drive the artist in new directions to make it something original.

What is the poem on "Aspiration"?

That is my friend Tyler Strandjord (I hope I spelled that right) reading his poem "Aspiration". We recorded it quite a while back to put music and poetry together. The music I did originally sucked, so I thought I'd give it another try while I was in school.

On "Slippy Get Back Here" there is some talking muffled in the background who/what is that about?

Unlike Aspiration this is no poetry. I just wanted to sample a voice and process it, but I didn't know what to sample. I was taking music business classes at the time and thought it would be ironic to just read my notes on sampling laws.

Are there any tips or tricks that you used on the EP that you would like to share?

I'm actually really pleased with the drum sound I got on "This is not my Home". I programed the drums for that track in Reason's Redrum and used a light distortion on it in pro tools. It made it sound like the kit was rattling the snare and I thought gave it also pleasantly colored it. If you want to use real drum sounds try putting some subtle effects over them to keep them from being so clean and sterile.

Also, be creative with what you have to get the most out of it. I wanted to record trombone but I don't have a trombone and can't play one. I cheated the system by recording the trombone parts on trumpet and pitch shifted them down. I had to be careful to bury them in the mix enough (because they sound terrible soloed) but it filled out the trumpets. There is great music being made with extensive amounts of equipment and great music being made with very little. Use what you have and be creative!

The Strait of Anain would appreciate feedback on his music and this article.

Click here to contact The Strait of Anain.

Electronic Technique

2008-07-29T13:38:00.000-07:00

Thanks to everyone who has wandered over to Electronic Technique! I have been a fan of the netlabel scene for a few years now and really appreciate the global community that has formed. (For those of you who are not familiar with netlabels you can check out the wikipedia article here.) There is a great acceptance and variety music that is easily accessible online; for this reasons I have enjoyed sharing my music and dialouging with other netlabel artists. The aim of this blog is to get inside the heads of netlabel producers and let them share their creative process and their creations. My hope is that producers will creatively feed each other and inspire more quality music in this community.

If you would like to be featured on Electronic Technique please e-mail me a link to one of your releases and and tell me a bit about yourself.