Track Breakdowns: Awesome EP

Title: You are Likely to be Eaten by a Grue.
Released: Awesome EP(March 2009) http://8bitcollective.com/music/godinpants/You+are+likely+to+be+eaten+by+a+grue/
Platform: Nanoloop 1.3
Notes:This was an early track of mine, one of the first I recorded. It features some strange sounds compared to what I normally associate with chip music, the percussive echoes that pan from side to side, and the chime like sound.
It makes very heavy use of the FM option found in Nanoloop.
This track doesn't feature much in the way of pattern change, it mostly consists of the same few loops, muted and unmuted, while I played around with pitches and other parameters. Even in this beginning I was making use of a “live” style of playing songs.

Title: Goat Farm
Released: Awesome EP(March 2009)
http://8bitcollective.com/music/godinpants/Goat+Farm./
Platform: Nanoloop 1.3
Notes: This track also begins with some strange sounds, and is performed in much the same way as “grue”. I slowly introduce new patterns into play, building up the soundscape.
It is also the start of a style of writing that has been present in a lot of my music, where a melody is accompanied by an underlying drone. Due to Nanoloop's 16 note phrases, I had to constantly swap between melodies that I wanted to change on every second bar, in this track places can be heard where I missed changes due to being preoccupied with other tracks.
This track builds up, and then finishes in almost the opposite manner, with tracks slowly being pulled down and out of the mix.

Title: Like a Toigah.
Released: Awesome EP(March 2009)
http://8bitcollective.com/music/godinpants/Like+a+Toigah./
Platform: LSDJ
Notes: This track was written when I first started coming to grips with LSDJ.
It features a sampled drum kit(a combination of a 909 for the kick/snare and 606 for high hats) and retrigger effect that I would come to use in many songs later on, becoming one of the staples of my early LSDJ writing.
This track still maintains the underlying drone, although in this incarnation, it is given more life, by making changes slightly less regular. The chord command can also be heard on this part, cycling between the root, 3rd and 5th of the scale.

Title: Nana's Voice.
Released: Nanovoice Compilation(unreleased thus far 21 August 2009)
Platform: Nanovoice
Notes: This was cut out of a larger 30 minute “jam” with Nanovoice running in an emulator.
Purely improvisational in nature, I slowly added and removed parts of a 16x16 array, creating the slow morphing changes of the song.
Nanovoice still remains one of my favourite “jamming” platforms, due to the nature of the interface and sound it creates.


Title: Let's Go to Bed(Cure Cover)
Released: Awesome EP(2009)
http://8bitcollective.com/music/godinpants/Let%27s+go+to+bed(cover)/
Platform: LSDJ(emulator) + Casio VL-Tone accompaniment.
Notes: This track was originally recorded for a Cure covers compilation, which it was inevitably cut from before the compilation was eventually cancelled.
This was written before I owned a physical copy of LSDJ, so I composed and recorded it from an emulator running on my computer.
This can be heard in the noise on the track, and also in the difference of the sampled sounds vs. when played from a gameboy.
I used a Casio VL-Tone to accompany, playing the vocal melodies of the song.

Title: Vacuum
Released: Awesome EP(2009)
http://8bitcollective.com/music/godinpants/vaccuum+song/
Platform: LSDJ
Notes: Vacuum started as a collection of small ideas for a Drum and Bass styled track. Looking back at it, it does seem a bit slower than I would like, and some of the transitions are hard.
This track continues my (ab)use of the retrigger function on drums, but that is to be expected of the genre I was aiming for.
It also features some of my first experimentation of using the pulse channel to create kicks.

Title: From Tokyo With Chips.
Released: Awesome EP(2009)
Platform: Nanoloop.
Notes: This is a track that I wrote while travelling on trains through Japan. It was recorded into a portable recorder in a hotel room in Hiroshima and features some experimentation with Nanoloop's “song mode” and is perhaps one of my longer tracks. The second half of the song strays away from a lot of what is introduced in the first half, as I improvised with instrument parameters and jammed my way through an almost soundscape type interlude. I attempted to build the track back up towards the end, as sounds become more complete, and some of the earlier parts return.
Parts of this track were later re-used in an improvisation using a Gakken sx-150.