To BT or not to BT....?

    BT, born Brian Transeau, known as one of the pioneers of electronic music is both a visionary and an artist to take note. He is solely responsible for bringing you the disc jog your mama warned you about, but in a rhythmic, effect-filled and "glitched" flavor. What the heck am I talking about? Read on.

    As early as 1970's "Noise Music" was the fringe of what technology was doing for music (and vice versa). Acts with sound-producing, filtering, playing of damaged Cd's and vinyl records were a sample palette for ages of breakbeat and industrial DJ's and Producers to come. The concept is simple; any distorted, bit crushed, bit depth-reduced sound is spliced and effected over a rhythmic pattern, more often used as a percussive element, sometimes digs deep into the avante-garde and experimental to bring you glitched symphonies. Spanning art performances and loose concepts in early video games until the mid 90's, glitch music exploded as its own scene and production craft. Countless artists all over the world utilized this technique in a sparing manner, mostly using the sound of skipping Cd's layered together alongside more typical instruments. Fast forward to the 00's and glitch music and effects are in unexpected arrangements and blockbuster movies. They have in one way or another permeated our pop culture as slickly as the word "baby". Up until those times, a respectable glitch asset was slaved over for hours, cutting, fixing, arranging and mixing until a few seconds of a flurry of erroneous sounds can be called something close to music.
   
    BT's career as a remixer in the EDM circuit was embellished by his signature glitch sound. It wasn't until his software company, Sonik Architechts (who was later bought out by iZotope) that one would appreciate the amount of work put into his songs. Stutter Edit is a program that effects any signal in a multi-layered filter and effect "screen" that can separate samples one from another and space them out, oscillate frequencies between one another, bit crush, timestretch, granulate, phase, etc. all at the same time, producing professional results in a press of a button (or key). This program has been used by professionals in the club industry, and also myself. It's very easy and even though not every effect is gold, there are some magic moments that leave you breathless.
   
    "BT composed the high octane film score for the blockbuster hit The Fast and the Furious as well as the haunting tonal background for Charlize Theron's Academy Award-winning performance in Monster. His other scores include Doug Liman's Go, Under Suspicion (starring Morgan Freeman and Gene Hackman), Miramax's The Underclassman, Sony's Stealth and the video game Tiger Woods Legends. " [8]
   
    Not all pioneers ever get [any] credit. As a music industry professional, there is a lesson to take away from BT's success and the edge he found and expanded on to get there. I view his career a raging success not only for the amazing remix work he produces, but the innovations that his team made possible for simpletons like me to press one button and do the work of a few people over the course of a few hours otherwise would. His passions have led him to a road bound with exploring music from a technological eye's point of view - to hold everything as a masterpiece waiting to be engineered instead of flukes and wild ideas. I bet for BT, the moment of magic happened when he realized that there was something physically out there lifting up and carrying his name with pride. Something that he wasn't the first to accomplish, but was be able to give to the rest of the world - the gift of seeing rhythm and sonic palette possibilities not regularly made in nature or instrument. Something his mind conjured up and made real through perseverance and hard work. Through being bold and innovative. For making the world conform to his vision, not the other way around.

-Chuma

Portishead - Where's your portis at?

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    Portishead is best known to help Trip Hop secure a foothold in U.K. pop culture and won a Mercury Music Prize for their work on Dummy, their 1994 hit album that had permanently breached the U.K. top 40. Their Jazz-inspired, lazy dubby swing that could be categorized as trip hop, a more feel of the offspring of Hip-Hop, Reggae, Punk and Electronic. [7]

    Trip hop was an instrumental palette able foot in the door for the likes of electro to gain momentum in pop, making way for the bridger of the two: Dubstep, achieving what two-step couldn’t do in the 90’s, introduction to a broader U.S. market and infused into commercial mediums to get the masses used to the deep bass sounds for the future of music would follow the low-end heavy, high end harmonizing experiences and scapes instead of strict “4 on the floor” mentality. Not that that’s going away anytime soon…

    Through clever marketing, Portishead was able to sell 150,000 copies of its first album in the U.S., despite the public-shy producers and the complete absence of touring. [8] This marked a conundrum in the system. How can so many records be sold with so little put in? One theory of course, is the lack of availability to the band and its visionaries so it puts the band in a position of causing one of two situations to occur: one is no one gains interest. Which is what happens regularly. The other, of course is you make people hungry enough for your material, the success will come despite your involvement.  From a personal standpoint, this album signifies something I’ve held true for years and that is good music is transparent. Not so much in impact or content, but it is transparent from judgment and is uncontended through time. It is my firmest belief that worlds of “underground” past are now mainstream-able untapped (yet still) markets that favor sounds that are different but the same, not as in terms of pop – “the same, but the same”. Lame!

    Portishead and bands and artists like Portishead (Tricky comes to mind) make it possible for niche’ music to slip in, unnoticed into the mainstream fold. Most often than not, alienating the original fans and receiving luke-warm welcomes from the average Jill or Joe. I thank Portishead in its participation in the past to make bass-heavy music (a personal favorite of mine) become so palatable over time. Maybe not so much for its direct involvement, but to be a guiding light for those who are tired of mainstream and those who are immersed to huddle around the same speaker in a non-judgmental way. 

-Chuma

Kraftwerk-Making it Werk

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    Kraftwerk were the pioneers of “noise music”. They engineered sounds out of complicated pieces of equipment, which hold a loose resemblance to synthesizers of today. The band represented itself as working parts of a machine. They had made this statement by wearing suits and at one point presenting themselves in a socialist-communist color scheme and presentation to their shows. The big deal was that influential and pop-rock at the time followed the formula of exposed chest, guyliner and tussled emo hair. Kraftwerk’s sound was generally noise arranged in the fashion of a classical piece of music with a central theme, sometimes profoundly direct and rigid, other times a vivid, fading dream upon which sounds and arrangement was initially based on. What made Kraftwerk stand out was their electronic interpretation of pop.

    Their albums throughout 1974-1981 were a mix of successes and flops. Their international fourth album hit Autobahnwas a success in several ways. The song played on German word play. The chorus (if you could call it that) lyric to the 22+ minute song is “Wir fahr'n fahr'n fahr'n auf der Autobahn” [5] which, by no accident sounds a bit like the Beach Boys and any American singing would usually be found singing along “ Fun fun fun on the Autobahn”. The album-titled song proved to be a bit of movie music, a bit of Beach Boy fun, all with a robotic, engine-like rhythm of a car. Their sixth album in 1977 was a flop and never made it for airplay in the U.S. and most of Europe. Karl Bartos, one of the interchangeable group members recalls [6] “clearing the dancefloor in France when the album was introduced at a club [they] were visiting.”

    Before Afrikaa Baambaataa and company added a sense of rhythm and dance-ability to their music and the like, Kraftwerk enjoyed an impressive stint at being a pivotal force in electronic music. Although letting go of the wheel of electronic foreground and innovation once Breaks, House and Acid music hit their respective markets and changed the face of the predominantly underground culture. Once creative and successful interpolation simply comprising of programmers and sonic innovators, now found a way to be successful front men and achieved a status of artists. With classical backgrounds and influence in arrangement, etc. they had recruited “pieces” to complete the machine that was Kraftwerk. These were usually musicians, also classically trained, but the show belonged Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider.

    Besides being sampled and imitated for years to come, with elements still presiding in House music today, Kraftwerk paved the idea of pop music to what it is today; lyrical folklore usually revolving social activities involving loud music, alcohol, mention or overtone of sex, and always in an establishment such as a club. Generally having a good time, generally appealing to a specific market to include party-goers and people with money to “pop all those bottles”, but I digress. The point is its less organic and less about arrangement or intricate production due to the technology that’s available and it’s all predominantly technologically-palleted and is more about what It sounds like in a club than anything else. Not to mention the amount of synthesizer-intensive pop hits out there that are not necessarily “techno” in nature.  Kraftwerk influenced David Bowie and prompted him to explore technological aspect of music creation throughout his career.

As a listener, Kraftwerk is weird and hopeful and industrial-without-being-grundgy-or-filthy-to-achieve-it kind of way. It represents the beginning of something that wasn’t as organic or as presentable as people were used to, but it dually managed to erase the point at which man is man and is now made a cog in a machine. A machine that would explore tape manipulated through filters, combined with oscillators, arranged as a classical piece and form a cohesive, representative and themed piece of art. Engineers who became artists. Brilliant. As a music producer their work seems to drag on and seems to go off on tangents, but sweetly get back to them and attempt to finish them off grandly, in a classic fashion. I would look at their work as more of a map or a palette from which to dig into, explore and formulate a temporal translation into something familiar using nostalgia as well as current musical trends to achieve success. To then ask yourself: “ok, where does this awesome sound come from?” I was magically surprised to find by the end of the quoted documentary that most of the sounds I grew up on with Breaks and Trance were directly sampled or expanded on concepts Kraftwerk laid out for future generations. This blew my mind wide to the possibilities of even my work to be a guiding foundation for a successful, musical formula that others will emulate and expand, make better and temporally translate. 

- Chuma

References

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[1] The Bob Edwards Show - http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAudiobook?id=327529904&s=143441

[2] Everything Was Right - The Beatles Revolver By: Paul Ingles - http://www.prx.org/pieces/15368-everything-was-right-the-beatles-revolver 

[3] http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2001/dec/08/extract

[4] http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAudiobook?id=296005812&s=143441

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[5] http://www.lyricsmania.com/autobahn_lyrics_kraftwerk.html

[6] http://www.veoh.com/collection/music-documentary/watch/v17166226D39Jw7dc

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[7] http://triphophq.com/?page_id=26

[8] http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/Portishead-Biography/B5DF65CBDB7DFBFC4825693B0002403F


[9] http://www.berkleemusic.com/scholarship/BT'
 

Marvin Gaye What's Going On

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Prior to Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On, I Heard it Through the Grapevine was your typical Motown sound that defined the label and according to the veteran musicians of the time was your run-of-the-mill pump out. The deviation from this formula came at much criticism from Benny Gordy, the founder of Motown. He refused to release the record and Marvin Gaye gave him an ultimatum to not play a single show until the album was released. [3]

Social reform issues, voice against war, ecological concerns, saving children of the world. Blues roots all throughout. Caring seems to be the central theme of the album. Vocals not directly speaking to audience, more like listing facts or passing by casual conversation, all linked into vocals. Makes the listener more attentive to groove and vocals being sung due to their indirectness. Some tracks showing beginnings of electronic music’s non-traditional percussive elements, especially dealing with vocal one shots, harmonies. Christian overtones dealing with love for one another. The instruments at times are vague and seem to be doing their own thing. Harmonization seems to be focused mainly in timbre and not so much in the chord progressions in some songs.

           

I can almost see influences of Marvin Gaye’s in Michael Jackson and 90’s pop Jazz. The laid-back not-in-your-face nature of the vocals gives a sense of a calmer type of Jazz, if a thing like that existed. As a music producer, I see the mixing of some of the higher register instruments took precedence. I cannot draw, from lack of expertise in the subject, whether this was done intentionally and for what purpose, however the shakers and bells seem to stand out more than other instruments in the mix. From a listener’s standpoint, I can appreciate the inspiration for the pop explosion of the 90’s and beginnings of electronic music elements, however this album bored me to tears. Which makes it difficult to listen to without an air of bias. Mercy, Mercy Me has elements of a trippy trance song in its outtro and that’s really the only thing that set this apart from the music that’s out there right now in the same genre.

- Chuma

The Velvet Underground and Nico

Submission, discipline, nightlife leather, drug use were the flavors of uncomfortable subject matter that opened up a brand-new word palette for The Velvet Underground to play with. The Velvet Underground can only be viewed as a form of art, rather than a band, not aimed to make lasting impressions or memorable music. What you get instead is overdriven instruments, overlapping melodies sometimes out of key, loads of dissonant tones in melodic as well as (effect?) instruments and lyrics that never really follow much of a format other than someone with a mental condition or on heavy drugs. Which captures a sort of charm in it of itself as the audience is entranced by an intimate-sounding performance.

Lou Reed and John Cale, both artists that worked together in a band called “the Primitives”. Cale was a musical prodigy and a classical composer from Whales. Reed was a talented songwriter and wrote a dance song called The Ostritch, which was the first song the then non-existent band at the time had. The producers scrambled to find artists for this band and along with Reed, had a small audition with Cale. After the band’s demise, they set out to form Velvet Underground with neighbor and percussionist Maureen Tucker. [4]

As a listener, I was exposed to things that were pretty tame in comparison to what’s out now. Contrast this to the Beatles and there are plenty of similarities, sure, however the subject matter was fringe at best. The Beatles were inspired by this act, as it is apparent with their use of the sitar inRevolver. Not coincidentally sounding like the tuned droning of guitars used in Velvet Underground’s songs. As a music professional I’ve noticed elements used in electronic dance music and some dubstep. The warm bass envelopments and percussive high-register/gritty timbre sounds are that of Detroit house or breaks or any remix done by Infected Mushroom. This was, of course highly experimental and Velvet Underground fought tooth-and-nail using Andy Warhol as their shield and gritty experimental sounds and subjects that were more along the lines of a noir novel than a trip down Abbey road as their sword.

Andy Warhol combined elements of movies, real, gritty music and art in his parties he held for a while before his fading interest and realization of inadequacies as a producer by Lou Reed set in and Andy was fired from the corporation he was a part of made to manage Velvet Underground. Andy Warhol was solely responsible for creating a bubble that he created for Velvet Underground’s creativity at the expense of his investment into the band. By virtue of celebrity alone, he was able to give the band free reign and not worry about sales or criticism.

The Beatles

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  Prior to the recording of Revolver, The Beatles sang primarily about love; boy & girl songs. After the break they had that was meant to be a three month time period to make their next film, The Beatles chose to take LSD instead. When they came back to record, the sounds were light years ahead of their time and so far removed from all their other work. Also to change are the song themes. No longer love-fixated, the songs talked about psychedelic experiences and beliefs, sad old English folk, taxation, all in one album!

    Backward loops have always been a mystery to me, listening to this album as a kid. I found them to be memorable, unusual and sometimes scary if used properly (thriller movies).  The use of backward effects and vocal parts really set the sound of The Beatles, however they were simply “playing catchup” [2] to the likes of Bob Dylan, Velvet Underground, The Mama’s and The Papa’s, whom have been riding the psychedelic wave of San Francisco. Drum compression seems like a common knowledge topic now but back then, it was an experimental tool that The Beatles took advantage of. I can see glimmers of what The Beatles have spearheaded with their creativity in today’s music, especially in the House music department. Now there is a thing called “New York Compression” where the percussive elements and drums are the most apparent in the mix.

 I doubt I’ve tapped into the true wonder of what Revolver has to offer for me as a musician.  As an industry professional, this album reminds me that creativity can come from a spiritual place as close as floating upstream in my bed, swaying between the waking world and the one we slip into when asleep. It has taught me that good music is timeless. This album has made me compare every good piece of music I have heard to it. This may be the standard for good music, at least consecutively successful single source of good music, anyway.

- Chuma

Beach Boys

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    Prior to Pet Sounds, the Beach Boys’ image was about the surfer culture, going out to the beach and having fun. There was always a grand image of this spectacular place you go where you’re on top of the world when catching some waves. There was also an underlying fear or presence of something out of place – a killer wave or a group that would otherwise ruin your fun.

   A lot of the influence of this underlying theme as well as capitalizing on an explosion of surfer culture due to newer and lighter materials being available at that time to make surfboards came from Brian Wilson. He has been the sole producer up until the mid 70’s. Between his father’s controlling behavior even after firing him from being the manager of the Beach Boys in 1964 [1], and falling into a raging rivalry between the Beatles, which made him write a more expressive, more complex pieces aimed for the sole purpose of being a classic. Producer Phil Spector has been his greatest influence on the album. He had watched Phil Spector at the recording studio they shared. He learned and was inspired by him and brought this inspiration to Pet Sounds.

    What he brought was a going back to a simpler time in the past. Some songs sounding straight out of 1920’s, but all with a good, hearty rhythm and the Phil Spector signature “wall of sound”. The songs take a break from the usual cheeriness found in a Beach Boy album. The arrangement of the songs takes you through a journey of matrimony from the festive beginning, to a song of “where has my love gone”. Contrasting the Beach Boys’ view from before, perhaps their teen selves have grown and project that is the inevitable progression of a relationship.

    Pet Sounds was different, darker overall in comparison to the Beach Boys’ prior work. There were parts of great use of trumpets I haven’t really heard before either in that key or octave. The session musicians added their own taste and for the most part add to the Beach Boys sound.  Uses of mostly orchestral instrumentation adds to the natural sound of the lyrics and adds very tastefully to the tone and timbre.

    This seems to take a break from their norm and focuses on real emotions that are not necessarily happy-go-lucky ones you would expect. Perhaps that's the point in it of itself - to not fall into expectations once they are set for the public eye. Although the trick, I suppose is knowing when there is a public eye to speak of and what the expectations are.

- Chuma

Welcome All

Welcome!

    This blog was created for the purpose of future collaborators, fans and anyone that is curious enough to know more about me, Dmitriy Chumachenko to see into my mind and life.

   Born in Odessa, Ukraine and emigrated to the United States, I began living the American dream. Sort of… It was very difficult at first adjusting to a whole new way of life. Music was the only thing that stayed constant. Fast forward to a few years later. There are bruises on my body, dried tears on my face. It’s dark and I am alone, by choice. I hear music somewhere off in the distance thumping and growling away. A smile grows on my face. It feels alien. I no longer feel alone. It’s late night (or early morning, depends on who you ask) I am clocking in hours on top of a humvee, armored for the occasion and tired as hell. Music is serenading my ear over grown men yelling, explosions and 80mph winds. I am no longer bored. Going even further through time, we arrive at now. Bright colored lights, a console, dials and knobs In front of me, flashing for the occasion. A smile on my face, one I can’t seem to recall living without or remembering what it felt like to be without. Music is hitting me in waves of wobbles and bass. I am profoundly in the place I belong. Although this place is not a location, but a way to be.

    Throughout my life music has been the constant. To this day I firmly believe music has saved my life. I intend to do the same for music.