Tribal Warfare - StaticNomad

Thanks very much. I actually had a lot of difficulty with the bass, as you can see from some of my other replies.

"How you managed to get such an organic sound is beyond me."

I'm not quite sure what's so organic about it. Maybe the didgeridoo sound? Everything else is, I think, very electronic and processed.

"Really like the instruments you selected in this piece."

Thanks. Getting that right seems to me to be just as important as getting the melodies and grooves right.

No, I'm certainly not new to all this, though this track was made quite a long time ago. I've been regularly producing music since about 2000 and playing instruments in bands and at home since about 1993.

Thanks again.

Hi.

Thanks for commenting.

I actually really struggled with the bass on this. It's all synth bass but I felt very unmusical playing these different lines in. It's hard to explain but I felt very musically limited and I had to do a lot of editing work on these bass parts. I've got something like 6 synth basses here, coming in at different points. Maybe I can go back and edit them a bit more to make improvements, I'm not sure.

It is a pretty clean and clear track, with some funky chill vibes.

I don't do much 'pure electro' as most of my stuff features a lot of played acoustic instruments - different guitars, bass, cello and banjo (as well as lots of synth work). But occasionally I do a track with none of them, just synths. I haven't done one for a couple of years, actually.

Thanks again.

Good to hear you liked it.

Yes, the low end is fairly good on this one though I had a lot of trouble playing synth basslines on this and felt very unmusical doing it. I have about 6 different synth basses in here.

Ethnic drums (mostly djembes) are good and something I should use more often.

Thanks.

Sorry, I forgot to reply to this.

I found this hard to make as pure electro is not my natural style. I tend to use lots of guitars as I'm not much of a keyboard player (though pretty good at synth programming).

I had big problems with the basslines in this.

I will have a think about a bassier kick and also check out Com Truise. I haven't heard of it/them before.

Thanks.

Thanks.

I don’t know if it’s really fully professional work but I’m getting better all the time and have greatly improved the overall quality of my mixes in the last few years.

I'm still not happy with this one but I do enjoy it.

Hi. I do like this one but I’m still not completely happy with it. But it’s quite different for me as it’s only synths, the structure is unusual (3 or 4 drum-free breakdowns) and it's really quite a short track for me. And I really like the didg and pad sounds. Oh, and the arppegiated leads.

I checked out your Astral Projection link and thought it was OK. I’m familiar with lots of music like that but find it a little boring. Hard to explain but it’s maybe too much psychedelic drug music and lacks musicality for me.

“I like a kind of a steady drum groove and slow tempo”

Me too. That’s the kind of thing I’m best at playing along to. I never seem to start fast tracks. There are fast sections in my tracks but they always comes from making the drums go double time. I can play along to fast stuff but I’m much happier at a good slow or mid tempo groove.

“lots of complex textures”

I never come up with those as planned things. They just come from experimenting many, many times with different layering of sounds. I try to get things to fit together in interesting ways that I haven’t really heard anyone else do.

Glad you liked it.

I think it’s a fun track.

"Never heard of you."

Yes you have. I've favourited a couple of your tracks and had a back and forth conversation about one of them - the one featuring only industrial machine sounds that is really quite melodic.

You just didn't remember my name from those discussions.

"I have to say what a compliment it was suggesting that something of mine made them think of you."

Thanks very much. I'm not sure which of my tracks you've checked out or exactly what you thought of this particular one. If you want pop, classical, Afrobeat, punk, gabba, garage, house, grindcore metal and so on - I'm not your guy. But, if you want far out, psychedelic journeys featuring a lot of deep grooves and some strong melodic content, I'm your guy.

Most of my tracks are much longer than this one and also contain loads of guitar, bass and banjo so feel free to check them out. This one was me in a pure electro mode. No instruments played here. But also no samples used.

Thanks for your thoughts.

Hey - I was only joking about having multiple accounts and personas. I'm just StaticNomad on Looperman. I like to have a laugh!

However, if you listen to my "quality catalog", you'll find there are a lot of different genres and sounds and stuff covered (sometimes in the same track). Often gets very confusing when I'm putting a track together.

I'd like to cover many, many more styles and sounds but I have loads of limitations in my playing and don't really technically or musically understand how to make any genre.

I just use sounds I like and styles of playing I can manage and comfortably play and then groove along to a good loop and build things up from there, piece by piece, sometimes over a number of years.

So, I sort of try to combine all my musical personas/preferences/abilities at the same time in some tracks. Lot of work to stop it sounding messy!

This was a slightly more straightforward track as it doesn't cross multiple genres and doesn't have any recorded instrument playing - just synth playing and programming.

If you'd like to hear the continuation/second half of this track, here it is:

P For Pneumatic

http://www.looperman.com/tracks/detail/156638

They both share many of the same sounds though each also have their own particular sounds that aren't used in the other.

I guess Tribal Warfare is the better track but maybe not.

Thanks for checking in on my little electro tribal groove thing.

Yo. I've never made this a featured track but it seems to have so many comments because it's the first one on my profile and people come and check me and it out and decide they like it.

Yeah, didg is cool here. A sound I'd like to use more.

Yes, African animal documentary might work though maybe it's a bit too tight and funky for that.

This is one of my shortest ever tracks, believe it or not. Many are at least twice as long. Some even go up to over 17 mins, though that's something I'm trying to change (with some success).

Ah, I guess you came to check out a track of mine after I reviewed your dubstep/glitch one.

And you chose to comment on the first one in the list. I've never had this as a featured track so I think the reason it's got so many comments (for me) is because other people did the same as you and liked it.

I don't think of it as cinematic but I know what you mean - it could be great soundtrack music. Not sure if that, technically, means it is cinematic. Anyway, doesn't matter.

I've heard of the game Deus Ex but never played it or perhaps even seen a screen shot.

Yes, maybe a stealth mission as this has a chilled out, low key sort of vibe to it. Powerful but not banging. Not as uptempo and aggressive as your track I reviewed.

Thanks for deciding to check it out.

Hi again.

I'm sure you must have chosen to play this track because of the title. It's a title that really fits a lot of the music you make. But I'm not sure it fits this track so well.

Anyway, 2:43 lead synth is a fun and very psychedelic sound. I need to use it in more tracks!

I updated this track last year. It used to be only about 3-4 minutes.

4:43 we hear the return of the sound that you really liked on 2:43. And also the didgeridoo comes back.

Most of my music features played and recorded instruments (guitar, bass and banjo) but I also do what I call 'pure electronica'. This is a pure electronica track.

It's much easier for me to play lots of guitar as that way I can express myself the best. I'm not a good keyboard player so much more work for me to make a track only with synths. Most of the synths here are carefully programmed, not played.

Thanks for checking it out.

I will try to do more pure electronica. I have another track that is an extension of this one but I haven't finished it yet.

Here are some other pure electronica tracks a little bit like this one (but also very different):

http://www.looperman.com/tracks/detail/147824
http://www.looperman.com/tracks/detail/151693
http://www.looperman.com/tracks/detail/104626

Hi. I haven't seen that film so am struggling a little to make sense of the quote from it. Maybe this makes you think of far out, spacey ethnic groove stuff.

It's definitely right up your ethnic and world music street though the only two elements that push it in that direction are the didg and the djembes (perhaps the shaker a little as well). Otherwise, it's one of my few pure electronica tracks. Not sure I played a note on it (all programmed) and certainly didn't record any instruments.

I've still got a bit of a problem with the overall sound though I can't quite explain my problem. It's cool but there's still something slightly lacking.

"Don't really feel the "warfare" vibe myself"

I'm with you on that and did say in the description that I had real problems coming up with a suitable title (as I often do).

I was thinking of going with Sipi Tau - a type of war dance you'll see the Tongan rugby team perform before matches (similar to the New Zealand Haka, the most famous of these pre-match rituals and stirring stuff).

These pre-match, aggressive dances are well coordinated so I thought this track might be a good soundtrack for them. Maybe I'll just call the track Sipi Tau and be done with it.

I'll put this track on my mostly pure electronica album - one of 8 albums I've been composing, mixing and compiling for the last couple of years. Just need artwork and quality mastering and I have a whole load of stuff to release from 14 or so years of home music making.

Good to hear from you.

Yes, there are some fun sounds in this.

I don't do a lot of pure electro, preferring instead to use lots of guitars and acoustic drums with my synth work, but I do a few pure electro tracks. Others to check are: Tiny Little Pieces and Headlong Into The Irreversible Orbit.

Yes, synth at 2:43 is awesome and then gets brought back later on.

This has a sister track utilising many of the same sounds though I'm nowhere near finishing it.

Thanks for checking this out. This seems to be pretty much my most popular track on here.

Hello. Yes, this does have quite a clean sound and people really seem to enjoy this one. It's me in my pure electro mode. Most of my stuff has a lot of guitar, bass and banjo as well as acoustic drums (though they are from EZ and Superior Drummer).

So much time spent mixing this to get good separation between all the instruuments. The drums here are a mixture of programmed electro hits (eg from the classic 606 drum machine) and manipulated drum loops. The djembes are not a loop but single hits that I programmed, though they don't sound perfect (because they are just single hits, all at the same velocity). But I guess they sound good enough.

The whole track was made in Reason so I'm sure you will be interested to know that one of the main drum loops is the very first drum loop that loads up in the REX player in Reason 1.0. I love it and have used it many, many tracks. Check out my track Circular Motion to hear more of that same drum loop (but at a different tempo) as it's a better track than this one. And made a long time ago.

Thanks again for the interest.

Thanks. You decided to listen to track 1 on my page. This is a fun one. Pretty catchy and far out (my favourite thing) as well. I started it a long time ago but recently improved and lengthened it by a couple of minutes.

I would definitely say I have better tracks on here though they're all quite different so it depends on your taste.

Here are a bunch of tracks that I would say are better than this one:

Lord Of Misrule, Right Place Wrong Century, Into The Out There, Shapesmith, Zero Per Cent Proof, Debt Black Hole, NightTime Thrones and Thousand Ball Blues.

But I kind of love them all. The others are mostly a lot longer (I do up to about 18 minutes) so this shorter track has a certain character of its own. I need to do more short tracks. And when I say short I mean under 7 mins.

Good luck with all you do and thanks for the interest.

Cool. I can't help recommending other music by me to people who like one or more of my pieces. And I do stuff in a lot of styles so some people like some and not others.

Hi. Thanks for checking out some of my tracks. I'm fairly happy with this one though not entirely with the movement of the various basses. Found them hard to do and they're still not quite right though it's hard to put into words quite what's wrong with them.

But there's a lot that's enjoyable with this track and its basic tribal groove. It has a sister track that will be finished some time in the next few months that will probably be near nearly as good.

I'm going to just make an assumption here and guess that as you're into r'n'b, you like at least some hip hop too. I do some very alternative hip hop epics that incorporate a whole bunch of genres. A few to check out, if you feel like it, are: Zero Per Cent Proof, Way Beyond Wrong and The Fatness.

Almost all my synth sounds for last 12 years have come from various synths in Propellerheads Reason software, which I've been using since version 1.0.

Quite a few basses in this and they are indeed quite fat.

Thanks. There are still some things that bother me about it but there's a lot to like, especially the cool grooves.

In 13 years of producing music, I've only used didg in two tracks.

I think I should use it more.

Thanks. I still have some problems with this track, especially the bass, which I found surprisingly difficult to do and it's still not right. I made most of this about ten years ago and then this year updated it, adding another couple of minutes to its length. Maybe I'll go back in and try hard to improve it. There are some very cool bits in it while some other elements could and should be better. Must try to use that main arepggiated lead synth more!

Oh thanks but I can and do pick fault with that. I made this years ago but in the last year extended it by about 2 minures and improved loads of little things.

It's just not as good as I hear it should be in my head. I know everyone can say that about anything they've done but I feel it more acutely on some tracks than others. Sometimes you just have to give up, I guess. I think I've probably done all I can with this.

Yes, it is a cool basic tribal sound. That main drum loop plus those djembes, didg and bass sit really nicely. Everything came from that beginning. Check out my track on here called Circular Motion as it's way better than this one and I wouldnt change much about it. And it has some things in common with this track.

Thanks. I guess by 'main drums' you mean that hip hop loop. Yes, it is a total classic and, for what it is, difficult to better.

I have used it in quite a few compositions at different tempos. You can too if you have Propellerheads Reason software. It is the very first drum loop loaded into the very first demo song in the very first version of Reason. Yes, it was so good I could not help using it over and over again.

I use very few drum loops these days as I've progressed to complex, detailed, programmed acoustic drums, which I much prefer (though a great loop is a great is a great loop).

Please listen to my track on this site called Circular Motion as the same drum loop features quite prominently in that one too. It's a much better track than this one and I made it about 13 years ago when I was only about 20. It's almost a fluke of a good composition as it stands out as being much better in terms of production than almost everything else I was doing around that time. It's also a nice blend of ethnic and electronic sounds. Actually, there aren't really ethnic sounds but ethnic scales/melodies so achieves a similar vibe.

Cool. I don't listen to goa trance but I'm pretty familiar with most far out psychedelic music and have heard lots and lots of trance over the years but find a lot of it boring.

I guess these are sort of trancey sounds but I prefer a slower tempo with a deeper, more interesting groove.

Yes, the sounds are quite clear but they're a lot less clear on lots of other tracks by me though I'm hoping to change that and do better mixes all the time. It gets harder when you use lot of guitar and effects. Good luck with your own stuff.

Well I'm genuinely surprised, based on your other comments on my tracks, that you thought this one was good. As regards freshness, I do actually have a much better and extended version, I just haven't uploaded it yet. When I do, I'm fairly sure it will be enjoyed by a few who listen to it. Hopefully, you'll prefer it too.

By the way, what sort of freshness did you have in mind?

I had some real problems making this. Started in about 2001 and then I left it for many years and then extended and improved it this year. It's still not as good as I think it should be so not sure if I'll maybe go back and try yet again to improve it. Most of my stuff has loads of guitar in it but this is one of my less common pure electro compositions.

Yes, the groove is excellent. It's based around the very first drum loop that plays in Reason 1.0, which I've used in quite a few tracks. Then the djembes really help push that groove along. This is all made in Reason (not that that really matters).

I didn't synthesize it. It's just a didg patch in a bit of Propellerheads Reason software. No skill on my part there. However, I have actually synthesized a didg in another track that's on this site. Listen of course to the whole thing as it's one of my best (and I made it about 13 years ago when I was 20) but check out the part between about 1:53 and 2:45. That is pretty much a synthesized didg. I was using a hardware vocoder. My two sound sources were my voice into the mic and a synth clarinet patch. So there are clarinet notes that I'm modulating with my voice. If you think about it, clarinet plus a human voice is not far off what a didg is. I had no intention to synthesize a didg (I'm not that clever), it just came about from messing around with sounds and patches. Actually, I think I need to set it up again as it's pretty cool.

Merci. Le francais est mon deuxieme langue (je suis anglais) mais il y a beacoup de mots et phrases que je ne reconnais pas. J'ai utilise Google Translate pour m'aider un peu mais je ne suis pas sur de ce que tu dis ici: "une mélodie et un son extra". Peux-tu traduire ca en anglais? Ce morceau etait assez difficile pour moi parce que la guitarre en mon premier instrument. Mais dans ce morceau, je n'ai joue pas un instrument: touts les tons (notes?) etait programme. Et il etait assez complexe. Merci pour ecouter...