Roots And Branches - Spivkurl

Your words mean a lot to me! This song was pretty important, and thoroughly enjoyable to create, so it makes me happy that some others like it as well. Songs like this seem to be shaping the way I work lately. Got to love those real recordings! Thanks for your support!

Hey Bear, thank you for taking a listen to this one! I am honored by your compliments and way of thinking of the way I make music. It's also good to hear that you felt that the song worked well to support the artwork. In all honesty, I don't think of this as a truly "live" track. The liveness of it comes in each instrument part being played or manipulated live. So it's similar, but to do it truly live would either be impossible, or require recorded/sampled backing. I found the organ part to be very influenced by the field recordings I took of the crows, and I wonder if this is part of why it feels more minor or morose than the rest... many seem to have those sort of feelings when it comes to crows or ravens. My feelings about them are very different, and I am thankful that they use our home and neighborhood as a landmark. I am working and gathering equipment to be prepared to perform live at some point again. Grabbed a pretty complex stereo loop/sampling pedal recently which I am learning how to use. Also a some good portable synth and sampling stuff. Unfortunately there are many hurdles to doing art in public in this city, but a pedestrian is a semi-permanent local. I really appreciate your words and the favorite! Thanks!

Hey there, thank you for your kind feedback! I have heard of Newgrounds before, but never visited the site. I have it bookmarked now, so I can look deeper into it, thanks for the tip! There have been a few games released which used some of my audio, thanks to looperman. Really games were part of how Spivkurl began. My buddy at the time was a programmer, and had a game all planned out. I spent quite a while developing my skills, leading to giving him a demo of songs for the game. Unfortunately, both the game and the future of our friendship dissolved. Still, it helped me learn a lot. You're right, this was a lot of fun to make, and I hope to develop this way of working much further. Thanks again!

Ha ha, yes, that is no problem! I don't charge for any of my solo releases at wearerecords.com of course. I would be willing to ship you a CD copy though. I try to make my albums to be heard from beginning to end, uncompressed and on a good stereo system... so the CD would be ideal for that. I wish I could release a double vinyl for this album though! Thanks!

As do I, my friend! Thank you for the inspiration! This song will be on the album I release next week. I hope you don't mind. You will be in the liner notes as ViVaDa, if that is what you prefer. If you'd rather have a different name listed, then please contact me. Thank you for leaving your words!

Likewise, it is nice to see you visiting Looperman! Thanks for your kind words! I thought that the description for this deserved some attention, partly because anymore people will just assume a song is virtual. This one is very much non-virtual, but hands on/DIY. Just made a couple more additions to my modular, and hopefully soon I will be able to leave it in the past and get to hard work on the new case of modules. After all, I have recordings of some of these modules from 2004 still! I appreciate you listening!

Thank you Evan for the kind words! I honestly don't know what the big deal was either way regarding the song. None of it was the biggest deal for me, aside from being used as some kind of symbol for the downfall of an online community. I may have been guilty of the same in past times, but I can't disagree more these days. Sounds like your high school experience was far different from mine, but then I didn't finish... positive frame of mind is always a good thing when you're peaking though! I went into making this new album with the intent to make it far more supportive and positive than my last couple, and after hearing it all the way through a few times, I think I mostly succeeded. There is a definite shift onto the B-side any way. Well, I appreciate you stopping by!

Thank you for your insight into this piece! Yours does seem like a different impression, when compared to the others. Yours makes sense to me, as those dark and broken trees are to be seen most every day around here, and we're no strangers to toxic pollution. In fact I'm starting to feel dark and broken myself. Oh well. Happy you enjoyed the listen!

Hey buddy, thank you for the enthusiastic comment! I always appreciate when you stop by, and I welcome the urge to go and hear some of your music! Hope all is well with you!

Hey buddy, thank you for taking a listen and leaving the kind words! You are right, I did have a lot of fun working with the gear... Things have changed drastically in my studio, and I'm just getting settled in... things have even expanded since making this track a couple of weeks ago! I am capable now of 9 different CV/gate/trigger sources for controlling my DIY gear from the DAW, and it's nice. The beach-style ambiance is probably due to the field recordings at the beginning and end... they are actually from a stereo recording taken out my studio window, which contains many crows and a barking squirrel in the distance. Thank you for taking the time to listen!

Thanks Stohgs for the kind comment on this song! Many people seem to think the organ does not quite fit in... it's odd to me, as I know it is played with the same notes that are present in the rest of the song. I can only think of two things... first the fact that the song is primarily modal and the organ part uses some chords, often not done in classic modal music... second, the organ stops used are less focused on the fundamentals and more on the overtones, so some of that focus may be auditorally confusing. Thank you for your words and listen! My new album is out today!

Heh, thank you for listening and leaving a comment! My new album is out!

Your words mean much to me, since I know that you know your way around a synth (or a studio). I'm guessing it's partly the modular brassy tone which gives the impression of brightness and detuning. I would agree. The low note priority based portamento added a good subtle vibrato sort of effect... while the FM (Both F's) and AM added brightness and interest. I can't lay claim to playing all percussion parts myself (some were carefully sequenced with MIDI), but the ride cymbals and tom/kick rolls were spontaneous non midi stuff. I get what you mean about the colors, I think I experience that condition at times. Part of why I like to use certain colors on my DIY gear. Thank you for checking out the track, and leaving your kind words! Have a good day!

Thanks for your interest. I have contacted you with a couple of questions about your project, and I await your reply. Thanks again!

Thank you for listening and leaving a comment!

Thank you joe for the friendly expressive comment! You are right, this song did have more of a focus on making the music rather than other things. I think this is partly due to creating it based on inspiration from an image. There were of course other things happening in my life, and they all feel into the piece. I'm used to people running away from my music, or driving off the road, or hell forbid turning it down...! I really enjoyed the process, and into to work a bit more like this. Thank you again!

Hello again! Appreciate you being the first to offer some sort of appraisal here on the loop! Your views on the mood are interesting to me, and also most likely spot on. When I began the composition, I was feeling a glow, like I was in a good dream... then the organ part was the last instrument to be created, at a moment when I began to feel disjointed and frantic. Technically, the only trumpet sort of sound is part of the organ setup, and using that "wow" foot control almost gave me a blister on my toe... need to were socks or shoes next time! I find the modular part to sound rather saxophone-like. There is an unusual feeling throughout partly due to the C# phrygian mode which I chose to represent the color green, with subtle suggestions of A dominant bebop (resulting in a moment of honesty)... The note of A represents green in some other schools of thought, and the scales are enharmonic aside from that G which ties them together in the song. The birds are actually a flock of crows which visits our neighborhood around this time of year, and I captured them out the window of my studio last December... there is also a squirrel barking buried deep in there. The "sea" is actually the sound of the wind from the same recording... our city is one of the windiest areas in the country. The snare drums are not technically analog, though I can't say for sure the source of the sounds on the machine. This was far more involved, hardware/physically, compared to most of my synth stuff. Used foot controllers on four of the instruments to do accents in real time, as well as tweaking the string part in filter and delay domains. The artwork was a big influence on the song, and I can be thankful for that. Wonder why it didn't show me the fave on here? Oh well. Hope you are well! Thank you!