Feature Creeps: Waterfall Theory

I've put together a little collection of my previous music as a little EP about computers & computer games.

FEATURE CREEPS - The Game Dev Band

The tracks are:

• Waterfall Theory
• Break Point
• Flow State

Murray Lorden VS The World

Eat this in your ear face.  Boom!

Listen to Murray Lorden VS The World...

or download MurrayLordenVsTheWorld.mp3 (6mb)

I made this song after watching Scott Pilgrim VS The World.  

I loved the Sex Bobombs jam session in the intro titles.  Awesome.  

Had to do my whole own take on it.

Beer was involved.

I loved how they were just jamming out in a suburban living room, and calling out the changes to each other and stuff.  Fun and raw, and reminded me of that special jam room vibe amongst friends.

I wanted to emulate that but as a stylistic conceit on my own in my bedroom.  Because...  well you know, I'm not a cool young teenager anymore with "friends" and things like that.

Harrisonville

A song I made a while ago. Thought I would do more to it. But after listening to it many hundreds of times since, it's now one of my favourite things I've made. And I don't think it needs any more tinkering.  :)

Listen to Harrisonville...

or download Harrisonville.mp3 (15mb)

I've often listened to it while working, as it provides a catchy consistent drone of beatsy pop fuzz under whatever I'm working on. Great way to block out the noise and chatter at a cafe while hipsterfying your life on your laptop or iPad. It makes me feel good. Hope you enjoy it too.

It's called Harrisonville because George Harrison put a capo on the 7th fret when playing "Here Comes the Sun", and I thought I'd try something with the capo on 7, and this is what came out.  :) Thanks George. You were a real winner.

Features my own creation, the Fuzboz pedal, recorded into the Korg CR4  cassette recorder.

FUZBOZ: The First Prototype

I built my own custom designed fuzz pedal that I've called the Fuzboz.

It came out of my frustrations at trying to build a Supersonic Fuzz Gun, which is a damned hard pedal to get right due to having to get very specifically valued transistors.

I started with a very basic beginner's circuit, and added my own modifications to it, to make my own unique pedal, that I'm rather proud of, and very happy with.

I started with the Colorsound One Knob Fuzz... which is a great pedal to build first because the entire circuit is explained in this one image.

I fiddled around with ideas of how to fit it into the small enclosure I had. Pretty easy with only one knob! The knob on this design simply specifies the Output Level of the fuzz. Inside the circuit, for simplicity sake, the fuzz amount is hard wired to full blast. It's a great rough nasty sounding fuzz, straight out of the cage.

After my failed attempts at making a Supersonic Fuzz Gun, I really wanted to have success with this pedal, and to learn something along the way. So I decided to breadboard the design, rather than soldering it together straight away. This involves sticking the components into a "breadboard", without solder, so you can test it out, and muck around with the components. I'm really glad I did this, because I learned a lot experimenting with different value resistors along the way.

There was discussion about whether one of the resistors should be an 820 or an 82. I ended up going with a low value resistor in that position, so I could dial in a very lofi early 70's fuzz at the bottom end of the Bias spectrum, because I like a mellower sound at times. The higher you turn the Bias, the more high-gain and modern the fuzz sound. I figured, why not let the user start off real low, and dial it up as high as they want, rather than force them to have a high gain sound and dial up from there.

A goal for me was to make a pedal with us much variety and user control as possible, without making it unreliable or difficult to use. I feel I've ended up with a pedal that lets the user find early 70's lofi fuzz sounds, through to high-gain distortion sort of tones, through to fizzed out high-bias fizzly bit-crunch sort of tones.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. After getting the one knob version working, I really wanted more control of the sounds, because it only had a Volume knob, basically.

So I noticed that people on forums were talking about some obvious changes to make, such as adding a Gain potentiometer, rather than a fixed 1k resistor for full Gain.

And then, you can add in a Bias potentiometer to vary the Bias of the transistors. I don't even know what that means, as such, but I knew I wanted to do it. So I found on forums how to swizzle things around and get that in there, too.

Off my own bat, while working on the breadboard, I realised that changing capacitor values would let more or less bass frequencies through (after a friend of mine named Ben told me that capacitors act as high pass filters). So I added another footswitch that switches between two different capacitors. I call this the BASS CUT footswitch. When you activate it, it cuts a bunch of bass and thins out the sound. Press it again to boom back in at full power. It's a good way to achieve a more retro 60's sort of sound, especially if you also pull back the Input Attenuation a bit as well.

So then I was done, and ready to assemble the pedal. It was sounding pretty groovy on the breadboard! I drew up a rough veroboard layout with my modifications in there, and got to work!

Luckily my housemate has a table drill which let me drill out the holes for the enclosure.

I also decided to make a proper digital version of my veroboard layout, so I had a proper record of how it worked, so I could make more in future, as I'd like to sell a limited run of the pedals once they're fully ready for the wild! It also meant that I could make changes and iteration more easily, without having to keep redrawing things each time.

Another design goal was to make the veroboard as small as possible, so I could keep the enclosure size as small as possible. I'm a guy who likes to have about 10 pedals on a pedalboard, so keeping each pedal small is important. But at the end of the day, I think this pedal (as it continued to evolve - as you'll see below), would be better off in an enclosure about twice the size. Easier to build the pedal, and easier for the user to confidently stomp the different switches, etc.

It's funny, because there's quite a lot of hardware in there, but the circuit really is quite tiny (bottom right corner).  :)

Once all the wires start to go in, it really gets quite messy. I need to get better at my wiring techniques! And I think I need to redesign things to tidy things up in general!

To my chagrin, once I built it into the pedal, it had a much stronger sound than it had previously on the breadboard! I think because all the connections are cleaner, and the wires are neater, etc, the actual sound of the pedal comes out with more power. Which annoyed me! Because it had lost a certain wild fizzly sound that it'd had on the breadboard. It used to have a bit of a Supersonic Fuzz Gun sound on the breadboard in fact, which I've never gotten back. But I started developing some ideas to get some of the elements I wanted back. To mimic the "lossiness" of the breadboard layout I'd had (with really long wires dangling and criss crossing everywhere), I decided to add an Input attenuation stage that would reduce the level of the input, to try to pull away from the high-gain distortion sound that the pedal was making, even at the lowest settings.

I kept tinkering, and was much happier once I'd added an Input Attenuation potentiometer that let me reduce the level of the guitar signal coming into the pedal, thus giving it a more low-gain retro sound. And I added the Voltage Starve potentiometer to allow for more fizzly shit-out kinda tones, which can be fun and gruesome.

The main problem with the pedal prototype as it stands, is that there's just too much going on for such a small enclosure. I want to build the Fuzboz Deluxe in a slightly larger size, and have the Input and Output jacks on the sides or top of the pedal. Currently they're on the bottom and getting in my way!

It'd be much easier to build into a larger enclosure too.

You can hear the Fuzboz pedal being used on an upcoming post, "Harrisonville".

PS: This whole project was sort of a procrastination from working on my indie computer game projects. But it has so many overlaps and similarities to making computer games. They're both complex interactive logic circuits. And I really enjoyed building this pedal, and each definitely taught me more about the other.

Piccolo

This is a fantasy orchestral piece done with my VOX Phantom guitar and a Roland GK3 pickup and synth system, and a bunch of pedals, my Copicat IC400 tape echo, and two amps setup in stereo.  

I was going for a Dark Crystal sort of vibe.

Listen to Piccolo...

or download Piccolo.mp3 (5mb)

I'm really interested in symphonic music, and I'd like to try more, when I have time.

Tambo

Tambo is a jam-band I put together with a bunch of friends.

The idea was to throw off the weight & commitment of being in a "proper band".

Tambo existed for us to improvise in a jam space, and that was it!  

No gigs.  No rehearsals!

The magic happened in the moment.

No trying to re-play past songs, or perform like a human playback machine.

Tambo was a tonic against these things, and was purely inspired by good times for us as friends and musicians.

At the time (and still!), I was loving the music of acts like Budos Band, Menahan Street Band, Beastie Boys instrumentals, and blaxploitation soundtracks.

You can listen to the YouTube playlist

 

Or the Bandcamp album

 

"Fearless Faceless Cowboys" was the third jam session, and I thought it came out the best overall, and made us all smile from ear to ear.

Even many years later I'm very proud of it and enjoy listening myself!  

I enjoy listening to it much more so than listening back to my other bands' painstakingly recorded albums!

It's one live jam session recorded to 4 track cassette, and mixed a day later straight from the 4-track, through a string of effects running through the AUX sends. Enjoy.

Fuzzy Christmas To You

Have a Fuzzy Christmas, friends.


Listen to Fuzzy Christmas...

or download Fuzzy Christmas.mp3 (20mb)

I recorded this on my 2880 Looper out in Park Orchards on Christmas Day.

Me and Ev were working on building our own Supersonic Fuzz Fun pedals, and I was already feeling warm and fuzzy from the good Christmas valve tones going around, so I selected Saint Nick (Nitro) for the dirty work on this song.

Turn up the radio.  Bring the fuzz.

"Crim Crimeny" - Dubby Copicat

If you need a dubby journey into the somewhat paranoid subconscious of Murray's Collingwood lair, look no further... You have found it here, complete with tape delay, piano, and yes, flute!


Listen to Crim Crimeny Dub...

or download Crim Crimeny Dub.mp3 (13mb)

I dusted off the Yamaha 4 Track recorder, and recorded this little piece, not really knowing where I was headed once again.  Started with 606 drum beat through my Copicat IC400 Varispeed, for a dubby beat.  Then added Piano through the Copicat delay, then Guitar with Foxx Fuzz Wah, then finally, Flute through Copicat.

A flute I bought from up the road for $90 on Smith St.

You Hold Up My Sky

Listen to You Hold Up My Sky...

or download You Hold Up My Sky.mp3 (6mb)

Murray sings.  Yes indeed.  This song is just waiting to become a number 1 hit.  Just need to pull together Murray and the Magic Tones.  Anyone?


A song I recorded yonks and yonks ago, and have never quite felt is "complete".


But I reckon it's rad, and can't be assed working on it any more.  That's how punk I am.  Yo.  Eat it.


I think of it as a Sonic Youth Love Song.  I enjoy that sort of dirty pop naivity.


I used Talkbox on bass, which was fun.  Bammed out some loud drums, and saturated those little bitches.  Um, evil Jim Dunlop Bass Wah on the guitar for those nasty chorus swells.

I dug up some old photos from the session, January 2010.

I asked Yoda for some feedback.

"More harmonies in the chorus, it needs."

Yes, I must agree, the chorus is lacking a bit.

"A solo in the bridge, it needs."

Yes, Yoda!  Okay, okay.  Jeez.

I will do more work on it one day.

"F Major Mania" - A hark back to the 60's

Listen to F Major Mania...

or download F Major Mania.mp3 (7mb)

I was playing my brother's old amp in Park Orchards.  We call it "The Dr Who Amp", because it looks like it was made by the BBC special effects team, out of tin foil, or something.


It sounds really crusty, like some old Beatles amp.  so I was just playing around, and then everyone went out, and I was about to leave.  And I thought, "I'm gonna record a quick song!


I ran downstairs with my H4 Zoom set to Multitrack Mode, recorded a drum beat to the click track, then ran upstairs, and wanged out some guitar over it with the Dr Who Amp.


Then I went home and threw some bass on there.  Done!  It's real scrappy!  But another fun journey into the sounds of the late 60's.


The structure of the song is a bit weird.  I kinda like the Verse part the least, and it appears the most.  Would chop and change it around a bit before making it into an actual song for a band format!  I like the intro riff a lot, which re-appears at the end.

This is me from years ago.  Seemed appropriate.

I wanna be in a psych prog rock band. 

Fax me if interested.

"Runnin' on Empty" - an exploration of exploitation

Listen to Runnin' on Empty?...

or download Runnin' on Empty.mp3 (12mb)

I've been loving the sounds of the 60's and 70's in a big way.  I started listening to a bunch of blaxploitation movie soundtracks, and wanted to try my hand at a tune in that style.


Whenever I try to do that, it seems to go in a Beastie Boys direction, because I listened to so much "Check Your Head" when I was a teenager!  It's embedded!


I started with a percussion loop from Edwin Starr's song "Runnin'", and added my own stuff over that.  I played Organ, Foxx Fuzz Wah Guitar, and an overdriven Gonzales Jazz Bass.


Fun!  I tried to add Trumpet, but I suck, so I gave up on that.  If anyone wants to add Brass for me, that would be stupendous!

Foxx Fuzz Wah, the most troublesome, frustrating, pain in 

the ass pedal I've ever owned!

Barely ever works, known to cripple minds and hearts.  

Sounds proportionately evil awesome!

I love you, you blue wretch.

Made of Dirt (featuring Brendan Barnett)

Listen to Made of Dirt (featuring Brendan Barnett)...

or download Made of Dirt.mp3 (13mb)

I bought a ridiculous old Farfisa transistor organ, and made this song, which my good friend Brendan did some golden improvisation over.

It cracks me up, and at the same time, I honestly just love it.  :)

Brendan, you're a legend, mate.  One of our finest fun-time works.


The Farfisa 257R, at the centre of most of this piece...

Where Are We Going?

Listen to Where Are We Going?...

or download Where Are We Going.mp3 (6mb)

I dusted off the 4 Track recorder, and recorded this little piece.

Featuring the voice of Denis V Smith, 

from the Northside Christian Centre, Bundoora,

from an old cassette I bought at an op shop in Coburg.

Country Thinking

Listen to Country Thinking...

or download Country Thinking (v33).mp3 (5mb)

I was in Ruffy.  I thought I'd like to record a country song.  

I wanted to try some slide guitar, and also to use my little smokey amp.

I recorded an egg shaker, and a broom, inspired by having seen Neil Young use this technique on an MTV Unplugged performance.  :)


I also added guitar played with a cello bow to give it more country vibe!

Here is an older sketch of the song recorded on a Zoom H4 multitrack thing, while I was in NZ in my hire car, I think!  It's got more of a wistful, perhaps sorrowful vibe.  I guess "melancholy" would probably feel more apt, actually.

or download Country Thinking (H4 Sketch).mp3 (2mb)

The New Loutonians - Said Hello!

The New Loutonians debut album "Said Hello" is out now on Bandcamp!

It all began when we won the Parkwood Highschool Talent Quest.

It wasn't until 10 years later that we began playing music again.

This albums represents our debut full length album.  :D

Empty Sea Disco

Listen to Empty Sea Disco...

or download Empty Sea Disco.mp3 (11mb)

You're my isotope

My last hope

My love dope

My dreamgirl

No joke.

I went up to Ruffy for a few days with dear and inspiring friends Jim Batt and Kim Boekbinder, between Christmas and New Years.  We ate amazing food, picked raspberries, relaxed, drank a bit, and I made some tunes.  Here's one of them!


I started with the Roland 606 drum machine, running through my Watkins Copicat tape echo, then through an overdrive, delay and reverb...

Then I played my Fender Precision Bass through my Ibanez SB7 Bass Synth pedal to get the main part of the song.  I also used the Behringer Reverb Machine (RV600) for the Space Echo, which always makes me think of some sort of strange angel choir, and the Line 6 Echo Park for it's nice Sweep Filter Delay.  I also used the Reverse Delay setting.

Then I used my Rocktron Talkbox with my Phantom Guitar to do some sort of vocals, that also stood as a guitar lead.  

Then I added some glockenspiel, and some normal bass, and slap bass parts, and edited it all into something more manageable once I got home!


Listen with your stereo set to phat.  
Good walking music.