In the beginning . . .
There was Nate, a computer, and a drum machine. And a lot of random samples. A lot.
Music for Mathematicians was the first album of electronic music I wrote. I believe that it was written mostly in 2000 and possibly some of it in early 2001. The second section is the earliest electronic music I put to tape (um, virtual computer tape, I guess).
As you may notice, this album is heavy on samples. I threw just about everything I could on this album - poets reading their works, movie samples I culled from the internet, presidential faux pas - everything. The song "Homework Assignment" opens with a sample that is, as the title would suggest, a homework assignment, read by a professor and posted on his website for his students to listen to. In retrospect, I could justify the abundance and randomness of samples as a type of postmodern statement about the pervasiveness of such aural snippets in our lives, maybe justify the end result as a sort of assault on the listeners' senses and sensibilities. But really I just liked grabbing samples off the internet and throwing them on top of beats. Yep . . .
Sometime I would like to go through and annotate the samples as best as my memory will allow.
On the whole, these songs tend to be more repetitive than the later material. This was because of the software I was using at the time and also because I didn't really know what the hell I was doing. .
So, despite all the shortcomings, or perhaps because of them, the album still has a sort of childlike charm to it. In the box to your right you will see links for individual songs. You can also download the entire album as a zip file (note - if you are using a PC, then right click on the various links and select “Save link as”).
Music for Mathematicians ZIP FILE (84mb)
The Second Wave
The songs grouped together here were written not too long after Music for Mathematicians. These differ significantly from Music for Mathematicians in that they do not feature samples. The impetus behind this change was my realization that every song I wrote for Music for Mathematicians was sort of - what's the word? - illegal. These songs were from a period in my life where I was thinking about trying to actually do something with the music I wrote, and you can't do anything remotely commercial with songs that feature samples you haven't been given the rights to use. So away went the samples, and here's what we have left:
The Second Wave ZIP FILE
INTERESTING FACTOID:
These songs were titled much, much later. In fact, some of them I just titled right now. I've never be one to pay much attention to titles. When I am working on songs, the files on my computer are assigned letters or numbers.
END INTERESTING FACTIOD
The Third Wave
I think I wrote these songs around 2004/05 (I'm hazy on those sorts of details). You will notice a big jump in the musical complexity between these songs and the ones preceding them. This is because I started composing music with a program called Sibelius, which is an actual music notation software. After composing the music with Sibelius, I would then import the music as midi files into a program such as Fruity Loops. I would then assign synths to play the midi files (thus eliminating the crappy midi sound). The drums beats to these songs were added later. Since there is a lot of material, I'm going to break this section up.
There was Nate, a computer, and a drum machine. And a lot of random samples. A lot.
Music for Mathematicians was the first album of electronic music I wrote. I believe that it was written mostly in 2000 and possibly some of it in early 2001. The second section is the earliest electronic music I put to tape (um, virtual computer tape, I guess).
As you may notice, this album is heavy on samples. I threw just about everything I could on this album - poets reading their works, movie samples I culled from the internet, presidential faux pas - everything. The song "Homework Assignment" opens with a sample that is, as the title would suggest, a homework assignment, read by a professor and posted on his website for his students to listen to. In retrospect, I could justify the abundance and randomness of samples as a type of postmodern statement about the pervasiveness of such aural snippets in our lives, maybe justify the end result as a sort of assault on the listeners' senses and sensibilities. But really I just liked grabbing samples off the internet and throwing them on top of beats. Yep . . .
Sometime I would like to go through and annotate the samples as best as my memory will allow.
On the whole, these songs tend to be more repetitive than the later material. This was because of the software I was using at the time and also because I didn't really know what the hell I was doing. .
So, despite all the shortcomings, or perhaps because of them, the album still has a sort of childlike charm to it. In the box to your right you will see links for individual songs. You can also download the entire album as a zip file (note - if you are using a PC, then right click on the various links and select “Save link as”).
Music for Mathematicians ZIP FILE (84mb)
The Second Wave
The songs grouped together here were written not too long after Music for Mathematicians. These differ significantly from Music for Mathematicians in that they do not feature samples. The impetus behind this change was my realization that every song I wrote for Music for Mathematicians was sort of - what's the word? - illegal. These songs were from a period in my life where I was thinking about trying to actually do something with the music I wrote, and you can't do anything remotely commercial with songs that feature samples you haven't been given the rights to use. So away went the samples, and here's what we have left:
The Second Wave ZIP FILE
INTERESTING FACTOID:
These songs were titled much, much later. In fact, some of them I just titled right now. I've never be one to pay much attention to titles. When I am working on songs, the files on my computer are assigned letters or numbers.
END INTERESTING FACTIOD
The Third Wave
I think I wrote these songs around 2004/05 (I'm hazy on those sorts of details). You will notice a big jump in the musical complexity between these songs and the ones preceding them. This is because I started composing music with a program called Sibelius, which is an actual music notation software. After composing the music with Sibelius, I would then import the music as midi files into a program such as Fruity Loops. I would then assign synths to play the midi files (thus eliminating the crappy midi sound). The drums beats to these songs were added later. Since there is a lot of material, I'm going to break this section up.
Birthday Fragments
The first section consists of seven songs I uploaded around my twenty-seventh birthday, though the songs themselves were written probably a year earlier. They are all short and I may go back and work on them some more in the future. I recently came across different versions of each song. I believe that the only differences between the two versions are the drum sounds and the occasional effect. The differences exist because the two versions were mixed-down at different times and on different computers (hence the beats differ because the computers didn’t have the same set of drum samples).
Classical Pieces
These tracks were all composed with Sibelius and they were my attempt at “classical music,” and by “classical music” I mean, “music without drums.” I actually like these quite a bit and it’s a shame I don’t have a functioning copy of Sibelius anymore. These tracks are in mono and are recordings of the midi sounds triggered by the Sibelius program (synth strings / horns usually don’t sound realistic, so I kept the midi versions of these songs rather than punching them into a program like Fruity Loops).
Music Meant for a Band
Believe it or not I used to play in bands. These songs were written with a rock band in mind. At some point I decided to record them to my computer. And, yes, that’s me playing guitar on the first three tracks.
Nathan and Tim
These songs are songs based around Tim Hove’s bass lines. Tim came down to the studio (i.e. my bedroom) one day and laid down a bunch of bass lines. I sampled the parts I wanted and then created songs around the samples. Tim’s been begging me to put this stuff up for years, so here you go Tim.
Assorted Sibelius Stuff
These songs were written at the same time as the birthday fragments, but were not posted online until now. I’ve assigned most of them numbers, since they never had titles.
The Fourth Wave (Will it ever end?)
I’m putting later stuff here. For the most part, I posted these songs first in myspace blogs.
Nathan and Jay-Z
Danger Mouse released an album called The Grey Album which featured vocal tracks from Jay-Z’s The Black Album with samples from The Beatles’ The White Album providing the music. Long story short, I got an a cappella copy of The Black Album and put my own my own music behind it. I’ve done of few more songs than are listed here, but they are not yet polished enough to post.
FAWM: Why Would You Care Where I’ve Been?
This is my first February Album Writing Month Album. The goal of FAWM is to write at least fourteen songs during the month of February.
FAWM: The Computer Learns to Love You
And this is my second FAWM album.
