Category: music production

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Noer the Boy’s Futuristic Sci-Fi Bass Album Review:

A Forlorn Hope

Noer the Boy is at the helm of a new generation of pioneers exploring the frequency spectrum through abstract bass music. His beats crush with punishing distortion and his music seethes with melodic and harmonic intricacies that will being your dance moves to the next level. From his background in marching band, choir, and video editing; Noah grew a fascination with kinetic beats, industrial sounds, and the unrestricted freedom of computer sound creation.

Noah is 27 (August 3rd, 1993) from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Noah was born and raised in Appleton, which is about an hour and a half from Milwaukee on the northern end of Lake Winnebago. Noah studied music and band in high school playing the French horn, which is pretty damn cool and also became a drum major for his high school, Appleton East.

Noah is a member of DJ Shadow’s imprint Liquid Amber, Los Angeles collective Courteous Family, and Noisia’s DIVISION, Noer the Boy has also released music on Mass Appeal, VISION, Alpha Pup, and Orange Milk Records. Noer teamed up with Shadow to co-produce ‘Horror Show’ featuring Danny Brown and tour Europe following the release of his debut album ‘Mechanism’. His sounds have grabbed the attention of bass music figureheads G Jones, EPROM, Machinedrum, Ivy Lab, and the Low End Theory club night in LA.

Noah seems to be in a solid space, even with the impact of CoronaVirus in 2020. Pretty awesome considering he now makes a living off making music, sound design tutorials and sample packs, and has an awesome Patreon where you can get exclusives of all his newly released tracks, as well as deeper packages to help music creators augment their productions. He works hard for it and his sound reflects that.

I’ve been lucky enough to take lessons from Noah for about the last year and a half and we’ve been drilling down into mix engineering, deeper sound design, and modular synthesis. Noah is really a wiz at music, so make sure you follow him because he will definitely be releasing new music. He’s recently started to make heavily synthesized house music, or electro, which I have to say I am ecstatic about. Electro-House is my favorite kind of music.

I interviewed Noah about A Forlorn Hope, in an effort to get a better understanding of his music creation process, and what this latest album means to him. I loved the album, especially Shapeshifter, Nebula, Exile, and Rule of two. The whole album certainly deserves a listen on some high quality speakers! (your car is probably not loud enough). Check out the Q and A with Noah below and leave a comment if you feel inclined:

Interview with Noer the Boy

Q1. Elliot: “I personally love all of your music. But this album seems special. I think it hits harder than most and that the sound design is pioneering. What kinds of processes and techniques do you use to make your sounds and mix stand out so much? What kind of special sauces do you use to create such a punishing sound?”

A1. Noertheboy: “Don’t underestimate the power of layering. A few simple sounds or effect chains can combine to form something that appears much more complex than it really is. Treat sound design as building with lego bricks – maybe the instructions are useful but also maybe you want to experiment instead.”

Q2. Elliot: “A Forlorn Hope has some of my favorite tunes on it. But I think that the title track is special and its kind of the motif of the album. Its fat. What inspired you to create that track, and the sounds that are in it?”

A2. Noertheboy: “Without giving too much away, Forlorn Hope is about a doomed journey to the edge of the known universe. ‘Forlorn Hope’  was originally named ‘Event Horizon’, but after watching the 90s film by the same title I didn’t want people to think I made the record about that movie.”

Q3. Elliot: “My favorite track is Nebula, I’m not sure why, but I just love the cohesion of the track and the melody that persists and finds an apex near the ending. What are your favorite parts of the album, and why?”

A3. Noertheboy: “It’s impossible for me to pick a favorite from my album. Each album track is my favorite for a different reason. If I don’t feel 100% like it’s my favorite song made so far, it doesn’t make it on the record.”

Q4: Elliot: “How did you come up with the theme and storyline behind the album? Its pretty cool. It reminds me of a combination of Lost in Space, Dune, or maybe the Abyss.”

A4. Noertheboy: “‘Forlorn Hope’ itself is a term for a group of soldiers tasked with a leading mission, usually a suicidal mission where casualties are high. That combined with my love of deep space SCI-FI films have influenced me a great deal. The Alien series, Interstellar, War of the Worlds, 2001: A Space Odyssey – movies like those have shaped a lot of my sonic identity. The world that ‘Forlorn Hope’ exists in is also the same world that my first album ‘Mechanism’ takes place in. I’m a big fan of concept records.”

Q5. Elliot: “You said on your instagram that writing this album has been particularly Cathartic for you. In what ways have you grown personally and professionally from writing A Forlorn Hope?”

A5. Noertheboy: “I only start write an album when I have something new to say and new tools to showcase. So a lot of growth has to happen to get to that place. And the album writing process itself is transformative. Writing a few songs will undoubtably inspire me to write more and that process leads to rapid growth and breakthroughs that might come much slower if not for writing a cohesive LP.”

Q6. Elliot: “How long did you album take?”

A6. Noertheboy: “The process took a little under a year and a half.”

Q7. Elliot: “How long have you been writing music? What was your first show like?”

A7. Noertheboy: “I’ve been writing music as Noer the Boy for going on 8 years, but music has been an integral part of my life ever since I can remember. My first show was a house party in college and I remember playing hella Pretty Lights, rap music, and Skrillex mashups IIRC. Shoutout my old music homies Kaelin and Alec for playing with me at that first show!”

Q8. Elliot: “You’re pretty good at writing music, Noah. But why do you make it? What’s your primary inspiration. (or 2, or 3)”

A8. Noertheboy: “Music put simply is my everything. It’s what I know. I’d make music if nobody listened.”

Q9. Elliot: “Is there anything else about the album that you want people to know? Maybe you can comment on how you feel about it being finished and out there in the wild to have a life of its own?”

A9. Noertheboy: “Shirts and vinyl copies are in the works! Big thanks to everyone listening and sharing the record, I really appreciate it.”

Q10: “Any last notes? Any coronavirus advice?”

A10. Noertheboy: “Take the stay at home orders seriously so we can get back to enjoying live music.”

That’s it for the interview, feel free to comment on anything and make sure to check out this very avant-garde production from Noer the Boy – A Forlorn Hope.

Noer the Boy (live)

You can buy the Forlorn Hope album on Bandcamp to help support Noah in his journey. You can also follow him on Twitter, Instagram, and of course, on Facebook.

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the E.T. – Crystal Caves is OUT NOW

crystal cave OUT

Sorry its been so long since I’ve posted about my music here. I’m getting back into the swing of my second job (yoga instruction) and I started a new landscaping business this year, so it has been very difficult to find time for things other than work and relaxing from work, and music requires a lot of attention, effort, and time.

However, I have been working super diligently on my music and continuing my lessons with Noah, aka Noer the Boy, whose music you can check out here. He’s a really talented dude with an incredible grasp on distortion and how to manipulate sound to create ultra heavy beats, so make sure you check out his music. His melodies are also really incredible, make sure you listen to his latest album: Forlorn Hope.

Melodies

The biggest challenge thus far in learning how to write music has certainly been learning to write effective and ear catching melodies. Ideally, to create melodies that resonate and build upon themselves to create an overall harmony that is enjoyable. Thus the release of ‘Mystery’ and ‘Go Big’, which are by far the most melodically oriented tracks I’ve made. I have kinda pushed sound design to the side to explore music theory in more depth and to get a handle on mixing, which has always been really challenging for me (before Noah, I was completely self-taught via youtube). I’m thinking about getting another mentor also just to keep growing in different ways. I’m also working with my buddy who is literally the best guitar player I’ve ever met, Rich Santana, to start making more analog sounds (drums, guitar riffs, bass riffs, etc). I’ve also picked up the Arturia CMI Fairlight and Buchla Easel emulations, which are super fun and incredibly unique instruments.

Mixing

Learning to mix has been quite the journey for me. I got into music because I love sound and experimental beats, similar to Mr. Oizo, Daft Punk, Deadmau5, Eprom, and No Mana, but obviously all of the artists I just mentioned are fantastic mixing engineers. Experimental sound design isn’t really that cool unless you can properly mix the sounds, because of the overlap of the distortion and lack of quiet in certain parts of the frequency spectrum. I am continuing to educate myself on how exactly to mix sounds to create heavier beats and will continue this journey for a few decades, I hope.

Crystal Caves – Elliot’s newest track

This brings me to my latest piece of music, an abstract BASS track that I call Crystal Caves. This is significantly slower than the majority of my music, because I am trying to branch out from my favorite genre, house music, to play with more experimental and heavy rhythms. I’ve also worked out longer intros and some serious layering of melodies in combination with tighter mixes through precise equalizing and compression to make more cinematic music.

Get my music pretty music anywhere

The track is available on most streaming outlets and I’ve actually used a 3rd party distributor for this track instead of using DistroKid, though I am very skeptical of continuing to work with any distributor. I want complete control over my own music, which makes it tough to even send my stuff out to labels. Please share my track with your friends if you like it, I also really appreciate anyone who reaches out to me with a comment or even a buck or two to support my journey in making music. But I really appreciate anyone who is just willing to give my music a good listen.

Follow my releases here: https://linktr.ee/etelford32

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Mystery is OUT NOW

Mystery Cover Art

the E.T.’s latest melodic electro house track is a well mixed 120 BPM adventure in the key of D.

Production

I spent about 6 months producing the track and I got a lot out of trying to work with all of the different sounds and variations of the original melody that I was able to create. I used all of my production technology, which now includes Fabfilter PROQ3, Izotope’s Trash 2, Sylenth, Reaktor, and all of the native Ableton plugins.

Mystery is available on all streaming platforms!

https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/theet/mystery

Download

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Music Writing and Upcoming Artists for 2020

Independent Music Production Studio

Lately I have been very centered and focused on writing better music, which always seems to happen in tandem with spending more time practicing yoga. I can remember in India when I first started making music with Ableton every day after I practiced the Primary Series with Saraswathi. I think I was inspired by Rumi while I was there and just wanted to find stuff to create.

I’ve always been into EDM, but making music gives me an extra excuse to be a mega-nerd about it. I make a few new playlists every week for my yoga classes, follow me on Spotify for them. My favorite artists this week are Black Gummy, Sayer, and Eprom. I’ve also been registering to Deadmau5’s latest album and like it a lot more than when it was first released. Sayer should be named slayer, his sound is so cool.

Somethin Somethin and No Mana have also been making great music this last year. About a week ago I went on a Mat Zo, Matt Lange, Flume, and Yung Bae have also been in my most play lists.

Lessons on writing melodies and mixing

After my last album, it became pretty apparent to me that I needed a lot of work in the studio learning about mixing and getting my sounds to layer and compliment each other. I saw a post from Noer the Boy on Twitter about Ableton lessons and decided to give one a shot.

It turned out kinda magnificently, Noer, or Noah, the guy I’ve taken probably a dozen lessons from is a prolific writer and has lots of great tracks already finished. His mixes are also very much on point; they punch through the speakers and the music makes me want to get moving. Its pretty exciting.

I have also finished my studio, meaning I have 2 Yamaha monitors and a subwoofer that get pretty loud so I can hear everything. I can understate how powerful this is going to be for my mixing; until recently my music was all made out of headphones (which don’t have nearly the same dynamic range as good studio monitors. More high quality tools to get better results.

More Progress in Melodic Structure

Writing a full melody has always been kinda difficult for me, but I really feel like I have written a few tracks that have a great melody and that are almost ready to be released. I have a lot of work to do on the mixing of them, designing some more dope sounds for ’em and on tying them all together. The new mixing tools I’ve gotten recently are also helping a ton.

It has been a journey in patience as I experiment with all different kinds of keys and modes to get the flow of the music going just right, but I think I’m getting there. I’ve also been able to finish buying all of the professional tools that I need for my studio, so now I can focus on the writing.

One last artist to watch for: G JONES

This guy just did his first headline at Red Rocks and will be starting to tour internationally here soon. Make sure you check out this pioneer of bass music when you get a chance.

More Music Coming Soon…

I have a bunch of tracks that I am working on that will form EROS Part 3. I’ve been working a bunch on the storyline as well, the whole project continues to evolve a lot. Check back in the next few weeks for the nunu 😀

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the E.T. – EROS Introduction | Novaborn | J the Alien

EROS introduction

the E.T. presents:

EROS INTRODUCTION

Introducing EROS

EROS INTRODUCTION: The EROS album is definitely a step-up from my previous work. The mix quality as well as the writing is just on another level (thanks to a lot of hard work). I am attempting to write songs with a new degree of depth, EROS is a result of that search. Now for the EROS introduction, my latest work and music that I am very proud to present to you.

I have taken a lot of influence recently from old rock music, especially Pink Floyd, the Beetles, Led Zeppelin, and Jimmy Hendrix, specifically. The ideas of concept albums and how Pink Floyd used them to talk about ideas that are pervasive to the human experience. I’m in love with how Led Zeppelin plays to ideas and how all of the artists create stories with their music. Especially Hendrix.

So I have attempted to adapt my own methodology to create a concept for an album that I think can stand the test of time. EROS is an alien concentration camp of Mar’s moon that all of my tracks focus around. I am almost finished writing the tracks built around these concepts and there is a full storyline to accompany it. EROS tracks has been nearly 6 months in the making! So here’s the story.

EROS was originally going to be a trilogy

 

I decided to cut down the track count to about 7 or 8 and just take the best. I have also signed one of the tracks to a label. More on that later. Now to introduce EROS and the Universe that exists around the alien concentration camp.

EROS Introduction

Part 1: Introducing J the Alien

Introducing the main character of the Saga, J the Alien. J is an alien, in fact, he is the last being of his race, a once populous and prodigiously successful civilization until the collapse of their neutron star. Now a being must be born into a collapsing star in order to absorb the necessary energy into the incubation process. The energy requirements are so enormous that a birth causes the neutron stars to collapse within a millenia. The Novaborn live until they are killed.

Novaborn – the birth

Future Bass Hybrid

Novaborn is the story of J’s birth, the first part of the EROS introduction. He was birthed without any knowledge of his ancestry into the darkness of space. Upon waking for the first time post-incubation, J is guided via the Novaborn AI, Celexa to his new homeworld, Celexus. Celexa encountered a planet during the incubation process and already begun the terraforming process to make the atmosphere suitable for J to arrive and begin mining the crust. His first quest inundates J with knowledge about his species, their energy consumption, the energy costs of his own life, and the recognition that he is the only one of his kind. J’s life is a search for energy, to keep himself alive and to revive the Novaborn species.

J the Alien – Introducing the main character

Future Electro

J is a very unique character that I am very excited to share. I had an entire album built to explore J’s universe and existence. But I scrapped 5 tracks and combined the rest into the EROS saga. J has all kinds of incredible technology and unique attributes. Luckily, these attributes  make for harrowing and mind-melting adventures through the cosmos. I will release the next tracks ‘very soon;.

I will be releasing more music within the next three days, most notably Positron, which is at the basis for J’s technology and existence. Also check out this music video for Novaborn in the meantime:

Also, check out my previous album, HAZE.

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New Music and more Focus on Yoga

Morgan Page - the E.T. remix

Morgan Page – Beautiful Disaster (the E.T. remix)

This past week has been great for my yoga practice and also my music writing, usually the two go together for me. Hence the above remix of Morgan Page – Beautiful Disaster. The vocals are fantastic, I really hope you like the mix!

I subscribe to a sample library that I have a certain amount of download credits to each month so that I can download professional sounds, mostly drums and specialty synthesizer sounds or vocals. They are royalty free, but I always manipulate them enough to make them unrecognizable anyways.

They have remix contests and this contest in particular had some excellent vocals to work with, which I was looking for in Splice anyways, so I decided to just go ahead and do a remix instead.

So my latest track was a fantastic mix-down experience because I got to work closely with vocal samples to making them fit into the overall house mix that I created to accompany it. The vocals make the track stand out against a lot of my other work, but the sound design is very similar and the leads are Juno emulations.

I took a lot of new sound design techniques that I have been working with and applied them to the stems that were provided. The track is pretty simple, but the drum-beat is very original and the bass is super dope, I seriously can’t wait to hear it on a louder system. Part of the reason I make music is that I like bass music and house so much; it gives me a good perspective on going after the future of the genres and market.

The percussion also keeps the track moving at all time, while an electro stab that I added creates a bit of contrasting melody against the chords of the track, just to spice it up and provide a bit of my own flavor. I think the best part of the track are the FX and the beat. On some louder speakers those drums will smash.

Anyways, I hope you like the track. I can’t offer you a download, but here are the streaming links:

Soundcloud – Stream and let me know what you think of it.

Splice Contest – Vote for me!

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Crave – the E.T. [Electro-House]

Crave - the E.T. (cover photo)

Crave – The E.T.

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Crave came together over the course of a few months, the layering of the lead synths took a while to plan. I feel like this is one of my best produced tracks yet and I certainly put a good amount of time into it.

It doesn’t exactly fit into what I am getting ready to create with my next album, but I certainly feel that the track is well written, so I am releasing it as possibly one of my last singles. I am feeling heavily into writing albums and am pretty excited about the idea of creating themes around the tracks to give them more purpose.

Electro-House and Modern EDM

For the past week I haven’t even been listening to much EDM. I’ve been actually getting really excited about older Pink Floyd tracks to find sounds that are more uniquely dissonant and distorted. Their older work certainly contains some mastery. This track is another experimental attempt at trying to create the sounds that meld together into a seizing rhythm of house beats.

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Y – Future House

Y is OUT NOW!!!

That is apparently optimal wording for a new track release. You can download the track below, let me know if you have any difficulties.

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I used a combination of my favorite drums samples from some Splice packs that I have been collecting for over a year now. The kick is from the Deadmau5 pack, it has some of my favorite drums sounds. The hats in this track are very uniquely arranged, I feel like they add a tremendous amount of momentum.

The Bass is heavily modulated and I’ve create three different layers for it. It should really shine on larger systems.

The Lead is yet another JUNO synth sound, which is still my favorite. I’ve added like 5 different FX channels to it that are all mixed into the drums to give some awesome melodic and pad pumping effects.

The composition came together rather quickly, I am sometimes really surprised at how it just seems to happen on some days when I devote myself to it.

Anyways, I hope you enjoy the track, I will hopefully have time to make a music video for it in the next week or so.

<3 E.T.

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the E.T. Harmony Remix and the pursuit of Signature Sounds

Harmony Remix

CloZee – Harmony (the E.T. remix)

Get ready for the Harmony Remix, the E.T.’s best track yet. Turn up your speakers to max and clear the tables around you before your insanity commences!

 

the E.T.’s Harmony Remix

This might be the most amount of time I’ve spent on a track. I spent a lot of time getting familiar with the sound design that CloZee uses and learning the key of F minor, which I must say made the experience worth it by itself. This was a great opportunity to learn about some very unique instruments. CloZee makes world music which nearly always uses live instrumentation. This also means that she uses a ton of different instruments.

I focused on re-using her Erhu, Harmonium, Khuur, Zither, Bass, and Guitar samples in the Harmony remix. This is a great Complextro, Bass-House track because her influence is so visible throughout the track. There is a good amount of glitch percussion and weird Bass designs to accompany what is mostly re-used samples from the contest site. I didn’t even experiment with key changes at all, I tried to make the track as recognizable a Harmony remix as possible.

I also created some heavy Bass sounds and creating a darker atmosphere for the track, though I keep the melody in F minor. The percussion mix is solid, I hope you enjoy making dance moves to it.

Sub bass is mixed in properly. My favorite part of the track is the arpeggiated vocal melody that moves fully into the track at the last drop. Initially that last drop was going to be the end of the track, but I couldn’t help but think ‘what a waste of energy!’ so I re-did it. I hope you like the finished version. This track is one of my more cohesive arrangements and most certainly has some of my best mixing and sound design.

The Composition of CloZee’s Harmony – the E.T. remix

The introduction last about 30 seconds and introduces a completely new drumkit, but I did use her clap sound as a layer in the drum rack I used. I added several House Bass sounds to the track as well as re-using CloZee’s mid bass sound in the intro to the 4 bar Complextro loops that the tracks breaks into.

The sub bass keeps the track rolling throughout and little breaks for the heavy bass sounds make for a funky and somewhat unpredictable beat, which I love having in House tracks. It makes the track so much easier to dance to. Verse 1 also introduced my vocal manipulations and the guitar melody that finishes the loops along with the Bass plucks.

I did a good amount of EQ’ing on the various sounds, but I like to keep my EQ’ing to a minimum because sometimes it causes the sounds to lose a lot of texture.

The Final drop is a proper crescendo and introduces a new melody that I created with the vocal samples that were introduced in Verse 1. The Erhu is continuous throughout the track and I feel like that instrument, along with the harmonium make the track instantly recognizable as a CloZee remix. I hope I did the original track at least a bit of justice…

Finally making Glitch-Hop

this new wave of production is going to be epic; I got into music because I loved Glitch-Hop and how it could just drop into a crazy beat out of nowhere, so CloZee’s music has been great to experience while I improve my production skills. BROKE is a milestone for the E.T. that I am really excited about, and will continue to create tracks that remind us that perfection is for robots! I have a track that I’m working on right now called Tinkerbox. It will take the production style of Broke into a new universe.

Finding & Creating Signature Sounds

Lately I have been working heavily with the Juno waveforms within Serum. I created an emulation and it’s by far one of my favorite sounds to use in my tracks. I have also created quite a few pads and ambient sounds with it, but I think it’s use in Glitch music will be the most interesting way to use it.

I’ve also worked hard to good at manipulating vocals into Melodies and Glitch sounds. I continue to experiment and play with the textures and transients (initial hits) of manipulating vocals. They say this is how Kanye made all of his music. Honestly the human voice is incredibly pleasing to the ears, so its probably true.

I designed 90% of the bass sounds in this track. Everything except for the weird lazer Glitch sound CloZee used in the original Harmony mix.  I am now better at mixing as a result of spending so much time on sound design.

A New Wave of the E.T.

I have like 5 tracks in the works right now, including a bombaf TECHNO track called Position. Named after Issaac Assimov’s idea for AI. It reminds me of Gesaffelstein and Pursuit. Also, Digitalism just released a new track, Spectrum which is an awesome dance track! One of my favorite new tracks, I will definitely be fitting it into my live sets. The louder I play it, the better it sounds!

My plan is to DJ a friends B-day party later in the month. I think I might play some originals, but getting people dancing will be so much fun. DJing is super fun with cool people. Right now, I feel pretty repressed when it comes to music, so it should be a great time!

the E.T. continues to improve with my ears, skill-set, and ability to produce music. A lot of this new music is unique; I am turning a corner into a new realm of quality. Definitely shoot me some feedback if you have some!

There is a new FORCE music video up on Youtube, you can subscribe to my channel here, definitely the coolest one I’ve made to date.

Check back soon for more music updates, free tracks, and links to all of the coolest ish on the webs.

Thanks for reading,

Elliot