The Smush Newsletter, Oct 3th, 2001, Vol 1.9 Contact: oskillator@hotmail.com Home: http://www.mindspring.com/~pfister_/smush/ Back issues available at http://www.mindspring.com/~pfister_/smush/news.html Table of contents: 1. FLOOR OF SOUND ..... 18 2. SCREENSHOTS ........ 77 3. NEW SMUSH MUSIC ... 104 4. MISUNDERSTANDINGS .. 121 5. CLASSICS ........... 135 6. IF YOU WANT MORE ... 161 FLOOR OF SOUND -------------- I was inspired, this weekend, to write no less than seven smush songs, all of which I've uploaded to the smush page. Five of these songs were inspired by listening to Frank Zappa's brilliant album "Jazz From Hell", the only purely instrumental album to be awarded the "Parental Advisory - Explicit Content" label. Except for one track, "St. Etienne", he created it entirely within the confines of a Synclavier sample/synth/sequencing system. This was back when the Synclavier had no control over dynamics; every note was played at the same volume. So I thought -- it's was good enough for Frank Zappa ... in fact, he won a "best rock instrumental performance" grammy for the single "Jazz From Hell", which was all sequenced ... why should I control the volume my notes play at? Just make them all the same volume and the dynamics of the instruments should shine through by themselves! And also, inspired by Phil Spector's classic "wall of sound" production style, I thought: what if the sounds were layers so thick that not only could you not walk through them, you could even WALK on them? Literally?! With the right set of speakers, it could be done! All it'd take is a few compressors and some powerful amps and you could walk on my beautiful tunes! You'd go deaf in microseconds... but that's just an engineering problem. Monkey work. I'm an artist, here. If I want people to walk on my sound without going deaf, they'll damn well make it happen. Well, here are the results: MUM - MaxiMUM density. This song shows you how dense a mix can become before it begins to sound too poncey. It grows in steps, and it starts to become pretty poncey around 1:07. TRO - FunkaTROnic. This song was written using trumpets. That makes it funky. The bass helps too. Especially the bass in the bridge, where it keeps playing the same note over and over again -- funk is defined by how much the next note deviates from what the most advanced music theory tells you would be proper. I'm not up on the latest advances, but in 1991 terms, this was mathematically proven to be the funkiest riff possible. DSC - DreamSCope. This song is named after the device in the C.S. Lewis novel "The Dark Tower" used by the main characters to look at a dreamscape. It eventually drives them insane. Luckily for you, I did some beta testing of this song and faded it out right before the point where most listeners went insane. PAW - Evil's PAW. If you find yourself stuck in Evil's Paw, listen to this song and it will tell you how to get out. Here's a hint: just jumping out doesn't work, because you'll just land in the other paw! SPC - SPace Capsool. This song was inspired by Bach's corpse being pun is a space capsule alongside a few of his favorite LPs that he wrote. At first, I thought, damn, that's pretty wide distribution of his music! But then I realized that there are no people to listen in outer space, and when you factor in the population growth, really, smush has had more listeners in our time than Bach had in his. Maybe due to all the breeding it sounds like cheating, but that means in terms of listener count, we're doing better than Bach! SCREENSHOTS ----------- Rubbahead: Hey, Lemon. Our studio needs some new gear. So I got a job as a consultant for a database project. Lemonhead: Not again? Remember last time? You changed all the fields of the database to 'boobies' and the company had to change its business plan to providing internet porn or go bankrupt. Rubbahead: It was the right thing to do. I'd do it again. But this time, I have something different in mind. Here's a copy of the application I'm going to be working with. I need you to go in and take a screenshot of every dialog box in the program and print it out so I can mark it up in red ink. That way the company knows what it got wrong. Lemonhead: This application is twelve megabytes! There are probably thousands of dialog boxes! Rubbahead: Well, you'd better get started. Lemonhead: You know, you always bitch when *I* give *YOU* a huge chunk of work on one of *MY* pet projects. Rubbahead: Yeah, you ought to stop doing that. Lemonhead: [opening the application] You know, this is the sort of thing we should get an intern to do. He could gain lots of useful screenshot-taking experience, and with a little luck, build it into a lucrative screenshot-taking career. Rubbahead: We're legally not allowed to hire any more interns since the R.F. incident. Lemonhead: Oh yeah. NEW SMUSH MUSIC --------------- Here's the non floor-of-sound stuff. Here, I wasn't shy with the volume controls. suf - Didn't the world need just one more song about pain and human suffering before it was content? This song was written under the auspices of the "Under the Floor of Sound" corporation of San Bernadino. It was not, however, a work for hire, despite what the preceding sentence would imply. Sab - Sa(a)b makes me want to cry. The random piano chords and arpeggiated and heavily processed synth solo makes me whoop with peals of indifference. The filtered drill and bass snare incenses me. I like listening to music that makes me angry. It helps me to grow as a person. MISUNDERSTANDINGS ----------------- Rubbahead: There's someone on the phone here who says our "Pain LP" damaged his audio equipment. [editor's note: the limited edition "Pain LP" was given out during Smush's first tour and consists of the songs "hig", "xxx", "snp", "bsy", and "lud"] Lemonhead: How does he know that? Rubbahead: He listened to it once and now all his other music sounds like shit. Lemonhead: That's just because all music sounds like shit in comparison to our great music. Tell him that. Rubbahead: He says he'll see us in court. Lemonhead: Not if we see him first! Ha ha! CLASSICS -------- Here, I've gone to the bottom of the list of smush songs -- those that have been listened to least of all smush songs. Some of theme are quite good. Vot - Don't forget to vot! This was recorded by a live three-piece band in my garage. I played piano, rubbahead played the dulcimer, and R.F. played the bass guitar. We didn't work out a chord progression a head of time, so you listen to us fumbling to work one out in real time. It's quite an experience. Dud - Rubbahead's gift for melody shines through in this first seven seconds of this song... then he layers his wonderful melody in house beats and synth harmonies that don't quite work. But it's also quite an experience. The ending is a classic smush style inverse-fade to black done by saturating the signal path to the extent that everything becomes inaudible. rux - ruck(u)s. So simple, yet sublime. The chord progression is beautiful on its own, but layered with synth riffs and many drum layers, it is the instantiator of a ruckus. How many drum layers were used? I couldn't say. But how about those synth riffs? I wrote at least three of those. A layered masterpiece. Six layers. Yeah. Let's see you top that with your four-track hardware, Mr. George Martin.