About two months ago (that would be June or so), a friend forwarded to me a spam which, he said, might almost have come from the pen of Mark E. Smith himself. I agreed - and jiggered the spam text around a bit to make it even more Fall-like:
Sheila pondering rawer porcupines
[chorus]
kangaroo cites baselines
[chorus] But
you can protect yourself from supervision
visibility Sargent
[chorus x2] There it sat...until I got the idea that it should have a Fall-like musical accompaniment. Since spam alt-text is stolen from other sources, it seemed only fitting that the music for this track be stolen entirely from other sources. So I set to work ripping excerpts from various CDs, anything that seemed somehow Fallesque. Some were known Fall antecedents (some '60s garage stuff), some notorious Fall followers (guess), and a few were kind of surprising but just fit. Aside from having fun figuring out how to get everything in the same tempo and vaguely compatible key (I didn't really control for that when sampling), I will cop to three somewhat creative moments: (1) the "noise" solo in the bridge is entirely derived from one two-second loop, massively fucked with courtesy Gold Wave; (2) the drums in the chorus are brutally chopped down to size from a drum part about half the speed: I chopped the offbeats out, then further channeled each beat to the appropriate length (I was smart enough to choose an easily dividable number for the BPM, figuring I could switch things around later if need be - but in fact, I think the tempo's fine); and (3) the bass part in the chorus is assembled note by note from one bass note. So I more or less wrote that part. I had such fun, I put it on there twice (double-tracked it, one part in each channel). The vocals were the hardest thing. I had nothing but a cheap computer mic - but since I was going for a faux Fall track, I figured I'd process the hell out of the vocal and make it tinny and megaphone-like anyway. Still, since I've never been a performing musician I don't exactly have mic technique. That was a learning experience. The other main problem was: no way can I do a Mark E. Smith imitation. That would suck. Instead, I tried to speak in cadences that seemed to fit the song, but using my own voice and intonation rather than trying to imitate. (Some of you may be kneeling in praise right now in that the Fall thing meant I didn't try to sing.) There should probably be a contest to see how many samples folks can identify...oh well - there isn't. Without further ado, I present to you..."Tinsnip Idol Mandate" by Monkey Typing Pool (recording here as "The Stumble" (not quite a fall...). |