cats on earth - frequencies

cats on earth - frequencies by cats on earth

this is pretty much the only cats on earth track i've done in the last year or so. for this one i used mainly the jx-3p and jx-8p. the first half of the track is almost all 3p, the resonant blippy arpeggiating sound, the bass, the eerie pads, the video game melody, the funky synth riff that comes in later...all the 3p. obviously the bending lead isn't the 3p, since that synth doesn't have a portamento effect...i think that may have been the microkorg. the whole end section is 8p pads doing a lovely vangelis-esque chord sequence with melody provided by the yamaha pss-460 doused in effects and some microkorg arpeggio washes in the background with a little white noise filtering from the 3p. the drums are a bunch of different drum machines all chopped up with a touch of the amen break for good measure.

indian summer.

summery weather is pretty touch and go here in san francisco.  our summer comes late in the year and even then is punctuated by random spurts of rain and gloom.  you gotta take the warm weather as it comes.  for now it's nice, so it's inspiring some late summertime jams.

Indian Summer by moto-SLAVE

soundtracking.

just a little ambient soundtrack muzacks made on the jx-3p (mostly).

carpenter's blade by moto-SLAVE

additions.

a few weeks ago i brought home the newest addition to my studio, the roland jx-3p.  i haven't had a ton of time to spend with it yet, but so far i'm loving the sounds that come out of this machine, especially the pads and the funky synth-horn type sounds.
i read a lot of people saying that it's a bitch to program without the pg-200 addon to provide all the knobs and switches, but honestly, i didn't have ANY problems tweaking the hell out of this thing straight out of the box.  super easy.  i think people get hung up on the fact that there aren't a ton of knobs on the front and often overlook this synth (and others like it), which is fine by me because that means i get to pick them up for bargain prices!  and besides...i see a bunch of knobs on an old analog synth and as lovely and tempting as they are, all i really see are a bunch of things that will need replacing and cleaning.
the little track sketch below is the result of me experimenting with the jx-3p for about an hour.  all the sounds, except the drums, were done with the jx-3p and there is little to no additional work done to them aside from maybe a tiny bit of delay on one of the tracks.

jx-periment by moto-SLAVE

sketch 01.

i've started doing a lot of single-session tracks lately.  sketches, really, but they rarely evolve into anything substantial.  but for some reason i still like them as loose little vignettes, so i'm going to start posting a few of them.  back in school i always liked flipping through people's sketchbooks and seeing their raw little doodles, so it's kinda like that.
most of the time they're inspired by images i've seen or random thoughts that i've had, so i'm going to try to include those things in the posts as well.
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one of the things i love about living in cities is the stuff you find if you poke around a little. hidden spaces, forgotten alleys, places where things once happened that are now just part of the scenery. remember how it was? by moto-SLAVE

adobe advert.

back in 2005 i did the music for adobe's photoshop CS2 promotional video, created by volume design inc.
the music is an edited down a modified version of an old cats on earth track called "the technique".
you can watch it here, if you're at all interested.