Tristan John's...stuff.

Floating Back to You

Rain Song (As Quiet Eyes Sleep)

Rain song (As Quiet Eyes Sleep) from Tristan John on Vimeo.

An idea I started working on a few nights ago while watching my girlfriend sleep on skype. Not much of a pianist, but I think there’s something here.

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One of my first pro-tools projects from sometime last year. I wasn’t compelled to complete it due to the horrible sound of my only mic at the time. I rediscovered this song while looking through the archives for another forgotten project that I’m working on completing.

The drums on this track are ridiculously compressed..not sure what I was thinking at the time, but I’ve decided to leave them that way…they give it a sort of overly exaggerated pump that sounds sorta cool in my opinion but may catch another listener off guard.

Shakin’ It Off

Shakin’ It Off - Tristan John from Tristan John on Vimeo.

I started this track in late April I believe. Another atypical piece, its always exciting watching/hearing peoples opinions of it. In conception I was aiming for something pop punk , cliche and sort of retro/cheesy, I think I did a fair job of that.

The production style is reminiscent of something out of the mid 90s(as is everything else I do). Recorded it in protools, I left the mix as dirty and crunchy as possible, lots of compression. I got a chance to experiment with some inverted phase on the thicker rhythm guitar on the right. I also took the chance experiment with some distortion on the vocals. The approach on the vocals was slightly challenging considering that I usually never sing like this. Was forced to do a few dubs and even a choral track during the second phase of the song.  Lyrically, Shakin’ It Off is somewhat of a song about nothing.. perhaps utter distrust and insecurity? They don’t really single out anyone in my life.

“These Walls”

These Walls (EF) - Tristan John from Tristan John on Vimeo.

Started this project at home in Trinidad sometime around the middle of April while on break form school. The material and production is definitely a radical shift from anything I’d typically do. Alas, I do believe it to be one of my few personal favourites, probably because it sounds so..not me?. 

I think it might have been early morning that the writers bug bit me, I ploped on the couch, picked up the tele and began plucking around. After not touching it in a few months (and it being a horrible imitation of a tele) it was unmistakeably out of tune, but rather than tuning it up I decided to fuck around with it un-tuned..I was able to pull out some eerily dissonant arpgs. that I vibed with and eventually turned into a line. Needless to say I’ll probably never be able to capture this sound again. I started production moments after.

I was equipped with my trusty H4 handy recorder, its USB cable, my laptop, and my tele. No guitar cables or keyboard around, I had to accept the fact that the production value wouldn’t be very much. I hadn’t done anything outside of my Miami set up in a while so I approached this song as somewhat of a personal challenge. The track was mixed on acoustica’s mp3 mixer..a program that only allows sequencing on a grid-less free form basis, manipulation and automation of  leveling, paning and rate(speed) changes. No plug-ins. 16 bit 44.1 khz max.

After comming back to Miami I was able to add in the bass and, only until a few days ago, that little rap section in the middle, using protools.

I started first with the drum loop, put it together using Acoustica’s beatcraft. I was almost ceartain I would loose these laptop speakers to the distortion I put on em. The highs on this “ear-friendly” version are much less than those of the original version. I remember hearing them fill my empty house while I was upstairs prepping to visit my girlfriend. Something about them creates such a subversive experience, I couldn’t wait to experience them on larger speakers. Fooling around with the snare’s EQ taught me quite a bit about where the snare can and even should be in certain genres. In this song the snare isnt very noticeable but its presence is certainly “felt”. I used universal effects such as compression, EQ, distortion, reverb. And some individual effects like flanger for the tambourine. I eventualy found some drum sounds I had sampled form my yamaha E203 and tossed them in there, they barely make it out of the distortion to the extent that almost fit perfectly.

The guitar was recorded using the H4 XY condenser microphone setup with some preprocessed compression. The intro and outro feature 1 guitar line but during the beefier parts of the song a second dub joins in. The mics were set up about 4 inches away form the pick(the H4’s microphones are very very sensitive as you can hear). I wasn’t sure how I was going to make the guitar sound work..but it does.

The vocals were a task…not having any software effects meant I had to work with some pretty funky guitar effects from the H4. I a few overdubs, some weird EQing using Audacity and some harmonys got them to a workable level. I had to manually place the delay in the sequence and adjust the levels so that it sounds almost natural. The rap section in the middle was done entirely in protocols with plug-in eq distortion and delay..life made absolutely simple. this has a sort of totally different realm effect in the song but this song is so abstract, this one of the rare instances where I can actually accept that.

Recording bass was a bitch. I hadn’t acquired my  tursor/hofner yet so I recorded bass the same way I did with almost all of my songs prior to getting my bass.. I used my custom made pitch drop effect on my line 6 pod with my les paul model electric. the hardest part was tuning to match the tele(which I obviously never quite got, nothing in this track is actually in tune.0.o.)

I also used a 1kb program call tinypiano that I sampled some notes of the bells with, then placed them  in the mix.

-Tristan