Halloween Harmonitronica

I have a few new harmonitronica pieces online, all created with some new equipment I’m testing out. I’ll write more about this separately, but I have outgrown (or rather, my music has outgrown) the basic delay pedals I’ve been using. They weren’t flexible enough, didn’t offer enough loops, or enough control over the loops, and too much of the system was mono. More and more with this music I am trying to create spaces which means I need much more control over the stereo image.

In any case, here are the newest pieces:

• March Of the Zombies
  Halloween harmonitronica. A staccatto rhythm harp, overlaid blues harp using a filter, and percussion recorded live to a loop track. This takes advantage of a new sampler I’ve been using that includes some great effects and a nice set of drum sounds, as well as an ElectroHarmonix multitrack loop unit. This is all live, including the rhythm track.
• Why Are You So Far Away (Why Are You Not Here With Me)
  A sad and simple blues figure, with overlaid harmonies. There’s no rhythm here and all the effects are various delays from an Eventide TimeFactor.
• Discreet Harmonica IV (More Music For Housecleaning)
  This is a series of minor-key figures played on a chromatic harmonica, each running in its own loop, all different lengths, and themselves allowed to repeat and decay through the EHX system. Mostly the loops drifted on their own as I cleaned house. Every once in a while I’d play something new into the system, or change which loops were recording or decaying.
• Discreet Harmonica V (The Very Long Black Veil)
  A deconstruction of the country classic. I played the melody once, straight through, as you hear it, and looped it on one track of the EHX. Then as the melody played again, I recorded harmony parts, recording sections of those into three other loops, all different lengths. I then let those decay and overlay almost at random, adding some new parts here and there. I concluded it by allowing it all to decay as I played the melody one more time. These simple diatonic melodies work really well for this; the harmonies clash sometimes, but just as often they find surprising and beautiful new combinations.

As always, these are played completely live, and edited only for length (and in some cases for level).