These performances also generated the essential elements of the <tfo> sound, which would then be brought into the studio, and act as the building blocks for a diverse set of songs.  The Bloodless Coup compilation features many of the unreleased songs <tfo> produced during this period.  They truly combine a range of influences including electronic, electro-acoustic, Arabic, Eastern, downtempo, hip-hop, funk, punk, dance, ambient, chillout, and mash-up.

You can purchase Surface_Sounds on iTunes, and most other major digital retailers.

I am currently in NYC performing live soundscapes for Collage, James Franco’s dance-theater directorial debut.  The show’s producer John Morrow describes Collage as “a mixed-media piece that uses sound and visuals to play with the idea of how different art mediums interact. Using video, dance, poetry, theatre and music, we have created a performance that will be an engaging experience for the audience.”

The interesting thing about doing soundscapes/sound design for this show is that sound is used in a very different way than more traditional approaches to sound in a show.  In those instances, the sonic component either creates a foundation or adds to the dramatic moments of a scene and its characters.  In Collage, the sound is generated, manipulated, and performed live in response to the actors and dancers.  In this instance, the sound takes on a character of its own.  It is no longer a static component to the piece, but an always changing acting, and reacting dynamic one.

Here’s a recent write-up about the show on the Gothamist blog

Stay tuned for samples of the Collage soundscapes.

Matt Everett, who has now fully rejoined <tfo> (The boy plays 10,000 instruments!) brought his array of instruments including a guitar, bass, accordion, mandolin, violin, cello, bouzouki, and recorder.  I worked the usual electronics including a variety of synthesizers, a harmonica, qin, various shakers & percussion elements, and acted as the in-house engineer/producer.

The songs we composed for the soundtrack have a very distinct sound, combining ambient textures with folk elements.  A dreamy, contemplative Western feel.  The combination of Matt’s folky guitar playing with it’s twangy sound, courtesy of the perfectly deteriorating strings, and the string pads I programmed on the Korg Polysix, are the key ingredients to the Endless Idaho sound.

From the official Gagosian Gallery press release:

“For Endless Idaho, Franco edited outtakes, deleted scenes, alternate takes, and behind-the-scenes footage from My Own Private Idaho into a 12-hour film. Endless Idaho provides an unprecedented look into the workaday process of making a movie, from location scouting to repeated takes. Like many of the films of Andy Warhol, a major influence on Van Sant’s own auteur style, it is a provocative, often riveting blend of documentary and fiction. Interviews with actual hustlers who played secondary characters in My Own Private Idaho are intercut with shots of River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves improvising and refining their performances under the direction of Van Sant and his crew.”

<tfo> is currently working on a full-length soundtrack album for Endless Idaho with a release planned for late Spring.  Here’s a few more samples of the songs composed for Endless Idaho:

Score 2

Score 3

Score 4

Scape 2

Grand Strategy I was composed, arranged and produced by <tfo> founder Timothy O’Keefe, with significant contributions from Matthew Everett, Ryan Rooney, and Mike Lamantia Jr.

The songs of Grand Strategy I combine intricately programmed beats, beautifully sculpted synths, meticulously performed & arranged instrumentation, and evocative vocal melodies.

You can purchase Grand Strategy I on iTunes, Emusic, Amazon, and most other major digital retailers.

Click here to download the Grand Strategy I EP one sheet

Change combines seemingly opposite music elements by bringing together electronic and folk music motifs. A drum machine kick, a Casio CS-80 synth pad, and the swirl of white noise from a Korg MS10 are intertwined with a banjo-sounding plucked viola, mandolin, bowed strings, and a variety of overdubbed percussion including a glockenspiel, human hand claps, tambourine, and snare drums.

The Process
The original track began with a straight 4/4 Roland TR707 kick drum and the Casio CS-80 synth pad. I then wrote the bassline to reflect the key change of the pad melody, and added a simple yet complimentary piano part.

Change: Starting Sequence

Guitars
Once this sequence was written, I could hear the sound of a variation of the “train beat” layered on top of the kick drum. I could also hear the sound of staccato guitar chords. Ryan Rooney was brought in to record the the staccato guitar part, and we recorded two versions of it. One in a higher octave and another in a lower octave to create a fuller sound. We then did a few passes over the entire song as Ryan improvised a variety of different melodic guitar parts. This produced an additional guitar melody including one with a bell-tone quality, which would eventually be used in the song’s chorus section.

Change: Guitar Layers

Drums & Percussion
I originally attempted to capture the “train beat” with a high tom drum I found in the basement of my building. I used a drumstick and a brush to try to capture the shuffling sound. This produced a nice additional percussion element with a shuffle and rimshot quality, but it didn’t get the full effect I was looking for. Later on in the arrangement process, I brought Mike Lamantia Jr. of makeupbreakup into the studio to capture the full train beat using a snare and a hi-hat.  This would eventually lead to Mike contributing a number of drum tracks to <tfo> material.  I also recorded a number of other percussion overdubs including human handclaps, egg shaker, and tambourine.

Change: Drum Section – drum kit/drum machine kick/tambourine/human handclaps/

Matt Everett was brought into the studio to listen and see what elements he could add.  I knew I wanted him to record a bowed viola part with the chorus. Matt often experimented with plucking his viola, producing a range of sounds that can sound like, well… a plucked viola or a number of obscure rare string instruments someone might discover while traveling through various parts of Asia.  Always a lovely additional sonic element when it clicks with the track’s other instrumentation.  On Change, Matt’s plucking lead to strumming and produced an almost banjo-like sound.  A sound that complimented the other folkish sounds on the song, and rounded out the overall sound.

Change: Strummed Viola & Mandolin

I then took these elements and began to develop the song’s arrangement along with the song’s lyrics.  This process usually takes longer than I want it to, as I constantly work through the elements in my mind, developing words and melodies that work, and have moments where everything clicks and words come to me.  As the track developed, it was being pulled in two different distinct directions. One being a more “electronic” sounding track, while the other being a more “folk” indie feel. My goal was to find the best mix of these elements, and to make it them work in a complimentary way with one another instead of the final song sounding the two opposite sounds being forced together.

After developing the verses, a chorus and what I call a “post-chorus” was developed.  This allowed me to form the song’s basic structure.  Matt and I experimented with a variety of overdubs including mandolin.  The mandolin track was chopped up into little melodic pieces that complimented Changes’ folk elements and arrangement structure.

At this point in the production process, the track lost some of its electronic feel.  I cleared all the track levels and slowly mixed the track from scratch, balancing the drum machine kick, shuffle drums, synth bass, synth pad, percussion, guitars, vocals, and strings.  I made sure the kick and bassline cut through the mix creating a strong foundation, and throughout the mixing process I made minor touches to the arrangement.

Once the existing tracks were mixed, I added two additional elements including white noise sweeps to transitional points in the arrangement using a Korg MS10.  The other final element was a glockenspiel melody line that fit perfectly with the chorus.  I mixed these elements in after finding the right takes, and the track was complete.

Change: Glockenspiel with Guitars and Viola

Tame is dark, danceable, electronic pop, and in some respects a throwback to earlier electronic pop artists like New Order and Depeche Mode. Electronically produced melodies are combined with the lovely string work of Matthew Everett, a seasoned composer, writer, and collaborator/contributor to the sound.

The Process

In its early form Tame was the beginning of a completely different song, and had a wealth of melodic and textured tracks. These tracks had two distinctly different sounds, and therefore were separated and split into two different songs, one being Tame, and the other currently an unreleased track by the name of As I Wait To See You.

Like many of the songs, Tame combines electronic hardware (Roland MC202, Emu Emax Sampler), virtual synths (Korg MS20 and Polysix), and acoustic instrumentation (viola, drum kit).

The extracted elements that began the song were a virtual MS20 bassline, and the basic drum beat which combined drum machine patterns I composed with live drums played by Mike Lamantia Jr. of makeupbreakup.

Tame: Drum Section

The Synthesizers

I synced a pre-midi Roland MC202 to a sequencer using a Roland MSQ-700, and composed an acid pattern.  I applied distortion by overriding the signal in the mixing board, and also ran it through an Envelope pedal.  I recorded multiple takes so that I could have a different filter sweep pattern panned hard left & right in the final mix.

Tame: Roland MC202 Distorted Sequence

I then recorded two additional MC202 tracks, playing the instrument directly over the track.  One overdub consists of an improvised blip & beep sound, and the other overdub is a distorted melody for the chorus section of the song.

Tame: Roland MC202 blip bleeps & distorted melody

With these elements in place, I designed a synth pad using the virtual version of the Korg Polysix, and wrote a pad melody for the verse and chorus sections of the songs.  I built on top of the chorus melody by adding an additional piano melodic progression using an Emu Emax, and sculpted the panning of each note to create a fuller, more complex sound.

Tame: Korg Polysix Pad & Emu Emax Piano

The Lyrics

Once the core elements and arrangement was in place, I began developing the lyrical components to the song.  I repeatedly listened to the song in the studio, and  developed some of the lines for the verses and chorus.  I also recorded a number of stream of consciousness vocal takes from which I would extract additional lines that worked with what I was developing for the song’s lyrics.  Like many of the songs in the Grand Strategy series, I uploaded rough mixes to my iPod and listened to them as I walked in order to refine the arrangement and develop additional lyrics.  Once the lyrics were complete, I recorded a final vocal.  The vocal track was then processed using the virtual Korg MS20, and a delay plug-in.

The Addition of a String Section

With all the elements already in place, I could see how the addition of natural strings would tie everything together.  Matt Everett and I spent at least two recording sections developing string parts.  Of course Matt experimented with his viola plucking style, which complimented Tame’s other melodic components.  We then took several passes over the same sections, building layers of viola on top of one another.  After some thoughtful editing and the proper placement within Tame’s arrangement, the strings added a dramatic nature and human feel that I felt the song needed for completion.

Tame: Viola Layers

The Process

The music of Love & War was originally inspired by a guitar melody that was improvised by musician and long-time <tfo> contributor, Ryan Rooney. The melody had surfaced during a number of our live improvised performances as a trio featuring Ryan Rooney on guitar, Matt Everett on viola and/or cello, and myself on electronics and mixing board.  This melody was then recorded in the studio, and served as the starting point for Love & War.

Love & War: Original Guitar Melody

An original Roland TR909 drum machine was used to composed the song’s drum track.  The 909 was put into 32nd note step mode, allowing for the drum sequences to contain fast hi-hat and snare rolls. It also allowed for a rolling kick drum sound at the beginning of each pattern.  Each drum sound was tracked separately so that they could be processed differently.  A phaser was applied to the 909 hi-hat track.

Love & War: Drum Section

The Guitars

An early and important influence on my musical identity was The Smiths.  While listening to Love & War in its early stages, I could hear layers of rhythm guitar, reminiscent of songs like The Boy With The Thorn In His Side, There Is A Light That Never Goes Out, and Bigmouth Strikes Again by The Smiths.  Another guitar studio session was arranged, and a variety of guitar overdubs were recorded including the rhythm guitar parts, and additional melodic parts for the chorus.  During these sessions, a bassline that Ryan composed and performed was also recorded.

Love & War: Rhythm Guitars with Bass Guitar

Love & War: Additional Guitar Melody, Bass Guitar and Piano

The Arrangement & Vocals

The guitar, bass and drum elements were then shaped into a rough arrangement, and a Korg Polysix synth pad (hardware, not the soft synth version) melody line was written for the chorus section using a preset that was specifically designed for this song.

Love & War: Chorus Polysix Synth Melody

With a basic structure, lyrics were developed through what has become a very common practice for me in lyrical development.  I had a few lines I had written down while listening to the song, and the took a number of stream of consciousness vocal recording passes over the song.  I would then extract additional lines from these vocal takes, and build more words around them until them formed into full verses and chorus sections.  With the lyrics fully arranged, I tweaked the rough arrangement to accommodate the vocals and recorded a final vocal track, doubling up on the voice for the chorus sections.

With the vocals complete, I took spent several studio sessions listening through the track and fine tuning the arrangement.  This included adding a reverse piano part, and a bridge that featured an aquatic textured Korg Polysix synth line that was gated with the Roland TR909 hi-hat track.

Love & War: Gated Polysix Aquatic Synth Melody

Once all the elements were record and arranged, it was time for the final mix, and the result being the recording you hear.

Martin van Etten’s Tame Remix Production Process

When Tim asked me to pick a song off the album to remix, I was between “Tame” and “Love and War” based on my affinity for the lyrics and the fact that their respective BPMs were in the area that I wanted. When Tim told me that Hoska was already remixing “Love and War”, the choice was made for me. I started with a basic four-to-the-floor version with a cool 8^th noted FM bass line reminiscent of Stuart Price (that Tim still has yet to hear) but as soon as I hit the chorus I ran into a wall. Everything I tried sounded like I was forcing two songs together and my brain wasn’t writing anything that felt natural as a chorus. I was thinking very much “inside the box” at the time.

I would have found a solution had I stuck with it, but a different inspiration struck. I was in Philly looking at apartments and the idea to do a baroque version of the song in ¾ popped into my head. I had my laptop and audio interface with me, so I started putting the basic pieces together to see if Tim’s vocal timing needed any tweaking to fit into a ¾ signature. No changes were needed. I had just upgraded to Ableton 8 and this was the first chance I had to take it for a spin. I ran Tim’s vocals every which way through the new Vocoder and made custom waveforms for every part of my Operator-tailored bass line, but realized that I was just thinking about new toys and not about the feeling of the remix. I didn’t want it to read like Daddy using nothing but star-fades for the home edited Christmas video.

Besides his vocals, the only audio from Tim’s original version of “Tame” that I used was the violin line. THAT required a bit of a timing shift. I used the gater in dblue’s “Glitch” VST to sort of cram a square peg into a circle hole, if you will. In retrospect, I should have used Ableton 8’s amazing warp markers to transmogrify the violin into my own little Celtic waltz. I feel that the choppiness from the gater perverts the beauty and smoothness of the violin a bit. Just nitpicking.

I also stuttered one of Tim’s “L”s when he sings the word “Love” in the second verse and dropped the drums and bass line to call attention to it. I did this to make him say “L-Love”. My little signature. I gleaned the idea off of Fake Blood (who slices vocals in all of his remixes to say “Fake Blood” between buildup and beat-drop) mainly, but the idea also reminded me of Michelangelo’s act of painting himself into “The Last Judgment” as St. Bartholomew’s flayed skin. Sort of like metadata in the actual audio. I’ve heard that sound engineers for motion pictures hide Wilhelm Screams wherever they can as a sort of signature or graffiti tag as if to say “I was here”.

The orchestral strings were actual multi-sampled recordings of quick-bowed and sustained cellos. I used Garritan’s Personal Orchestra, a VST with gigs and gigs of orchestral samples at every velocity you can imagine. I actually used it for the quartet cellos you hear in the intro to the “SHUT UP, GET DOWN” remix I did for Triangle Forest. Quite realistic when the velocities and timing are properly sequenced. The final buildup that starts with these strings is my favorite part of the “Tame” remix.