The Charisma Trees

My solo music project

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Another track for the current album. I can’t recall now whether I uploaded an earlier version or not, but I scrapped it in favour of this one

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While I was out of work and cooped up in my parents’ spare room two summers ago, I played around with synthesizer plugins and running an electronic keyboard through fuzzboxes. This was the result.

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New guitar day: a Jazzmaster copy, fitted with P-90s

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RPM 2012-2018, by Charisma Trees

5 track album

Debut EP, “RPM 2012-2018″, is now available for free digital download from Bandcamp.

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Man, I’m behind on this. I was out of the house for over a week, so lost a lot of time. Right now, I’ll have to record four more songs in two days to meet the deadline.

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Retreating back into familiar territory with post rock-ish reverby guitars and self-oscillating delays.

It doesn’t sound like it belongs on a SF movie soundtrack, but oh well.

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I’m even unhappier with this one, because it’s so messy, disjointed and far away from what I originally wanted it to be. I was going for a sort-of pursuit on foot, in narrow city streets in search of archaic technology with a lurking cloud of menace. I really wanted this particular track to turn out well, too.

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Another short “background music” piece that’s supposed to fit in with the movie soundtrack theme that I’m trying to use for inspiration. It’s supposed to be a backdrop to tension, unease and jet lag. I’m not really happy about how it turned out, but I’m pushed for time.

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A short piece of BGM, which took the whole of an hour to put together. If it sounds like that restful period of the evening where you’re winding down for the day and have no energy left, that’s because this was the exact situation I was in when I recorded it.

I’ll file this under “to be worked on properly at a later date.” Yup, this is gonna be a concept album/unofficial soundtrack.

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My first attempt at the RPM Challenge for 2018 (basically a NaNoWriMo for musicians) is shamelessly inspired by retro “krautrock.” It includes several lines of cheap synthesizers run through fuzzes and delays, with just two guitar chords during the entire song.

I arranged the whole thing from scratch in the space of 24 hours.

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Squier Mustang HH in a very cool sparkly cobalt blue colour that’s advertised as “Imperial Blue.”

I wanted a hardtail bridge and double-coil pickups to give a contrast in sound when recording overdubbed guitar tracks with the Jazzmaster (which is still my favourite guitar, but not suitable for certain sounds and styles).

This model of Mustang is a great instrument though: it’s extremely cheap (less than 125 Euros at the time of writing), light in weight and plays well, staying in tune and being comfortable to play. I’d strongly recommend one for beginners, students and anyone who wants an inexpensive backup guitar.

I’m planning to upgrade the potentiometers for the volume and tone controls to make it sound a bit brighter, and may upgrade the pickups later on. Even so, it’s a very neat-looking piece of kit that’s loads of fun to play around with.

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The trouble with lyrics: what about an AI?

Trying to write lyrics to songs is hard. I wonder whether I’m the only one who has this problem.

I enjoy writing and find languages fascinating, but I’m keenly aware of how I’m no good with writing song lyrics. As much as I enjoy novels and short stories, I never “got” poetry, so perhaps there’s a connection between being unable to write song lyrics and not appreciating poetry.

I’m also aware of the fact that the Vocaloid software doesn’t sound quite the same as a real person singing (and I sure as hell can’t be persuaded to sing myself). So there’s a double hurdle with songwriting: not only do I find the words themselves difficult to arrange, but I’m also using an instrument that can’t sound quite like “the real thing”.

I’m now coming round to the idea of turning the “artificial-ness” of Vocaloid to my advantage, and use it as an instrument in its own right with its own sound rather than trying unsuccessfully to sound like a human voice...in the same way that I wouldn’t even try to make my solid-body electric guitar sound like a hollow-body acoustic one.

Why not take things a bit further, then? I’m currently re-reading Ray Kurzweil’s book The Age of Spiritual Machines (which I discovered after reading about how the band Our Lady Peace used it as an inspiration for their Spiritual Machines album), and one segment introduces Kurzweil CyberArt Technologies’ Cybernetic Poet (the site looks very dated to our 2017 eyes!). This is a computer program that, with some clever algorithms, can “write” its own poetry using a database of existing literature as a reference.

This got me thinking...I’m already using a piece of computer software to make sounds that (more or less) recreate a human vocal performance in order to avoid having to record my own voice, so why not hand over the whole lyric writing process to software too?

This is still a rather vague idea that I’ve yet to fully shape into a definite plan. Kurzweil’s Cybernetic Poet appears to be only compatible with late 90s operating systems and there’s no recent update as far as I know, but I am now hunting for a Windows 7-10 compatible AI song lyric generator...

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This was a recording that I originally did way back in 2015, and despite being rushed and rough around the edges from my RPM Challenge haste, I’m not too unhappy with it. I guess I ought to find a place for it on the EP (which will be free to download anyway...)

There are a lot of details that I wish I’d done better, but if I were to go in and try to “improve” anything, I’d probably put my hands up and admit that it sounded better the way it was. I’ve yet to successfully re-record something that sounds better than the first attempt, so here you go.

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The trouble with a solo project is trying to organise stuff and keep it all in one place, where it’s kept neatly together and everything’s set up for when you need it. My effects chain is always changing, so a sturdy pedal board with Velcro is a compromise that’s worked well so far. In a few months, I’ll bet this picture will look different again.

In signal path order then:

Boss pedal tuner: the most important thing really. It just *works* and is never likely to break.

OD-3 overdrive: a bit of a “secret weapon,” this. It’s inexpensive, ordinary-looking but boosts the volume without losing the bottom end to the sound.

Fredric Effects Russian Muff: a modern copy of a Russian-made big muff circuit. A nice smooth fuzzy sound with a punchy low midrange that’s perfect for getting cello-like sounds out of a guitar.

Fender Blender: a strange octave fuzz that doesn’t sound quite like anything else. Someday I’ll find a use for it!

M.A.S.F. Lavender Head: another strange Muff-style fuzz that’s loud, spitty, snarly and vicious. Useful for cutting through the mix.

PS-2: another oddity that can do “Slowdive in a box” digital delay or pitch shifting, but I use it for octave up/down settings, as well as self-oscillating noises that the designers probably didn’t intend.

NuX Modcore: a handy little thing that can do chorus, phasing or rotating speaker sounds at a ridiculously low price. Fun!

DD-500 delay: this does everything. Digital, analogue, tape echoes...all the delays I need in one.

RV-5: I’m not a Boss shill, honest! XD I keep this on my board because the “modulate” mode sounds so lush and space-y.

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I may have finally found a use for the Fender Blender, the noisy octave fuzz that rarely gets brought out of my storage box of unused pedals.

There’s a song I’m working on that sounds kinda atonal and dissonant in an “industrial” sort of way, so I’m giving this weird box a try.

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This is another instrumental track that I recorded some time ago, but gave the eq and meter levels a few nudges to make it sound more balanced.

This was my first attempt at a song that features no guitar tracks at all: the percussion comes from a cheap old Roland drum machine run through reverb, echo and delay effects, with electronic piano and synthesizers layered on top. Then I added a few samples of self-oscillating delay pedals for a bit of extra ambience and texture.

I’m a little bummed about Tumblr’s file size restrictions, so compromised with 160k mp3 instead of my preferred 320k. Hopefully it won’t affect the sound quality much.

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Initial plans for the first EP

I’m cheating a bit here by using old recordings alongside new ones, but I hope that the end result will make for a cohesive “thing” overall, while still being varied enough to be interesting. So far my plan is:

Upbeat-ish song (possibly the title track)

Short instrumental

Heavier, rockier track

Another instrumental

Something a little bit different

The instrumentals are easier because I don’t need to think up lyrics or programme Vocaloid. I’ve set a bit of a challenge for myself in that the “different” track to close off the whole thing will be completely new (at the time of writing, all I’ve got is a drum track and a short synthesizer sample), and the “heavy” song is an unfinished reworking of another old recording that I quite liked and though had potential.

As far as the track listing goes, this is what I’ve settled on. If it works out how I want it to, this should give a good “flow” to it when they’re all played back-to-back.