Cut-Up

  • Apr 9, 2023
Ryan
Fifth Element

No one said a damn thing about a sixth, seventh or fortieth element.

Don’t mind the mix lol yikes. This assignment blew my brain apart and this track is me trying to put it back together, which only went so well. Good to feel the rush of sharing something that’s so unfinished. I think there are some good ideas in here, which the assignment of course gets the credit for helping birth into the world. But at a certain point, the parameters were pushing me away from where the song wanted to go. So it goes, baby. It did get me thinking about some deep stuff.

Bells do most of the looping, but then electric guitars take over the same loops for a bit here and there. The “fifth element” is actually two verses and a whole-ass B section. But the loops are goin’ the whole time, promise. At the very end (as the loops fall away), we end up on the less dominant side of the polyrhythm that started things off. Neat!

 

Runnin’ around

as if I’ve never changed.

I’d been thinking

I killed off the only thing

loveable or good inside of me.

Sure, I should have known

that you always saw

the better part of me.

Looked and I was

a spectacle for shame.

A cut-up locking up

the smaller lonely thing

I was scared

would take a hold of me.

Sure, I should have known

that you only saw

the bigger part of me.



Looking for feedback on

Which parts of this get redundant and which parts feel fresh?

Discussion

  • 5 Comments
Ben October 7, 2023 7:24pm

This is so clean. The drums with that light melody in the background in my left ear really reminds me of the Bad Plus cover of “Flim” by Aphex Twin, especially around 0:30-40.

Ryan October 9, 2023 12:36pm

Oh shit, had never heard this track. This is awesome. Yeah this one was definitely heavily inspired by Four tet / Aphex / Bibio.

Ben October 9, 2023 12:47pm

yeah, definitely Bibio vibes too

alechutson April 10, 2023 6:57pm

i love how your loops become more of a texture/ drone than the main structure of your track.

the only part that feels a like it could use some freshening to me is the snare loop, everything else feels like it’s serving a purpose

Ryan April 13, 2023 1:31pm

Thanks, yeah, I was into the loops becoming a texture, too! Keeping the chord progression out of the loops helped a lot. Got to later reframe the length of the loops, harmony, etc.

Totally agreed on the drum loop—kind of ended up locked into using it because it’s a full kit loop and then was dissatisfied with my attempts at making small variations on it. Then ran out of time to experiment more lol. I think it could work if it showed up in one less section. Or if I threw in another kit layer that varied it up? Maybe that’s the move.