RPM Challenge: Be Part of Autopilot

The RPM Challenge starts tomorrow and we're gonna do it again. Write and record an album in the month of February.

But our album will be a different album. It will be an instant album generated in under an hour. We will push "play" on Autopilot and the magic will begin.

However, there is much work to do to get to the point where we can push that button. First, we need to build a brand new sound pool. The pool contains the beats, melodies and sounds that get mixed together and tweaked often beyond recognition to create something new, everchanging.

And we don't want to do all this work ourselves. And so, we are pulling together a global crew for the effort.

SoundCloud.com has been a great help here and has introduced us to all sorts of cool new music and musicians from all over (Finland, Singapore, Barbados, Germany, Italy, England, Brazil, US, etc). Among them, we've found many willing participants.

How bout you join in as well and drop us a file?

The types of files that work best are:
- Beats (no bass lines, no melodic stuff on top)
- Arhythmic melodic pieces (ie. ambient)
- Soundscapes (field recordings, short wave numbers stations, control tower intercepts, etc.. Go crazy.)

Format requested:
- 256 kbps MP3

No 4 bar loops, please. Give us full length performances that we can toss right in the pool.

So, drop away!

Send us your track

Some Strategy

And here it is:

The song for January.

Some Strategy by airkingsound

It's full of bits and pieces from present and past.

A piano I still regret selling years ago (Baldwin Acrosonic).

A childhood nylon string guitar I sometimes regret still having (especially when it comes to tuning).

Organs. My numero uno go-to organ, the Kimball Caravan, is the star of this show.

Mellotron, yes. Optigan, no.

Next stop: February and the RPM Challenge and another song.

(And I never did get around to posting the king tones.... We'll see what comes of that idea.)

New Gorillaz

Gorillaz have a new album due out this year and everything Damon touches is alright by me.

The samples from this album below, unveiled by the man himself on Radio 1, are demos, and they sound like it.

"Broken" is very chill and the most realized of the 3. It heavily features an organ that may be of the grandma variety, judging by the drum beats used and the arpeggiating pass lines. "Electric Shock" starts with an out of tune orchestra, which is joined by more organ; it abruptly moves to an 80s vibe which eventually outros with a The Go Team-ish female vocals singing one line: "That's electro shock." Stylo is more 80s beats and syncopating basses and is, uh, just plain weird.

Check em out below.


Gorillaz - Broken (Demo)



Electric Shock (Demo)



Stylo/Binge (Demo)

Autopilot Greatest Hits #1

3 notable moments from the past.

Autopilot 020507-2139 by airkingsound

Autopilot 051607-1056 by airkingsound

Autopilot 041707-1201 by airkingsound

My People

Yes, I've found them. My people.

They post. They share. They comfort. They give tips.

My people.

People who talk about "Cascading Strings". People who know what you mean when you say, "The Entertainer". People who perk up at the mention of "Swinging Fingers". People who take pictures of "Poly-Synthesis Percussion" buttons.

People who bemoan the weight of them. People who have no room for them. People who kill the mice eating wires in them.

People who take pictures of them. Lots of pictures.

They name them Thomas, Allen, Walker, Rodgers, Kimball, Wicks, Baldwin, Hammond, Lowrey, Gulbransen, Wurlitzer, Vox, and Farfisa.

They absolutely love their manuals, reeds, pipes, draw-bars, tone-wheels, and pedals.

They absolutely love them, my people. And you can feel their love here:
The Organ Forum

Look Around You - Music

Thanks to Netscrap for this one.

Link

RADIOAKTIVOX!

God Bless the crazy folks at Optigan.com who have made the first new Optigan disc in 34 years. Bless them so fools like me can throw $100 down to buy it.

And I will.

Enter RADIOAKTIVOX!










If you're not familiar with the Optigan, go to Optigan.com now. Air King owns an Optigan and uses it (and the fine samples available from Optigan.com) HEAVILY.

Here's the proof:

mineral by airkingsound

Time Box

It's all about time-boxes this year. A fixed amount of time to get stuff done. Deadlines.

Here's what's in store:

One Song Per Month
Fueled and egged on by co-conspirators Derek and Geoff, we will put out one song a month in 2009. There'll be a lot collaborating back and forth, using SoundCloud.

RPM Challenge
We'll do it again in February and once again it'll be an Autopilot project. That means 27 days of creating and gathering sounds and 1 day of outputting an album of generative music from our little machine. I've already hooked up with some talented musicians on SoundCloud who are game. Are you? drop me a line.

Weekly Blogs
They're gonna keep on coming. Once a week.

King Tones
We've created a lot of loops over the years, and we use some of them for ring tones. You should be able to do that, too. We'll start making these available for download (Free). 10 per month.

Air King Faves
Mixed in with the blogs will be some shout-outs of the tunes we like. A lot of them are from our various vinyl finds out there in thrift store land (Grady Martin anyone?).

Well, I just took care of the Weekly blog task. Now off to start working on Song #1, which is an instrumental heavily featuring the Lowery Carnaval housed in my mountain studio get-away. Think Ennio Morricone as played by Grandma on her home organ, as interpreted by Air King.