Leonids, 1833

"Some of those wandering stars seemed as large as the full moon, or nearly so, and in some cases they appeared to dash at a rapid rate across the general course of the main body of meteors, leaving in their track a bluish light, which gathered into a thin cloud not unlike a puff of smoke from a tobacco-pipe. Some of the meteors were so bright that they were visible for some time after day had fairly dawned. Imagine large snowflakes drifting over your head, so near you that you can distinguish them, one from the other, and yet so thick in the air as to almost obscure the sky; then imagine each snowflake to be a meteor, leaving behind it a tail like a little comet; these meteors of all sizes, from that of a drop of water to that of a great star, having the size of the full moon in appearance: and you may then have some faint idea of this wonderful scene."

And here's the song from May which carries the name of the event that evoked the description above:

Leonids, 1833 by airkingsound

This one heavily features:
- Sampled & processed Lowrey Carnival organ (do you see a trend?)
- Upright piano
- Craig from Madame Blavatsky Overdrive on bass (thanks Craig!)
- Various and sundry beats
- Wurli 200a
- A little synth here and there
- Audio Damage plug-ins (Ricochet and Eos)

Next? We've got 3 pieces in motion. One or some will end up on your doorstep in early July.

Pop Choice

April brought our attention back to an old mountain cabin sampling session of a $36 Lowrey Carnival organ that our dear old departed friend Dennis helped cart back in his truck from the valley Salvation Army a few years back.

We've mentioned this one before, but it's really done now, so here 'tis:

Pop Choice by airkingsound

This one goes out to you, Dennis, though I think a guitar-based tune a la Johnny Cash would have floated your boat more.

This song is one of several coming over the next few months based around this organ, which has super cool beats and great little lead sounds. Not bad at all for a behemoth marketed to the masses of middle aged and middle class folks back in the day.

The bass, rhythm, and lead lines here all come from the Carnival, with the exception of some additional rhythmic bits. For good measure, there's a healthy does of Mellotron at the end, and bits of Wurlitzer Electronic Piano sprinkled throughout.

Holy cow. It's May already and a few new ones are on the stove-top. The Sirens will direct us on our journey here over the next weeks.

Give The Game Away

Picture this: the vows are taken, the happy couple rushes off to the shave ice van, and this music begins to play.

Loudly.

And they're off.

New optigan-fueled album from Air King, for your listening pleasure.

A huge thanks goes out to Andrea Campi for the lovely picture used for the cover. Go check out his pics on Flickr. They're mostly taken with toy and antique cameras and are wonderful.

Next? It's April and we got a new song to record.

Shave Ice Get Away

There's the plan. And there's the inspiration. Sometimes, they mesh. Sometimes, they're at odds.

When they're at odds, you try to make them mesh.

My plan for this year is simple. Record a Song A Month.

We did this in January. In February we recorded a whole album. In March, I've been side tracked. And very aware of it.

Then came the inspiration. Over a beer.

A colleague of mine was talking about his upcoming Wedding in his native state of Hawaii. And he mentioned that the get-away vehicle was going to be a Shave Ice van, driven by some eager 22 year old who was going to do it for free. Then someone mentioned ice cream truck music and that's where it hit me.

No. Optigan music blasting from the Shave Ice truck. The same Optigan music I made for my friends Geoff and Lizette when they got married several years ago. This was one of my favorite projects. I took 2 weeks and fired up the optigan and made a soundtrack to a wedding.

So, March will see another album. One that's already done. I'll mess a bit with track order. And in my usual graphic design ninja way, I will find a cool pic on Flickr, get permission to use it, add the album title and Air King Sound to it and presto. Album.

So, you will all have some pretty cool optigan music to listen to in about a week's time.

Jet Lag

For the month of February, we took the RPM Challenge and created a new Autopilot record. We are pleased to introduce Jet Lag.

This one was a bit different than past ones in that we widened the circle and got MANY great submissions from a bunch of very talented folks on soundcloud.com. We also gathered some sounds from freesound.org.

And to boot, the great, great photo from the album cover above comes from Hamish Innes-Brown on Flickr.com who kindly allowed us to use it here.

So, it was a fantastic collaborative affair and I'd like to give a huge shout out here to everyone who contributed:

vanhainkoti - anu - luc shylavani - cott - rhythminmind - drox - corsica - hangar17 - cora - justin3am - acclivity - seeshy - mbo - troj - ermine - timofei - morgantj - james uk - ndrobinson - erh - audiactiva - pcaeldries

This is your album.

Now, time to check it out.

Jet Lag (Full version):

JetLag by airkingsound

Jet Lag (Cut into 11 tracks):

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.)