Do you ever have those dreams that just kinda go on and on, that are about nothing or nobody you know…it’s just a bizarre conglomeration of all sorts of memories, passing thoughts, random places and events, and just general lunacy? Yeah, me neither. OK, I have those all the time. They’re usually a whole lot of bizarro fun! When I can remember them, I write them down or talk about them on a voice memo/dictaphone.

Today, I tried an experiment…putting one of those stupid, ridiculous, random dreams in song form. You know how sometimes when you first wake up, you’re in this quirky weird mood and you start making up goofy songs? Oh, just me…Wow. I should see a therapist. *sigh* Anyway, this little ditty was conceived in such a manner. Early morning commute, singing into my tape recorder.

Just reading these absurd lyrics should show you what kind of a messed-up dream I had! Ohhhhh but the song…what a way to begin 2012. With what is quite possibly the dumbest song I have ever recorded. But it’s catchy!!

The song’s called “Sugar Booger”. WHAT???? Yeah. That’s what I mean. Random. My grandmother used to call me sugar booger when I was little, just a funny little pet name. So I guess that’s where that comes from….

No clue about the lions, attack ants, grocery store, and saw mill. All I know is that Sugar Booger runs a saw mill, and he tames lions, and apparently can command ants to come out and raid picnics. Oh, and he’s weird looking.

LISTEN TO THE SONG

Here are the stupid lyrics so you can sing along:

Sugar Booger was a unique man
a thousand ant piles at his command
when he snapped his fingers and
he wiggled his toes they would all come out of their holes…
well he marched em on down to the picnic site
them unhappy campers never could get a bite
Sugar Booger was a scavenging delight

Sugar Booger
he talked to the animals
he was really nice
you didn’t ask him twice
he could even translate to vegetable

Sugar Booger
he roamed from place to place
he sorta looked like a dog with the legs of a frog
he was a freak of the human race

Sugar Booger
Ran a big saw mill
just a grindin up stumps and a shreddin up clumps
and he took em up on the hill

Sugar Booger went to the grocery store
His lions needed food so he bought em some more
when the little cubs got a taste of the grub
they started running all around the floor

Sugar Booger
Went to jail that day
His lionesses made too many messes
but they were just trying to play

Lyrical genius coupled with an unparalleled musical arrangement and a stellar vocal performance. I think this is a Grammy hit song.

Gotta love the little ARP string  “solo” in the middle

So there you go, a weird song about a weird dream! Good luck getting it out of your head…LOL!

Happy New Year!

MooT

Akumajou Densetsu

aka Castlevania III

This is not a video games blog, so I’m not going to talk about a video game…but I am going to talk about some amazing video game music which has stood the test of time…and a version of it that unfortunately didn’t reach the ears of many people outside Japan.

The Castlevania series of video games is one of the longest-running video game franchises, and like a lot of those (Mario and Sonic come to mind), its music has become an iconic part of the experience. For many gamers, it doesn’t get any better than the third installment, released in late 1989 for the Famicom in Japan, and later in 1990 for the Nintendo Entertainment System in North America.

Those who were lucky enough to play the Famicom version got a much richer audio experience however, due to the addition of Konami’s VRC6 chip inside the game cartridge. The VRC6 adds another three sound channels to the console’s usual five, allowing for much fuller chords and effects. The NES, on the other hand, does not support additional sound channels, so the music had to be watered down considerably to sound passable when the game was localized for North America.

The original hardware of the NES, the 2A03 chip, has five sound channels: 2 Pulse waves (with variable pulse width), 1 Triangle wave, a pseudo-random Noise generator, and a Delta Pulse Code Modulation channel for audio samples.

The VRC6 chip adds to those: 2 additional Pulse waves (with much finer control over pulse width), and 1 Sawtooth wave.

Just adding three oscillators makes a world of difference. This is some of the finest music ever to grace an 8-bit video game…I like it so much that I want to share it with you.

I used my mastering knowledge to put together what is, to my ears, the best-sounding version of this music. I didn’t have access to the original machine, so I used an emulator – and not all emulators are created equal. I tried a few different ones before deciding on JNES, an older, but quite good, NES emulator which supports the VRC6. Those of you who are very familiar with these machines may notice that this one sounds a bit different from the real thing. This was an aesthetic choice on my part. I just simply liked the more aggressive sound of this emulator. It suits this material perfectly in my opinion. Sorry about that, purists. Accuracy is great and all, but my goal was to convey this music in the best possible way. No spatial effects apart from stereo panning were used…unlike the CD version of this music that you can find – it has all kinds of ugly reverb added to everything. What’s up with that?

While I was working on this project, I became very familiar with the tunes, and was amazed at how they manage to build the intensity from the beginning of the game all the way up until the final battle with Dracula. Also, a lot of the tunes are in the same tempo, and in compatible keys…it gave me a great idea. Why not tie them all together into a big fat medley that takes you on a trip through the game? That’s exactly what I did…and while I was editing, I knew that I wanted it to have beefier drums in it. My first attempt was to play real acoustic drums to the whole thing, but that sounded too raw compared to the pinpoint precision of the 8-bit music. I finally opted for programmed drums, but real cymbals played live – that was the perfect combination. It turned these tunes into some of the funkiest video game music I’ve heard in a minute! You just might want to get up and dance.  Add to that some extra synth spices, and some creative studio effects, and here’s what you get:

I don’t like “remixes” in general because I feel like most of the time people hack away at what made the original tune great. I don’t like to think of this as a remix – it’s really just an “enhancement” of the original tune. I took great care to preserve and complement the things that made the original music so amazing.

Download that piece, along with the entire soundtrack, in 320k MP3 format HERE.

Thanks for listening! I’m so glad to be able to bring this music to fresh ears.

Enjoy!

<Moot>

If you like this music that I’ve just given away for free, why not consider donating? It only takes a minute.

Arthur Verocai’s “Na Boca do Sol” has been an early-morning favourite of mine since I first heard it a few years ago. The whole record is amazing…it’s one of those rare records that feels like it was waiting for my ears. It may be hard to explain to some people, but I take music very seriously, and when a sound comes across my ears that really feels like it was made for me, I latch onto it and don’t let go. These sounds are so few and far between that I feel that if I don’t grab them, I will have missed a vital piece of

The Soundtrack of My Life.

There’s early morning music, there’s night music, there’s sunny-day music, there’s snow music, and then there are those odd ones that seem to work no matter when you play them (Stereolab’s Dots and Loops is my favourite LP for this reason (among many others)).

I listen to a lot of music sung in languages that I don’t speak (another reason I love Stereolab) because I’m forever fascinated by the phenomenon where songs convey their meaning/feeling regardless of lyrical comprehensibility. You’d be surprised how often it works. This is a case where it definitely does.

Recently I’ve had the great fortune of meeting someone who digs music as deeply as I do, if not more so. Her name is Laura G. Manifold, and she is an amazing human being. After you read this post on her Tumblr, I think you’ll dig what I mean.

Now I get why “Na Boca do Sol” is an essential part of the early morning soundtrack to the life of Moot Booxlé.

May 2011 bring you peace, blessings, and funky vibrations.

On the ONE,

Moot

I am selling a few pieces of gear.

Any of you who know me pretty well know that this is a huge decision, because I’m a music gear packrat.
If you’re not interested personally, feel free to share this with anybody you know who might be. I need to sell these things.
I’m willing to pay shipping on all of it (in the USA) so these prices include shipping.

(Outside the USA, contact me and we’ll work something out.)

Here’s what I got:

1. E-Mu Proteus/1 rack sound module – perfect working order, in fairly decent cosmetic shape. With manual and power cord. $115.

Proteus Pic 1 | Proteus Pic 2 | Proteus Pic 3 | Proteus Pic 4

2. Yamaha TX7 (a DX7 without keys, basically) – It has some cosmetic blemishes, but works great. $130.
**IT WILL COME LOADED WITH A CUSTOM SOUND BANK MADE BY ME, INCLUDING MY EXCLUSIVE 6-OP TALKBOX PATCH!**

TX7 Pic 1 | TX7 Pic 2 | TX7 Pic 3 | TX7 Pic 4 | TX7 Pic 5

3. Pioneer Stereo Spring Reverb – this thing is in great shape for its age…mid-to-late 70s. Psychedelic front panel, grungy, spanky, vintage sound! $115.

Pioneer Pic 1 | Pioneer Pic 2 | Pioneer Pic 3 | Pioneer Pic 4 | Pioneer Pic 5 | Pioneer Pic 6

Let me know if you’re interested in any of these pieces…I thought I would ask you readers/fans before putting this stuff on eBay.

Please send any inquiries to moot@mootbooxle.com.

Thank ya!!!!

MooT

I never promised you a rose garden.

I did, however, promise people with good ears a lot of fun finding the edits in Lynn Anderson’s 1970 mega-hit song.

The following is from my friend Chris Sotelo, an audio engineer (among other things) who knows an awful lot about analog recording techniques. I’ve posted the song below so you can listen along as he picks out the tons of tape splices and other anomalies in the recording.

Have fun!

Moot

ROSE GARDEN

I think it is interesting what one can do with 30 inches per second tape (while the world thought 7 1/2 IPS was fast), razor blade, splicing tape and great session musicians.

Listen closely…..

Rose Garden (<---If the player doesn't work, use this link)

Grab your headphones, plan to stay there a while and let’s critically listen
to this recording.  Keep your hand [or cursor ] close to the pause and rewind buttons at all times.

Here are the timings of the edits.

0:04
0:07
0:13
0:25
0:29
0:40
0:42 (tape flutter)
0:48
1:03
1:13
1:21
1:37
1:42
1:52
2:00
2:06 (tape flutter)
2:08
2:20
2:34

What a painstaking process to produce a hit song.  But that’s what it is all about.

Chris

I was on a cassette tape trip today…Don’t know why exactly, but for some reason I’ve decided to dig through the archives again. To my surprise, I found some stuff I made when I was a Freshman in High School that doesn’t suck! As a matter of fact, I was pretty impressed. It’s very sloppy, sure, but it definitely shows a direction that I was taking in music at the time.

The following is the sound of a 14-year-old pre-Moot Booxle (I hadn’t been given the moniker yet) in the spring of 1998. The only instruments used are a Yamaha PSR-530 keyboard, and a Squier Stratocaster. I’m not sure if it was plugged in directly, or was going through a miked amp…I do remember that the effects were a Boss CE-2 analog Chorus and a Boss OD-2 Turbo Overdrive.

Recorded direct to a Pioneer cassette deck.

Peter Panpot

(that was the title on the cassette card!)

But I digress.

Times are changing – of that we can all be sure, because it’s thrust into our faces every time we go online. In an increasingly web- and download-driven world, music store shelves continue to shrink, as does the selection they offer. Have a taste for the obscure? You’re not gonna find it at any of the big chains these days. Have a jones for Jazz? Thankfully, there’s still enough of a fan base for it that at least some stores still have a decent range. Either that, or they feel some sense of responsibility to still present this music that has so shaped our nation, as if the Ghosts of Jazz Past are guilt-tripping them into it. Whatever the reason, I, for one, am thankful.

But what about Soul, Funk, and R&B records? Has the rich history of Black music in this country become so marginalized that the most these stores can offer us is a bunch of lame “20th Century Masters” or 2nd-rate Greatest Hits compilations? I like to think that this music, which I love more than any other, is enjoyed by at least as many people as Rock music is. Probably not as much as straight-up Pop music, since that’s engineered specifically for the masses. But why is it that I can go to Borders and get pretty much any Rock record I’m looking for, even slightly obscure stuff (and let me clarify – by “record” I mean “CD”…I have to get my Vinyl elsewhere, unfortunately, but it’s still all “records” to me), but when I’m looking for Donny Hathaway’s Extension of a Man or the remastered Marvin Gaye Here, My Dear I never find those. Marvin Gaye! Is that too much to ask? It’s not like I’m trying to find forgotten oldies here. I’m looking for a record by an artist ranked #6 on Rolling Stone‘s Greatest Singers Of All Time. Not exactly Shooby Taylor, The Human Horn.

Those are just some examples, but time after time, no matter what I’m looking for, I always end up just ordering it from Amazon. Thank God for Amazon.

Yes, I’m one of those strange cats that still likes to buy hard copies of albums. Whenever I can at least.

STANGA

The words don’t seem to mean much on the surface…but beneath that surface lies a different story. The song: “Stanga”. The author: Sly Stone. Sly fans know this song as recorded by his little sister Vet’s group, Little Sister, on a 45 released under his fledgling company/label Stone Flower.

The musical backing was all provided by Sly himself, on Maestro Rhythm King drum machine, Fender Bass, Fender Telecaster, and (I believe) Farfisa combo organ through his signature wah-wah pedal. If you think it sounds like There’s A Riot Goin’ On you’d be right…it was recorded during that same heady, electrified, Funkafied period….

But what if he had saved it for his own group to record? What if he had sat on it for a couple of years and brought it out during the Fresh sessions?

The idea struck me all at once while driving down the road one day. I will make that happen. I will record my version of what it might have sounded like. This thing has been on the back burner for almost a year, getting little tweaks here and there to the arrangement, adding parts sporadically. FINALLY, at long last, I’m finished.

I think this is the funkiest recording I have ever made. All instruments and voices were played live by me – no MIDI or any other shortcuts. It’s real and it’s raw. And it might be the first time you’ve ever heard me play Sax or Trumpet.

Prepare to be FUNKATIZED.

Dig it:

(The track is downloadable too – just click the little down arrow on the right side of the player.)

INSTRUMENTATION:

Yamaha bass, MPC-2500 (Rhythm King samples), Acoustic drums (hi-hats were two 16″ Zildjian crashes!), Rhodes Suitcase 73, Nord Lead 2x through wah (Organ sound), DeArmond electric guitar through wah into Epiphone Valve Junior, King saxophone, Bundy trumpet, tambourine, vocals (recorded with Studio Projects C1 mic).

Hit me and let me know what you think! Hope you dig!

MooT

It’s here! The new album from Moot Booxlé, Talkin’ About Christmas!

Produced, Arranged, Performed, Mixed, Mastered, and whatever else by Moot Booxlé.

Many of you had asked for a whole album of funky talkbox Christmas music after seeing my Talkbox Christmas videos on YouTube. Well, the wait is over, my friends.

I got a late start working on this music, after having spent the past month or so working on a Christmas musical. That is my good excuse for delivering this to your ears so late into the season.

Anyway, put a glide in yo stride, a dip in yo hip, and come on and download this here thing!

TRACKLIST:

1. Little Drummer Boy

2. God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen

3. Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town

4. Jingle Bells Etc.

5. Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas (remix)

6. This Christmas

7. Greensleeves (What Child Is This)

NOW AVAILABLE FROM BANDCAMP.COM – in just about any format you could want – including Apple Lossless and FLAC!

CLICK HERE!

For now…Enjoy the music, and have a Merry Christmas!

On the ONE,

MooT

I just awoke from a very disturbing dream. The whole thing felt familiar; It was like watching a movie, only with me in it. From what I can tell, the whole thing was shaped by the music that was in my ears. I’m a habitual listener of music to fall asleep by…

This time I put my iPod on shuffle rather than playing through one of my many “sleepy time” playlists. I’ll tell you what was playing in a second.

The thing began with me driving through this (strangely familiar) shopping center, which had a really convoluted parking lot. There was a hair salon (a corporate one like SuperCuts) on one end, and at the other end, another one, which was always closed for some reason, and I was looking to get a haircut. I’d had a good experience with the one that was always closed (guess it was open some time!), and there was a fast food place next to it that I liked to go to, which had now been replaced by a different one that had a menu which was mostly blank. I kid you not. Everything I asked them did they have was met with a “no, sorry, not anymore…”!

[1] So I went across the parking lot to the other hair place, and was met by rude employee after rude employee. After they finally finished taunting and ridiculing my current state of hair, one of them finally relented and agreed to cut my hair. I looked down at the dude’s feet, and he was wearing sandals, which was not a good look…his feet were are mangled and had the appearance of baked chicken! This is where it started to get stranger and stranger.

Walking out of the hair cut place, it suddenly turned into a video store, and it took me forever to get out of there – it was like a maze! Next, I found myself either in a church or a school…It seemed familiar (I’m pretty sure I have had dreams involving this building before), and I was wandering the halls late one night, [2] going in and out of doors for no apparent reason, turning off lights…I guess I was locking things up for the night. I have no idea. I don’t even know why I was there in the first place. The walls, even the ceilings, were covered in this dark walnut paneling. Something spooked me though, and I pulled out my phone and started checking my Twitter (I’m a Tweetaholic), which in the dream gave me almost magical abilities…I was able to defy gravity and leap between walls and ceilings, off ledges and whatever…as long as I was on Twitter. Hey, I said it was weird. For some reason doing this seemed to make me feel better, and soon I was outside of this building and in a college somewhere.

From what I gather, I must have been a student at this college…this is where the details get fuzzy. I’m kind of glad to tell you the truth…it was some messed up stuff. Somehow I got in the middle of a murder mystery (a real one)…there was a girl on campus whose friend had gotten killed, and she was seeking revenge, justice, or something…apparently the perpetrator hadn’t been caught. She came to me with all this “evidence” that she needed to prove that a certain person was responsible, and as much as I didn’t want to be involved, I got caught up in the whole thing, and found myself going to the courthouse to try and recover this document, or argue her case, or something…I’m fuzzy on why I was there.[3]

I looked at my clock. The time was 6:08 PM – the courthouse closed at 6 PM, but I could still see people inside…so I tried the door. It opened. The officer at the front desk immediately grabbed me and handcuffed me to the desk. I wasn’t disturbed by this, because apparently I had once worked there, and that was protocol for anyone coming in after hours. A security guard saw me enter, and followed me in, and just about the time when all the questioning was about to start about why I was there, my old boss (in real life) from the County showed up. I guess he was now over the operations there. He told them to leave me alone, and I got un-handcuffed.

I handled whatever business in there, and then everything fast-forwarded to the next afternoon [4], where some weird looking dudes in suits (the one guy looked like Justin Timberlake from that one SNL short he did…) were chasing me through this college campus, and I was trying to run after and warn this guy (the alleged perpetrator of the murder) that he was about to meet his end, one way or another…I guess I didn’t believe this guy was the killer. Well, before I could catch him, one of the weird guys in the suits tackled me and knocked me out. The rest of the scenario played out like a movie. The alleged killer, trying desperately to run away from the dudes in suits, fell over a railing into a dried up reservoir, except his long chain he was wearing got caught around his neck, and I watched as he struggled and struggled to get free, but all the color was draining from his face…this is the part that makes no sense (LOL!!! as if anything up to this point has made any sense!). The guy’s legs landed in an abandoned car, and out of the car (I guess) came someone’s hand wielding a knife, which proceeded to cut the guy’s heart right out. And I’m seeing all this unfold but I’m powerless to do anything about it. I felt paralyzed. I was so shaken by what I saw that I woke up…and here I am.

Disturbing stuff. So, here are the songs that were playing (they formed the “perfect” soundtrack). During this post, there were footnotes. Retracing my steps, I was able to put back together where each song began, and at those points I put footnotes.

[1] Madlib – The Sky (Beyond Sight)

[2] The Free Design – Girls Alone

[3] The United States of America – Do You Follow Me

[4] The Isley Brothers – It’s Too Late

I’m thankful to be awake and in one piece. I’m glad that was all in a dream. I’m going back to sleep now….

Till later…

MooT