Reading Notes

9-11 Minute Read | Laptop or Tablet Recommended

Topics and Themes

From a digital mess to creative organization; Reminiscing about Americorps; Cleaning up old indie hip-hop beats.

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Let’s say you did something in the past you’re proud of. It could be music, art, or a particularly awesome business deal. Let’s also say that many years pass by since you even thought about it. Isn't it fun to think back and reminisce? For me, I’m not talking about mooning my boss (though I was quite pleased with myself for doing that), but I’m talking about what I created previously and never released.

I enjoy looking back like this, from time to time. It's incredibly ego-gratifying to listen to some of that music and think "Oh, I have definitely progressed from that place... what a dumbass I was." I also get curious to see if anything can be salvaged and therefore rereleased. Perhaps there's a diamond in-the-rough, hiding in the mess of craziness.

I used to have a difficult time finding these hidden gems in my archive. Organization for me was a little… scattered. That looked like a bunch of folders in different places on my computer, random hard drives, cluttered cloud backups. My desktop, for example, was cluttered with audio projects that were "important" enough so as to end up on my desktop, where they would (possibly, maybe) receive top priority. It got to the point where the stuff I worked on in the past seemed like it disappeared into a black hole. I didn't like the idea that I wouldn't ever be able to find the things I once enjoyed working on but just didn't finish.

Luckily, I had my chance in 2016 to completely overhaul my digital creative life. A close friend of mine showed me his system for organizing all the previous creative assets he had into three simple folders (Display, Project, Raw if you're curious). Every single thing I've done on a computer since time immemorial was dated and reorganized into one of these three folders according to year, month, and day. This included every song, photograph, FruityLoops or Ableton Live or Cubase project, terribly angsty poem, disgustingly stupid short story, or laughable YouTube video. My point: Everything was succinctly organized into an organized, searchable-by-date folder structure.

That project took about two months to complete (and six months to back up on the cloud). I breathed a big sigh of relief once it was all done. I had a moment of clarity when I realized that I now had the freedom to do just about anything I wanted to do with my entire musical and creative history because it was searchable.

From that moment on, I’ve often felt curious if anything from the past was salvagable. Grande Valley Auction Incident is a direct result of this interest in looking back. I have found tons of old indie folk and slowcore songs scattered throughout my archive system, and I've greatly enjoyed remastering and releasing the songs. Had I not organized my digital assets so thoroughly, Grande Valley Auction Incident would never have seen the light of day.

How I mooned my boss in front of everyone and get away with it

There have been other projects I've been passively interested in revisiting, including KidShy. KidShy was the moniker I used to create two dozen pseudo hip-hop beats from 2004 to 2005 when I was a volunteer for Americorps. Americorps, if you're unfamiliar, is/was a national service organization created by Bill Clinton in his first term of office. The program engaged younger persons into service that specifically helps local communities. In other words, it's like the peace corps but for America. I’m really not sure if Americorps has survived the funding freezes of 2025. If not, it’s a huge shame. The organization truly did (does?) great things for America.

Back to the story: I joined Americorps not long after that extreme punch to the face that led me to eventually pursue teaching full-time. The specific program I joined was dedicated to building trails and improving environmental stewardship in Austin. It was hosted at American Youthworks in South Austin and was nicknamed E-Corps, for Environmental Corps.

Americorps didn’t pay all the well. I mean, I agreed to volunteer for $42 a day. I honestly don't know how I ate that year, let alone pay rent. Plus, the work was extremely challenging: In all weather, we worked outside either chopping down ash-juniper (an invasive, water-hungry tree in the Hill country of Austin), or building trails.

I was placed on a team of about 10 other kids from all walks of life. Peter seemed more likely to be at a think tank than on the trail. Gretchen was a full-on hippie. Kat liked indie rock and was basically a hipster. Andre was a local Austinite who was doing his second year in Americorps and appreciated the medicinal qualities of THC. Wil was a writer who's evocative short stories still resonate with me to this day. KG was from the hood and was the guy we could all count on if shit hit the fan. JR was a fun loving guy who was perennially in love with dinosaurs and the outdoor world. Our crew leader, Jessica did her best to manage us... with varying degrees of success. At one point, I decided to make my displeasure of her leadership known by mooning her with my pimply, white ass in front of everyone. The thought of that moment still makes me chuckle.

[Sidenote: Mooning your boss will sharply remind you of the power you have. Since the program was paying me so little, and they were having such a hard time finding ”volunteers,” they had to be a little desperate to keep me, right? That’s how you can moon your boss and get away with it: Make sure your boss absolutely needs you before you drop trough and show them the backside of your birthday suit.]

The friends who spoke hip-hop…

KG and Andre loved music. They would pop beats on our van's stereo system every chance they got. Sometimes KG would begin to flow over the beats they put on. I got the idea to start making my own beats and seeing what happens. I showed one of these frankenstein-beats to KG, and he was all over it. He immediately started flowing over it. There's no better complement than when a big dude who looks nothing like you says, "your shit inspires me, man. You got more?" I began creating more and more beats in force.

At that time, the best moniker I came up with was KidShy, probably because I felt incredibly shy during that time (As time marched on, the association with Kimchi came naturally). During this period, some 24 hip-hop beats came out of me.

There was a sticking point however: The beats sounded terrible in the car. KG would pop them on in his beautiful boat of a car, complete with a massive sub in the trunk, and the beats sounded like a garbled mess. Sure, they’d sound fine in headphones, but in audio engineering parlance, the beats didn't translate. Truth-be-told, they would sound godawful in every single place except my own headphones. Uncool.

The process of engineering music to translate across the (literally) billions of different devices is called mastering. Mastering engineers are the unsung heroes of the recording industry. They take music that either sounds like garbage OR sounds like someone spent a hundred thousand dollars on it and finalize it into something that sounds acceptible on literally billions of devices. The music then has the best chance to "translate." During the KidShy/Americorps period of my life, I knew I couldn't possibly get these beats to translate well with my lack of experience, shitty equipment, and dearth of focus. Nor could I afford a mastering engineer to work on them because, well, remember the $42 a day?

In other words, the beats stayed hidden on my computer for 20 years. And I mean the word “hidden.” I forgot I even created them in the first place because, well, the archive was quite messy.

After recently releasing Slow Core Christmas, as well as Archive Volume Three by Grande Valley Auction Incident, I felt the time might be right to attempt the re-mastering of more music, and I found these archived hip-hop beats hanging around. The first question: What if? The second question: Is it possible to take these wimpy and loose-sounding hip hop beats and turn them into beats that slammed and potentially sound great in a car?

Mastering The Beats to Slam A Bit Harder

My first move was to understand how to actually master a hip-hop beat at all. Clearly, I had a lot to learn. I happened upon an otherworldly magical YouTube video on audio compression on the channel UBK by Kush Audio. He shows how the attack of a compressor can help shape the transient at the beginning of the sound, aka the "attack." The release can make the beats dense and distorted, or it could make them dance a little bit. I ended up employing Kush Audio's Novatron specifically:

Kush Audio’s Novatron

Further, I explored the excellent plug-ins Bloom, Soothe2, and Spiff, all by Oeksound to create a deeper tone, reduce unwanted resonances, and beef up the hit of the drums.

Oeksound’s Bloom, Soothe2, and Spiff

After about six passes through each beat, I felt happy enough with them to get them ready for release. I was able to do them a little more justice than I would have been able 20 years ago. It feels good to bring that KidShy period of my life to a close.

Did I keep in touch with these old friends?

No. Sadly, I didn’t. I can only hope that everyone found their happiness. Of course, I've bumped into a couple of them over the years. I saw Gretchen at a grocery store and it was great to catch up. I also bumped into Kat. She couldn't wait to get away from the conversation. I heard from Wil here and there, and he even posted a couple of songs I produced for him.

Really, the pebble that started this whole Kidshy avalanche was Peter, the guy I thought better belonged in a think-tank. Peter reached out to me in the fall of 2024 to ask if I had any recollection of a beat he and I played guitar on. Peter, thanks for reminding me of KidShy. This is for you:

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Reading Notes

6-8 Minute Read | Laptop or Tablet Recommended

Topics and Themes

Context in Marketing; Behind-the-scenes of Archive Volume Three; Fixing audio with Izotope RX; Stories overpower recording quality

I have to be mindful to avoid falling into a common musician self-promotion pitfall. You know the one, especially if you have a friend who's a musician:

“You should check out my music. I’m on Spotify, Apple Music, and all the streaming services. Tell me what you think.”

I'll admit, I've done this to many friends! The last time I complained about how promotion like this doesn't really work (because it doesn't), a friend of mine patiently reminded me that context is everything in marketing. Paraphrased:

"If I met a musician on the street and he said, 'Hey check out my music,' I wouldn't do it. But if he spoke more generally about the ideas surrounding music that he likes, if he talks about things about music that he gets fired up about, and then told me how his music fits into that context, I'm far more likely to check it out.”

It was so simple that I forgot it for a moment: Context means everything.

I recently began these Behind-The-Scenes articles to give some context (the first one was for Lodern by Wicked Cities From A Distance). They’re similar to the commentary you used to get with DVD releases: You learn about how the music was crafted and hopefully gain some insight into what inspired it. And of course, if you dig the music, it's great for both of us. If you’re not into the music, you might be interested to see how it all came together, and what inspired the album in the first place.

Today, I want to do a behind-the-scenes look about Grande Valley Auction Incident's new album Archive Volume Three:

The origin story of Archive Volume Three

As I mentioned before on this blog, I recently unearthed some old tapes in the closet of my studio. My curiosity got the better of me. I had to know what was on them. I dusted off my old cassette tape player and popped one of those tapes in. I was horrified by what came out of the speakers.

The horror gave way to a little bit of shock, which led quickly to annoyance. Couldn't I have done better than that?!?

After a couple of days of mental back-and-forth, I became curious about the songs. Isn't there a curious force, a weird magic behind these recordings? Couldn't I possibly fix them up? Couldn't I use it as a chance to get better at audio engineering? I was willing to try. Besides, things were far getting too serious and I needed a chance to poke fun at myself a little bit. What better way to have a little fun than to publish some excessively personal, depressing songs recorded almost twenty years ago on a terrible cassette recorder?!?

The process of repairing the audio

The first problem I ran into was fixing the audio because the songs were recorded on a subpar cassette recorder using an internal microphone. It would be generous to say that the sound quality was... rough. I needed to eliminate the hum of the gears and the grinding sounds picked up by the internal microphone. It took some experimentation to figure out how to get rid the audio of the nasty artifacts, but Izotope RX10 ended up the winner:

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Izotope RX10 DeNoising Plugins

Since both the voice and guitar were recorded in one take with just one microphone, I couldn’t adjust the vocal volume seperately afterwords. I had to grab the Master Rebalance plugin for Ozone 9 to boost the vocals back up:

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Master Rebalance plugin for Izotope Ozone 9

Finally, I needed to control the “ss” sound in the vocals, often called sibilance. If sibilence gets out of control, any "ss" I sang would sound harsh, piercing, jarring, and downright bad. I relied upon Ozone’s Dynamic EQ module and Soothe2 by Oeksound for "De-Essing," and it sounded passable:

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Ozone’s Dynamic EQ module and Soothe2 by Oeksound

When I approached each track individually, I needed to surgically remove offensive frequencies lest they take over the mix. Neutron’s EQ module allowed me to do just that. For example, on the third song, Generational Fails, I made these adjustments:

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Neutron’s EQ module on Generational Fails

Overall, the changes I made up to this point accounted for 80% of the results. The remaining processing involved addressing smaller issues on each track and adding light touches to the master track. I enjoyed figuring out how to make this sound as appealing as possible. To be brutally honest, I don’t think I achieved much. Lo-Fi music is still lo-fi music, and you can't really polish a turd.

The origin story makes the music interesting (hopefully)

Still, despite the white-hot emotional mess I was in when I recorded these songs, I feel a tiny bit proud of them. I try to remember that it isn’t really the recording quality that matters. I mean, sure, we musicians all want our music to sound really dope. Yet, throughout the history of recorded music, there have been a great number of songs that told such great stories that listeners looked past the poor recording quality and loved them anyway.

Not like that’s gonna happen with Archive Volume Three! Let’s be realistic here!

Putting my bias aside, perhaps the story of these songs transcends the bad quality of the recordings... that sincerity about what is true, open, unembellished, and raw in life. Maybe the strangeness of my life filters through the music. Maybe the isolation I felt echoes around after a listen or two. Maybe there's something endearing about watching a train wreck happen in real time. I highly doubt it, though. I can only be certain that these songs are proof that I used to wear my entire heart on my sleeve, and damn, it was pretty heavy.

I could barely conceal my feelings from anyone during that time. I was in a dark place. These songs documented that time of my life almost too perfectly, and maybe that's why I was so embarrassed about them at first. I don’t mind sharing them now. I guess I have enough distance! It’s fun to look back and shudder at the dumbass I used to be, and I’m sure that when I’m 60, I’ll feel the same way about who I am now.

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Have you ever wondered how the most perfect music falls in your lap at just the right moment?

Kin Leonn, a UK-based ambient and electronic music producer, and his music smoothly nestled themselves into my headphones this summer. I needed it, too.

I learned of Leonn from his work on the film The Breaking Ice. The movie follows three adults in their early 20's, living in contemporary northern China. Each character forms a deeper friendship with the others, while simultaneously, all of them work through their past traumas. It's billed as a bittersweet romantic drama, and it delivers.

The Breaking Ice forced itself onto my list of movies that I will watch twice. It has a solidity to it that I appreciate from good, independent movies. Besides, all I needed was to hear just a few seconds of Kin Leonn's musical score to know that this movie would slay.

I've since come to admire Kin Leonn’s work on a much deeper level. He has a way of creating music that surprises me, pushes me, and haunts my edge every time. I believe that his music effortlessly incorporates a wide and surprising degree of contrasts.

There are several techniques he uses to create this contrast in his music. And, I might do a deep-dive on that in the future. For now, I want to go deeper on how Leonn’s deliberate use of contrast in his music influenced the process I had on Lodern, the most recent release from Wicked Cities From A Distance. I also want to talk a little shop about Eurorack synthesizers.

Boring Synth Pads

In the past, I created a lot of ambient pads and soundscapes, droning out for dozens of minutes. The trouble appears when ambient music dangerously veers towards sameness, and slaps the listener with boredom. Drones can feel a little dumb, repetitive, numbing, and perhaps overdone.

This was why I felt so relieved to hear Kin Leonn’s work. It forced me to realize how important it is to think about variety, to insert some conflict inside of a song. Nothing wrong with having a little fight in you.

Discovering Leonn’s work compelled a deeper awareness of composing music that surprises and delights. I definitely attempted that with Lodern.

Creating Variety With Just Two Notes

Lodern has two notes: A root and a major third. It started as a simple drone piece. But this focus on contrast haunted me:

How on earth do I make a 15 minute long song interesting when it's just two notes, total?

To answer this, I need to nerd out about modular synthesizers. Fans of Eurorack are gonna love this part.

Granular Synthesis via Morphagene and Nebulae

The bulk of Lodern was created from two Eurorack modules, the Make Noise Morphagene and the Qu-Bit Nebulae. Both of these modules accept recorded audio and turn it into loops. Then, they can mangle those loops in so many wonderful ways. John Lennon would have flipped his wig had he had access to these two modules!

On the Morphagene, I had a piano loop running backwards. Using control voltage, I was able to change where the sound played inside of the loop (SLIDE on the Morphagene). Further, I CV’d (short for control voltage) the size of the loop (GENE SIZE), and I also CV’d the MORPH knob on the Morphagene. This formed a dynamic loop, one that changes, a lot.

The output of the Morphagene took flight after getting patched into a Hologram Microcosm with the MIX all the way up. I fiddled a lot with the Microcosm during the recording (TIME, ACTIVITY, and REPEATS). This part sounds pretty mellow just on it’s own:

Make Noise Morphagene

On the Nebulae, using a similar piano recording but played in mono, I found a single section of the loop that I liked and froze it by turning the SIZE knob all the way down while keeping the START knob static. From there, I used my fingers to manually adjust the DENSITY, BLEND, PITCH, and OVERLAP controls.

The output of the Nebulae took on a very intense sound after I violently shoved it into a distortion pedal by DOD called the Gunslinger (Shoutout to Jerry Daniels for the pedal). This noisy loop dominates the dead center of the stereo field throughout the piece. During the mixing stage, I paired it with an EastWest Spaces reverb, a pretty slick convolution reverb, just to give it a little more breath:

Qu-Bit Nebulae

These ideas were patched through to three separate tracks on my iD44 interface, and then captured in one take… One big, long, 15 minute take.

Adding Thickening Agents

I needed something to anchor the droney loops, something I could stand on with some certainty. I plugged a triangle wave output from the Pittsburgh Modular SV-1b into the filter section of the same module. I then took the lowpass filter out to the mixer. In one take, I opened the filter to get more volume when the song needed it:

Pittsburgh Modular SV-1b

Finally, I loaded up an ensemble string patch from EastWest's Hollywood Strings 2. I voiced a simple chord and mercilessly programmed it to repeat endlessly. If you've worked with orchestral samples, you know that the "sustained" sounds make interesting drones. Why? Players gotta stop at some point! The post production audio engineers who work on these sample libraries are often tasked with looping the end and beginning of a patch to create a sustained sound:

Aquiring More Contrast and Conflict

As I mentioned before, I do love long stretches of sound. But, drones need contrast to whack the livin’ hell out of a listener. I had to find places where sound could jostle things out of the ordinary.

A very good friend of mine Eddy Hobizal, who’s music you ought to check out, graciously allowed me to borrow his Fender Rhodes. I was able to plug that bad boy straight into the Hologram Microcosm. Without too much fussing about, I could play all sorts of chords and the Microcosm would throw everything back to me in a nice, twinkling way. An exemplar contrast to the lower foundational harmony.

Finally, I added some nature sounds. Why the hell not? Ambient musicians love nature sounds. Classic. Like a duck to water. Ha!

The entire session looks like this in Ableton Live:

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Lodern in Ableton Live 12

Lodern in it's Entirety

Overall, I tried to make the elements of Lodern subtly contradict the next. I wanted each solitary minute to sound a tiny bit different than the previous. Sometimes the keyboard sounds would drift casually into the background, or lift up in the higher registers, or tinker with different harmony. Sometimes, the stereo field would hinge from balanced to dangerously out-of-phase. Sometimes, the thickening agents would just wreak a fever pitch of intensity.

I didn’t know what direction this music could take when I first started working on it.

My August this year (2024) held a plenitude of change. For one, I bought a new car. Having AC felt incredible as I had been without for about 7 years. I could actually drive places without having to bathe in my own sweat. I kept on getting the nudge to write and I began doing it. I decided to get new photos taken for my sites. And, Autumn felt closer than ever.

And once that change started happening, it manifested itself into Lodern. I ended up composing in that in-between place where I hadn't yet changed into something new.

I knew I had to pivot from old Dave to new Dave, as it happens from time-to-time. Lodern is music of that transformation, but specifically the space in-between, that liminal space, where we haven't yet figured out what's going on. Where we haven’t really finished the metamorphosis. That space has intensity. A good friend of mine said it's like taking a Polaroid and having to wait to see the picture clearly, later.

All I gotta say now? My-oh-my, thank god it's fall in Austin. That's a polaroid I've definitely been pining for.