Tag: In Like Flint

Categories
Live Looping

Loopocalypse: A Live Looping Concert

This 65-minute performance features 17 of the songs I’ve been performing live over the last couple of years. In concert, though, I use a single instrument. But here I get to play most of my favorite guitars.

I’ve posted each of these songs individually over the last few weeks, but this is the first time I’ve shared them as a single video.

Song List
1. Heroes (00:20)
2. Thunderbeast Park (05:28)
3. Just Like Heaven (09:09)
4. Shake It Off 11/8 (13:14)
5. God Only Knows (18:14)
6. Monospace (21:12)
7. Lujon (24:39)
8. Disco Plato (28:15)
9. Pumped Up Kicks (32:00)
10. Pandemonic Waltz (36:44)
11. Love Will Tear (38:16)
12. Midnight Cowboy (42:57)
13. In Like Flint (46:13)
14. Space Shrine (48:45)
15. Rhiannon (52:34)
16. Luxardo (56:55)
17. Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space (01:00:58)

Tech Notes
1. Joe’s Looping Rig (01:05:25)
2. The Guitars (01:08:39)

Categories
Live Looping

Loopocalypse Day 13 (of 17): “In Like Flint”

This is a companion piece to yesterday’s version of John Barry’s Midnight Cowboy theme. It’s the main title from Jerry Goldsmith’s score for In Like Flint, a kitschy Bond parody that predated Austin Powers by decades. I was too young to see the film as a kid, but a radio ad featuring this theme blew my impressionable mind. I seriously believe the theme’s #4s and b2s triggered my lifelong love of dark chromaticism.

I’ve covered this once or twice before, though the sounds are quite different here.

The guitar is an unremarkable 1982 Les Paul Custom — the cheapest real Paul I could find when I needed one for an Apple sound design project. It’s even stamped “SECOND” on the back of the headstock. But the only original parts are the neck and body. The pickups are unpotted Duncan Seth Lover PDFs, and the guitar houses the most ridiculously over-the-top wiring scheme I’ve ever attempted.

Here’s an explanation of my live looping rig.

Categories
Digital Effects guitar

Double Double MIDI Trouble

I just recorded a solo version of one of my fave film themes: Jerry Goldsmith’s main title to the 1967 spy spoof In Like Flint. I’ve adored the melody since childhood, and I blame it for instilling the love of chromaticism that made possible my extraordinarily uncommercial career.

I’d previously posted another version of this tune, performed upside-down on a friend’s lefty guitar. But that was all-analog — this time it’s digital. And I’ve used the video to highlight a favorite MIDI technique: doubling recognizable guitar sounds with non-guitar synths and samples.

I've been obsessed with this score since dinosaurs ruled the earth.
I’ve been obsessed with this score since dinosaurs ruled the earth.

It’s funny — being able to trigger pretty much any sound from the guitar isn’t necessarily as liberating as you might think. Sure, when you first try it out, it’s thrilling to conjure an electric piano sound from the fretboard. But who wants to hear some schmo noodle aimlessly on electric piano when they could be noodling aimlessly on guitar?

For better or worse, I find myself using this technique repeatedly. When I double a part effectively, the result still seems like part of the guitar cosmos. It feels like expanding the palette, as opposed to vomiting on it. (Not that I’d be above vomiting on a palette if it helped create a cool painting.)

Did anyone else encounter this sort of childhood musical contamination? A melody, progression, or tone that infected you early on, and colored everything after? I’m not talking image, like falling in love with the Beatles on Ed Sullivan or Nickelback on the CBC because they were so frickin’ cool. I mean a primal sonic imprint. Anyone?