Introducing Sliders
December 2019

Greg Erken
gregerken@email.com

=======================================================================
In this busy day and age, who has time to listen to a whole song? 

To help fill your ever-shrinking attention span, Man Behind the Curtain Productions presents Sliders. Sliders is a buffet of musical hors d’oeuvres, an assortment of aural finger food, a grab bag of byte-sized ear candy, a box of rocklates. You never know what you’ll get, but at least it will be over in a few moments.

This collection of 28 short ditties, loops, and novelty items – clocking in at less than 20 minutes total – is perfect for snacking in between servicing your social media addiction.

Sliders are instrumental demos, plus a couple vocal melodies. Some have bits of lyrics, yet to be recorded; many have no lyrics whatsoever.

Three tunes continue my “Things” project with songs for my youngest niece/nephews: “Kyler Dakota (Asleep On My Shoulder), “Amazin’ Grayson,” and “Being Nathan.” 

All songs written by Greg Erken, except, you know, Jumping Jack Flash.
=======================================================================
Download Sliders

Zip with all songs
www.latestidea.com/mp3/Sliders/Sliders.zip

Individual Mp3s
www.latestidea.com/mp3/Sliders/

DropBox (shared folder)
https://tinyurl.com/ye9yh98r

Stream Sliders

YouTube
https://tinyurl.com/u6u5447

Soundcloud
https://soundcloud.com/greg-erken/sets/sliders

=======================================================================
Production Notes
Sliders was created using bass and drum tracks auto-generated by Apple’s Music Memos app for iPhone.

Workflow:
Unamplified Electric Guitar > iPhone mic (not direct) > Apple Music Memos  > GarageBand for iPhone > iPhone line out to PC  > Sony Vegas and Ozone.

There are no overdubs on Sliders, except for the studio chatter on “Take 5.” Only one audio track (guitar or vocal) per song was recorded in Music Memos. Typically in GarageBand this single track was cloned, blown up and tortured beyond any sense of decency.

In Music Memos, you begin by recording an audio track. Trim the beginning and ending of the track to create a loop, and two clicks generate bass and drums that attempt to follow your melody/chords and rhythm. 

About 70% of the time the bass correctly identifies the tonic note of whatever chord you’re playing. Sometimes it will play the “wrong” note but it will be something fantastic that I would have never thought of. You can fix the bass by inputting the chord changes down to the 8th note. To force the bass off the tonic you can fool it by inputting a different chord than what you actually played.

If necessary you can fix the drums by shifting the downbeat backwards or forwards to match your audio, but otherwise you have only indirect control of what the drums play. Both bass and drums allow you to adjust their respective styles between the extremes of Loud/Soft and Simple/Complex. Most of these Sliders have drums and bass set to Loud and Complex, which generates 8th notes on the bass and lots of high hat, toms, and fills on the drums.

Music Memos exports directly to the iPhone GarageBand app. GarageBand automatically separates the imported Music Memo into separate tracks for audio, bass, and drums, ready for FX, virtual amps, cutting and pasting, etc. The bass can now be fully edited as a MIDI track. You can’t edit the drum track as MIDI, but GarageBand expands on Music Memo’s options that allow you to further influence not what the drums play, but how they play. 

GarageBand on the iPhone provides limited export options, so a stereo mix was recorded out via the headphone jack into Sony Vegas on the PC. After further editing, a final stereo mix was generated using Ozone.

=======================================================================
Track Listing
1	FOMO
2	What’s Your Hurry
3	Chicago
4	Voice Male
5	Good For You
6	Like You Don’t Know Love
7	Let Someone Else Be Elvis For Awhile
8	What U Like
9	Take 5
10	No Can Do
11	A Good Day
12	Pixie Dust
13	We’re Talkin’ Squapa
14	Amazin’ Grayson
15	Intermission Time
16	Being Nathan
17	Kyler Dakota (Asleep On My Shoulder)
18	Talkin’ Bout a Tiny Beebitz
19	Bouncy McBounce Face
20	Light Fuse, Get Away 
21	Corner of Sesame and Bourbon
22	Twang Thang
23	Daily Grind
24	Jumping Jack Flash
25	Look Long
26	EZ DC
27	Ambiguous
28	Explosiva