Zombies have always been excellent company for a weekend. A point of view that our ohmfriend John H. Van Eaton very probably shares, specially after his recent work on the FX and soundtrack for new Urbanchillers’ horror comedy movie “E-Discordia Dating for Zombies & the Undead” trailer. A lot of Symptohm:Melohman, several Ohmicide:Melohman spices, some Quad Frohmage sugar and a loads and loads of blood!
Being a Celldweller fan. It’s the kind of thing we think that happens only at other people’s families, until the day we surprisingly see it happening within our own kingdom. And what should we do, then? Well, if you think we’re going to lock a friend in one of Ohm Force cave’s abandoned dark rooms and feed him with a defrosted pizza, you’re completely mistaken! We’re open minded people and we do accept – and respect – our friends as they are. The proof is that we’re even sponsoring FIXT’s current Celldweller remix contest, which offers prizes from Ohm Force, Fabfilter and Cakewalk: if you appreciate his electronic-and-almost-trance-metal-rock, don’t miss this opportunity to have fun, show your skills and grab some gear. Nevertheless, Klayton/Celdweller is a first-time Ohmicide:Melohman user, what shows that he’s indeed a clever guy. And it’s true that he sculpted some very nice distorted landscapes in his tunes, which fits very well with his…. euh… we better stop here, otherwise you’ll start to think that there’s more than one fan here. Not at all, everything is under control!
How to fatten a Vermona M.A.R.S., first passing it through an Ohmicide:Melohman, then an Mobilohm. It seems that yes, you can fatten something that’s already phat, resulting in some obese sounds.
Some time ago Fedor Thonnessen has reached the second place in Delamar’s music production contest (with the nice track “Power Walk in The Park”, that you can listen here) and since that we’ve been following his musical moves, specially the MySpace profile of his duo Fedido, with his mate Guido. If before being at the contest podium their production already used to be powered by the Symptohm:Melohman’s sounds and Quad Fromage’s filtering, next album’s tracks (they’re now in studio recording it) are being tweaked with their brand new Ohmicide:Melohman and Hematohm. Fedido’s last album is called “Improclima” and it’s free, released under a creative commons license. We’ve benefited from the moment to know a little bit more about them…
Tell us more about Fedido…
Our trumpet & keyboards duett FEDIDO exists since 2003. My friend and I met in a jazz band where we both felt the urge to widen the horizon. We record a lot and then spend a lot of time in post production. My friend has started using effects from an old PC version of Logic on his portable computer with amazing results. Sometimes we use home made or royalty-free loops (rythms, pads etc.) Even though we never set ourselves a style, our music has been called « relaxing », soothing… It’s true we don’t venture into « savage » sounds – or, in my view, what *we* percieve as savage is still calm by general standards ;-) Until now, we have played exclusively for the pleasure we get out of it – and for the absolute artistic freedom we enjoy as long as there’s no money involved. Anyone can listen to our albums (two until now, working on a third) on www.myspace.com/fedido , and we apreciate any feedback !
What’s your studio setup?
My main computer is a Powermac G5 QUAD (4x 2.5 Ghz), bought with still 6 months of warantee to go, when the Intel Macs started to come out. I also use a PowerBook G4 1Ghz, as well as a modest PC Intel Dual Core 1.6Ghz, which is more than enough for running well crafted Adobe Audition and Steinberg Wavelab (both quite old versions, but entirely sufficient for my needs).
On the Macs, I use Logic Pro 7. I started to use Macs so I could go on using Logic. (Having both worlds is a bonus as far as I’m concerned !) Pro 6 has been working perfectly fine for a while now; a stable setup is a setup I want to keep – so no urge to upgrade to Pro 8 right now.
I’m very fond of the proprietary plugins in Logic; I especially like the ES2 (a great and extremely versatile substractive synth.) The SPACE DESIGNER is a convolution reverb that sounds just amazing with sheer infinite presets from ultra-realistic to ultra weird ;-) Finally, there’s the no-fuss and still very flexible EXS 24 sampler, which accepts Akai and Giga format, which, again, is all I need.
My audio interface has been the Presonus FIREPOD for years; it has 8 channels all with mic preamplifiers, a very decent sound and a simple design that suits me well. Also a lot of outputs allowing for pretty much anything to be sent anywhere. I have done live recordings with it (8 channels come in handy!). I don’t know if an optical out has been added on the new version, I know people complained about “only” SPDF output on this unit…
I don’t want to sound too flattering, but my Ohm Force plugins ARE the ONLY non-Logic-native plugins I paid for! I started by falling in love with… was it Frohmage ? Ohmygod ? Anyway, i felt at ease with it instantly. Sometime later, there was a group buy, and I got myself the « All Filter » bundle, which included the both gorgeous QuadFrohmage and Symptohm:Melohman.
Now I’m exploring my newly won Hematohm and Ohmicide (you gotta love them just for the NAMES, right ?)
What have been the concept and the starting ideas for making your contest track?
I essentially let myself being guided by the loops offered for the contest. To have sort of a background, I started with a homemade, pad-like loop (made with the ES2, a Logic synth), nicely distorted with Frohmage. I then let the synth loop (with lots of reverb to keep it distant, discrete) play along with my own loop. I then let both the rythm and bass loops kick in, as they played really nice together.
When I heard the organ loop, I instantly wanted to « trash » it, so it would feel like someone talking (that was the idea, anyway !) So I sent it through « BitCrusher » from Logic. I then stopped the rythm section and made the organ loop resonate / « sing » through Frohmage in a kind of midway-through « solo ». Rythm section kicks back in, organ solo ends, and I let my own loop have the « final singing », resonating through Frohmage as well. That’s it.
What kind of music your listen to? What are your major influences and favorite artists?
I’ll try to be brief, because there would be so many names to mention… As a pianist, Keith Jarrett, Chick Corea and… Vladimir Horowitz (classical) have had a huge impact on me. The Pat Metheny Group has been in my life since about 1978. I stopped listening to new albums for some years now, but his music – and, of course, the magical touch of his keyboardist and co-writer of most songs, lyle Mays – feels like home to me. I just have to add Radiohead… and Kate Bush ( !) to name the uttermost important ones…
My buddy and I both enjoy Pink Floyd, Miles Davis (especially what he did since « We want Miles »)… and lots more !
This is the newest theMDR video on the web, a live performance of their “Foreign Tongue” song. theMDR the current music projetc of our ohmfriend Matt Walker (former Smashing Pumpkins drummer and nowadays drummer in Morrissey’s band). This video was produced in Chicago by Flashpoint Acadamy of Media Arts and the editing is by Matt himself: you’ll find more details about it here, and also check out their brand new MySpace profile design…
Loads of distortion on vocals? Colombian gothic artist Elamorte explains how he uses the Ohmicide:Melohman distortion plug-in from Ohm Force to process his vocal tracks. He could have made this tutorial without showing his face, but it wouldn’t be scary enough. His track is called “Suicide” and you shouldn’t listen to it alone at home…
Part 1
Part 2
This time our german ohmfriend Colin Stark (you’ll probably remember him from our first video cohmpetition, one year ago) waited almost until the last minute to send us his most recent production. Now he shows how he personally uses his OhmBoyz, Ohmicide:Melohman and OhMyGod!. (Colin, you have indeed experienced some technical problem when rendering your video, as video speed is weird and there’s no sound at all. The HD version is not working neither. Please render/upload again and send us a new link as soon as possible!!!)
Third submission by Michael Hetrick is once again about our distortion beast Ohmicide:Melohman, this time showing a creative way to use the plug-in: using each band’s noise gate parameters to apply different kinds of distortion to each portion of the frequency spectrum, what gives – in Michael’s studio an acoustic drum loop – new personalities to the audio and spicy rhythmic enhancements to what used to be a ‘not that uncommon loop’. In addition he plugs in an OhmBoyz delay and – wow – we could make an entire track only playing along with parameters and cleverly exploring the variations of this delayed-gated-distortion setup.
Second submission comes from Melbourne, Australia: Nicholas Levey shows how he uses both Ohmicide:Melohman and Predatohm distortion units – with some additional spices provided by OhMyGod! – to create “violently distorted textures suitable for ambient music and soundscapes”. Watch the video then pay a visit to his myspace profile.
Cohmpetition’s first submission kicks some ass: former Smashing Pumpkins drummer Matt Walker shows how he uses the Ohmicide:Melohman at home and during his drum sessions. Matt is currently on tour with Morrissey, and if you still don’t know what Matt we’re talking about, he was the guy on the drums from 96 ’til the end of the band…
