my name is shoe.

ANDREW SHOEMAKER - “IN YOUR DAYDREAMS (NITE MUSIC)”

I spent the weekend putting together some music for http://inyourdaydreams.com by night. I encourage you guys to check out the site after 6:00 PM, or, if you want to do it now, just change your computer’s clock from AM to PM, or vice versa. The site encourages you to go do something else instead of daydream, like get your groove on to this danceable track. Galen said from Ann Arbor yesterday: “I’m dancing like it’s a John Hughes movie up in this here hotel room.” Quite. 

in your daydreams

The site I composed music for has gone live at last. Head over to http://inyourdaydreams.com and bring some much needed time-wastage to your otherwise productive workday. The site was written by Heather Apple, designed and built by Tofer Moran and Callie Peck, and creepy-whispered over by this moi. It’s tough to really describe this site. You just need to experience it for yourself. 

ANDREW SHOEMAKER - “DAYDREAMS SITE MUSIC (song version)”

As I mentioned last week, I have been commissioned to produce some music for a website that my girlfriend Heather Apple and Tofer Moran (of In the Circuit of the Sun) are building. The site isn’t live yet, so I can’t really go into detail on what it is or why the music was designed this way. As soon as the site is up, I will be sure to link to it and discuss it in more detail.

This version is not the one that you will hear on the site, at least, not quite. It is an earlier version that I was very happy with but which Heather and Tofer had some minor problems with. I made the changes they requested, but I want to go ahead and share this version as it is. 

ANDREW SHOEMAKER - “FAR FROM HOME”

The holidays are nearly upon us, and all the shopping I’ve been putting off is now weighing heavily on my shoulders. So, naturally, I’ve been ignoring it and instead working ceaselessly in the studio. The last couple days have been productive, and I’ve managed to crank out another new song. Galen and Heather both independently used the word “lovely” to describe this new song, “Far From Home.” I find it interesting because I don’t think it’s a word that should be applied to really any of my previous work in Garageband. What’s with the change? Well, for starters I now have access to some very high quality MIDI samples, and voices that I would have shied away from in the past are now exciting new colors added to my palette. The strings on this song for instance have a breathtaking quality about them. There is one audio recording here though: the acoustic guitar track under the climax.

The title here has some significance, I suppose. This is my first year living in another state from my family, and as Christmas approaches, I am eagerly anticipating returning to them in North Carolina next week. You can hear that yearning in every note of this song. Home is so close, but so far away.

UPDATE 12/19: Galen was in town this weekend and helped me adjust the snare sounds a little bit here. He also experimented with some light, airy vocal takes, and we layered them over the climax of the song here for a nice effect. I’m even happier with the song than I was before. Thanks, Galen!

ANDREW SHOEMAKER - “WINTER CHILL”

Well I finally did it. I took the plunge, made the investment, and now I’m in my bedroom working with a Pro Tools Mbox system. After getting everything set up on Tuesday, I spent today experimenting, and I wanted to share my results. I’m thrilled with the quality of both the MIDI sounds I’m able to create with Reason and Pro Tools and the recording quality of my AT2020 mic.

For this song, I recorded a few ukulele tracks and applied some thick delay to create a densely textured wash of percussive sound. I also created a bed of cool, minimal synth pads. The goal was to give the listener the sensation of an icy, desolate landscape. It’s been cold here in the city lately, and it’s only going to get worse. I’ll be sure to keep working with this track, and I’ll share pictures soon. 

ANDREW SHOEMAKER - “ROBOSAN THEME REMIX”

Hey guys. I’m in New Haven for the weekend visiting Galen, and I spent a little of my free time working on a remix of the Robosan theme using the individual track stripes from the recording session. Beyond the obvious chopping up of vocal parts and riffs, I applied a liberal amount of echo and reverb to the drum tracks to get a cacophonous clatter of beats, and it really changed the whole mood of the track. Check it out!

ANDREW SHOEMAKER - “SKY RIDER”

This song is an old one. I worked it up about a year ago, and it underwent about five or six different revisions before I settled on arrangement I liked. After that, I fiddled with the mix and master for a long time. Eventually I let it be, but I was never really happy with it. Flash forward to now. I’ve been picking up a lot of tips and techniques from the engineers at my internship: Daniel Dzula, Francis Garza, and David Steinberg. These guys have been amazing teachers, and I’ve been trying to absorb as much of their brilliance by osmosis as I can. So when I listen now to the work I did so long ago, I can immediately hear what needs to be improved. I spent the last few days working and came up with a new mix of ‘Sky Rider’ …which was then revised three more times (with a lot of helpful notes from Galen).

Things I changed:

• Varied the velocity of drum hits in order to ‘liven’ up the synthetic midi sounds.
• Added an arpeggiated miniMoog to the end of the track (Galen’s idea)
• Put a Bitcrusher filter on one of the tracks towards the end
• Doubled various tracks and panned them out for stereo-effect
• Added more cowbell. Seriously. Just listen.

ANDREW SHOEMAKER - ‘SLEEPING PILLS’ 

My good friend Matt Hardigree, Jalopnik News Editor, asked me to contribute a song for a video they will be posting soon. His only direction was that the song should be “dance-y,” so I had a lot of freedom to experiment. I decided that I wanted to work with a sample that could be looped and easily chopped up. I found what I was looking for (as I so often do) in a Radiohead song: ‘Melatonin’ from their 1998 EP Airbag/How Am I Driving? This track was worked up very quickly, and despite the rush, I’m very proud of the beat. I may still tinker with this track a bit, but this is the form in which it will be heard on Jalopnik. Thanks for the opportunity, Matt!

ANDREW SHOEMAKER - “FULTON STREET BLUES”

One of the first songs I made after moving to the city was this little number. A buddy of mine sent over a heavily disco-influenced track he was into at the time, and what struck me most about the song was how it managed to do so much with so little. Whereas much of the music I was writing at the time was fairly maximal in construction, incorporating lots of layers, I thought about trying to create something that had a lot of space but still managed to feel propulsive and vibrant. The song I came up with is called “Fulton Street Blues,” named for the major Brooklyn thoroughfare where I was about to step out to meet my girlfriend for a drink. It was a quiet, warm July evening, and I was actually late because I got going with this song and didn’t want to walk away. It’s still one of my favorites, and I intend to keep working with it. I would love to replace the crappy midi fiddle with a live recording.

ANDREW SHOEMAKER - ‘STUTTER STOMP’

Here’s an early track I made circa spring 2010. You may (or most likely not, depending on your degree of nerditude) notice a similarity between ‘stutter stomp’ and this piece from Yasunori Mitsuda’s classic video game score. Obviously this was unintentional, but when a friend of mine pointed out the connection I realized how immensely I am influenced by game soundtracks. When I was 12, I begged my mother to buy me the three disc soundtrack to Final Fantasy VI by the legendary Nobuo Uematsu from a magazine ad for a Japanese telephone order service. Despite my mother’s befuddlement and the operator’s broken Engrish, the order got through. These days, video game music is hardly distinguishable from the scores of film and TV, but the aesthetic appeal of 8 and 16-bit music continues to find a place in the music of electronic acts like Anamanaguchi and Crystal Castles (among others). It influences just about everything I write, too.