Category Archives: Sober October

Sober October

Noggin – Orkas (Invitation)

Artist:
Title:
Album:
Date:
Part 1

Title: Orkas (Invitation)
Artist: Noggin
Album: Sober October
Date: 2011

Figured it’d be a nice preview to start the record off with a little piece of the epic later to come. Plus, I really dig that snare glitch-splash through the reverb getting cranked up.
MPC straight to 1/4″ reels via LXP-1.
Full album available at http://soundcloud.com/djnoggin/sets/sober-october
Download: Noggin – 01 – Orkas (Invitation) (right click and choose ‘save as’)

Sober October

Noggin – Beat Friends

Artist:
Title:
Album:
Date:
Part 1

Title: Beat Friends
Artist: Noggin
Album: Sober October
Date: 2011

Did I time it right? Are we conveniently at a collaboration Thursday again? SCORE.
Friend on the street, friends on the beat, beat friends.
Jon provided the base drum sounds during a visit to Denton. Amazing what you can do with only a single sm57 overhead. I have gotten so much mileage out of these sounds, sometimes I want to scrap every other drum sample I have. I also love using my fingers to recreate what it takes homedude an entire body and a fair amount of stinky sweat to pull off.
This track almost made it onto the Old Town Acid EP, but I felt it really went with the vibe of this collection , so here it is.
MPC and x0xb0x straight to 1/4″ reels via Mackie mixer and LXP-1 on send.
Chuck originally called this one “Day in the life of a hypnotist”.
Full album available at http://soundcloud.com/djnoggin/sets/sober-october
Download: Noggin – 02 – Beat Friends (right click and choose ‘save as’)

Sober October

Noggin – mawL

Artist:
Title:
Album:
Date:
Part 1

Title: mawL
Artist: Noggin
Album: Sober October
Date: 2011

Named from a sampler naming mishap, I present to you another one of the oldest songs off this record. This was written in Anacortes in the fall around the same time as “Thumb”. It also contains rare samples created from even older buzz files. Performed live a couple times, and jammed to.
Then while recording, this really sweet groove opened up.
MPC straight to 1/4″ reels via Mackie mixer and LXP-1 on send.
Chuck originally called this one “Walking home”.
Full album available at http://soundcloud.com/djnoggin/sets/sober-october
Download: Noggin – 03 – mawL (right click and choose ‘save as’)

Sober October

Noggin – Jouges

Artist:
Title:
Album:
Date:
Part 1

Title: Jouges
Artist: Noggin
Album: Sober October
Date: 2011

Definition of Love-Hate here.
This track was originally a favorite of mine, though I figured it might not appeal to a wide range. However the first few listeners loved it.
It went through many permutations and edits.
I eventually started to despise it because it’s so nasty to begin with, its not easy to tame.
It almost got scrapped, but held on as being the first reviewers’ favorite – how could I let it get relegated to b-side-land?
It’s an ER-1 feeding back on itself and pressed really hard to tape in the garage with Jon.
ER-1 straight to 1/4″ reels.
Chuck originally called this one “Dirty”.
Full album available at http://soundcloud.com/djnoggin/sets/sober-october
Download: Noggin – 04 – Jouges (right click and choose ‘save as’)

Sober October

Noggin – That Old Orange Guitar

Artist:
Title:
Album:
Date:
Part 1

Title: That Old Orange Guitar
Artist: Noggin
Album: Sober October
Date: 2011

Final version of the ambient track I posted earlier this year (bonus track after so you don’t think I’m double dipping).
All the sounds in this one came from my first guitar, recently rigged up with piezo, plugged straight into my sampler. I got to say thanks again to my uncle for that guitar, cause it basically was my gateway into wanting to learn to hone my craft.
I want to dedicate this one to my good friend Kyle of California.
MPC straight to 1/4″ reels via Mackie mixer and LXP-1 on send.
Chuck originally called this one “Leftovers” (and I like that).
Full album available at http://soundcloud.com/djnoggin/sets/sober-october
Download: Noggin – 05 – That Old Orange Guitar (right click and choose ‘save as’)

Sober October

Noggin – Walk Around

Artist:
Title:
Album:
Date:
Part 1

Title: Walk Around
Artist: Noggin
Album: Sober October
Date: 2011

Here’s the one track from the Reverb City sessions (sort of a Sober October sessions alpha version) that actually made it to the album. I just liked the jam so much I couldn’t let it go. And yes, since I already posted this, bonus track is included.
MPC straight to 1/4″ reels via LXP-1 on full reverb.
Full album available at http://soundcloud.com/djnoggin/sets/sober-october
Download: Noggin – 06 – Walk Around (right click and choose ‘save as’)

Sober October

Noggin – Thumb

Artist:
Title:
Album:
Date:
Part 1

Title: Thumb
Artist: Noggin
Album: Sober October
Date: 2011

One of the oldest tracks, and most played out, I’ve been performing this piece at shows since December of 2009. I wrote this track one night in Anacortes when I couldn’t sleep due to excessive pain.
The beats came from wanting to honor DJ Screw in a way. The melody is a program I created on the MPC after sampling Alyx’s keyboard.
MPC straight to 1/4″ reels via Mackie mixer and LXP-1 on send.
Chuck originally called this one “One amazing evening”.
Full album available at http://soundcloud.com/djnoggin/sets/sober-october
Download: Noggin – 07 – Thumb (right click and choose ‘save as’)

Sober October

Noggin – Reel to Roll

Artist:
Title:
Album:
Date:
Part 1

Title: Reel to Roll
Artist: Noggin
Album: Sober October
Date: 2011

Great! My plan worked perfectly according to …. plan(?).
Here we are on a Thursday (collab days) and the track we come to is pretty heavily collaborated on. I posted this track earlier this year, so yes, get ready for a bonus track today to quell any chances of haterism from the naysayers out there.
Jon played some guitar and I played some ER1 and we turned the gain to the tape reels up really high. Then I got crazy with the scissors tool and the spectral plugins in Logic.
This is the weirdest one.
MPC straight to 1/4″ reels via Mackie mixer and LXP-1 on send.
Chuck originally called this one “Untitled”.
Full album available at http://soundcloud.com/djnoggin/sets/sober-october
Download: Noggin – 08 – Reel To Roll (right click and choose ‘save as’)

Sober October

Noggin – Orkas

Artist:
Title:
Album:
Date:
Part 1

Title: Orkas
Artist: Noggin
Album: Sober October
Date: 2011

Here is the longest track from the album at ~12 minutes. It’s a 2 part piece that I wrote pretty much entirely on Orcas Island in the North-West islands of Washington State.
While there, I came across a tiny, cheap casio keyboard in the closet where we were staying. The keyboard barely worked – it was stuck on one preset that was like a hybrid organ / piano / vox thing, and then drums. If you hadn’t noticed, I love working with restrictions so I fired up the sampler and pulled about the 4 or 5 sounds this thing could make, and set to working digitally dicing them with the rudimentary functions of the mpc to create entire instrument sets.
From those sets of sounds, these two, very related tracks sprang forth. Again with the further refinement and couple of garage sessions, and the finished piece was put to tape. Every sound from that crappy old broken keyboard found in a closet. Work with what you got.
MPC straight to 1/4″ reels via Mackie mixer and LXP-1 on send.
Full album available at http://soundcloud.com/djnoggin/sets/sober-october
Download: Noggin – 09 – Orkas (right click and choose ‘save as’)

Sober October

Noggin – Do You?

Artist:
Title:
Album:
Date:
Part 1

Title: Do You?
Artist: Noggin
Album: Sober October
Date: 2011

This track was, for the most part, created in a very short time frame art project / experiment / live experience / promotion done at The Business in Anacortes.
For this project, I came into The Business (a record store) early in the afternoon armed with nothing but a turntable and an empty sampler. The idea was to create an entire set of songs from nothing but the vinyl available in the record store, on the same day as the show (thanks Nick for helping me live out a dream). I grabbed anything that looked interesting … some BTO, some aerobics training, some Burl Ives (a necessary Anacortes original), some proto-industrial, and most notably for this composition, some Olivia Newton-John.
The first couple hours were spent sampling and chopping, with a couple hiccups due to poorly planned memory usage – resampling in an mPC2kxl takes an excruciatingly long time…I’m talking 20 minutes to resample a 30 second sample. I learned this the hard way on this day when I had nothing but short time to work with.
This piece definitely came together the easiest, and continued to be refined throughout the next few months, culminating in a couple recording sessions in the garage to tape (see Reverb City). I’ve chosen this markedly dissimilar track to close the album out on a high note.
I will continue to post the album in reverse order.
Thank you.
MPC straight to 1/4″ reels via Mackie mixer and LXP-1 on send.
Chuck originally called this one “Love is the opening door”.
Full album available at http://soundcloud.com/djnoggin/sets/sober-october
Download: Noggin – 10 – Do You (right click and choose ‘save as’)