Welcome to all of you wandering over from a Facebook ad! It’s something I’m trying out, since I am very bad at self-promotion. But since you’re here, check out the music players of both Psycliq albums over on the side column there. You can buy each album as a direct download from the Download link underneath the player, or you can also get them on iTunes and Amazon. Most of all, though, welcome and enjoy the music!
Author: psycliq
Psycliq is a one-man musical project by Justin Richer, working in the strange musical world of experimental electronic rock.
Guitars and the acoustic properties thereof
Like any self-respecting electronic band, I’ve got myself a fair bit of stuff that makes bleeps and bloops sitting about the studio. Some of which really likes to misbehave, but more on that another time. But anyway, it would seem that my preparations for this next album have made me break down and pick up some new equipment, quite in the opposite direction. You see, I finally went out and got myself a decent acoustic guitar.
What makes this interesting in terms of my music is that I’ve never actually used an acoustic guitar in any of my released material. Well, OK, there was that one time for the Kickstarter rewards project, but only the Kickstarter backers will ever hear that one. And in fact it was listening to that recording that convinced me that the old one just had to go.
But now I’ve gone and picked myself up an acoustic guitar with a built-in pickup. I know, the wonders of technology, right? Since my house is rarely quiet enough to use a microphone these days, this is an especially important feature. And now that I have it, my mind’s already started to run along with possibilities for adding this sound into the mix. It will definitely be in use on Results Not Typical, as I’ve already got three songs tracked out waiting for it. But I’m also thinking past this odd little project into how I could use it in other stuff. Being mostly a keyboard player that dabbles in electric guitars, I look forward to the challenge of incorporating this instrument into more of my music.
After all, why limit myself to just a bunch of sinewaves?
Four songs?
Today, while dusting off things for my monthly off-drive backups (kids, it’s always important to keep things on more than one disk!), I went through a few different directories in my ProTools hierarchy and figured out that I have four songs all but finished for Results. These are four piano-based pieces, some with some programmed drums and one with a whole pile of synths on top. That still leaves a lot of dangling bits for an album that is mostly made of dangling bits, but in light of recent craziness I was a little surprised to find myself fairly happy with the state of so many songs already. Once I can get my studio put back together more properly, I can start tracking on some of the more guitar-heavy ones. Also once my neighbors decide to stop riding their Harleys at all hours. Don’t they know that v-twin bleeds into the recording? Though I can think of one track where that might actually help. Hm!
In other news, I think I have made a technological leap and managed to connect this wordpress account to my personal twitter account. OAuth is such a wonderful thing. But, then again, I am a nerd.
Update: in future, I will preview the twitter message this thing spits out. That must have been very confusing to most people.
On Production
Work on the new album continues, but at a much slower pace than anticipated. Lots of travel lately for the day job has kept me away from home and therefore studio, and a string of minor family illnesses has made working on any kind of project difficult. Kids are such adorable little disease vectors, aren’t they? Add to this a long-needed computer rebuild that required re-installing and re-activating all of my music production software, and the odds are really stacked against me.
But even with such impediments, I have managed to poke at a few songs in the last month or so. I at least know where most of the ones I’d like to see on this album are going to go, and just need to find the time to take them where they need to be. The good part about being a self-produced independent musician is that you can take your time and don’t have to run by someone else’s clock. The bad part is that there’s nobody telling you that you really ought to be working on that music thing now.
Maybe if you ask really nicely, I’ll tell you some track titles…
Lightwell
Lightwell is a small game I wrote for the Microsoft Surface multitouch table computer. It can best be thought of as “pong meets rock band”, as several players sit around the edge of the table and each control a paddle that bounces back little blips to the center. Each player is in turn in charge of a single track of an underlying song, the music of which is related to the blips that are coming out at any given time. I used a few Psycliq songs, since I had all the source tracks to them and could split them up however I wanted. I also put together a track from Hunz, since he was awesome enough to put his tracks up online in a format I could use.
I’ve finally managed to get a few videos up on YouTube, and thought I’d post them here.
The Next Album
I’m always working on new musical ideas. I keep a recorder by the piano to try and capture the more interesting bits to be used at some point in the future. Many of these have turned out to be interesting little jazz bits that haven’t really had a home. It’s time that they found a home.
So far, I’ve put out two albums, The Mathemagician’s Riddle (a 5-song EP) and halt (a 10-song instrumental album). I am now working on a third album to collect some of these song ideas together, and I hope to have it ready later this summer. The album will be titled Results Not Typical. And I’ve even got the album art here for you:
This album is going to showcase the jazz, blues, and classical elements that are generally deep under most of my music. Even so, it will still have its fair share of synth programming that I can’t seem to get away from. I’ve got about 13 possible songs lined up for it, but who knows which ones will make it to the end collection.
Let’s try that again
I wasn’t very happy with the google sites implementation of psycliq.com, so I’m trying out a wordpress-based approach now. Here’s to hoping this one sticks.
Psycliq Musical Productions 