Backtrack: Sameeha

Long 'Behind the Music' post on this track. Feel free to skip it and go listen to the rest of the album instead, ok?

Last year, Callan Holderbaum (Grayscale co-producer, ie. the one who had to record take after wheezing take) gave me a short CD of instrumentals he had produced on his MPC1000. Of these, there was one track that instantly stood out in my mind, the instrumental for what would go on to become 'Sameeha'. That day, I had the final 'verse' written out - it bares the distinction of being one of two tracks on the album unchanged from the day it was written. Upon recording the first demo cut that night, I came to the -intoxicated- epiphany that this song was the justification for my dreams of being a hip hop musician. Every word seemed to write itself; the song came together cohesively on the first try. There was no drawn out writers block, hours of faux-editing bullshit. No forced struggle to try insert meaning and poignancy into otherwise vapid lyrics. Everything fit. And then, I grew to hate the song.

There were a lot of reasons for me not to put this track on the album, the most obvious being my own fear of exposing so much of my inner sanctum. By nature, I'm withdrawn when it comes to my family. I haven't engaged with them in any meaningful way since I was in middle school , and as a result, my relationship with them is distant to the point of non-existence. My sisters (one of whom this song is directed to and takes its name from) and I did not associate on similar planes. To them, I'm a specter who floats in and out of their lives on occasion. And as I kept on listening to this song, I began to doubt its message, and through that its necessity on the album. 'There's no reason for anyone to hear this', I figured. 'Do I even believe this myself?'

Of course, over time any artist will come to scorn the works they praised at inception. I don't know where I'm going with this but allow me to ramble a bit longer.

'Sameeha' was the last track to get mastered for the album. Up until a day before release, the song was still in limbo, still on the brink of the cutting room floor. Finally, I swallowed my doubt and threw it on. Now it seems like you (the ever-loving and ever-judging audience) have grown quite partial to it, against my predictions.

I still rarely talk to my sisters. Does that make this song less meaningful?

Again, just rambling.

Thanks for listening!

Thank you for listening to the album and sending me all your comments! If you haven't downloaded to it yet, why don't you go here and spend 45 minutes of your life grooving to my ramblings.

I've been working to push the album both online and in person. Sending it out to college radio, XM, blogs, news sites, etc. If you, the wonderful listener, know of any spots in the real or virtual world where this album could possibly be appreciated or critiqued, feel free to link to my bandcamp site.

In other news, I'm in the planning stages for a music video of Flametongue. I've been working with Mike O'Brien of www.obriencomics.com to come up with a concept and hopefully in the next few weeks you'll be hearing a bit more about that.

Furthermore, I've released the acapella for Snakecharmers online. You can download it here and work on your own remix of the track (72 bpm). If you come up with something that you're happy with, please send it to me at swamisound (at) gmail (dot) com. In the next two weeks I'll be releasing a Snakecharmers megasingle featuring five (5) submitted remixes. Maybe one of them will be yours?

Keep on checking back in the coming days for more remixes, news, and word on the upcoming CD Release party!

Navid

On production...

First, to redirect any curious listeners, the GRAYSCALE album is available here. Enjoy!

If you're easily bored by the technical aspects of music making (as many of my friends tend to get when I drone on for hours about this shit), skip this entry and go listen to the album. Now, onto production...

As my own producer, I'm lucky enough to have the ability to craft my instrumentals exactly (to a degree; the artistic process is a nitpickingly tedious occupational hazard) how I want them to sound under my lyrics, or vice versa depending on how I'm writing the song. The digital age has allowed artists like myself to explore and experiment with all aspects of the song-making process, once a Herculean task divided amongst a legion of producers, song writers, house musicians, engineers and technicians. Of course in the digital micromanaging of production, much of the finesse, the time honored and honed techniques of the old are lost in the jack of all trades (master of none) mentality, but I don't see that as necessarily a bad thing. Just the rise to prominence of a new age of music.

I am a musician and the computer is my instrument. Through it, I command an army of synths and samplers, I wield guitars and microphones, I have at my fingertips an old school arsenal of drum machine and turntables that I mash, trash and chop into new forms of traditional sound. I am the one man band in the age of hip hop and iPods.

Did that sound too pretentious? I kinda envisioned Hans Zimmer's score to Batman Begins in the background as I was typing it. Anyways, all delusions of grandeur super-musician status aside, let's talk about the production behind Grayscale.

For anyone unfamiliar with the majority of my production setup, let this outdated picture do the talking.

Bootleg basement setup, I know. Abbey Road it isn't.

A majority of my music is made using the computer and two MIDI controllers pictured above. One of them, an AKAI MPD24 (the bastardized version of an MPC) serves as my drum pad/loop controller, with definable knobs and faders for tweaking synths/adjusting mixing levels/etc. The other keyboard is my baby, an M-Audio Axiom25 with 8 pads and definable knobs as well. These two tools (as well as FLStudio - I've been on that software since it was Fruity Loops v2) are the basis for my production. Furthermore, I have microphones, guitars and a turntable all running in through my EMU 0404 DAS into FLStudio. I love that program.

On Grayscale, I made sure that every track represented a different aspect of my production (or via collaboration, my influences in production). Tracks such as Soundcheck, Don't Call Me and Grayscale are built around live guitar recordings but sampled, chopped, and padded with other samples to fill out the soundscape. On Grab Bag, I sampled from vinyl and drum machines, mixed with digital synths and samples to create a strange collage of sound. Flametongue, Sameeha, and the Station Break Interluude are my collaborations with producers who utilize the AKAI MPC to craft their music, one of the most traditional mediums of hip hop music. The Swami Interluude is my attempt to digitally recreate what hip hop producers do on the MPC on the computer. This Room and Encore are also pretty much entirely digital sampling while Snakecharmers is all original synth sequencing. With this album I wanted to explore the limits of my production creativity, draw from all aspects of the spectrum.

Most producers have a sound that they stick to, the sound that defines them. I'd like to think that my lack of a defining sound is what makes me unique. Who knows? All I know is that I'm trying to take a genre of music I love and put the art back into it.

And in this age, with this much control of the music, maybe it's possible. Maybe it's a pipe dream in the septic system that is mainstream ultra-polished commercial rap music.

Who knows?

Navi - Grayscale (2010)

G R A Y S C A L E

navi

2010

Well, the album is finally here. Forty five (semi) polished minutes of my strange brew of hip hop. Feel free to download it and comment/review/troll your opinions. Also, feel free to spread this link around to all your friends and enemies. In case you don't know, the album is compressed in zip format and can be unzipped using free programs such as WinRar.

If you haven't already signed up for the mailing list, I suggest sending an email to swamisound (at) gmail (dot) com with your name in the message. Keep your eye here for updates and details for the upcoming album release party!

Enjoy.

Navi

www.swamisound.com

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Album can be downloaded here:

Mirror 1

Mirror 2

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Tracklist

01. soundcheck (2:49)

02. grab bag (3:02)

03. the swami interluude (1:48)

04. snakecharmers (4:33)

05. flametongue (3:13)

06. eyegore (1:44)

07. don't call me (4:36)

08. station break interluude (1:10)

09. this room (2:56)

10. sameeha (3:29)

11. monsoon season (3:45)

12. encore (5:21)

13. aftershow interluude (1:29)

14. grayscale (3:51)

Grayscale Track Leeque!

For anyone who missed the Facebook posting for the GRAYSCALE digital release party, here's a leaked preview of one of the album tracks. Enjoy!

Happy Twenty Ten, Gang!

Been a long time updating, but fear not! The GRAYSCALE project is nearing (a long-delayed) completion and I'm pretty psyched to say that it has finally reached the expectations I set when I decided to start working on it way back at the beginning of 2009 - or earlier, for the people who've been waiting for an album from me for years now...I know, I know. I'm a chronic procrastinator.

So anyways, I won't give a set-in-stone release date, but let's go ahead and say the end of this month? How's that strike your fancy? Seeing as how I'm doing most of the production myself and it's taken almost an entire year to get this album from concept to fruition, that seems like a reasonable date.

A quick word about the creative process, if I may. When I started working on the GRAYSCALE project, it was going to be a mix of new material and re-recorded old songs (Contagious, It All Falls, etc) packaged neatly to appeal to both people who'd never heard my strange brew before and fans who've been listening (or letting my mp3s stagnate on a hard drive) for the many years I've been sporadically releasing material. A large amount of the tracks were punchline driven throwaways and battle-rap posturing, as many of my songs have been in the past. As the months went by and songs were added and removed from the roster, GRAYSCALE became more of a personal outlet, a chance to express myself on a deeper analytical level. As a result, most of the original lineup was scrapped and new songs were re-written with an actual focus in mind.

I'm not going to digress into the murky swamp of my personal life, but know that the finished GRAYSCALE project is about as close a mirror to myself as I can make at this point in my creative timeline. I hope it's as good as I think it is. :P

That much said, it's a new year and it feels good to be back on track! Here's a remix I did to tide you over until the release. It's pretty self explanatory. Enjoy!

PS: If you haven't already added yourself to the mailing list, please send an email to swamisound @ gmail . com with "EMAIL BLAST" in the title and your name in the message! I swear there's going to be actual content in it this year. Peace!