What do you sound like on Nu-ILX?

well, i am mostly lucky about getting into this job i guess. i always knew i had good sense of smell. i once did a job application for a so called smell panel in amsterdam during my studies (i actually majored in philosophy). they needed people who would go to places in the city to smell and judge if there is 'smell polution',so i thought making money smelling things would be cool, so i applied. but i had to do a test, because they wanted people with very 'average' sense of smell, because they would be most suitable to judge when a smell would give hinder. i was gonna go through a set of two tests on two days, but after the first test they already told me i didn't have to come back for the second test, because my smell was so much above average, and i would be to sensitive to give usable judgment about smell polution. but after that i kinda felt i should do something with my nose and started getting interested in the world of fragrance. also because i have always very much lived by my senses, also with sound and music, and food, etc.
i ended up writing a lot of people for internships, and finally ended up as a lab employee at IFF in hilversum (small place close to amsterdam) and worked further from there. also, designing smells is not always designing perfumes as a lot of people think when you say you work with fragrance. a lot of consumer products have designed fragrances, food products, fabrics, cosmetics, etc. it's also a lot of chemistry and technical stuff. one day i would like to focus on perfume though, but that's quite hard i think. the world of perfume designers is on of the few that still works with apprenticeship. there is a school for perfumery in grasse and versaille, but it is very very expensive to study there. i think givaudan also has a perfumery school somewhere, but it is probably also pretty hard to get in. the only thing i can say is, built up a memory of smells. focus very much on the technical and chemical side of it, and be willing to be patient and start at the bottom. or just start with trying to make your own perfume at home, there are definitely some more niche perfumers who started that way. it is all very much about practical experience. i think to be honest the best way to go for people wanting to work in the fragrance industry would be to get a degree in chemistry and try getting a entry level job at a fragrance related company.

well, i am mostly lucky about getting into this job i guess. i always knew i had good sense of smell.

i am only this far in and it's already one of my favorite posts

thank you for that thoughtful response!

but after that i kinda felt i should do something with my nose and started getting interested in the world of fragrance. also because i have always very much lived by my senses, also with sound and music, and food, etc.

identify with this! while i'm under no illusion that i am going to become a smell professional, i've dabbled in perfumery and smell-making. also enjoy the chemical side of things (commercial fragrances, etc) and have read a few books, but i'll always be a dilettante. i admire your life's path! and your music is pleasing too.

burt oraneg, professional nose, you have officially lifted my spirits today and that is no small task.

thanks n/a

burt, nice sounds and textures yo...i like the parts that have a little more rhythm/melody/structure to hold it together, but i always prefer that to a total free/stream of consciousness vibe. you should start an 'ask a nose' thread.

DONE
ask a nose

Another remix that I did came out. You have to sign up to a mailing list to download it :(

Probably the one I'm happiest with actually although I sort of wish I'd done 200 takes for the guitar part in the balearic breakdown section rather than 100.

here's the link:

http://facebook.us2.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=8257d3332f00a86de331bc5cc&id=0847b5ea0e

i added a new track, something i did around 2005/2006 but never did anything with cause i don't really like my voice on it. it's a lot more straightforward drumtrack/guitar/vocals thingy than the other tracks, more melody as well i guess, less samples but still pretty loud and murky in a way.

http://naptimes.bandcamp.com/track/i-was-a-little-red-rooster-dancing-in-my-room

put it on my soundcloud too:

http://soundcloud.com/cruelt/the-other-tribe-skirts-summer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y82oJ4WQxNg

the background music is from the two pieces we're doing on this concert, taken from our rehearsals

Your voice is a bit higher than I imagined, but you sound great as an announcer anyway.

lol

Put up some new stuff, under my guitarty technoy talias:

http://soundcloud.com/bleak-house/bleak-haus-slowdrive

Under my other alias, some evil Acid:

http://soundcloud.com/glocknspiel/matty-balaam-tr-s-acid

…and a tune from a couple of years ago I hadn't put online before:

http://soundcloud.com/glocknspiel/matty-balaam-1st-world

Electro/uke-pop:

http://soundcloud.com/resistorsings/all-i-wanna-do-is-strum-my

this is a blues thing i wrote -- it's kind more important to me just as far as progress in learning fingerstyle goes than it is great per se just because it's the first thing i've written where i've managed to keep a steady bass one/two bounce going while doing a syncopated melody...

mostly posting it because my 2 year old comes in at the end asking to watch the show Dinosaur Train and offers some withering rock criticism :)

http://soundcloud.com/matthew-lee-helgeson/dinosaur-train-blues

my band performing a short set in a tunnel just after midnight, recorded to my Zoom H4n:

http://www.sendspace.com/file/6fkkds

downloading now, will listen when i get home tomorrow crutis

new song, no chance: http://soundcloud.com/weinventyou/save-until-it-hurts

love the mellow synth/organ soundz

I really like that

thanks, that's good to hear because i was having negative second thoughts about the recording today. i had many moments of weakness yesterday and ended up quickly drinking a whole bottle of wine, with devastating consequences for a painfully frail person like me. wrote and recorded everything while completely wasted and i think it shows a little too much. but still, glad you like it! :)

'don't sing.'

That was pretty funny.

ouch

oh wait, i read that without the quotations and thought you were telling me not to sing. i was like Jeez, i know i'm not great but lay off me!

No that's my 2 year old from the thing I posted haha, she's not wrong!

probably the most ambitious/complicated fingerstyle acoustic thing i've written thus far...lol @ the joke "location" i added being added to the title

http://soundcloud.com/matthew-lee-helgeson/october-file-part-ii-at-winner

I like it, and that's a lovely tone on the guitar as well

thanks! just recorded into the voice recorder app on my android phone, but yeah it's kinda crunchy in a good way

going through old emails i stumbled across this from about five years ago: http://soundcloud.com/eeeeeein/drone i do wish i had either a less atrocious recording of it or any recollection of how i did it.

Party sounds.

newest thing i've written, definitely feel the best about this out of all the stuff i've done this year trying to learn fingerstyle/folk guitar...this is written in DADGAD, the bert jansch/neil young tuning, love this tuning so much....this is actually pretty hard for me to play so i fuck up a couple times glaringly but i just wrote it

http://soundcloud.com/matthew-lee-helgeson/the-lady-and-the-fox

I like it & don't hear the errors. What'll you do with it? Rearrange for a vocal or leave as is?

thanks (and yr too kind about the errors, they are driving me nuts)

my ambition is to do an album of acoustic instrumental stuff, i cannot sing or write lyrics at all....thinking of using some primitive drum machine and synth textures underneath but nothing too much, just need to keep writing stuff & hope it's compelling enough musically to stand on its own

send them to me and i'll fucking shred on top of all of them

i require solos consisting totally of two-handed tapping, deal?

three-handed tapping

one hand clapping percussion

I'd tap that (b)ass...

(through a guitar amp)

did this refix very quickly after being introduced to it by n/a:

http://soundcloud.com/chantssound/anna-meredith-nautilus-chants

it's basically an edit with a new beat + effects. could have added more parts but it didn't feel necessary.

i feel like it's the most likely to work in a dj set out of anything i've done so far, but my perspective may be skewed.

really cool jordan!

thanks matt

In high school, I was in a band that recorded a song (http://soundcloud.com/a-guy-called-fieri/outburstmp3) with verses that sound just like "The Lion Sleeps Tonight." We had no clue until after we recorded the song. If only we could have shazam'd ourselves 8 years ago.

nice that reminds me of the lucksmiths

In retrospect, I think we did sound like low production value lucksmiths. I liked the lucksmiths very much at one point in my life. We really wanted to sound like the Eccsame the Photon Band iteration of the lilys, but we always slowed things down too much and added vocal harmonies. We were obsessed with vocal harmonies. They all sound pitchy to me now.

wrote this song, http://soundcloud.com/a-guy-called-fieri/thawingoutmp3 , to purposely rip off the lilys but it sounds more like the lucksmiths. I also wrote a vocal melody that mimics the guitar melody. I probably shouldn't have done that.

don't know the lilys, not a huge jangle fan but i bought this lucksmiths used CD once and it really hit a nerve w/me

every lilys album sounds different. eccsame is probably the only one where they sound shoegaze, I think. I like the fingerpicking songs above, ilxors!

thx :)

Those songs are kinda decent if basic. The melodies are impressively direct and hooky for a high school band. The vocalist (dunno if that is you, Sufjan Grafton, or some other guy) is really great. Gets the words out good, no straining.

Thanks, Eyeball Kicks. We all sang. The smoother vocalist is Mark. If you want to pinpoint more clearly what a combination of Sufjan Stevens and Sue Grafton sounds like, you need not look further than "Mannequin Awakes" (http://soundcloud.com/a-guy-called-fieri/mannequinawakesmp3). It confirms that I was one sad, sappy asshole in high school. I also pronounce words in the song like Jesse Pinkman of Breaking Bad.