One of the things I like to do to break up the creative cycle is to noodle around with music. As some of you may recall, I’ve played music in several different genres on a number of different instruments — bass, keys, guitar, 12-string guitar, mandola, drums/percussion (short-lived at the throne), and generally anything that comes my way (tabletops, trash percussion, violin bow on electric bass, vocal experimentation, etc.).
Below is the product of my noodling around last night.
My goal over the two or three hour period was to return to that early post-punk/darkwave sound that has found a resurgence in recent years with bands like Kælan Mikla and Mochat Doma (Молчат Дома), with leanings towards the sounds of Joy Division and early Cure.
Because I was playing bass guitar for that kind of music “back in the day”, I never really thought too hard at the time about how that sound was created. I focused on my bass and let everyone else do their thing. And, seeing we were a three-piece band at the time, we trended more into the guitar/bass/drum/vocals sound than to the synth sound. We had one, but we were very synth-lite. And being the nominal keyboardist with no idea of what he was doing with bass or keyboards at the time, we largely avoided keyboards (and embarrassments) with a few exceptions.
For this piece, I first sequenced a pretty basic synth drum machine pattern to give me a rhythm to work from. I wanted low- or no-cymbal, punchy with a beats per minute at somewhere between 100-150 bpm (it ended up feeling best at 120 bpm).
Then… to find the synth sound I was looking for — which took approximately half the time spent writing this piece.
It’s not easy to find softsynth sounds in 2025 that really capture the feel of that 80s “big” synth sound — they’ve basically gotten much more advanced and, as such, synths are complex sound generators when I wanted something more than a standard analog tone (that exists as well), but not mutilayered polyphonic with synth/bell/piano/strings/glass folded into a single sound.
But I found one I liked (several, in fact): a modernized “warm power saw lead” ended up being the bass range sound I was looking for here. Lush and low on aggro, yet with enough edge to not be airy. Note to self: I think I like Saw waves for this genre and sound.
Beefy sound, certainly, but it needed some higher-register melodies to balance out the heavy end, so I stole my daughter’s new electric guitar and played around with something else that I never had much call to use (or money to buy the necessary pedals): digital delay and phase to try to get a Cure-like sound (mixed with a chorusing effect, of course, as that was a standard effect used in the 80s across all genres). Just a hint of feedback/distortion to bring out the phase sound (but not to the point of flange). While not perfect, I was pleased with the feel of the sound. After all, I’m not trying to perfectly emulate Robert Smith’s distinctive sound, I’m trying to go for the vibe of the era. It could use a few tweaks, but this is a songlet, not a song (yet?) — more proof of concept than an end-product.
The songlet felt like it needed another layer of sound at the end, so I tossed in some of those polyphonic bells for a background melody in a few places. More for structural support than to be heard in the foreground.
Of course, this is all very draft. Proof of concept, remember. If this were more than a demo, I would get into engineering and maybe adding vocals. And I may, but for now, I am happy with where it is at as a demo.
Let me know what you think in the comments. Hopefully I avoided channeling Peter Hook too much (as I did in my last songlet) and stayed a little more “me”.
29 responses to “Songlet — 13may2025”
I like it a lot. This is my preferred genre behind New Wave. I love the dark, goth, and industrial vibe. When Bowie started taking a hiatus and Gary Numan began entering goth/industrial, I became a fan of Numan’s early aughts music–even attending a concert and meeting him in Orlando in 2010. But then he became stuck in a groove, and Bowie released The Next Day in 2013, and my love found its way back to Bowie. Ironic that Bowie’s darkest album (Blackstar) was his last, and I still can’t sit down and listen to it in total after all these years.
Anyway (I digress)–love the sound you’ve created here. It tickles my goth/darkwave fancy and I look forward to hearing its further development.
“Blackstar” is like “Outside” for me. I have to be in the right mood to listen to it. When I do, I generally enjoy listening to it, but if the mood isn’t right I don’t enjoy it. I generally like Numan’s newer stuff, although I haven’t listened to it often enough for it to be “sticky”.
Thank you! I have a feeling that I’m going to tinker with the overall general sound a bit more before it becomes a final song, possibly starting from scratch now that I’ve got an idea for direction. But this was both a critical and fun exploration.
Not receiving notifications of your replies….got to look into it. Anyway, I’m looking forward to the final version. 🙂
Hmm… That’s odd and wouldn’t surprise me if it was yet another back-end issue. WP Reader has been wonky for me lately (no stars on anyone’s posts, missing comments that show up when you visit their site)… Weirdness all around.
The android app seems fine though… I wonder…
Excellent! This brings me back to when I was young.
Thanks, Bob. I’m glad I could capture some of that 80s sound we grew up with.
I like this, Michael. Certainly some Smithesque sounds from the guitar, but not, imo, an Imitation. The keyboard sound is great, the tone being very ’80’s but updated and more like the darkwave sound from, say, mid 2000’s onwards.
Talking of which…
Bands who totally slipped beneath the radar (for 40+ years): Attrition. If you know of them please ignore this!
I stumbled across a review of their last album (2024) whilst following up a link to something else. Anyway I listened to it and was quite intrigued. I’m on the fence at the moment as I need to listen again and check out their back catalogue, but the have a sound that I think you might connect with.
Attrition did show up in my feed a couple of years ago (maybe two years?) and I liked what I heard. I can’t recall why I didn’t continue to listen to them more than I have. I have a feeling that it might have gotten samey-sounding across their full catalog, but it could have just as easily been that I wasn’t in the mood to listen to that type of music for a spell and never got back to them. AS I said, I recall liking what I heard and every time they show up in my feed, I think I should give them another go, but then never get around to it. So now I have as good of an excuse as any — Chris recommends them 🙂
Ha! Now you’ve made me out to be the fount of all knowledge 😂😂😂
I’ve just spent the last hour or so listening to some older material. Some I really like, some not so much, and there were a couple where the female vocalist sounded a bit like Siouxsie. Big shoes.
I’m not sure that I can do anymore right now though. Certainly interesting but I guess you’d need to be in the right frame of mind.
I think that ‘This Death House’ is purely instrumental so I’ll give that a whirl sometime this week see whether it inspires me.
You’re not the fount of all knowledge? Have I been mislead? 🤣
Maybe that’s what it was — an uneveness to the sound. I liked some of what I heard, but didn’t like some of what I heard and said, “oh bother” before moving on. Still, I’m going to give them another try.
The only person I ever felt came close to Siouxsie was Landray on the Smith/Severen side project, The Glove. And she still didn’t have Siouxsie’s presence.
I will ever crush on Siouxsie, I think. Just show me the Hyaena photoshoot and I melt like butter.
🙂 Best not to cross her, though!
And yes, sad to say you have been misinformed!😂
I wouldn’t dream of crossing Queen Siouxsie. The results would not be pretty. Or is it “remains”?
😂 Indeed. Female role models of the past (musically speaking) – Siouxsie, Patti Smith, Poly Styrene, Debbie Harry, Kate Bush. Now the youngster have Taylor Swift & the like. Hmm.
No contest. Our generation can kick their generation’s asses. 🤣
🙂
I want a refund!
Should have read the small print, I’m afraid 😂
🤣
Dangit I meant to respond to the first part of your comment as well.
I think Marr’s signature was always the relatively clean guitar with digital delay. I’ll have to force myself to listen to some of their albums again — all the respect in the world for Johnny, but Morrisey is a prick (always has been) and I always have a hard time listening to someone who I greatly dislike, so Smiths were relegated to their singles for me growing up and beyond. Like the music, greatly dislike Morrisey.
Thanks for the compliments! I always value your opinions and thoughts.
I would agree about Morrisey – always came across as someone who would deliberately take the opposing point of view, and do a 180 if you agreed with him! I quite liked some of their early work; I think it’s a case of being able to separate what people do from who they are.
I actually meant Smith as in Robert regarding the guitar sound; more atmospheric, less is more, sound in which you can get swept away.
LMAO…. See, that’s what I get for thinking.
Aside: I’m in “administrative analytical mindset” this morning because I got a strange email before leaving work yesterday asking me to modify company-wide documents (Standard Operating Procedures) because a client took issue with a single phrase they were wrapped up on semantics with. I in a mentally-prepared state to “debate” with a couple of pushy coworkers who think they can bully me into making changes that I feel are unnecessary and have the potential to have an overall negative consequence to making that “small change”. This is probably why I read Smiths as the band. 🤣
Well, that’s even a bigger compliment. Thanks Chris!
😂 I once got criticised for mis-spelling a word in a report and got asked to redo it. (I hadn’t, I’d used the English spelling rather the American and my colleague had spell checked using the American version). Anyway I took it back, changed nothing and re-submitted it. Nothing was said!
Crazy Americans. Always forgetting to add the extra letters and mispronouncing words like “garage”. And they spell tyres wrong as well. 🤣
😂 To be fair, and you’ll know from your time over here, we’re the worst for not pronouncing words as they’re spelled – Worcester for one!
Yeah, that’s pretty odd. Must have picked that up from the French. 🤣
If in doubt, blame the French! 🤣
Oui!
😂