| Style: | not strictly Drum 'n' Bass |
| Written: | summer 1999 |
| Recorded: | summer 1999 |
| Runtime: | 11min 27sec |
| 128k: |
Temporarily Unavailable
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Traffic Jam, was a concept I came up with in the summer of 1999. I had just realized how much I liked Drum'n'Bass and wanted to create somthing in a similar vaine. Using a 4-track tape recorder that i had borrowed from my school over the summer holidays I set about creating Traffic Jam.
There are two parts in this piece both were recorded using a Yammaha D10 electric drum machine and PSR200 keyboard. The first piece uses an E minor chord in the background played on the guitar while the main riff is played on guitar also. Without having a bass available to me at the time, I used the bass pickup of the guitar to give a slightly deeper tonality.
Part two drops the guitar theme and uses keyboard sounds instead. I used a low bassy preset to achieve an industrial kind of sound near the beginning (being a fan of Prodigy at the time) whilst to end the track I used the imagery of bells chiming out a melody. Both parts, especially the second, are very dark, moody and supposed to have an almost haunting feel about them.
The two parts were recorded with a week inbetween and to achieve this I allowed extra long notes at the end of the first part that I could fade out as part two started for the mixdown. Apart from having an initial backing riff, with drums put down, the third and fourth parts of both sections were improvised. After having one or two practise rounds to find good sounds on the keyboard, i let the flow of the music tell a spontanious story. Even now as I listen back to the piece five years on, the random feeling of not quite knowing what is coming next, not having 4 bars of this, 4 bars of that as with modern dance, leaves an element of chilling interest, and of course it's all played live, no midi perfectionism.
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