Sean Ongley

Tag: Synthesizer

  • Peridot EP

    Peridot EP

    Presenting my newest single “Peridot,” released to all streaming services under the pseudonym SYMMTR. Actually it’s an EP. And really it’s a double EP. Here’s what happened.

    These songs were basically finished by winter 2022. I did further mixing and stuff, but it was complete enough that I made remix packs and distributed them to several producer-friends. The plan was to release a two-song EP with a remix for each.

    I received more affirmative responses than expected, so I was hedging my bets that multiple remixes would be turned in on time and from that I could release two EP’s spaced out by one month.

    I released “Topaz” with remixes by All The Stores Are Closed and Matchewey, because they turned theirs in promptly.

    Alex Hansen sent a compelling short remix for “Peridot,” but the others did not come through, so I decided to go ahead with just the one. All is well.

    “Peridot” was produced in Logic Pro, using a lot of vintage emulation instruments like the Mellotron and Roland 808, as well as real analog sounds from my ARP Odyssey. Alex tells me his remix was made with micro-samples entirely on his iPhone.

    SYMMTR is a thin mask. I don’t really hide behind a pseudonym to be anonymous, but invited the universe to give me a name for electronic, beat-driven music, and that’s what I got.

    I want this project to continue to be collaborative, even though it’s essentially a solo project. Working with these guys for remixes was cool. We didn’t go back and forth at all, I just accepted their outputs, which I think is how remixes usually work.

    I enjoyed all their tracks and truly appreciate their participation.

    One takeaway from this is that (like a band) giving your song over for others to interpret means they have the opportunity to see it totally differently, and that can be better, worse, or just different. I want to embark on direct collaboration, so that artists actually contribute to SYMMTR tracks, not just remix them.

    I don’t know if SYMMTR will ever form as a band, but I’m open to that too.

  • 2009: The Lost Album

    2009: The Lost Album

    Presenting the long lost album produced with Josh Hanson, in the year 2009, titled 2009. Truth be told, it was published once before, but I took it down, remastered it, and got in touch with Josh again to discuss having it up permanently. We needed to clear up a few things about its release.

    The music is different, something that only Josh could have initiated. Step 1: Josh transfers 4-track cassette recordings onto my Pro Tools 5 rig. Step 2: I remix those soundscapes and contribute additional tracks. I shared my progress but he didn’t interfere, and eventually we met for the third step of mastering.

    Josh used his own modular analog synthesis rack to record into the Tascam Portastudio. I used my ARP Odyssey Mk2 and Roland Vk1.

    Mastering took place in KBOO studios using Adobe Audition software, version 1. That software did pretty well, even though it was a destructive process, meaning you reshape the digital waveform over and over, rather than running it through real-time plugins, or better yet analog audio equipment. You are stuck with each step rather than tweaking settings on the fly.

    Once the album was mastered, Josh had ideas about how it should be released, there was a specific indie record label that he had in mind. And we didn’t have cover art. Originally I named our “band” Paradeux, and the album Animitta. It was pretentious honestly.

    Something about me back then was extremely impatient and would jump the gun, forcing others to respond, rather than patiently communicate and compromise until a final product is achieved.

    This impulse to just get things done be damned the quality of presentation led to a deep frustration between Josh and myself, because I took the music and made a quick and crappy header and posted it to Bandcamp.

    If we were trying to get it out through a label, we can’t have it available already. As a result, the release went nowhere. He didn’t promote it and we didn’t talk for years.

    So, one day I decided that I wanted this album on streaming services, so I emailed him. By this time, we were not in a feud, in fact, he was over it. But I like resolution, and closure.

    So I asked if he’d be cool if I released it, and this time, no band name, no solo tracks (we both had one solo composition on the original release), that we’d agree on all details in advance. He said yes. So I remastered it and sent the copy to Josh and there were no problems.

    The album artwork is very simple. It is an iPhone image taken of a glass sculpture by the artist who made it: Heidi Schwegler. This would be in Joshua Tree, California, at her materials lab.

    The music is an aesthetic journey that evokes surreality, and personally I see images of desert landscapes, ocean coasts, deep skies, dark caverns, machines, and stuff I usually relate to when I’m on mushrooms.

    This music might be heavily THC-induced (at least my contribution) but I wasn’t doing psychedelics at this time.

    Heidi’s glass sculpture blends into the ocean blue sky against a desert landscape, white puffy clouds, and this weird squirrel head on a rock, I felt like this photo (that to Heidi was just an instagram post) relates to most of the aesthetic of the album. And nobody had to lift a finger to make it into a cover.

    I tried putting text over the image and around the white border, but none of it looked right. So I left off the text, especially given that this is a streaming copy, and listeners see that information. If I print an album, I can do any number of things, including the use of alternative artwork.

    The album is now available on all streaming services. It can also be downloaded from Bandcamp. Please add it to your collection or pay for a download.

    This music is also available for free streaming without an account at thru.media/2009-album. This is a value-for-value music album.

  • Meet SYMMTR

    Meet SYMMTR

    SYMMTR came to me by intention. I didn’t want to think of a name to publish electronic music under, I wanted to arrive at one. The name had to stick under heavy rains of doubt. There’s no perfect name, but it’s not just arbitrary.

    Sym is a Greek prefix meaning together, or in union. A great example is symphony, meaning sound in unity.

    “Symmtr” is always auto-corrected by the computer to symmetry. Dropping the e and the y emphasizes the word meter, so it means literally meter in unity. Being a lot of MIDI driven music, it’s like a symphony of meter that becomes sound in the computer.

    The phrase “precarious symmetry” was floating around my head when I decided to take on a name for music.

    Throughout my life, I’ve floated the balance of precariousness with shit working out as if by some divine symmetry. That is also a lot of the music I make. Projects like Death Worth Living were unstructured improvisation, much like my life, the music somehow comes together. Sometimes it’s messy and displeasing, but it’s life.

    Although SYMMTR is much more structured and is built in controlled computer software, there is still a huge improvisational element to my process. That’s when it feels the best.

    I previously posted Sonny’s Plan on Bandcamp, where I discuss how I produced each track, but the purpose of this post is to discuss the introduction of a new artistic identity.

    Aside from my 2009 release with Kelly Slusher as Imra, I’ve never published to streaming services until now.

    The story of SYMMTR really begins after Imra. I also produced an EP of Kelly’s music while we were taking a break from Imra. That break became permanent, but so did my interest in computer driven music. I learned a lot from the catalyst of Kelly, so I wasn’t about to let go of my experience gained using Ableton, Reason, Cubase, and Logic. Most tracks include some performance from the Arp Odyssey, but mostly, it all is generated from stock software.

    The first SYMMTR LP Sonny’s Plan represents this slowly formed identity between 2010 until 2020. Most of the music that I have made in life is without clear meter, performed and composed in the same instant, it is “experimental” and “avant-garde.” This content is a departure from that, and in a sense, more experimental to me personally.

    Every song on this LP was put out originally in a half-hearted way, as a SoundCloud drop, or Bandcamp, without much regard for cover art. There wasn’t a serious intention, I was just anxious to get songs on my profiles. I grouped these together, in every case possible going back into the sessions to revise the mix, before remastering every song together.

    The second release as SYMMTR was produced in 2022, a single/EP called Topaz. This includes two remixes, one from All The Stores Are Closed, the other from Matchewey. They could not have taken more opposing directions, the prior going full force Jazz House style, and the latter going Down Tempo.

    The next slated release is a sister single/EP set to have two remixes as well. I am still waiting on the second remix for that track.

    Building a remix pack and making it accessible to fellow producers was a valuable experience, something traditional to the electronic music scene, and I look forward to doing more of that.

    STREAMING AND DOWNLOAD LINKS:

    Apple Music

    Spotify

    YouTube Music

    Bandcamp

  • F Drone for Philly

    F Drone for Philly

    F Drone for Philly by Yours Truly

    I dedicate this piece of ambient music to Philadelphia. It is in F minor.

    This is also my first piece of music produce from my new bedroom studio. When my last tenant left, I took over the room as an office and post production room. Every “post production” room works great for electronic production.

    I am using my usual ax, the Arp Odyssey, record in Ableton with a single soft synth track in midi. Mastered in Logic and posted as a single here and SoundCloud.

    When I have enough of these drone to release a volume I will. Also the vision for short films, very simple ambient films, should also be produced for these. Let it happen. Let it come.

  • New Electro Album: Sonny’s Plan

    New Electro Album: Sonny’s Plan

    Without fanfare, I present to you a collection of songs one decade in the making, featuring just one song produced within the last five years, which I made the title track to: Sonny’s Plan.

    Had this music been the exclusive focus of my creative life through these years, then this would deserve tremendous fanfare. Throughout that period however, I ran three more music festivals, played and recorded many hours of improvisational music, got deep into stand-up comedy, launched and disbanded a magazine and podcast, worked madly in a haunted house, while adapting a new life in Philadelphia.

    The music that I hear is deeply connected to whatever was happening in my life at that time. Usually it is positive, because I tend to compose music when I have the extra time and space to work. However, there are plenty of sad stories in here.

    “On the Rails” for me is pure heartbreak. While there is something triumphant about the peak of the song, it rises out of what sounds to me like the welling of tears in my eyes that I had while producing it.

    Only the title track was recorded at my home studio in Philadelphia. This music space is not quite what I’ve always dreamed of, but it is the most professional music space that I have put together for myself yet.

    Every one of these tracks were previously posted to a number of music hosting sites including my blog. All of these scattered songs with no context or proper mastering, something had to be done about them. It started with taking all of my old work offline. Now, it is up to me to package my old work in a cohesive way.

    It took a little time to select these tracks, lay them in order, remix when possible, and finally remaster the whole lot.

    These sessions were all archived in my hard drive, but I don’t have access any longer to the digital audio workstation (DAW) software involved. I was able to resurrect some sessions in a new version of Reason, which I ended up paying for on a monthly basis, to complete the project.

    I’ll break it down briefly how I produced each of these.

    “On the Rails” was produced inside Propellerhead’s Reason 7. The only analog instrument is the ARP Odyssey. This instrument threads across almost each track. It was summer 2015 and my studio was my living room at Penthouse 3 in the Lafayette Building, Portland.

    “Santa Crux” was fully formed in a single day, fall of 2013, in a studio apartment in Santa Cruz using Ableton Lite. I was traveling with a complete mobile production system. My friend had an empty apartment with a range of instruments, giving me the banjo and electric bass tracks herein.

    “Sonny’s Plan” is totally within Apple’s Logic X. The drums were recorded in my studio, clipped and looped. It was composed in 2020 but revisited to replace midi guitar sounds with live electric guitar. It is the first time I have owned a guitar in many years. I missed it.

    “Long House” was a cornerstone for me in early 2011, produced at the InterArts office/studio. Today, it would be a serious undertaking to remix this track, as it was produced with Logic 9 as the master DAW, rewired with Reason 4 and Ableton Lite, plus MOTU Symphonic Instrument.

    “She’s Back But I’m Gone” was produced in my penthouse studio in 2015, entirely in Reason 7.

    “Clap Trap” was produced around the same time as Long House in 2011, entirely using Logic 9.

    “Simple Structures” helped me snap out of a long music break in the spring of 2014. It reminds me of “Structures from Silence” by Steve Roach but I structured it with a simple house beat. Entirely made in Reason 7, in my Kenton neighborhood bedroom.

    “Autonomia” was produced at the same time as the previous track using Reason, but this time I took advantage of the new DAW features in the software. It is the only song on this album that includes live vocals, however, they are disguised under a vocoder.

    Naturally, I have had a variety of midi keyboards throughout all of this, however, none of them are noteworthy.

    Today, I look forward to what feels like a new life of creative work, and in many respects I put this music behind me. All put together for the first time, it follows a single thread of intention in a chaotic life. Even as so many things change, I can’t help but come back to music, and if it takes another ten years to generate an album of highly produced music, so be it, because I love the process.