Motion Graphics aka Joe Williams has just released his self-titled debut LP, built over the last two years spent moving between New York, LA and Baltimore.
It’s an enthralling collection of dense ambience, created by custom software instruments. An active producer, more of Williams’ recent work can be found the original score for 12 O’Clock Boys, a feature-length doco on the notorious dirt bike riders of Baltimore’s Westside.
Joe has given us a walkthrough of the various interesting production techniques found on the new record, which is available on iTunes as well as streaming below.
Lense
This was the first song that I wrote for the record. The way it starts works really well as an introduction. There are these choral sounds that overlapped from the score I wrote for 12 O’Clock Boys, and this is a theme that is repeated throughout the record. The percussion is straight foley, no real drum sounds were used, no snares/ no kick drums. Another common theme on this record is strumming. The computer wrote the strums on its own so that I didn’t have to source my own Lute.
Airdrop
This track is a segue into HouzzFunction. I see this song and HouzzFunction as two parts to a whole. Here again we have choral elements extended from the 12 O’ClockBoys OST. This time they’re midi sequenced at an extremely high rate. The harp and woodwinds are here as well, playing much faster than anyone out there could play.
Houzz Function
For whatever reason this track felt like it was hovering over a landscape that reminded me of cell phone towers that are disguised to look like more terrestrial objects. There are many varieties, there are cactuses, palm trees, flag poles etc. Even a bell tower at a Church in Dallas, Texas also is rented out to a cell company to provide wireless service. This track introduced the homemade scrolling instrument overdubs at the end of each verse
Anyware
The opening marimba was written with a QWERTY keyboard on an Amtrak headed to Grand Central Terminal. The train was full of people playing Subway Surfers, Pokemon GO, Candy Crush Saga. The marimba reminds me of an alert sound. The ambient melody overheard on the train. This is where I see the landscape of “Anyware” existing
Minecraft Mosaic
This track has a lot of Orchestral elements that were Autotuned. There are many brass and woodwind instruments on this record and this track has decorations of clarinet throughout.
Vistabrick
Another variety of the choral elements described above. This time I tried using them in this vowel mode. The voices run through every vowel in sequence. It reminds me of machine learning or calibration.
City Links
Here we have foley core replacing representation drums in full effect. Strums and Autotuned SFX. Strums can be notications, reminders, and rewards.
Forecast
Forecast is completely made of different scrolling instruments. The scrolling instrument is a sampler made with Ableton Live that scrolls through 100 different instruments at random. When you hold the notes down it freezes the instruments in pitch/time. It never plays the same combination of instruments twice, and sort of mimics the attention span needed to get through 4w of Google News.
Mezzotint Gliss
This track starts out with a stack of clarinets that are sequenced. Backup vocals here are chords from the vocoder.
SoftBank Arcade (Swiftcode Version)
On Softbank Arcade I used the audio from the jazz drumming to trigger MIDI notes. Every random drum hit would trigger the marimba to rotate in its sequence. To me the effect is free jazz recreating a pattern of morse code.
