headphonaut
For old tracks, go to:
For rock stuff, go to:
I got another site set up at 15megsoffame:
Appearing from out of nowhere, the Headphonaut bursts onto the scene with a unique blend of electronic beats. Various styles are integrated into a cohesive mix, including elements from acid jazz, big-beat, house, trip-hop and down-tempo. All this to produce a listening experience that will move you and groove you as he sees fit.
This one-man group has been together for over 20 years. Consisting of producer Ian Leung, what began as a project to relieve suburban boredom is now perched to become the NEXT BIG THING, or not.
Read on for more in-depth details, or just click the "Music" link to get to the good stuff :)
If you're curious about my older tracks, check out
www.soundclick.com/eon
(All songs are Ian Leung, 2000)Band/artist history
I think I got into this kinda thing when I was around 15....and the only people being entertained was myself. I remember the first few things I did....I'd grab random tracks off CDs, sample them as WAV files, and cut out bits and pieces of sound that sounded interesting. Rock CDs with big drum breaks were golden back then. After a while I had my own virtual drum kit, with all these samples of snares, kicks, hi-hats and everything. I'd take these sounds snippets and cut and paste them into loops, and form some semblance of organized sound.
Mind you, this was about 8 years ago, and technology wasn't quite what it is now. We didn't have the good stuff yet, like the Internet. Back then, if you wanted an MP3, you'd have to rip that sucker yourself. The music industry was still marginally profitable. Life was hard, back in the day. To get samples to play back at different pitches and speeds, I'd have to sample them at one frequency, and play them back at a different one. There were only three to choose from back then: 11K,22K,and 44KHz. All the speeds were either half or double of the original, with the pitch being either an octave higher or lower. That meant everything I sampled had to be in the same key. I had to make my own distortion, by amplifying the crap out of the sample, so that it's all clipped, and then bringing the volume back down. The only real effect I had back then was "reverse". Times were hard, and things took forever, but that was never a problem. I was young, energetic, dorky, and didn't have much of a life...so I had all the time in the world.
The first two things I did of merit were remixes...Breathe by Prodigy, and Closing Time, by Semisonic. Breathe sounded pretty much exactly like the original...but dirtier. The Closing Time mix was cool, but it was about 4 minutes too long. I had a lot of trouble keeping things under 8 minutes, back then.Your musical influences
I used to listen to a lot of big beat, back when it was still kinda cool. The Chemical Brothers, and the Crystal Method are huge influences...I still listen to them now. They've made me the person I am today. Not only do they rock, but their beats are so dense, you need a knife to cut through them. Every time you put one of their albums on with a good set of headphones, you'll hear something new that you didn't notice before. It was like finding hidden treasure, and was very inspiring. It shows that these guys work hard at making their beats quality, and this makes me want to put the most into my tracks as well. Most of my earlier work was me trying to be these guys, and failing. Check out the Checmical's Dig Your Own Hole, and the first two Crystal Method albums for some quality beatwork.
As the years progressed, I've diversified and mellowed out, as most people do. It's all about the down-tempo stuff now. A few years ago I was living quasi-alone in an apartment, and listening to a lot of trip-hop like Portishead and Massive Attack. Whatever you do, don't live alone and listen to Portishead. It's quite depressing. Instead, check out stuff by Zero 7, Thievery Corporation, and Lemon Jelly. Very chill. They're all great around 2am, although the music will still work before then.
Something also has to be said about The Avalanches. Essentially, they're a group of 6 Australian DJs who take sampling to ridiculous new extremes. The results are incredible...everything they make sounds fresh, yet familiar, with a very youthful, almost naively enthusiastic feel. It's also produced extremely well, and totally uncategorizable.
I think a lot of their energy comes from the background noises that you hear in some of their tracks and samples...noises that you probably may not pick up on consciously. Subconsciously, your mind picks up this white noise and associates them to a mood or a feel. A lot of their samples come from some really old pop songs and movies. I’m not sure from when exactly, but they were made in a more innocent time than today, and that comes through in both the content and feel. Your ears hear it and your mind picks up on that. You can hear this in all those new-age songs, with the clichéd wave sounds and whale calls and whatnot. You hear the waves, your brain relates them to the sun and the beach and being calm, and you just chill.
This whole “white noise” technique is something I’m quite into at the moment, and I’m trying to put it into a lot of my work. I’ve got these songs, “Phat Times” and “Two in the Morning”, which try to put this theory into work. “Phat Times” is based on the video my friend made of our Algonquin Park camping trip. Throughout the entire thing, white noise from a campfire is going through the left speaker, and sounds from the beach are going through the right. The rest of the track has this catchy campfire guitar riff, a cool beat, and sound clips of me and my friends acting like retards.
“Two in the Morning” was based on a live jazz jam for the V1 talent show, back in the summer of 2001. My buddy was the organizer, so he hooked me up with a tape. I cut up the track, and some good sax and guitar riffs out of it, and build the song on top of that. Most importantly, the tapes didn’t just capture the music playing, but all the other sounds around it. You can hear the audience clapping and talking to each other, and the wind blowing into the microphone. This all helps to make it feel real and live, like something that actually happened, and not like something some kid just cut up on a computer.What equipment do you use?
Here’s a list of what little gear I have:
Yamaha Pacifica electric guitar,
Peavey Rage 158 15watt amp
Yamaha classical acoustic guitar
Shure SM58S microphone
Intel P4 2.5Ghz desktop computer
Brain
Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS
Cool Edit Pro 2.0
Samples
Contrary to popular belief, the most important piece of equipment in this list is actually not the Shure microphone, but your brain. One of the great things about technology these days is that you can create some really quality stuff with an absolute minimum in gear and monetary investment. As long as you have something you want to express and the drive to get started, you can trust in your brain to take care of the rest.Anything else?
I got my Grade 10 in Piano and all the Harmony and History stuff that comes with it. In High School, I picked up guitar. Second year University, I bought my friend’s drum set. All that time spent learning music theory and harmony actually became really useful in learning new instruments, figuring out songs, and making my own stuff. It’s interesting how education works. You spend years studying things that are totally foreign to you and make no sense whatsoever, but once you start working in that field everything starts to click. I’m hoping I can say the same for this whole Engineering bit, because right now I don’t understand a damn thing.
One of the biggest challenges of making music of this type is structuring it properly. It’s not that hard to come up with a catchy riff or a few chord changes, but it’s a lot harder to put all your ideas into some kind of song form, especially when there are no vocals. With vocals, you can just loop the crap out of your beat and nobody would really care or notice too much. Just look at every hip hop song produced, ever. Without vocals, you need another element to grab the audience’s attention, which presents an additional challenge.
There’s also this issue with form and formula. There are some rules to writing songs, which dictate how your musical ideas should interact with each other, which parts of the song should lead into other parts, and whether the builds will all work properly. If your song’s not built properly, your audience won’t feel what you want them to be feeling. However, if you build all your songs the same way, it becomes formulaic. You’ll be writing the same song over and over again with slightly different notes, like the way Linkin Park does. I’m not sure where form stops and formulaic begins. That stuff they didn’t really teach in school. I’m working on that.Admin
Ian
@ian_leung
