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Uvula

By Cosmic Cairns on February 11, 2022 8:03 pm

I was originally thinking I wanted to do something with some vocals this week, but then last weekend I got invited to a bit of an impromptu class reunion.  It was fun but we ended up spending several hours in a really loud bar where I had to shout the whole time to talk to people.  I kind of strained my vocal cords and partially lost my voice for a couple days afterward.  Then just as it seemed to be getting better, I woke up with a bit of a scratchy throat one morning.  That seemed to resolve itself after a couple days, but I felt like maybe it would be a good idea to just give my voice a rest this week and do another instrumental.

Last week I played around with my microkorg, so this week I decided to play around with the iris2, a virtual synth that Chrisfoo hipped me to back in WB 2020.  I haven't used it in over a year either, so I was kind of just reacquainting myself with it and playing with some different sounds.  There was a bit of frustration because at first I could hear sound from it, but I couldn't seem to get Reaper to record any of the sound I was making.  After some quick online research I figured out I didn't have some input/output box turned to the correct setting.  Once I figured that out it was pretty smooth sailing.

I was using Uvula as a placeholder title mostly because I think it's a neat sounding word.  In case you don't know, it's what that thing that hangs down at the back of your throat is called.  I was going to change it to something else, but nothing was popping into my head that sounded right and then it occurred to me with the throat/voice issues I'd had this week, maybe it was an appropriate title anyway.  So that's pretty much the deal for this week.

Audio works licensed by author under:
CC Attribution Noncommercial (BY-NC)

Awesome man, super cool sounds on this one!  Good call on iris, I haven't cracked into that in a little bit either.  Big fan of the chirping sound in this track, it sounds like some kind of old school sci-fi transmission sound.

Sorry to hear about your voice too man, just out of curiosity, did you get tested for COVID?  Sounds like a lot of the symptoms I had when I got it in December.

Really enjoyed this! I like the chirping too, how did that effect/sound come about?

That's one pretty track! I like the quiet pace of the beat and the warm synth lines. Get a good rest for your voice!

Chrisfoo wrote:

Awesome man, super cool sounds on this one!  Good call on iris, I haven't cracked into that in a little bit either.  Big fan of the chirping sound in this track, it sounds like some kind of old school sci-fi transmission sound.

Sorry to hear about your voice too man, just out of curiosity, did you get tested for COVID?  Sounds like a lot of the symptoms I had when I got it in December.

I was feeling pretty crummy a couple weeks ago and took a covid test then, which came back negative.  Whatever that was I seemed to recover from and was feeling much better.  Then my throat got a little scratchy for a couple days this week.  It did occur to me that it might be covid this time, but I haven't taken another test.  The scratchy throat seemed like it went away and I don't feel too bad otherwise although maybe I'm a smidge congested?  Could still be covid I suppose.  I'm vaccinated and boosted, so I hear it can be fairly mild if you still manage to get it.  I dunno.  I'm getting really over this whole pandemic thing.  Can't wait for it to end.



hent03 wrote:

Really enjoyed this! I like the chirping too, how did that effect/sound come about?

It's just a sound on the iris2, which is basically a virtual synth.  It has quite a few different sounds you can choose from and I was just flipping through and choosing a few I thought sounded good together.  I haven't even really scratched the surface of what all it's capable of.

Kedbreak136 wrote:

That's one pretty track! I like the quiet pace of the beat and the warm synth lines. Get a good rest for your voice!

Thanks!  Will do!

Very nice track, I like the cold yet organic sounding ‘synth orchestra’ vibes from this. Not familiar with the synth used, but I got strong FS1r vibes from it before reading your comment.

Wow, lovely track man! I really enjoyed this. It doesn't matter what instruments you're playing, your Cosmic Cairns sound always comes through. Very nice!

zpeisman wrote:

Very nice track, I like the cold yet organic sounding ‘synth orchestra’ vibes from this. Not familiar with the synth used, but I got strong FS1r vibes from it before reading your comment.

Thanks!  I feel like there's so many options nowadays for synths and other music toys, I can't stay on top of all of them.  I decided to give this one a try because it went on sale for $10 a couple years ago and I figured I could justify shelling that out even if I didn't end up liking it.  I definitely think it was worth getting at that price!



cfurrow wrote:

Wow, lovely track man! I really enjoyed this. It doesn't matter what instruments you're playing, your Cosmic Cairns sound always comes through. Very nice!

Thanks!  I was feeling the flow on this one, which is always nice.

Hope you are getting well again soon. And don`t touch the uvula, you know what will happen.....

Q-Rosh wrote:

Hope you are getting well again soon. And don`t touch the uvula, you know what will happen.....

I'm feeling pretty good now.  But yeah, definitely don't want to be touching the uvula.

shout out to Green Day, who had a wild track title: "Bab's Uvula Who?"

...wait i just found something online:

"The title of the song is taken from a 1976 Saturday Night Live sketch called “Babs' Uvula”, in which a uvula specialist (Chevy Chase) tell his patient Babs (Gilda Radner) a “Knock, knock” joke:

"Knock, knock.
Who’s there?
Babs' uvula.
Babs' uvula who?
I don’t know, Babs. But I do know this – you’ve really let your uvula go to the dogs.""

LOL SO RANDOM

I once was playing a show and I was talking to my friends before the show and almost lost my voice for the performance!!! total nightmare!  hope you feel better! 

nice gentle melodic synth exploration here.

orangedrink wrote:

shout out to Green Day, who had a wild track title: "Bab's Uvula Who?"

...wait i just found something online:

"The title of the song is taken from a 1976 Saturday Night Live sketch called “Babs' Uvula”, in which a uvula specialist (Chevy Chase) tell his patient Babs (Gilda Radner) a “Knock, knock” joke:

"Knock, knock.
Who’s there?
Babs' uvula.
Babs' uvula who?
I don’t know, Babs. But I do know this – you’ve really let your uvula go to the dogs.""

LOL SO RANDOM

I once was playing a show and I was talking to my friends before the show and almost lost my voice for the performance!!! total nightmare!  hope you feel better! 

nice gentle melodic synth exploration here.

  Sounds like Babs needs to get her uvula checked out ASAP!  Aw man, losing your voice right before a show is a terrible time to do it.  I've only completely lost my voice once or twice and it was awful.  I still sort of had my voice after shouting for hours in the bar the other night, but I couldn't hit my falsetto range at all.  There was just nothing there.  It was strange.  Anyway, feeling pretty good and working on a track with some vocals this week.  Voice seems like it's hanging in there so far.  Thanks for listening!

Nice synth work... the most somber track I can remember hearing you do. Rest that voice. Sounds like a fun time though.

NWSPR wrote:

Nice synth work... the most somber track I can remember hearing you do. Rest that voice. Sounds like a fun time though.

It was fun, but I don't rebound from nights like that as well as I used to in my younger days.  I guess this one did come out a little somber.  I originally meant to just mess around with some sounds, but this thing flowed out of me and I kind of like it actually.

I was excited and scared to hear this,  because ... uvulas. This feel introspective. As I imagine a song of Uvula's people would be. There is pageantry here. Like a quest.
Hope the voice feels better.
That joke about Babs uvula up there is great!

Melancholic and warm and dreamlike. I certainly didn't expect to be reading about Chevy Chase when I started listening!

Love the laid back feeling those pads create early on.  Really calming track.

miraclemiles wrote:

I was excited and scared to hear this,  because ... uvulas. This feel introspective. As I imagine a song of Uvula's people would be. There is pageantry here. Like a quest.
Hope the voice feels better.
That joke about Babs uvula up there is great!

Yeah... the danger of placeholder names is they often seem to stick.  But then you can usually find a way to make the name mean something.  I like the idea of Uvula's people.



Autovessel wrote:

Melancholic and warm and dreamlike. I certainly didn't expect to be reading about Chevy Chase when I started listening!

Thanks!  I never would have expected Chevy Chase to come up in the comments section either, but it's always fun to see where things go.



Tone Matrix wrote:

Love the laid back feeling those pads create early on.  Really calming track.

Thanks!  I was feeling a little low energy when I did this, and yet weirdly this might be my favorite track I've done so far this year.

Such a great sounding track with a fitting name.

Anon_Buster wrote:

Such a great sounding track with a fitting name.

Thanks!  I wasn't sure about the name, but I guess it's kind of stuck now.  Glad to hear it works!

Love the chord progression and the atmosphere. Faved and saved

Fred und Luna wrote:

Love the chord progression and the atmosphere. Faved and saved

Thanks!  Appreciate it!

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