by Dan | Mar 18, 2009 | Music
Palette-Swap Ninja is proud to present our newest song parody:
Palette-Swap Ninja – “Halo ((All I Play-Oh))”
As you may have guessed, it is a loving parody of “Snow ((Hey Oh))” by Red Hot Chili Peppers.
If you like what you hear, tell your friends. Tell a web forum. Hell, tell Bungie.
This one took a while. Jude and I have been talking about this song for about six months, maybe longer, and working on it in earnest for about three, on and off. I had some time off from work so I used it to crash through all the parts I was neglecting — little things like guitars and bass and vocals.
Part of the problem was that “Snow ((Hey Oh))” is far more complicated than it sounds. I knew John Frusciante was a great guitarist, but I didn’t think he’d be quite so impossible to rip off. There was some trickery in getting the guitar part to sound anything like the record; I ultimately recorded it at half-speed. We do what we must.
The other part was that Jude and I really like to tell stories with our dumb little songs, and it took a while to really sculpt the lyrics so that they hit all the points we felt needed to be hit. We wanted a progression through the song so that the lyrics paint a picture and tell a story about this jackass.
And yes…that’s kazoo. I’ve been wanting to sneak in some kazoo for a while now, but since I could not get my Line 6 POD to feed back and I didn’t have an Eventide Harmonizer, this was the right opportunity to bust them out. And I would like to note that this is not just any kazoo. That is three kazoos in three-part harmony, with the lead kazoo having been a gift by a very special gaming musician:
by Dan | Mar 15, 2009 | Ninja Stuff
Palette-Swap Ninja is, as you know, a two-man operation, operating on opposite sides of the country. We are both very busy this weekend working on two songs simultaneously, plus a third project on the side.
Here’s Jude’s home studio, located just outside of Boston.
And here’s Dan’s home music studio, located just outside of San Francisco.
When the tracks come out late, you now know who to blame.
Jude said “I guess I should have put a keytar up against the wall.” I said yes, if only to make me look marginally less like a slob.
by Dan | Mar 8, 2009 | Ninja Stuff
Just finished up a new little segment jingle for OXM’s podcast. I think you’ll hear it this coming week on show 156. It was fun, but man, these things always take longer than it looks. An 8-second jingle? That’ll be three hours of your day, please!
If you want to hear it, you will have to listen to KOXM, of course. But if you want to see what it looks like, we’ll show you that much:
The next full song was supposed to be out by now, but that, too, is taking longer than expected. Most of the pieces are here in rough form so they are coming along nicely — it’s just the final assembly and re-recording anything that was too sloppy first time around. I’m having a lot of trouble getting the guitar parts to come out clean. Hopefully we’ll have something in the next week or so.
by Dan | Feb 19, 2009 | Ninja Stuff
Jude sent some basic tracks this weekend for me to start playing with. I busted out the Variax and started the very arduous task of recording the guitar on this one. Truth: I’m not a good enough guitar player to play this, but I am going to play it anyway with some digital assistance. I will come clean when the song is out, which will hopefully be by the middle of next month.
People always ask “What’s the next one?” and I never want to say. I mean, come on — that’s part of the fun. If you can guess the punchlines before we even tell the joke, it’s not very funny — and what if your ideas are funnier than ours? It sets everybody up for disappointment. But I will offer another clue: Stratocaster, neck pickup. Good luck with that.
Jude and I are now both working in GarageBand, though we were only in the same version of GarageBand for about two days before I upgraded to ’09. I am used to programs like SoundForge and, to a lesser extent, Pro Tools, but I ditched both so I could go with something friendlier. It makes some of the stuff easier and some of it harder, but again, it’s all friendlier. I can figure it out with a web search or two, if not simply mucking about with the menus. I think I’d eventually like to get Logic Express, since it’s the big brother of GarageBand and can import all the projects natively. Yes, please.
by Dan | Feb 16, 2009 | Ninja Stuff
I was on TalkRadar this past week (episode 38), blatantly disobeying my own simple “never appear on TalkRadar again” rule. Last time, I threw a mini-hissyfit, since the recording took something like two and a half hours and seemed to move at the speed of sludge. This time, however, I was prepared; I had a free evening, my wife was away, nobody was missing me at home except the cats — and some listeners said “Why hasn’t Dan been on in a while?” Combine free time with and ego stroke and I’m an easy target.
Of course, this one took three and a half hours to record. More or less.
While there, I once again got “hey, you should do this song” suggestions, including Brett’s Naughty By Nature parody of “OPP” for Little Big Planet as “LBP.” That’s a good one, but I don’t play LBP. I think the worst joke is the joke you force; as someone who doesn’t own the game and doesn’t even like the look of the Sackboys, I think I’m the wrong guy to sit down and pen a high-larious jokey-joke about it. When it comes to parody, you have to go with what you know.
It’s also nice to simply stand behind your own work. Funny or not, the songs we’ve done are creations of Jude and Dan. There are others like them but these are ours, you know? That’s kind of a key part of this project.
I think we have proven that anybody can make a parody song, so if you are one of those people who keeps thinking “You know what would be funny?” then I urge you to go give it a try. Save your ideas, make them your own.
