The Ninja Twins (Ninjutsu hip hop, spoken word, retro)

belldu

Synopsis
It's a tranquil day and two young ninja's are happily vibing on their Erhu and Electric Guitar.
Suddenly their peace is shattered and they are forced to face a formidable foe...
https://soundcloud.com/user-154254/the-ninja-twins?si=538a0fbf786f42eabe5debb8d435f102&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

Creative notes
The inspiration for this piece was provided by my son who was messing around with loops in Garageband iOS from the 'Skyline Masher' hip hop sound pack. I thought they sounded like a kids cartoon series he watches, and as his outer 10 year old interest moved on, my inner 10 year old was awakened ;-)

Musically, this piece features extensive use of Garageband loops both for percussion and chords. The chords modulate throughout the piece through pitch shifting. This was fun and took me to some chord progressions I wouldn't have otherwise thought of.

Here's an insight into the first 1 1/2 minutes:

I used Audiolayer for the background foley, and this is my first attempt to incorporate dialog (provided by my twin 10 year olds in exchange for far too many sugary treats) to embellish the musical story.

Production notes
Knowing my mastering options were limited in Garageband, I exported each track (32 of them) individually and loaded them as Audio into Cubasis. Thanks to Garageband's impossible to turn off normalisation, I then did a "fader's down" mix in Cubasis and tried to re-balance the many elements, keeping an eye on the peak db and lufs on the master track. This took a super long time and I could have kept doing it forever if I hadn't decided to get this done by the end of 2022!

MatthewKay

Beautiful track! I love a song that tells a story.

“ and as his outer 10 year old interest moved on, my inner 10 year old was awakened” Love that!

ReneAsologuitar

Hi @belldu ,
The oriental flare is clearly heard, and the spoken words are so fun.
I am trying to follow all the changes and turns in this creation.
Lovely story, and excellent musical scape.
Thanks for this beautiful production.,
Rene

NoncompliantBryant

Liked your kids..

That was awesome using them. Did they get a kick out of it? My daughter loves giving me little lines or found sound. Btw erhu is Chinese, ninja are Japanese. If you want a Japanese sound you could try more instruments like the shamisen or other wagakki instruments. This sounded distinctly Chinese to me because of the erhu.

belldu

Thanks @Sawiton, @ReneAsologuitar, and @NoncompliantBryant.
The kids did enjoy making it and it felt to me like I was capturing a bit of their childhood for posterity, along with reinvigorating memories of my own childhood.

With respect to the Erhu, yes it's Chinese, but there are similar instruments in Japanese culture, and the piece isn't intended as an entirely authentic Japanese work, featuring elements of the theme of Ninjago, and Ninjago is not a strictly accurate representation of Ninjutsu :-)
There are other misappropriations and anachronisms too with the Commodore 64 chords (1980s) and fighting foley and 'Finish Him!' from Mortal Kombat (1990s).
All good fun though and I feel like I learned some new techniques while hopefully adding something to the up and coming Ninjutso Hip Hop genre. :-)

NoncompliantBryant

@belldu said:
Thanks @Sawiton, @ReneAsologuitar, and @NoncompliantBryant.
The kids did enjoy making it and it felt to me like I was capturing a bit of their childhood for posterity, along with reinvigorating memories of my own childhood.

With respect to the Erhu, yes it's Chinese, but there are similar instruments in Japanese culture, and the piece isn't intended as an entirely authentic Japanese work, featuring elements of the theme of Ninjago, and Ninjago is not a strictly accurate representation of Ninjutsu :-)
There are other misappropriations and anachronisms too with the Commodore 64 chords (1980s) and fighting foley and 'Finish Him!' from Mortal Kombat (1990s).
All good fun though and I feel like I learned some new techniques while hopefully adding something to the up and coming Ninjutso Hip Hop genre. :-)

For sure. I'm Chinese so err on making the distinction for folks.

GeoTony

Superb… your a very talented family 🙏
As an aside how you you get your embedded SoundCloud like that? When I do it I get a little square picture to the left and then the graphy thing of the signal on the right.

MadeofWax

Great fun! Really enjoyed every aspect, from the vocal performances to the music and sound effects.

SLPGroundSoundMusic

very interesting track, like the samurai feel of it

belldu

Thanks @GeoTony, @MadeofWax, @SLPGroundSoundMusic.
Glad you enjoyed the piece.
It was a lot of fun to make even if the mastering process was painful!

@GeoTony, I've been wondering what I'm doing differently embedding my SoundCloud links, I'm not doing this on purpose, but happy to share my steps.
I use Soundcloud web app on my iPad, not the iOS app.
I then goto 'Tracks' and select the ... next to the track to get a Copy Link menu item.

I then use the link icon in the forum post editor to add it into the post.

All of my SoundCloud posts have had this large presentation and I don't know how to do it any other way.

Gavinski

Cool track! Loved the mix of retro and ancient. I'd strongly recommend the Erhu in the Geoshred Naada sounds if you want something more expressive - I'm guessing this was the one in Garageband?

AlterEgo_UK

Love this! I think the spoken words really add to it and make it something really special. It really does sound like some of the kids cartoons my grandkids watch (only better!)

belldu

@Gavinski Thanks for the tip on the Erhu, in this piece its just the Garageband one and I was ok with it as there was so much else going on. Lovely instrument though and I'll check out the Naada one.

@AlterEgo_UK Thanks, I need to stop telling my kids about the nice feedback because they'll up their rates for any future collaborations!