CPA ARPS - Gulf Shores

Hear The Track Here

A few years ago I got suckere...err......I mean I tried out a software program that promised ANYONE could be making music in about ten minutes. Oooh, I thought, you rotten bastards. Just when I had spent almost fifty years trying to make music properly up comes a computer program that instantly unmanned me. Puffing mightily, outrage spewing out into the ether, I checked out the software noting - a warning I now know by hindsight - that Brian Eno had some association with it. Koan, the software was called but I don't think I've ever laughed so much in all my life once I'd played with it for ten minutes. Play music in ten minutes, sure, but what kind of music? The kind only wolves, wildebeest, and flat bottomed cranes can hear.

Koan? Sure just drop out the A and you'll understand...

So why am I biting so hard on the leather this early in the proceedings? 'Midi composed and produced using Chordware Progression Assistant 9.3' it says on the track comments and that should give you a clue? Yes, but Gilmore, all prejudice aside what kind of music is it? Whelp, try this from the Chordware site 'ChordwarePA is both a chord / scale program and a loop-based music creation program'. Mmmm sounds suspiciously like Band In a whatsname to me. So, my ire isn't raised because of the way the music is made, it rarely is. What really gets me is what it sounds like.

And that, sadly, is where it all falls apart.

See, musically this is flabby. Some generally opposing sounds set on endless loop and - to my ears - only occasionally hitting any kind of groove. Much more damaging, IMHO is the overall tameness/lameness of the sounds being used, and that is where the Koan reference came in because this is exactly why I hated that piece of software. OK, it may enable you to produce a noise but then,,,, drrrrrr. Poking my nose in a little further I noticed that the artist known as CPA ARPS and the mover and shaker of the Chordware site are one and the same so, on that level, got to be a nice job. His own music maker no less.

Just need a lot more structure is all, and puhleeze some realistic sounds.