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LYRICS | |||
I can't be the only one whose been ignored When the retro-rockets fire, --chorus Retro-rocket, from the past --start rap --- You made fun of our obsession with technology Now everything is run by computers Because of our intellectual efforts So always remember, when you stare at the screen, confused and annoyed Wake up in the modern age it's all brand new, but we've always been here. When the retro-rockets fire, that's when you'll know we've won, --chorus Retro-rocket, now at last,
When the retro-rockets fire, |
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Liner Notes: This one is fairly straightforward. I've been a computer nerd since the earliest days of personal computers, and I was always annoyed that the culture of computer hobbists has always been ignored. Those golden days of user-groups and photocopied newsletters are gone forever, but I think those of us who were involved since the beginning have generally made a very nice life for ourselves as the world eventually came around to our way of thinking! And that is what the song is about, being a smug nerd gloating over the fact that we own the world which everybody else has to live in, a world that is still arcane and requiring of the skills we spent years building while others laughed at us. Why is it called "Retro-Rocket"? The idea is that all of these things we did in the past have actually been our ticket to the future, so the word retro is being used in the sense of retro-style, or nostalgia. So, it's a retro rocket that brings us to our future! Get it?! Well, at least I thought it was funny. I spent an awfully long time trying to get this song to sound right. This was one of my earliest efforts at completely digital recording, and the software really makes mixing difficult. The vocoder effects were accomplished by use of a couple of different shareware and freeware vocoders running on windows 95. I actually devote 4 tracks to the vocoded choruses, one for the unvocoded vocal (to help with consonant sounds), two for a stereo vocoded signal with 18 bands, and one for a monophonic vocoder with 128 bands (I think that is what it was... it's hard to remember... you can set it up to 4096 bands.) The carrier signal was created by playing just the backing chords in the sequencer and then sampling the output. The left-right bouncing organ sound is actually a string sound with the attack and decay cut off. Except for the guitar, the backing was entirely played on my PC sound card. I'm still not satisfied with the mixing, but I can't work on the song forever... Oh, and the nifty Retro-Rocket patch was taken from a design for a patch from "Tom Corbett, Space Cadet" (the patch originally said "Space Cadet", I modified it in a paint program. |
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