At work this week: I just completed this musical theme / signature for a cool-sounding video podcast - 10 Things TV. I really enjoy working with websites that have a video series or video podcast - I think this has been an area of rapid growth on the internet, and will continued source of interesting material and edgy approaches to connecting with audiences.
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The internet is a wild and wonderful place. It can also be extremely disgusting - for example, if you accidentally type “roids” instead of “droids” into Google Images - but I digress. Today we’re discussing pleasant things. And would could be more pleasant than a Super Nintendo game known as Spanky’s Quest?
I’m working on this music for a video / commercial that is going to go on the web somewhere. This is version A of two options I am going to present them with…Listen to it and see if you can guess what the temp track was in the version they sent me. 
Materials used: Omnisphere, Miroslav Philharmonik, Logic 9, EXS24.
There is a ton of stuff I’ve worked on over the last year that is languishing on my hard drive. Some are mostly finished, some are pretty embryonic - but I don’t want them to slip through the cracks. So hold on to your butts, ’cause here they come.
First up- this funky clavichord thing that I love. I think this will be included in some form on an “album” (I use that term loosely) of electro-space-funk that I intend to release later this year. It’s going to be extremely ill.
Until then, this is a tidbit of what you can expect. Funky beats, throbbing bass, hot synths, and percolating keyboards. Hot, sticky, mildly-stinky space funk. It’s like you got sprayed by some sort of alien skunk…and you LIKED it.
This is actually the final version of “An Epic Ran” that I posted a sketch of before. In that entry, I talked about how Jordan came in and recorded the beats, and since then I’ve been chopping them up and adding instrumentation / arrangements over them. Here is the result.
This composition basically sets up a kind of riff, with an abstract kind of melody and syncopated arpeggiation, and them proceeds to modulate through the circle of fifths (this happens every time the slides change in the presentation it was designed to complement). There is probably no need for you to listen to the whole thing - its practically a soundscape in that it doesn’t really go anywhere - it just keeps modulating.
The instruments are: Mr. J. Siegel on the rented Mapex kit and an old Ludwig Snare - which we mic’d with an APEX DP-2 mic kit. Software instruments: sampled upright bass, Spectrasonics Omnisphere, sampled 12 string guitar.
As Gabe said: “It sounds like Mannheim Steamroller…” Indeed.
This is just a work-in-progress clip of something I am working on for a multimedia presentation. I think it’s going to be some sort of presentation at an electronics tradeshow.
For this project I wanted to try something different. An old friend of mine was in town: Jordan Siegel, formerly the drummer of the fantastic pop band Fooled By April, and currently the frontman for Boston’s premeir classic rock cover group French Lick. I figured it was a good opportunity to track some live drums instead of sequencing / playing drum samples on a MIDI kit, like I might normally do.
So I got a drum kit together and bought a set of APEX drum mics. I’ve been skeptical of these “drum mic kits” in the past, but actually this kit worked pretty damn well. Jordan rolled in and played his ass off - and bam! I had myself a custom drum beat library. I went through and tweaked / spliced / hacked the beats all up, and now I am in the process of composing some music to go along with these grooves.
For this particular project, I can’t do anything too complex - imagine being one of the poor salesman standing next to this kiosk while the music loops every 3 minutes. Pretty much anything would drive you insane if you have to listen to it all day, so I try to keep the whole thing pretty minimal - its going to have a couple bursts of music at some key moments in the animation, but the majority of the piece will be pretty quiet and chill.
Anyway, I am still working on it. Once I get the whole thing done I will post it here. Stay tuned…
Client: “Oh, and we need a music bed for this presentation by tomorrow morning.”
Me: “….”.
Client: “Since its for a tradeshow, and will be looping the entire time, something simple and non-intrusive would be best.”
So I whipped this together and went straight to bed (I’d already been up 24 hours). It’s extremely simple. Stylus RMX + Omnisphere + EXS24 = percolating noises. Apparently I’ll get the chance to expand on this soundtrack once the presentation is converted into a stand-alone piece, complete with audio narrator, at some point in the future. At that point maybe I will post the whole presentation with the actual soundtrack, etc. Until then, this was a “fire and forget” project.
Working with Dan Milican at S-Films, and Paul Cavazos at Olah, I composed and performed this music for the Two Days in Texas soundtrack. There is an internet-edit in my portfolio, but I’ve posted the long version here.
Here is a track that will appear in a film project I will posting in the portfolio soon. It’s a bluesy piece with traditional orchestration backing it up (strings, woodwinds) and some acoustic guitar.
The acoustic guitar was recorded with a RODE NT-1A condenser mic, mixed with a little bit of the acoustic’s built in pickup. Most of the other instruments are software instruments, except for the electric guitar. The orchestral stuff was from the Miroslav Philharmonik plugin. I was tempted to use the lush East West QL libraries, but they ended up being too dense / heavy in the mix.
This project was heaps of fun - big shoutout to Paul C on this one.
This is something silly I whipped up after I somehow wound up with a recording of my better half doing her sarcastic rendition of “Baby Got Back”. Sir Mixalot would be…proud?
After fooling with this, I decided to make it available as a ringtone for the iPhone. You can download the ringtone here:
Download “White Beans And Rice” in the iPhone ringtone format
Once you download it, you should be able to add it to your iTunes library and from there sync it to your phone. Have fun!