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?
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.
So here is a more traditional version of the song (see this post for the other version).So I abandoned the West-Side-Roll feel (apparently being from Austin isn’t good enough, you have to be from San Antonio to make it work) and modeled the song into a more train / blues feeling. The idea still works well. I tossed a solo in there as a placeholder for the vocal track.
I had this idea for a song that was heavily inspired by a Sir Douglas Quintet tune, but the more I tried to go for that feeling, the trickier it got. Instead of a 1-4-5, I wrote a 1-4-1-6m-6# (?) sort of thing.
It’s sort of feisty, which I like. But the keyboard part is too ‘Baba o’Reilly-meets-the-circus’. Maybe I’ll take it out.
This was the first sketch of a tune that the Naturals are doing now, and I prefer the live version to this initial draft. But the basic idea is the same. I like to roughly sketch out the sections of music, and play with the transitions at home, then take it to a live situation and see where it goes.
I’ll post a live YouTube version of this song sometime to show the difference…
Here is a snip of a tune I am working on for Nathan & the Naturals. I’ve been on the fence about what direction to take this song in. Right now it seems like it’s on the verge of being an upbeat Bill Withers tune (Good!) or one of Michael McDonald’s later works (maybe not so good).
(Guilty admission: I love Keep Forgettin’.
All instruments by me (guitar, midi instruments, samples. Software: Logic).