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…

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!

Here is a little ditty I worked up a while back and then forgot all about. I rediscovered it while digging through some files on my machine. Actually I rediscovered a lot of half-finished ideas and songs, which I really should get to some sort of completed state, just so I can post them here.

You might ask why I post unfinished ideas at all. I like to archive my ideas on this site so that when I am working on new projects, I can use it as a reference library of sounds, phrases, mixes, and ideas. Its much easier to browse things here than on my hard drive, inside a maze of folders, etc.

Hence the “journal” title of this website. I am working on a portfolio of work though, which I should be able to launch later this month - stay tuned!

Back to this track: I am not really sure what this would sync well with. The bongos are reminiscent of a tiki-torch party on the beach, but the guitar is more like something you would hear in a dark smokey jazz club. Then there is the mysterious and ethereal song structure…which is out of place in both of those settings. But the end result of these combinations is something else entirely. If I had to pick, I would say it would fit with some sort of Vegas casino theme. Maybe a fashion scene in a heist movie…

OnVideo: Remembering Tokyo

One of the Japan-related websites I read regularly is the blog of Joi Ito, a Japanese entrepreneur and venture capitalist.

Recently he posted a video to Vimeo that he made using the new Canon 5SD MkII camera - a new camera that can shoot high-definition video as well as still photography. Since it was released under a Creative Commons Attribution license, I took the liberty of creating a score for the sequence.
Read the rest of this entry »

This is somewhere between a soundtrack and a soundscape, with little percussion / beats, and a sort of wandering structure that unfurls towards the end. I am no Brian Eno (although I am a fan of his), but I do like the ambient genre now and then. There is something psychologically liberating about working on a track once I’ve decided that it is evolving into an ambient thing, like at that point I can basically do anything I can think of.

In this case, that included appropriating a bit of Carl Sagan. The end result is something you might be able to listen to as you fall asleep.

This is an experimental track I made while fooling around with some of the new plugins I was discussing in the previous post. It has an authentic “breakdown” - sort of an experiment in controlled chaos. I also played with some vocal transformations, which was amusing for a while. Now my ears are tired and I need to think about something else.

Please forgive the meandering ending segment, I barely escaped with my sanity. Don’t ask me to go back there again. 

Arthur C. Clarke died last month. He was a visionary - and his brilliant mind, with Stanley Kubrick’s genius, is responsible for one of my favorite movies: 2001: A Space Odyssey.

One of the memorable traits of that film is the use of classical music to frame sequences of vehicles delicately dancing through the void. As much as I love these moments in the film, I have always agreed with Sun Ra and his Astro Intergalactic Infinity Arkestra’s contention that “Space is the Place”.

There is something about laser beams, black holes, and big rockets that says “funk” to me. With that in mind, here is a space-funk riff for the next time you venture into the abyss.

I enjoy experimenting with the NNXT sampler in Reason. Multi-sampling instruments are lots of fun, especially now that websites like the Freesound Project make locating new sounds so easy. This short sequence was an excuse to test out one of the instruments I created, and also an attempt at creating an arpeggiator in Reason 3.0. Apparently Reason 4.0 has one built in, but I haven’t upgraded yet, so I have to fudge it using the Matrix pattern sequencer. If you are still using Reason 3.0 - here is how to do it:

1. Create a subtractor or any synth / sampler, with the patch you want to use
2. Create a Matrix Pattern Sequencer unit
3. Using the patch cord view, connect the Matrix Pattern Note CV output to the OSC Pitch input on your synth. Make sure the synth is connected to the Mixer, or some output (so you can hear the noise).
4.  Then create a 4 or 6 0r 12 (or 32 - whatever) step sequence in your Matrix unit, and give it some random notes. 
5. Hit the Matrix “run” button, and then switch to your synth and play some notes. Your notes should trigger the Matrix sequence.  
6. Because this is not a true arpeggiator, it won’t be in tune in every key. So you will have to choose in-key notes for your Matrix sequence.

If you want to see an online video of this method, check out this YouTube clip (thx TJfromLP!)

This is music designed to fit with a questing / fantasy game. Something along the lines of the Zelda series: cute, fun, magical. Elves, mazes, tunnels, goblins, swords and armor, magic items…that sort of thing.

As you listen, you will hear the following segments:
INTRO (0:00): The music you hear during the main menu, before you start the game
EXPLORING (0:24): The general theme of the tune…traveling, questing
PUZZLE SOLVING (0:55): Presented with some sort of test / trial / puzzle
EXPLORING REVISITED (1:12): Back to the wandering theme, but fuller, more triumphant.
BATTLE (1:51): Attacked! Imagine the clashing of swords over this segment
DEAD (2:10): You sustained one blow too many, and keeled over. Hope you saved!

All of these instruments are MIDI instruments, tweaked and played in Logic Pro 8. I am a big fan of the toy piano sounds, I think they hold the whole piece together, and give it a fun feeling.

This was an exercise in re-sequencing a song I really like. Do you recognize the song? Hint: the actual song title is a synonym for “Woe”. This version is truncated, since the point wasn’t to fully recreate the original, just to learn from the arrangement and experiment with my own tones and textures. This is all me on the MIDI kit and using some nice synth pads. I also got a good guitar tone out of the Amplitude plug-in, I think.

When I listen to this song, I envision some kind of scene in an glistening modern airport: a man running through the crowd. Desperately trying to reach the gate before the woman departs. Like something from the end of a John Hughes movie.

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.

You can hear another version of this song posted here.