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.
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…
This is a sketch that was one of several options presented to a client. I think this track would work great behind underwater footage, like an ocean documentary or some sort of travel-channel scubafest.
Speaking of underwater - why don’t they rerun more of the old Jacques Cousteau specials on TV these days? Especially considering the popularity of movies like The Life Aquatic, which are obviously riffing on the JQ legend. Sidenote: can you believe that movie came out in 2004 - 5 years ago? How time flies…
Tools used on this track: Logic, EXS24, Spectrasonics Omnisphere & Stylus RMX.
Haven’t posted in a while - here is a recent track I was commissioned to make for an animated presentation - complete with some “whoosing” when stuff flies on and offscreen. If this video goes online I will post a link to it here later on…
Tools: Logic, Superior Drummer, various compressor plugins. All performed, except for 1 blippy sample which is so low in the mix you probably won’t hear it.
Lots of things in the works, new music, site redesign, and more. Its all going to have to wait until I can make some time to do it the right way, but Fall 2009 looks like an achievable deadline. Stay tuned…
Gabriel Jeffrey is a very talented man, so I was pleased as punch when I got the chance to collaborate with him on a video short. This work was commissioned by Lisa Kirk, a New York City artist, to be shown at her gallery exhibition. The show opens on the 20th at Invisible Exports in NYC.
This is a proof-of-concept / idea I submitted a while back, to a friend who is working on a very exciting video project. Since the piece I am posting here was recorded, we have improved on it, but I wanted to keep the original version around for posterity.
Bonus points to anyone who can guess what late 70’s TV show inspired parts of this music and melody.
When the project is finished, I will embed it on this site, along with all the info, credits, etc.
Here is another sketch for the same project I mentioned in the previous post (The Wild Frontier). It is a 30 second logo spot / bumper. The client wanted something less orchestral and a bit more alternative, so I used rock instrumentation and fleshed it out with some blippy excitement.
The feeling with this track is “standard” enough, it could go lots of directions. Mainly “parent company” logo animations, with the beginning have a montage of people - as the music builds it speeds up and resolves into the logo at the end.
The ending is a little abrupt, but it’s just sketch, so I try not to spend too much time fussing until I know the client likes the style we are using.
This is a short 30 second bit that started as a sketch for a work project. Its the kind of thing that would be the opener / title sequence for a show on the Discovery Channel or the National Geographic Channel. It has traditional western orchestration with some world instruments, and an exciting driving beat.
I have been getting some serious mileage out of the Miroslav Philharmonik plugin recently - the samples are very high-quality, and, despite some initial confusion I experienced, the interface is pretty friendly. Now that I have a larger keyboard (thanks Tom!) I need to start to use some of the performance-controlling capabilities (controlling the bowing of violins and stuff like that).
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.
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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.
Here is another soundtrack for a corporate-related video. This is a more worldly company, as you can tell from the slightly “world” rhythm track. Again, some breakdowns and build-ups that are based around interview segments and news clips.
This was my first time experimenting with Stylus RMX from Spectrasonics. It was very useful - I was able to quickly establish the basic rhythms I wanted, and get to the arrangements earlier than usual. If I can find a way to smoothly trigger Stylus RMX with my MIDI drums, it would be pretty hawt. But the Stylus RMX interface is not really geared for this, so we will see if I can work it out.
Posting soundtracks without the video is a drag, but I’d rather log my work here than wait for the video permission, etc. So here is yet another tune I did for a corporate client who shall not be named. Imagine lots of bright stage lights, some talking heads, footage of live performances, etc. Anytime there is a slow segment, chances are that is a person speaking over the track.
In this mix I am experimenting with some of the PSP Audioware plugins - they make some compressors and EQs that are quite nice, and really bring some excitement into the mix. The audio instrument / plugin field is bursting with options these days, and I am in the process of trying to find out what I need, what is useful, and what sounds like crap.