Another Day Gone (Total reading time less then 1 minute)
I’ve been in the studio writing this week trying to turn out a large amount of work. Here is a short listen to one f the tracks I currently have in production. The mix is rough because I am still waiting for the verses to be finished but the chorus vocals are done. You can see from the screen shot below there are many vocals used in the chorus of the track. There is a male voice, which is myself, and a female voice provided by Renee Stakey. There is also use of all sorts of vocal effects and other goodies. I love to do vocal production with talented singers. Strong vocal production really brings a track to life. At this point all of the vocals are being overdubbed to a 2 track of the instrumental which is in another logic session. When all the vocals are done every thing will be combined into the final session for the arrangement and mix.
Hope you enjoy. This is just a taste of the finished product. If you have any questions or comments please leave them below.
NBA Highlights From 1987
(Total Reading time less then 1 minute)
The cue used in this video is from a reggaetone project I did a few years ago. The cue it self has been used in many places. I came across this video while randomly browsing basket videos from the NBA channel. You know your write a lot of music when you randomly start hearing on videos you find on youtube.
New Beats (Total reading time less then 1 minute, Listening time 3 minutes)
A Quick tast of some beats I have been working on for future use in television shows and movies. Now that I have found an HTML5 compatible audio player I hope to post these little listening tastes more often. Enjoy.
All of the production for these tracks was completed in Logic Studio 9 using the onboard plugins as well as native instruments komplete.
Last night I spent a bit of time looking for a new wordpress plugin so I can feature some new music and video clips on the website. Enter MediaElement.js
MediaElement.js is a wordpress plugin that works with both Flash and HTML5. I was looking for a plugin that would play both audio and video and be compatible devices like the Iphone, Ipad. Hope you enjoy the quick clip of music. Now that I have got a good wordpress video and audio plugin I will be uploading more clips.
The track is a 60 second cue of some middle eastern war like music called:
Persian Assault
Would love your comments on the track and the player.
Their are a few radio shows that I listen to each week that I like to record. In the good old days or at least when I was growing up there was a show or DJ you’d want to record. One would sit by the radio, recording it to cassette tape so it could be heard again and again. Hot 97’s Future Flavors with Pete Rock and Marly Marl had me running to the store to buy blank cassettes every week.
Times of changed. Computers have replaced the good old tape deck but you can still use your computer to capture audio off of the internet.
You will need two applications.
The first GarageBand which comes on every mac. If your not using a mac you can do something similar with a program called Audacity. This short tutorial will continue using GarageBand however.
The 2nd thing you will need is something called Soundflower. You can download it free from the Cycling74 website.
After you have downloaded and installed Soundflower open up your system preferences and click on the sound icon.
Select Soundflower (2ch) as your output, and then select Soundflower (2ch) as your output.
Next you will open up Garage Band and create a new project. Once you have created a new project you will create a “new track”. To do this press the button on the bottom left marked with the plus symbol.
Select “real instrument” and then hit the “create button”
Once your track is created you need to select the input that the track will use to record.
Your Input source should be set to Stereo 1/2 (Soundflower (2ch)) and your Monitor should be set to On (no feedback protection) Having the monitor on this setting will allow you to hear what Garageband is recording.
Next you must open GarageBand’s preferences.
Click on the Audio/Midi section to see your Audio and MIDI settings for Garage Band. Your Audio Output should be set to Built In Output and your Audio Input should be set to System Setting.
Next go back to your Garage Band Session and press record on the track. Garage Band will now begin recording what ever audio the computer system is playing. At this point you could go to Pandora, or the website of a radio station and Garage Band will record the audio from the stream.
When you are done recording you can use Garage Band share feature to send an mp3 to itunes or to burn a cd of the audio you recorded.
It is important that when you are done that you return to your System preferences and set the Audio Settings back to what ever they were before you started. For most people this setting will be “Internal Microphone” for input and “Internal Speakers” for output.
Morning In St. Bart’s (Total reading time 2 minutes)
I started this Sunday with something I haven’t done voluntarily since Aug 12, 2004. I made a date with my wife to go to church.
My wife and I have driven past St. Bartholomew’s church almost every time we have visited New York City. The many times we have passed I never new that behind its doors one of the ten largest organs in the world rests in hiding. I still wouldn’t know if I hadn’t come across St. Bartholomew’s church while doing a google search about music in New York. The church is one of the few left that still understands the importance of music through the service. Since I read that I have wanted to attend a service there, mostly out of curiosity. How different could mass be then from my local churches.
It was very different and more beautiful then I could imagine. The first surprise was the walk through the gift shop to get into the church. Once you are beyond the small display of souvenirs things return to normal. The church had more detailed carvings, mosaics, and stained glass then I could even begin to describe. The pews and alter sat in a nest of organ pipes through out the structure. People filled spaces between them. And then their was the sound.
The choir sang works of Britten, an english composer and other parts of the mass, hymns, and psalms. I studied music like this in college. I hated it. Like opera it is a music that can not be experienced analytically or technically. It must be absorbed in its place of intention.
The sermon was given and in about an hour and twenty minutes the mass ended. Music, and art for centuries have been a way to experience, explain and communicate things that we can not explain. This is the first church I have been to that actually lets that happen.
What does a composer do? (Total reading time 1-2 minutes)
A composer is a person who writes music. Very often people ask me what I do for a living. Once I tell them that I am a composer I get a look and one of two responses. It’s either “wow, thats pretty cool” or a bad career choice joke related to working freelance all the time. A composer does write music of course but a composer’s real job is to bring emotion to life through music.
An instrumental piece of music or song can evoke feelings of happiness, pain, motivation, sadness, fun, movement, and excitement in just seconds. A fanfare announcing the bride at her wedding can fill a parents heart with joy as their daughter walks down the aisle. The sobering sound of taps playing in a cemetery can overwhelm the heart with sadness, honor and pride all at the same time. A composer at his best must make you feel something.
Writing music is about working with sounds and using them in a way that can make the listener feel a certain way. The score to a horror movie will bring you to the edge of your seat and cause your heart to pump faster. The truth is that all good composers try to achieve not just control over the instruments they write for but for control over the listener.
An Exercise In Midi Orchestration With Logic Studio
(Total reading time 2-3 minutes)
It is at moments like this that I must accept that I was put here to be a musician and composer. I had planned to do my postaday2011 blog post on something else this evening. The muse had something else in mind. For some strange reason I was browsing through soundtracks by Bill Conti and became obsessed with one of his cues from the movie Rocky. It was the same one that was also sampled by Biggie Smalls and Puff Daddy (Now Diddy, Dirty Money) for the track Victory. After a few listens I decided why not try to recreate some of those sounds in Logic Studio. After about a bit more than an hour I had to stop. The night was progressing too fast with to many things still to do.
So this is not a final product, just an exercise. My apologies it isn’t longer. I could work on this for 2 days and not even realize it. It was practice using midi orchestration. Maybe in a later blog post I will upload some screen shots and video clips from the Logic Studio Session.
If you have any questions leave a comment below. I would love to answer them as best I can.
Here is the remake in Logic Studio
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Here is the original.
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Take A Listen
(Total reading time less then 1 min, Total Listening time 3 minutes)
I finished a project this week and wanted to share a few snippets from some of the tracks I have been working on. Unfortunately these are just snippets. All of the tracks were completed in Logic Studio and mixed “In The Box” only the standard Logic Studio Plugins were used for mixing. Virtual instruments from and various sample libraries were used for the production and composition, including a few EXS instruments I created just for the project. Thanks in advance for listening.
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New Music – Addiction (Trance) (Total reading time 1 minute. Total Listening time 8 minutes)
Sometimes you need to stop working for a bit and just have some fun. For the past week I have been sitting in my studio working on music cues for a company here on the east coast. Writing the same type of music day after day can get to you after a while. This afternoon I finally took a break and had some fun. Doing more music of course…LOL.
I am also considering releasing this for sale in the near future. Be warned this is some pretty hardcore dance music. Think DJ Tiesto and Armin Van Buren. Thanks for reading and listening.
Addiction 134 BPM
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In case you are wondering it only took me one medium cup of Dunkin Donuts Coffee to write that. Scary.
