A Sky Full of Clouds

This is a rainy day song.

For those that care about these things... Guitar -> Granular Delay/Pitch Shift -> "Shed Load" of Reverb.

Spooks, Spiders and other what-not!

Halloween is just around the corner, so this time I thought I would dip into my bag of musical tricks and pull out some treats for you. These are two track of Halloween-y ambience that I did a few years ago for a friend's party.

This track has the classic Dungeon vibe to it. Lots of rattling chains, screams, lighting and other sounds of torture. Always a mood-setter. I designed it to loop, so hit the Repeat button of your favorite player and let it rip.



For this track I was asked make a "spider-themed" soundtrack. What the hell do spiders sound like anyway? I ended up doing some fairly major audio tweaking to end up with my spider sounds.

The World in My Eyes (Dark Edge Mix)

Another remix from the vault...

A few years ago, a some friends of mine went to San Francisco for a anniversary celebration for the Death Guild. One of the gifts they came home with was a CD collection of music from the party and other DG events. After having a listen to the collection, I was inspired to do something with a "harder edge" to it... this was the result.

Drumatic 3 by E-Phonic provides the amazing kick, while most of the synth sounds are coming from Rob Papen's Predator VST. Not a huge amount of tracks, but some very heavy tones.

Wonderwall - Audio/Video Remix

This is a remix of the song Wonderwall, by Oasis that I did about a year ago. I used to be a video guy in another life, so I took a stab at re-cutting the video to match my remix. My version is about 6:45, so I ended up having to re-use some footage to make it all work. The original song is original is about 87 BPM, and mine is 110 BPM - a more danceable tempo - so most of the video had to be speed-up to match. Enjoy.

Breezin (Wind Chill Mix)

Another one from the archives.... this one comes from way back in 2003.

Many many moons ago - when I first started remixing - I was a semi-regular on AcidPlanet.com (I'm still listed there under Analog Kid). At one point AP had a contest to remix some classic Jazz tracks, so I thought I would give it a try. Well to my shock and amazement, I ended up winning the contest with my Drum-N-Bass version of George Benson's hit, "Breezin."

So, without further ado.. here is the track. If you can, I would recommend headphones for this... there are some nice stereo FX at work.



I ended up winning a bunch of Loop CDs from Sony and a retro-styled all-in-one turntable!

Don't be a Vader Hater!

I've been listening to some old stuff and found a few goodies to post, so you just gotta bear with me. ;)

This started out as just goofing around with my daughter, a MIDI file of the Imperial March (Darth Vader's Theme) and a couple of VSTs. But as some of these things work out, the end result sounded pretty cool so I saved it and rendered it out.

So for your listening and dancing pleasure... the Imperial March - Skull Snaps Mix.



For you other VST geeks out there, this was played with the Roland/Edirol Orchestral VST, SuperWave P8 VST, Delay Lama VST, Smartelectronix Asynth VST and the Synth1 VST.

A Simple Lullaby

This is a little guitar and keyboard improvisation that ended up sounding (at least to me) like a Scots-Irish lullaby. For those that care, the guitar is in drop-D tuning. So kiss your love, partner or child and tell them Oíche mhaith, codladh sámh (Good night, sleep well).

Sorry, it looks like you can't do Flash.

Music for an Imaginary Film

So after my trip into Remix/Mash-up land with Miss Gaga, I swung my musical pendulum about as far the other direction as I think it can go.

So here is a music cue for an imaginary film. I'm not sure what type of scene this would go to, so I'll let you decide as you listen.

Paparazzi (Lady Gaga Vs. Eurythmics)

Another version of Paparazzi... what's all this then? Sometimes things work in strange ways, and you just have to go with it.

As I began playing around with the vocal tracks and instrumentation on the "Ear Worm Mix" of Paparazzi, I was suddenly struck by the fact that the melody and bass progression of the original song sounded almost exactly like the Eurythmics Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This). So I did what any good musician would do; I made a copy of the project I was working on and imported the song Sweet Dreams into my mix and looked to see if they really did match up as much as my ear told me they would.

It was a match made in audio heaven - with the help of Cubase and some fine editing and tweezing to the tracks. This is a Mash-up/Remix hybrid, in that I augmented a few parts with some doubling on synth, and added some additional drums.


I'm really pleased about this Mash-Mix, and I think it may be the best one I have done to date.

Enjoy!

Paparazzi (Ear Worm Mix)

There is a cunning trick that lies within many pop songs... the ability of the song to become an Ear Worm. What's an Ear Worm you say? It's a song, that despite your best efforts, gets stuck in your head and won't come out no matter how much you try.

A friend of mine recently was suffering from this affliction. And like all good friends, she decided to share the Ear Worm with me. Who knew pop music was so contagious... or dangerous!

So rather than curse her name and go mad, I decided to take this opportunity to remix a current song. For those of you who know me, you know that I tend to remix older tunes so this was chance to try out something new. Below is the result.



If this gets stuck in your head.. I'm sorry. You've been warned!

Ambient Light

This is a piece I did about a year ago mainly using Rob Papen's great Predator VST. After I did the song, I thought it needed a video to go with it... and this is what I came up with. All the images were fractals I made either in Fractint or Apophysis. Once I had enough of them, I brought them into Vegas and did the ole kaleidoscope trick. Predictable? Perhaps... but it looks nice. Enjoy.

Chung Kuo (Revisited)

For better or for worse, I'm (just) old enough to remember when "mainstream" analog synthesizers were new and mysterious. I can recall an early teenage afternoon at Draper's Music Center in Palo Alto (it's no longer there I'm afraid) making strange and wondrous sounds on a Yamaha CS-80, and marveling at the bulky landscape of sliders and push-buttons. And ever since that time, there's been a permanent place in my sonic heart for fat, analog synth sounds - Wendy Carlos, Isao Tomita and Vangelis providing the bulk of those tones.

Fast forward to today….

I recently purchased a great batch of samples of the Roland VP-330 Plus - one of the greatest Vocoders/String Synths - at Hollow Sun. For those of you who don't already know, besides the Vocoder section (listen to the solo on ELO's Mr. Blue Sky), the VP-330 was one of the main "goto" synths for lush string and faux choir pads. So when I loaded the samples up and hit that big chord... I was suddenly back in time; warm analog string tones pouring out of my speakers. And within a few minutes, I found myself playing the chords to Chung Kuo, by Vangelis. You remember the tune don't you… from the Mercury Lynx commercial from the early 80s? So once I had the chords down, I decide to attempt to recreate the entire song, and that's what I'm presenting to you below.



A few performance notes: This isn't meant to be a 100% note-for-note recreation, but I wanted to capture as much feel of the song as I could using similar tones and "signature" lines from the song. With the exception of the VP-330 samples, the bulk of the analog tones are coming from Applied Acoustics Systems Ultra Analog VST (8 instances). The melody line is played on Ichiro Toda's Synth1 VST.

I hope you enjoy this as much as I did making it.

And for those of you who have the VA-1 VST, here are the patches I created.

PolyKB Blues

Who doesn't love Blade Runner? If you don't... I don't wanna meet ya! ;)

So here is my meager tribute (aka blatant copy) to the music Vangelis wrote for Blade Runner. This one features nothing but the XILS-lab PolyKB VST (5 instances, with the exception of the drums).

So snuggle up to your favorite Replicant, pour a glass of wine and enjoy.


If you happen to have the PolyKB VST, drop me a note and I will send you my presets.

Mission Possible

Once in a blue moon, an opportunity comes up when I get to do some music for my real job. At a recent company function, we had to create a video that had a "Mission Impossible" theme. So rather than use the actual theme from the TV show, I did a quick redux of the movie version of the theme. If you have headphones, use them... some nice panning fx going on.

Sorry, it looks like you can't do Flash

Something Dark

Well it's been quite some time since I posted something new, so.... here is something new. A dark little piece that came out recently. I think it was the influence of How To Destroy Angels.

Enjoy.

Sorry, it looks like you can't do Flash

Smashing Mashup

Hello loyal listeners. This is another one pulled from the archives, dusted off, re-jigged and polished for your listening pleasure: Without You (Eminem vs. Yes). But, there is a small tale behind this one.. so humor me a moment. Sherman, set the wayback machine for 2004...

It was around this time that I became aware of the Mashup scene. Party Ben was in full swing on Live 105 in San Francisco and was churning out some great Mashups (if you don't already know Party Ben, go look him up). Having listened to a few tracks, and spent way too many hours making music with Sonic Foundry's Acid (they owned it before Sony bought them up), I thought I would try my hand at a Mashup.

I got a hold of the acapella to Eminem's "Without Me" and just started to goof around with it. As a joke, I looped a section of the 'pella with a section of "Owner of a Lonely Heart" by Yes, thinking that the two songs were so far a part, how silly it would be to join them.

Well... it worked. It worked really well! In fact, the more of the tracks I laid on top of each other, the more they clicked – they had same basic verse-chorus structure underneath. So after a few hours (or was it days) of work, some sample hunting and splicing, I had a really great Mashup.

Back to 2010.

I keep coming back to this mix and cleaning and polishing it every few years. For the 2010 mix, I've re-sliced some of the guitar loops, added some ADT to the lead vocals, adjusted a few levels and toned down the final master compressor.

To this day, this is still one of my favorite tracks I've done to date.

Enjoy!


Techie Stuff – for those that care.

The drum break and "orchestra hit" that Trevor Horn used on the original Yes track is from the song "Kool is Back" by Funk, Inc. I found a copy of the song and spliced those elements back in to the track along side the originals, but without the odd filtering that Horn did.

Trevor Horn was at one time or another a member of The Buggles, The Art of Noise and Yes. He also has produced just about all of Seal's albums.

Ch-Check It Out

Well. It seems that almost 3 months has gone by and nothing new posted. Life for me has been a bit "chaotic" to say the least. I won't bore you with the details, so on to the music, yes?

This is one from the archives. Some time ago, The Beastie Boys decided to upload many of the acappella versions of their songs to their website - http://www.beastieboys.com/ - so I took a spin at remixing "Ch-Check It Out" in an somewhat old school style.

So lace up your Adidas and pull out that track suit. Here comes the BASS! Enjoy.