If anybody needs a kickstart…

…Kickstart.com is the place to go.

Sounds very interesting. I just may use it for future (or possibly current) projects.

Progress

I’ve reached the halfway mark, i.e. about 23′ in.

It’s interesting how for this project I need to not compose in my “usual” style, yet there are moments where my voice just has to be heard. Those of you reading this who know of my choral works, either from singing them or hearing them, will understand when you hear it what I mean.

Much as any artist’s “voice” will speak, no matter the form, I guess my voice will be heard regardless of how many filters I put on between myself and the listener.

To click or not to click

One of the first questions I need to answer when I’m writing something, especially when it comes to writing to picture, is the target tempo. Most of the time I’ll set up my sequencer’s metronome to sound while I’m recording–that way I’m somewhat close to the beats and/or beat divisions I need to hit. With this album, it’s much more circumspect. The intent of the album it not to be a certain tempo or to hit a certain beat; in fact, I’d almost say the intent is to become timeless. Hence, I’ve decided to write the entire thing without engaging a metronome.

This is a more difficult method of composing, in a way. I don’t have the comfort of being able to “fix” timing issues by having my sequencer align everything to a tempo grid. No, I’ll have to do it by hand. Yet part of me thinks I won’t “fix” anything at all because the tempo was felt at the time. I’ve grown to trust my instincts on a lot of things, and this is certainly one of them.

It’s a different beast. Kinda like trapeze without a net.

Monday woes

After a long, dark–well, not actually dark since it was sunny & warm–weekend, it’s time for me to get back to work.

While web development pays the day-to-day bills, music is what I want to do most. It calls me all the time, yet I either ignore it or figure it’s something I’ll get to “later.” Invariably, that means “tomorrow” no matter what time of day it is.

I have a bit more impetus now to get the massage CD done. So I think I’ll work on that today.

On providing scores

I have a fairly large back catalog of choral music that I wrote several years ago. It is an ensemble form that I plan on revisiting in the future. However, those scores do me no good sitting unused in the computer.

So I’m going to release them. All of them.

It’ll take some time, going through the scores a bit. Almost all of them are in Finale file format, but I transitioned to Sibelius a long time ago and can’t translate them. The Finale Reader lets me basically open them up and print them out as PDFs. So there might be some editorial problems. If a score is terribly out of whack, I may just re-make it in Sibelius. But I don’t want to do that–it takes too bloody long, for one thing, and part of me wants to move on to the stereotypical “bigger and better things.”

So keep an eye out for your favorite (or soon to be favorite) score to show up. No ETA at the moment, just know that it’s on the table.

Massage CD Demo

So my friend Will’s mother has recommended / asked for a CD of music for massage, as, from what I understand, she owns and operates a massage parlor in Hawaii. We crunched the numbers this morning and found it fairly reasonable to produce 25 CDs that would be shipped there, not only for her own use in the shop but also to sell to her customers.

I like this idea. Getting my name out in the world at large is my goal right now, and anything which can be used to further that is certainly possible.

Today I started “writing” this album. I picture the need for something relaxing & soothing, so I probably won’t compose nearly as much as I’ll just start playing and letting what flows come out. It’s a very hand-wavy description of a fairly complicated process. I’m reminded of the single-panel cartoon I saw of two scientists at a blackboard examining an equation, in the middle of which is written, “Miracle occurs here”, where one is saying to the other, “We might want to be a bit more specific in step 2.”

I like movement and change in the music I write, so a project of this kind–where it needs to be, literally, meditative, is a challenge. At this point I’m getting around that by starting with little two-minute vignettes. Well, maybe not so much a vignette but I basically play around with a sound for two minutes before moving on to another one, hopefully seamlessly.

This first bit is all Omnisphere–I’ll be using it heavily on this project. It’s got mad skillz in this area. Mad tonez, too.

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Hope Springs

This is the other track I created for Spectrasonics’ Omnisphere remix context.

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Around the World

Below is a track I created for Spectrasonics’ Omnisphere contest.

I had to get the actual tool after playing with the demo sounds; ’tis a marvelous thing indeed.

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