January 4, 2016: This is just a little demo from what will most likely appear on the next EP that hopefully will come out this year. I wanted to refrain from releasing a lick of this and save it for an album release or something but I’m far too proud of it to stash it away until then. You can view the tentative lyrics for it on the Soundcloud link. This is really one of my favourite songs I’ve ever written and I’m really excited to finish it up. I’m also really happy I’m getting better at combining electric guitar into this electronic stuff. Sometimes it’s more of a challenge than you’d suspect.
December 14, 2015: I like this tune a lot. This was my final project for my course at Berklee, and it’s composed in the genre of House, but I added a disco flare. This tune is absolutely going to develop into something more – most likely a collaboration with a real singer. For this project, I really focused on chords and their progressions and different inversions and how they affect one another. I hadn’t really dove into this aspect of chording yet so I was really happy to be meddling around. Really, there’s only two parts outside the intro: the main drag and then a little relief section about a third of the way in. House is generally fairly repetitive at the core, a la Daft Punk, but with different moving parts around the core. I also challenged myself not to use Maschine in this. I wanted to get more familiar with NI’s Battery and this project gave me a good intro it. The other aspect of the tune I really focused on was the melody and counter-melody. Whenever I designed them before, I would just fart stuff out and hope it would fit and get frustrated when it wouldn’t. Now I know a little more about fitting melodies with other melodies, how to introduce them, etc. I’m super happy with the results of this one, but it is not done. Expect a version of this with vocals sometime in 2016.
November 28, 2015: Between assignments for school, I distracted myself with this little number. It’s short and sweet. I don’t know how much more there is to it. I like the fat revolving bass riff, the descending synth line and then the arpeggio in the last section that I arranged with Xfer’s Cthulhu. This was also my first time really experimenting with some sounds in the Arturia V Collection bundle. All new ear candy in this.
November 16, 2015: This is my second project for my term at Berklee. The last few weeks we focused on Trance music and started with analyzing the form of other trance songs to build a rough layout of ours. I have never done more automation on a song than this one, making it a great workout. Truth be told, this was my third attempt at writing a trance song. I really struggled with the right feel of it. I told my instructor that I was having a tough time and he told me to relax and think about characters for the song. In the end, I modelled the song after how a friend of mine makes me feel: uplifting, motivated, growing stronger, etc. This song is called COCO.
October 25, 2015: Here’s the first of a few projects I’ll have to do for my course at Berklee. For the last three weeks, we’ve focused on drum and bass music and the elements that make for a good DnB tune. Don’t think of this as a finished song, but as an appetizer before the main course
September 17, 2015: Karver Hitchcock and I have once again teamed up for a song. This one is called State of the Obvious. Like Posture, Karver did the vocals and guitar and I did the synths and drums. It’s always a blast collaborating online.
September 9, 2015: Well this was the most fun thing I ever did. TWRP had a remix contest. I procrastinated until like 2 weeks before it was due and then locked myself indoors and finished it. It was a wonderful challenge. I didn’t win the remix but I truly had so much fun making what I did. You can download this one here:[purchase_link id=”416″ style=”button” color=”blue” text=”Download”]
September 5, 2015: This one is called The Frost. It’s just another quick little demo that I made in a jiffy. I like the feeling of this a lot and could quite possibly become a collaboration song with a friend. The sound of the synths and how they move in and out were really inspired by Caribou’s album Our Love.
August 17, 2015: Here’s an exclusive ditty that can be found nowhere’s else but this very webpage. This is a demo I’m really excited about called The Narrows. I had a general thought for this song but my drummer Andrew aided me quite a bit, giving the song better direction. Then he left and I had a bunch of whisky and then 2:42 and beyond happened. You can go ahead and ignore that. It’s kind of interesting… in a “what’s going on here” kind of way.
August 8, 2015: Here’s another instalment from The Floor series. In these, I do no second take, no over dubs, no additional treatments after recording. I press record once and I bounce it down as soon as I do. For this one, I’m using Maschine to program all the drums; the Bass Station II for a synth sound, also linked to a VI inside of Logic; another keyboard sending MIDI data to NI Massive.
July 31, 2015: Here’s a demo I’m working on titled Phantom. This is a little grungier than most songs I’m working on currently, but damn it’s cool so far.
July 29, 2015: This song is called Arcade At Midnight but truth be told, it’ll probably end up being called Arcade @ Midnight. This one reminds me a lot of Jipugtug (see below) because of it’s video game-esque upbeat dance feel.
July 20, 2015: Here’s the complete playlist for PGEP arranged on SoundCloud. If you like this, please take a sec to download it 🙂
June 20, 2015: This one is called Jipugtug. Jipugtug is what the Mi’kmaq people called the Halifax Harbour before it was anglicized to Chebucto. This song is one of the first songs I started in Logic and it currently under construction but shall be super lively when the times comes.
March 20, 2015: Qualia. Philosophically, qualia can refer to different things depending who you ask. I relate most with Daniel Dennett who ascribes qualia with four different properties but most “ineffable”. Ineffable means that an experience can not be communicated or apprehended by any means other than direct experience. It’s some weird shit. As soon as I wrap my head around qualia, I’ll probably have the song nearly finished.
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