I Will be Featured Amongst Other Artists on Doug Lynner’s World of Noise 1st Anniversary Show

Dear Friends;

I've just been contacted by Doug Lynner of World of Noise Radio Show to inform me that my piece Dreamer's Guardian has been selected to be featured with other artists on his 1st Anniversary Show on http://www.flashbackalternatives.com, an Internet radio station based in New Jersey, USA.

There will be an online chat taking place with Doug Lynner hosting, which will include many of the artists featured. I intend to be online to take part during both October 8th shows.

If you wish to listen to the show as it airs, you can visit the site http://www.flashbackalternatives.com and listen to the stream from there and if you wish to take part in the chat all you need do is login/register as well.

The show Airs on October 8th, 2009 at 6pm Pacific time/9pm Eastern time (US) and 9pm Pacific time/ October 9th, 12am Eastern (US).

The show will also air again on October 11th, 2009 at 6am Pacific time/9am Eastern (US)

After these original three broadcasts on the station the show will be made available for on-demand streaming at the show’s blog located on http://neatnetnoise.com/

I hope you can tune in to listen and maybe drop a line as well!

Peace,

Anthony

Working on Remix for German Pop Group - New Concept

Hullo and greetings on this fine (is it summer?) day!

I was recently contacted by New Concept, a German electro pop group about remixing one of their releases, The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter. They had heard my release Dreamer's Guardian recently and liked the feel of it.

The song is a great pop song, very tight and well produced and here I'll be dissecting it and piecing back little by little something a little less poppy (perhaps). I love pop and I can easily go down that direction, but since the song already exists originally in that manner, I will instead be toning it down somewhat and finding a middle ground between the obscure and the accessible.

I received all the tracks for it the day before yesterday and I am now spending time getting to know them as they exist divorced from the original recording. I decided that I would only listen to the original once or twice and then not listen to it again until I rough out a concept of my own based on what they have given me. I don't want to be to heavily influenced by the original song structure, or overall sound. As it is, I am only currently using some of the vocals and backing guitar lines to arrive at a different feel and then creating new instrumentals separate (or layered with originals) as I move along.

It is such a flattering thing to have someone hear your work and then ask if you would do something with one of their own pieces. Thank you Marcel and New Concept for letting me have that honor.

Ok Finally a Small Sample!

Well, I've finally arrived at a point were I am pretty much satisfied with the arrangement of this piece. I'll mostly be spending time adding a little embellishments and texture (maybe) and then do a final mix. But here is a 35 second sample of it.

To sample click the image or here.

So a little behind it all. When I began this months ago, I had been thinking about how heavily influenced many artists had been by tribal drumming and indigenous peoples music. Personally, I was always excited about Peter Gabriel's work along this vein. The largest obstacle to date has been the inclusion of drumming and rhythms. Of course I have no drums, nor anyone to record and I had to rely on some loops (which I dislike) as well as create layers of drum tracks using Logic's Ultrabeat drum machine audio unit. I learned much about this in the process. There is still work to be done with some of the drumming on this piece, as I need to make it less static (thus, only a sample for now). Any looping I've used is minimal and relegated to the background to lend some fill and a sense of more drumming then there actually is. Layering, layering layering! This is primarily how I approach things anyway. I layer and layer and layer.

Droning instruments such as the Indian, tanpura as well as Scottish bagpipes are what I was aiming for regarding the evolving pads in the background. I have no interest in recreating those instruments, only the sense of what those instruments lend to a piece. This is what I love about synths - creating or editing sounds to bring them in line with exists in the real world, but not exactly replicating them.

Lately, I've been very attracted to how early analog synths were used in popular music. By todays standards their arrangements might be considered very simple and primitive. However, I really apprecate the lead sounds used by ELP, or Tony Banks (Genesis) and of course Pink Floyd's, Dark Side of the Moon. There is a bit of those elements within this piece regarding the lead parts.

That is it for now regarding the concepts. I hope you like the sample. Please let me know what you feel.