Almost There With New Concept's Remix

Yes, I am almost there, rounding the bend, jumping the cliff... close. It's been an interesting experiment working with someone else's vocald. I've been reinventing, restructuring, re-everything. I can say that the remix does not sound anything at all like their original release of Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. From the beginning I purposely avoided listening to the original so as not to be too influenced by it. I honestly haven't listened to it since I first started working on it about a month ago. I can't say I remember what it sounds like - is that awful? How ironic would it be if I were to listen to it right now and find that it's not that far from it a I think? Oh the trauma! Anywho... I won't listen to it, until I am finished. It was a promise I made to my muses :)

Ironically, all I did use that was provided was some of the vocals, both lead and background vocals. I had intended merging some of their original instrumentation into it, but it just never came to be. I found a melody line and chord progression within their vocals that originated with the backing vocals initially and went from there. Heavens and hurricanes by the time I was two thirds through composing and arranging I had managed to have almost 40 tracks! I've since pared it down considerably and I'm hovering at 2o somethingish. at the moment.

I've developed some issues with the Alesis Fusion as of late and I am not happy with it at all. As wonderful as it can be, I have to have it looked at because their appears to be a short in the volume rotary knob, not to mention some unresolved OS issues that are driving me to the brink. Needless to say, it's become one huge and heavy midi board and that's it. I also found out that Alesis has ceased production of it and that is a shame. Nuff said.

I am awaiting with gleeful anticipation for the updated Mac OS, Snow Leopard and also the recently released upgrade, Logic 9. I shall have both delivered to my door Friday and I will sit waiting in anticipation to meet the delivery man at the door in my fuzzy night robe and bunny slippers.

Logic may help me resolve some time stretching issues I have with some of the vocals. Yes, they work with the tempo relatively well, but I would like to change the stress of certain lyrics or syllables and currently I haven't been able to do that - Logic 9 will allow me to do that. Yes Yes Yes!

Until next time!

New Concept Remix Taking Shape

I'm working on the remix and it is beginning to take shape. It spoke and said, "let me be down tempo retro 80's influenced ethereal." So, I sat and thought about it for a tad and agreed. I'm using one of my favorite sound styles which I've managed to incorporate in many pieces in some form or another - phasing and flanging. But in this case, a more retro traditional string synth phasing - it just drips for me.

The piece is in a roughed out composition point and has a definite melodic structure, yet it differs quite drastically from the original composition by it's creator New Concept.

More as more becomes.....

A Work Day

Not too much going on today that requires massive details LOL. I'll be working on the dub/remix for New Concept this afternoon as soon as my coffee kicks in then off to see Julia and Juliet with some friends. It's a rainy, thunderboomer kind of day and the perfect one for concentrating on production.

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.

Games Without Frontiers Remix

Well I'm nearing the end of remixing Peter Gabriels 1980 release of "Games Without Frontiers". It was a great educational process as well as joy to work with one of my favorite songs by PG. I won't say that I'll have it ready for uploading to the RealWorld site for access in the next week or two. It's usually at this stage I set things aside for a bit and then go back to them to fine tune, mix and master, so I hope to have it up there within the month.

Games Without Frontiers Remix

Sadly I missed the deadline for the remix competition of Peter Gabriel's song Games Without Frontiers (only one of my many faves from him). Unfortunately for me, I found out less than a week before the deadline and as it turned out, the deadline was earlier than I realized as the judging portion of the competition was included in the final date. I am going to pick it up again and continue to finish it. I had been a bit reticent about it since I have so many other pieces of my own I would like to complete and I was afraid that missing the deadline would mean I would not be able to make it available for listening (as that IS the point isn't it? LOL! Well I found out that despite the competition has passed, I will still be able to upload a remix to the Real World site and then embed a link to it so others can stream it if they wish.

I would never make it available otherwise for fear of infringing on copyright and I have oogles amount of respect and admiration for Peter Gabriel to ignore that.

So, when it is finished I will keep all posted and provide a link so you can listen to my interpretation.

Peace,

Anthony

Peter Gabriel "Games Without Frontiers" Remix Attempt

Peter Gabriel through his organization "RealWorld" is offering his song "Games Without Frontiers" to be remixed in honor of this Summer's X Games.

PG has been a tremendous influence on many artists, in many genres. He has been a major influence of mine since I was a young teenager. I can honestly say it was a direct result of his experimental and unique approach to music that introduced me to more eclectic tastes in music.

Real Word has made the individual tracks of the original recording available for download to be used in remixing. Everything from PG's vocals to the individual lead lines and bass parts.

So I've taken the challenge and have begun working on my own rendition of his song as of last night. Unfortunately the contest deadline is July 15th, and I only found out two days ago that it began in early June! I cannot say I may make the deadline in time, but at the very least I'm going to give me best to honor the song and pay tribute to one of my all time artistic hero's.

I have never really considered doing a remix of an existing work aside from perhaps recreating some songs to play for my own enjoyment. So my approach to this is part experiment and part bliss! This was the first Gabriel song I ever heard. I fell in love with it the first time I listened to it while waiting in my mom's car as she ran into the grocery store.

I am purposely staying away from remixing this song into a high tempo drum and bass type trance mix because that isn't the type of work I do. However, I do wish to stay pretty true to the original melody structure and rhythm but in my own style.

Well that is all on that for now. I made serious headway late last night (until 4am) and I hope to have as productive a day or evening today as well.

Wish me well!

Peace,

Anthony Fasolo

Hmmm Technology

So, I'm trying to figure out how to get this very nice music player from ILike to work on my website, but I'm having a terror of a time with it. It seems to work lovely with Blogger, but not liking IWeb all that much. I must be doing something wrong. I will fuss some more tomorrow, and maybe - just maybe finish remixing an older piece that . . .well. . . needed remixing. Ahh, I'm sooooo behind.

Untitled

Finding herself amongst murky dense thickets, Lilly is bewildered. A gentle mist rises from the earth enveloping her body, it's moist nothingness causing her gauzy gown of silk to cling oh so tightly to her young tender flesh.

On the horizon the final glow of dusk fades to black. Lilly is alone.

She reaches through the darkness grasping for anything to guide her through the scratchy brambles only to clutch emptiness.

A desperate but inaudible cry escapes her trembling lips as she pushes on.

From below, deep within the bowels of the muddy soggy earth her utterance is heard

I've Been Selected as July's Featured Experimental Artist on MyStage!

This is real nice. I struggle constantly with the direction I take with my work, and which direction it will go and this was a nice surprise for me.

Thank you MyStage!

Anthony

THIS IS A TEST

THIS IS A TEST AND ONLY A TEST OF THE EMERGENCY BLODCASTING SYSTEM!

Hmmm A Thought

I was just listening to some work I've done, particularly some of the pieces on the site and it hit me that they all would benefit from a percussive rhythm of sorts. A thought. I have an aversion to "beats", so that concept hardly enters into the mix, but maybe something else.

Beautiful Storm

So I'm sitting in my living room and there is this huge and wonderful thunder storm taking place. I love it, and hopefully it will rain enough that I won't have to water my garden tomorrow :).

I'm working on a few different compositions at the moment, one that is a bit complex in production which always seems to take much longer. I never have one single way of putting these pieces together and this one is no different from any of the others in that respect. I work from the outside in, or inside out, or end to beginning or beginning to end etc.,

I hope to finish one of these soon.

Hartmann - Neuron

Oh my stars! I received this post today from SwitchedonSynthesizer today from Thalassa who posted a demonstration on the Hartmann - Neuron and oh my stars!!!! I love this machine! Well... it's no longer in production and very expensive if you're lucky to find a used one. There is no way I can describe the raunchy crunchiness of this thing - you must listen for yourself! The link is here.

It Is Finished

I've finished a project I had been spending too much time on. It is called The Dreamer's Guardian. I've posted it to my Myspace band site in full rather than a short snippet on here. It may take awhile to appear there as Myspace processes things rather slowly.

I am immensely relieved that it is finished. It is the first fully complete piece I've done in quite awhile. It was an exercise in frustration at times, fear at others and down right panic as well. This was a rather heavy piece and I would walk away from it from time to time to clear my head which is one of the reasons it took longer than I had hoped.

I struggled with its title for quite some time. I had wanted to work with drum programming hand drums and creating a more indigenous sound. As it progressed the mood seemed like warriors marching off to battle - but what battle? Yet with that in mind it's repetitious nature would on occasion induce a mild trance like state of mind. My mind would enter into a lull of sorts as if skirting the edges of sleep and I would have to shake myself awake to pay attention to what I was doing. With it's marching rhythm and deep resonating bass line I decided on the title as it is.

I hope you enjoy and please send your observations!

Anthony

Musings

I'm standing in front of the bathroom mirror, shaving and applying my daily moisturizer to ensure that all remains smooth and creviceless and the mind starts pondering things.

Although I am still in the final stages of one piece, I had to move onto something else for a break. I began a somewhat hypnotic piece that began with a fairly tight delayed repeating arpeggiated line running over a rumbling drone I had recorded some time ago. I was wondering throughout this how to apply what is created in a static and controlled comfy studio like environment to a more improvisational on the fly performance circumstance. There are so many directions to take with that idea and this is something I need to seriously consider.

For instance, how much is meticulously learned ver batim and then played exactly as recorded or how much is simply pre-programmed backings as so many Live PA's do? I am unable to answer this for myself as of yet. I do spend a great deal of time constructing pieces that are meant to be pretty static works on their own. How to apply them to live performance is a completely different task that I am a bit perplexed about.

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.

Gosh I Am Sloooooooooooow!

Gosh I am slow. I've been working on this one piece forever and three days! Holidays and a minor neck injury are not helping none. I spent a few hours this afternoon and fought with some midi issues and then reworked some small parts that I wasn't originally happy with. I'm wondering just how long it will be before I finally make it to the final mix. I'm prettty much settled on the arrangement, but of course I've come up with some more details that I may add. Hmmmmmffffffff. I so frustrate myself.

I'm beginning another total rework of my main site as the one that exists now at www.anthonyfasolo.com reflects the three pieces that were done for a final project and are in my opinion very dated. I will still include them on the new site as audio record of my past work.

I am seriously thinking of incorporating spoken vocals in the future. That means a mic and a voice - neither of which I have. We shall see.

Rearrangine and the folly Logic.

Well I've struggled with this one piece for months. Simply because I couldn't stand to listen to it anymore LOL, but I committed myself to finishing it because I've put so much time into it already. Well, I've been arranging some parts in Logic all afternoon - and Logic flakes out. It is having issues with midi data on one of the tracks and is missing notes strangely. Soooooooooo I've got to shelve this project for a bit until I can sit an go through all the midi data and sift out the problem. Just when I thought I was so close....

Updated Artist Site

Just a quick note to let all know that I've updated my artist site to better reflect my current direction into sound work and ambient electronic music. Please visit - I'll be back.

Thank you