Colder Nights

A few days ago I got an e-mail from tumblr with a picture of a birthday cake and a message saying my massively underused blog had been online for two years and a suggestion for me to share the joy. So, I thought, yeah... I'll do that, I'll challenge myself to make something, at least 2 minutes long and have it uploaded and posted to the blog by the end of Sunday (today!)

At first I didn't get started and I felt like I'd have to do a cheap bail out, then last night I sat down with a soundbyte of godzilla's roar from the trailer of the 2014 movie and one thing lead to another, this happened and I'm sort of proud even though it's not a masterpiece by any standard. It's a fun idea at least and I feel like I nailed a few important pieces down.

I thought I'd fail, but it turned out good in the end.


The roar is owned by Toho and WB I guess, and Akira Ifukube Erik Aadahl did a great job on it I might add. The melody and chord progression is based on pieces of Godzilla's theme in the 2014 movie originally created by Alexandre Desplat.

If you want to use parts of this for your own project, please do give credit to those who deserve it. :)

SundayChallenge - GodzillaHardstyle

A few years ago, a friend told me to try my hand at remixing the theme from the third Fast and Furious movie. Originally I had no idea how to go about it. So it's been sitting for a really long time with no progress.

At some point I got some synths and a short sample together to make the melody and every few weeks I toyed around with that, making some simple rhythms and stuff with the main melody.

Then suddenly a couple of weeks ago it all fell together and I got this result. A result I'm pretty proud of, especially seeing as I've had nothing really finished for something like a year.

I find it a fitting birthday gift for myself, to share this with everyone. :)
The artwork was done by me. Both taking the photo and editing it.

Tokyo Drift (Aikho Remix)

Teriyaki Boys - Tokyo Drift (Aikho Remix)

So, I've been doing some cleaning on my storage drive and I stumbled over this experiment turned full-length track. It's a simple one, but at least for me knowing where I have the melody and name from, it does mean something. I just thought I'd share the sound with you rather than keep it to myself.

Within a couple of years of me starting to make music I watched the movie "The Cave" (I think, also SPOILERS) that's about a parasite invading things like parasites does in order to in the end get out of the cave.

At that time my dad had also bought me a couple of sample packs and one of those happened to contain the main, base version of the melody in this track. Back then I also used a sample from the movie where the survivors of the cave, of which at least one was infected by the parasite said they think it wants to get out of the cave.


TL;DR I reimagined a song I made a long time ago, sometime I can't remember and I thought I'd share what I rediscovered today!

Feel free to download as long as that lasts and share it with your friends if you think they'll like it. I love it when people like what I've made, it gives me all the warm and fuzzy feelings. :)

Breaks

Parasite

I've recently started looking more deeply into what parts of genres inspire me, the roots of my inspiration if you will. In this track I dug into Hard House and thereby the rules or limits I set myself for this composition is based on what one often hears in a Hard House track.

Long rhythmical intro, shorter but just as rhythmical outro, Thumping 4/4 beat throughout sans the breakdown and chorus introduction in the middle. Heck, I even added some mild simulated analogue distortion to the volume peaks and a very low amplitude bit of vinyl crackle to it to make it sound more like it would in a club in the late 90s to early 00s!

The mad as hell monologue is a speech from the 1976 movie "Network".

The picture is one I took myself on one of my most recent trips to London.

Mad as Hell

Mad As Hell (Original Mix)

Ever since I finished Beryllium I've been going about producing this kind of music in the wrong way. I've tried to build a track like I do with other genres. That usually doesn't work and has in fact led me into an art block.

This passed weekend I sat down with different thoughts in mind though and I went about making this tune in more or less the same way I did Beryllium.

I did however add a sub bass this time, cause I thought that more fitting to the overall feel of the track than chopped loop basslines like I did the last time.

Magnesium

The first track I've finished in something like two years.

This one was inspired mainly by the wave of Bass House I've been listening to in the week or so before starting. Playing with hat loops and samples and automating volumes to change the rhythms into what I wanted and then I started playing with the rest of the track.

I coupled that with a bunch of bass pre-sets from both A.N.A and Massive tweaked into the same kind of audio signature I felt was right. Used far more chorus both in the synths and in the effect chain than usual in this one to get them wide enough for my liking while using FL Studio's 3xOSC to make a separate sine/triangle/white noise sub to keep out of that box.

The vocal samples in this one are cut from the rehabilitation review scene with Morgan Freeman in Shawshank Redemption, lengthwise they just fit very well with what I wanted to have and although my current problem is my tonsils not cooperating rather than prison and there aren't really any parallels to draw there, I still felt that with recovering from sickness and getting back into music production this is kind of a rehab of my own as well, therefore I though it fit well and that's how I decided on this title.

It's a little bit longer and built up a bit differently to most tracks of this genre, but with the vocals having things to say I kind of feel like this was the right choice and it still didn't get overly long.

The master was done by my friend over at Studio Nubdal https://www.studionubdal.com/
The artwork was done by me, both taking the photo and editing it.

Rehab

My inspiration here came from listening to a track on the album "The best of Toolroom 2017" on my way home from work. A track came on, "The Truth" by Stonez and Namazi, I got goose bumps when the choir came in. I loved it, and wanted to make a track with a choir and I had just the choir for it too.

I got home and sat down with a beat I had started on a couple of days prior, imported the song Transformation from the Brother Bear OST, seeing as that is probably my favourite animated movie and it has a beautiful choir piece performed by the Bulgarian Women's Choir, that had to go into the track.

Day one was spent cutting up and processing the choir parts in a way that made it sound the way I wanted with the beat I had. Day two was used to build out the track's layout and add in the melodic elements. Then started the days and days of small changes and additions until I today feel that it's finished to the point where I want to share it.

I decided to put up a Radio-ish Mix, for those that prefer less DJ-intros in their music, but since I built it up like a track that should be playable by a DJ (if I ever decide to get into that again I guess), there's also the Original Mix to check out. The differences aren't very big outside of the intro being cut by almost 2 minutes and the outro being basically half for the Radio Mix.

The mastering this time around was done by me, but still thanks to Roar (www.studionubdal.com) for the valuable feedback and tips during all stages of this project.
The artwork was put together and edited by me, photo is © www.robvanhout.net, used with permission.

Transformation

Transformation (Original Mix)

Transformation (Radio Mix)

Way too long ago I asked Roar, a friend of mine, if he had the stems to A World Ablaze by Aphzelia, the band he used to play with. He did and he sent them to me, but I sat on them forever without doing anything, really. I wanted to remix it, but not how.

Finally I've figured out how.

I took some inspiration from artists like phaseone and other riddim-y dubstep folks (I've been listening to quite a bit of riddim lately) and Subscape (Because I've always enjoyed that 4 to the floor kind of melodic dubstep he makes and with the chorus in this track sounding a bit more uplifting and melodic than the rest I think it was a good fit).
Then scraped together some influences and sound-design ideas from more EDM-y Trap and Dubstep.

So, with the foundation decided upon and built, it took about a month of working followed by bouncing my ideas off Roar which wrote the original to finally end up ended up with this. A blend of Riddim-like Dubstep and melodic Dubstep as well as Metal to the point of including a breakdown with a lower BPM than the rest of the track (146 dropped to 140 for the last part of the breakdown).

The master was done by my friend over at Studio Nubdal: https://www.studionubdal.com
The cover is and edit by me of their original "I"-EP's cover.

You can check out and buy the original song here, https://aphzelia.bandcamp.com/track/a-world-ablaze as well as on your favourite streaming service.

Aikho

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