Longest Road (Sandro Remix)

Jazz ballad,  From rehearsal in early Oct. 2016.

No Reason to be Concerned (Fifth Aspect)

I remade the iconic "Moar Ghosts n' Stuff" track from Deadmau5 as a technical exercise. 

Here's what I learned.  Although the song structure is simple, the complexity is in Deadmau5's production technique.  First, he starts with meaty, juicy and very expressive synth patches.  I am guessing these came from analog hardware or even modular synths that he uses.  

By using thick, warm expressive synth lines, he can get away with simple musical elements but still make them sound very good and complex.  For example, the bass is just one note essentially, but it is a huge, fat, expressive note.  I could not effectively duplicate it. 

Joel also takes great care in mastering and mixing, and each part is painstakingly adjusted and cropped to perfection so as not to step on each other's toes sonically.  I didn't put as much effort into this as he did, I'm sure.  I used Ozone 3 on the master bus and some EQ on the mixer channels.  

I managed to recreate Joel's synth sounds using Sylenth, a very good VA synth.  The organ is from Logic Pro 8.  The strings are EXS24 in Logic.  The arrangement and mastering was done in Ableton Live 8.  The drum sounds are from Deadmau5 XFER. 

I learned that by giving each drum sound its own track, you can create a lot more "slam" in the beat and more "air" between parts.  You can also modulate a specific part of the beat without affecting the whole thing.  This is really important.  

All of Deadmau5 music has a very warm, present sound.  I think he must use very high quality, hardware mastering gear to impart tube warmth and very crisp, precise compression and limiting.  All of his tracks slam hard, but it is never annoying or distracting.  He's obviously an audiophile about this aspect of his productions.  

All in all, I learned a lot from this exercise that I can apply to my own work.  The biggest lesson is the importance of starting with really great sounds, . 

Moar Ghosts Remake

A chillout track with an eastern feel.  Inspired by Dzihan and Kamien. 

Written in Logic Pro 8. 

Sits in Sapphires

Moody downtemp track.  Like most of my stuff, it could be movie music I suppose.  

Doublethink

A dance track in the style of Deadmau5.  As my music teacher told me "you have to imitate before you can innovate."  

Made using Ableton Live 8, Native Instruments, DCAM synths, some Sample Magic samples, Sylenth1, and mastered with Ozone 5.  

Livemau5

A beat-driven EDM track.  Although I love melodically driven songs, I also enjoy it when a track is driven by the syncopation and complexity of the beat.  That's the effect I was trying to achieve here.  There are some "five on four" grooves going on, see if you can hear them. 

Five on Four

A remastered version of Peter's recording of the Fantasie Impromptu.  Originally recorded in mono, with a cheap microphone, I was able to fix the audio to some extent and add professional quality convolution reverb, so it sounds like it was recorded in a concert hall.  

Fantasie impromptu

A rough master of my collaborative track with my friend Paul Aziz.  Paul is on guitar and bass, and he did the arrangement.  I am on alto sax, and I did the mix and master.  

We used Ableton Live and Ableton synths for the production.  Master was done with Izotope Ozone 5 Pro.  

electroneuro