Classical favorites

Part of Luna Park's Light Show in Sydney. Hope you enjoy!

https://open.spotify.com/album/07QxfyuHfQ0zXyHIaACWAC?si=ZDpc9l7jQu6kh5aVYeFeOw

Overture to Olympus

This piece was written in a single night. I was listening to some Jonsi and decided to just sit down and write something out. I haven't been able to do that with school and work eating up my schedule so I went and created this piece. I wanted to keep it simple, upbeat, and short. So there are a few instruments that I incorporated into this piece I haven't done in the past. First instrument is the kick drum from my new EZ Drummer Indie Folk kit from ToonTracks. It's a Ludwig kick drum so it has an incredibly tight feel to it along with the tom that accompanies it. On top of that I also brought in a Dulcimer to bring another tone of a plucked instrument even though a dulcimer uses mallets. The piano is from 8dio called the 1928 Legacy Steinway Scoring Piano. Seriously, if you want a beautiful scoring sound from a piano, definitely grab the 1928 Legacy. Anyway, as for the influence, Jonsi's "Go Do" soundtrack just features an incredible collection of some of the most powerful music out there, namely his orchestration with woodwind instruments, hence the flutes in my piece. Enough talk, go and enjoy!

H O M E

Track 8 from SEASONS

Visit www.TonyAndersonMusic.com to learn more about my story, my work, my process and what's next.

To acquire a license for this work, visit www.themusicbed.com. SEASONS will be available in its entirety on the Music Bed's catalogue by April 22, 2014.

Expect an iTunes and Spotify release by April 21 and enjoy the free streaming here on Soundcloud :)

Bass | Carson Childers
Guitars | Curt Vernon
Strings | Liz Navarra
Vocals | Tony Anderson & Liz Navarra
Drums | Jeremy Weldon
Mix| Ryan Ceola @ Haxton Road Studios
Mastered by Emily Lazar at The Lodge, assisted by Rich Morales

Buy on iTunes

Grace

DRIVE

This was written for the 8Dio Stand Out Contest. Hope you enjoy!

© 2014 Zachary Horner. All Rights Reserved.

8Dio Stand Out Contest Submission: "Cradle" By "Zachary Horner"

"Let My Love Be Heard" by Jake Runestad. Recorded by the Bob Cole Chamber Choir at Cal State Long Beach. Jonathan Talberg, conductor. More info: jakerunestad.com/store/let-my-love-be-heard

Let My Love Be Heard (SATB choir) by Jake Runestad

So, it's been quite some time since the last piece I've done (The Farmstead), however on my vacation in NY, doing my nightly searches of orchestrated covers of popular songs I stumbled upon a few pieces that were ok......an orchestrated cover of Owl City's "Fireflies" and some others.....the only orchestrated cover I actually was super impressed with was The City of Prague Philharmonic's performance of Coldplay's "Yellow". So I decided to take it upon myself to do a cover of one of my favourite Coldplay songs - Fix You. So after returning back from my vacation, that night I began my project......almost a week later, here it is. So as I always say, this is by far my favourite piece I've done. Everything from the strings to the woodwinds to the brass, everything just kind of meshed well.....Earlier this week, I was in a sticky situation deciding if I wanted to bring in the drumkit and the bass since I had the electric guitar featured, however whenever I tried doing the orchestration on top of it, it just didn't fit well....it wasn't like Metal Gear Solid well....so I had to figure out a different way to make it upbeat and triumphant without the aid of a drum kit......Luckily an inspiration came along and it was all figured out! However the next problem was that progressive triumphant segment.......this is where Coldplay is singing "Tears stream down your face" blah blah blah.....so I had to figure out how to keep the orchestration captivating and yet still endure 32 some odd measures at the same time.....But it was interesting to note that within two days I was able to knock off those 32+ measures....And the of course the ending was another issue to figure out......did I want it to end like coldplay's original? and then I though "Pshh, I'm the arranger, heck no!" So all in all, in a matter of 5 days this piece came to life........I was getting tired of listening to terrible orchestrated covers on youtube and what not so I had to do a cover to prove that you can do a proper orchestra cover on a rock song using a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) like Logic Pro or Cubase or whatever and some proper sample libraries like EWQL or MOTU. So yes, this entire performance is all done on a computer, precisely my 13 inch MacBook Pro with 8 GB of RAM with a 2.53 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, using Logic Pro and everything was used with EWQL with a few instruments from the Logic library (the piano and the guitars with some cymbals). Anyway, so some influences......John Williams work on Saving Private Ryan, the piece "Hymn to the Fallen", and also Jurassic Park haha! But otherwise there was no other outside influence for this piece, aside from Coldplay and their melody.....oooh I will mention that Lex de Azevado was an influence for the piano segment when you first hear it trickling down. Other than that, yeah I'm just super impressed that I managed to complete it within 5 days.....anyway, enjoy it, comment on it, suggest stuff, whatever......and also I'll have a youtube video up whenever later this week displaying the massive file in action....ENJOY!

A R T I S T S || Coldplay - Fix You

Alrighty, so I've got yet another song to send out to you peeps. The last piece I sent off was for the waldo trailer which was a reeeeally fun piece to compose..........but thinking back there were some issues with it......clipping, redoing 30 minutes of work that was lost, etc.........Anyway, so this piece I'm sending out is a piece to showcase the power of Storm Drum 2 from East West Quantum Leap (EWQL) and also the fun of using the lovely lil' Audio Export feature in Logic Pro which I'll explain later in this e-mail. So it's not a long piece but it gets the point across of what's possible to do......on top of that there are a few ideas that I really enjoyed, the theme towards the end.....where I think on a later piece I'll flesh that out because it kind of puts it out there but it doesn't develop.....and I reeeally dig the chord progression and how the strings flow with it......
Anyway, so this piece it was hugely influenced from Harry Gregson-Williams work off the Spy Games.......yes I went and watched that movie today and it's an extremely great movie! The soundtrack is just as good as the movie, thus I listened to the "Training Montage" piece, digging the beats, the synths, the usaged of rythms and whatever else. Also another influence is from John Powell's work off the Italian Job, I believe it's called "The Heist" but I'm not sure......Anyway, another great piece. As for the style itself, I was kind of leaning towards the style and feel of the my Mr. Drake files....some rockin' piano with some sweet strings and some electronic beats giving us the groove....So I was going for that approach.
As for the main purpose of this piece which is to showcase Storm Drum 2 and some key features you can find in Logic Pro, one of the prominent things I used was the Audio Export which is extremely useful for those wanting to manipulate the audio sound. So by simply right clicking your MIDI recorded segment you can select "Export to Audio" which will then export it as an Audio AIFF format. With this you can drag it in and then use the Sample Editor and do whatever you want.......in my case, I would click "Reverse" and place it accordingly......so for all those using Logic Pro, that's how you do that. As for Storm Drum 2.....if you have 395 bucks to splurge, it's sooooo worth it! So I used a number of their instruments from Fuzz Box to Distorbia to the Black Drum Kit and numerous others....all the beats were all made, none of this "looped" business...And also you can do the Audio Export thing as well with those and manipulate the sounds whichever way you want. And one more thing to add......panning. If you haven't explored panning and the fun it makes your music sound.....do it....after listening to a lot of techno and electronica music, panning hi hats and other rhythmic instruments is a cool way to elevate your music.
Obviously my usual rig for composing is the same as always, which doesn't take much at all haha! A 13 inch MacBook Pro 2009 model with 2.53 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 8GB of RAM, 250GB Hard drive, MOTU Symphonic Orchestra, EWQL Symphonic Orchestra Gold &amp; Storm Drum 2, Logic Pro, M-Audio Keystation and my newest addition, my lovely Apogee ONE audio interface.......and that's it......that and a creative mind I suppose could come in handy too haha!!! Anyway, enjoy the piece.


F I R S T | E D I T I O N S - It's Kind of a G Thing

Re-Entry  (Soundtrack: In The Shadow of the Moon)

F I R S T | E D I T I O N S - The Girl with the Blonde Streak

Alrighty, so this piece was written for a client out in Atlanta, Georgia...hopefully their client likes it as well haha! But I wanted to shared this piece because it was truly a fun piece to write!!! Sure I had less than a weekend to write 8 minutes of music. I wrote up a quick 1:30 demo to them and the director liked it but hadn't heard back from their client as for a green light yet but said I should go on anyway. So Friday, Saturday Night (because of work eating up my entire day) and all day Sunday up until about 3 am and even this morning I was writing this piece....The toughest part about this piece was trying to keep the momentum going for 8 minutes long and still retain that feel and style

When I was first approached about the project, I saw the video and instantly thought of two composers - Hans Zimmer's "Time" and "One Simple Idea" from the Inception soundtrack and also Philip Glass' Metamorphosis album. So I went to town with a simple piano segment which then was introduced to the guitars with their repetitive patterns. The strings were going to be a major factor in this piece as well. I also wanted to add in some electronica elements as well but at a minimum so that the listeners could be sucked into with the strings and piano.

Some obstacles along the way aside from trying to keep the momentum going for 8 minutes was the many modulations and key changes to get to a certain key I wanted. There is a 30 second bit found at 6:03 that frustrated me for a good hour on how to land it in a certain key....the key where the guitar and drums come in. That whole modulating segment took a great deal of time because there were many variations to go but none of them went as smooth as the one you hear.

Some other tidbit information to listen for: at 5:12, the guitar segment there.....I didn't realized it at first because I thought it sounded cool, but those three notes that play there are actually similar to the three notes you hear on the Spiderman cartoon theme haha!!! Also at 6:26, that key change from a G major to a B major was an idea that I had hard on a few Danny Elfman soundtracks.

The drumming found at 6:35 was a lot of fun to do! In the film, it's just clips of a time lapse sequence of downtown Atlanta at night....really cool looking, so to give a feeling of excitement and thrill of downtown I decided to try out this Coldplay kind of feel. It wasn't easy as I'm not a drummer by any means, so I had to figure out what a real drummer could do while I performed the recording on the keyboard haha!!! That last segment is also my favourite due to that sense of accomplishment you feel...I dunno if it's the drumming or the strings or what, but somehow it just feels like this motivation to keep doing the best you can.

Anyway, so there you go! Unfortunately due to this project, it will not be a downloadable piece. But feel free to comment or ask or anything!!! Since this is still being under review, there might be changes needed....if anything I'm assuming the last segment where the drums come in at 6:36. So until then, enjoy the piece!!!

Also check out my youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/jscottrakozy

Also check out my blog as well: http://theinsightfulcomposer.blogspot.com/

Also check out my website (in production): http://jscottrakozy.com/

If you want to ask me about my compositions in how I write them or anything, feel free to send me a message via soundcloud, and for any director or producer wanting to contact me to discuss projects, feel free to contact me as well via soundcloud!

Thanks again and hope you enjoy the piece!!!

~ J Scott Rakozy

T I M E | L A P S E

G R E Y | S K I E S

Daring to be different! The world is full of the ordinary. My name is Adam Halter and I'm in college making movies for fun or competitions and work with my friends. I hope to change the movie experience by trying new ways of filming, thinking, and working on films. Im also looking for musicians. Especially anyone who has written their Own music (for legal and copyright purposes) or even working on it or thinking about it I would love to hear from. Films always need music and I dont want to be the only one to become famous. I want others to succeed with me. :)

CHECK OUT MY MYSPACE PAGE TO HEAR ALL OF MY SONGS!!!

Classical favorites

Halter Productions