Number 9, number 9, number 9. Just kidding. Actually, this would be my first attempt to write a a full length soundtrack and it is a patriotic piece at that. We celebrate July 4th as our national independence day, so I decided to release and promote this soundtrack about this time frame. But there are technically no direct connection here to America. Many countries have been down this same road. The leading song is the only song that has words to in, but if you read them closely, this same patriotic remembrance could apply anywhere around the world or to the world as a whole unit too.

Land of Many Nations - Lyrics
Open Category - Patriotic/Musical/Soundtrack

I.

In man there is a dream
Common ground across all seas
Where love and hope can live and prosper
And the world can be as one
A new land of many nations
Where each man can stand up free

In truth there is a place where
Every man can make his home
A place of hope and new beginnings
Where freedom rings from every bell

II.

Once there was a time 
When a price was paid in blood
A man stood up for peace and freedom
For the dream that never dies
In the land of many nations
Sound the bells from every hill

The dream that men will die for
Common ground where freedom reigns
A place where love and hope can prosper
And every man can live in peace

I have previously written a musical that honors veterans everywhere. It is composed of three acts, each one written about a different struggle in history, each one uniquely written in the style of that particular war time era. Here, I pulled in a few of those pieces and weaved them into a greater whole. When I get around to producing a video I will site all these credits in detail. Two of these pieces will serve as background to the credits section. For now I will just give you the song titles in the event that might want to go digging for my play.

Act I

Land of Many Nations
Battle Cry of the Angles
Wedding Dance

Act II

Sailor's Eulogy

Aka: Go to Hell in honor my friend from Pennsylvania (I'll "wreck" your ass) ... and she can do it too ... I would love to put her up face to face against Satan. We would all be living in perfect peace now if we could just get Missy to blow Satan away off the planet earth, Oops, I mean, "wreck" his ass. She can do it too, Only in PA.

Captain's Log

Champions

Now this would be my favorite cereal. Love this stuff. It takes me about a day and a half to devour a major bag of these babies. My friend calls me serial killer now because of this phenomena. Guess there is some truth to that. Made by The Captain. My kind of cereal cartoon. Oh. About the song, this one grew on me too. I had fun pulling together the orchestral part, but I like all of it through and through now in front of all the others. What do you think? In Pro Tools they have dozens (lots) of different and unique guitar rhythm patterns plus some independent guitar solos you can pick and choose. You have to tell the program the key and order the patterns to get a good accompaniment and that was how this particular song started out as. Listen closely and you can hear a wide variety of guitar strumming rhythm patterns. Sibelius cannot achieve this realism yet. But both products, Sibelius and Pro Tools are made by the same vendor, well you know about that, and integrate well together ... one produces perfect independent note by note constructions for piano, voice or strings ... while the other provides supporting rhythm patching ...

The Captain

There was this one silly guitar riff that had no home. That is it had no character or charisma ... no life. I was just fooling around to see if I could take one dumb riff and turn it into a hook. Nothing else can be said. Smurf's up with you killer?

Smurf’s Up

Song six. I seemed to be on a roll with the other songs taking a multi-genre approach, so I decided to give R&B a try. At first I did not see where this was going. Structurally, I was having fun creating a layered design. One patch will play in harmony to another patch, then cut off halfway and begin an new patch that lines up with the remaining patch, in perfect harmony. Well, Just like brick laying, there is not better way to describe i it. This was a great counterpoint exercise and I also learned a lot about how to integrate the synthesizer. Then I wanted a story of some sort, so I envisioned the birth of all of mankind, from very basic native drums to more and more sophistication across time .. hope I said that right. In the beginning man was lost to sticks and drums ... but over time mankind became 10,000 thousand times more intelligent. That was the story line. Well, I tried. The first 2/3rds of the melody takes on that direction. Pro tools has all kinds of drum choices and patterns. I cannot do this in Sibelius alone. Then in the final third I got really crazy. I envisioned an R&B band having their lead guitarist not show up at the studio and then calling around for a replacement. But the only free guitarist out there at the studio was a metal head. This poor fellow only knew how to play a few really heavy riffs. But now check out the intelligence of the bass player. The bass player not only keeps up but then runs circles around metal head's riffs. Anyway, now do you see the scenario? R&B meets metal head .. I know ... only in the cartoons right? Oh well, I had fun. Sorry the song got long, hope you enjoy it. Subtitled Africa. I see Africa one day popping up out of the woodwork and blowing everybody else away through the delivery of serious high caliber love and intelligence. I do believe that one will surface in the future. But maybe that idea is but another pipe dream. You think? God bless Africa.

Crackle and Pop

Published April 12, 2015. Number 4 of Suite 21, is a haugepauge of similar but dissimilar Hispanic structures. There is a Latino New Age quality to it. Dreamy in other words. If you lose yourself into a siesta, I could feel good about that. That would make for a job well done at this end perhaps I guess.. Of course, there are a few less passive qualities here too.

I shared this invention with a few Latino friends up this way on Facebook and  received a mixed response. There are some clear cut Latin structures inherent here and your not so clear passages. Interesting enough, one guy from Brazil thought it might be Caribbean. Not sure I would take it that far. Argentina may feel disappointed if you misinterpret their middle piano influence, even though it is startled by a measure for measure baseline offset. What do you think?

Creative licensing I guess. I would have to give this one a green light. It may take a few repeats or so to be able to pick out its intricacies, but it is in there and grows upon you after a while. You could not ask for a more rewarding return.

Nut & Honey cereal was described on the box as "flakes of corn coated with nuts & real honey". It's best remembered for a series of commercials where "Nut & Honey" was misheard as "Nothin', Honey".  "What you got cooking in the grittle this morning Granny?" "Oh, Nothin Honey," That's country for "I don't want you to get any of my delicious Nut & Honey cereal dear, so I'm not telling you anything Grandpa." The original Honey Nut Cheerios recipe was described as a “sweetened toasted oat cereal with crushed nuts and honey.” While real nuts were used in the original formulation, the current cereal only uses “Natural Almond Flavor.” Catching on?

This is my fifth Latin attempt. The first piece was called Latina Trot (#11) and dates back to 1971. Then Sambas, Papas, Mama and HORNS, aka Viva Mexico in acoustic guitar format(#29) came along in 2007.  Then Lovely Senorita (#122)or Senorita Celosa or Nascida Do Mar and Flamenco (#129)popped up a hundred songs later in that same year. 

Latin music, like Jazz, is a phenomenal rhythm pattern study. Some of these titles have videos now. (youtu.be/zBIuo-pEjZ8 ... youtu.be/_KLfscICqKo ... youtu.be/9YrVEoMtqx4) Latina Trot was written with a guitar when I was 14, but later when I started using notation software in 2007, I was able to add additional voicing. All the other four pieces were written with Sibelius 4. This piece here uses Pro Tools patching. Listen to the improvement in guitar strumming quality. This title (#142) is beginning to sound much more real. It is next to impossible to do this using notation software alone. Compare and hear the difference for yourself.

Nut n Honey

Published June 24th, 2015. Song number 5 in this series (Suite 21) is a jazz/blues tune, This song begins in classic jazz form (4/4) but then evolves into the more classic 6 bar blues title. This is now my 6th jazz invention but my 1st attempt at 6 bar blues notation.  Not all that bad. Came out kind of interesting.

I still do not have the ability to place  any real vocals yet into my productions, although I recently found some software that might have been used to clean up my own vocal attempts, had I taken that route. However, the time available to complete the job has been cut short so we may need to just let the whole vocal idea go. 

The plan was to pursue two renditions under the new Glove effort, one with no vocals for international listeners, this album in other words, and the other to incorporate homeland vocals. I had hoped to take up basic vocal training and focus on simply throwing my own singing in there. It doesn't have to be perfect. 

But for the time being, I have decided to put off vocal training until another writing effort has begun somewhere down the road, should that time even become available. We are stuck with what we have to work with.  

In this production, you have your basic computer "aahs" and "oohs" to digest. Here the goal is simply give listeners a gist of what the vocal line would sound like if another jazz singer came along to do this album. Not the ideal situation to work with as not everybody likes this sound, but on the other hand, everybody in the world can understand the instrumental edition. Let's see what Wiki has to say about this particular zero nutrition American food stuff.

Lucky Charms is a brand of cereal produced by the General Mills food company since 1964. The cereal consists of toasted oat pieces and multi-colored marshmallow shapes ("marbits" or marshmallow bits). The label features a leprechaun mascot, Lucky, who is animated in commercials making the infamous declaration that his cereal is obviously Magically Delicious. Well, I can think of a lot more other places where Magically Delicious might be more appropriately applied, starting off with all the women in the world in general.

My appreciation for Jazz matured mostly from radio Jazz stations, although I was very psyched to catch Dizzy Gillespie in Chicago one year before he passed on. That was so cool. But the main hearing development took place in Philadelphia over a radio station called WXPN Public Radio which aired out of the University of Pennsylvania. 

This PBS affiliate basically identified with college pop mostly, but aired jazz occasionally when it felt right. The biggest blessings occurred every Saturday night though when WXPN aired The Blues Show for 6-8 uninterrupted commercial free hours.

Are you familiar with the basic 6 bar blues construction of a blues song? Basically, you play the same 1-4-5 sequence verse after verse, song after song, hour after hour, all night long. Can be very monotonous to a beginning ear when you first run across the beast. It takes time to hear the unique messages and styles, then suddenly appreciation goes through the roof leaps and bounds.

Anyway, I was just going to write about common sense jazz and its contrast to   the intricate nuances built into blues songs. In my effort, I put in the not so accomplished performance of a blues man I labeled Timmy the Trombonist and then contrast him off against the original sound of Tommy the Trumpet player. Yes, hate to burst your bubble, but a true blues-man would appreciate this puzzling situation. I mean, Timmy does do his very best to make the grade, but never quite captures the ideal soundscape. Tommy Trumpet, on the other hand, has no problem carving out his opportunity, effectively running circles around Timmy Trombone,. No respect. 

Yeah, I'd say that the blues has become a good friend to me over time in its own special way. Quite the study.  A most logically illogical query, to say the least. A lot of fun too.

Magically Delicious

Published April 10, 2015. Third melody for the 21st suite. In the last song I did piano, this time I wanted to develop a guitar piece. The ending of this song is technically a beat, as a rap beat. Nobody has developed a beat like this one before, but I have vocal recording ability now, so I may put words to this one in the not too distant future.

This suite uses generic naming, in this case, cereal names, as I havd ddone before. Every song here, excepting the first one, is associated with a breakfast food or its advertising cliché, which is more fun anyway. Let's what Wiki has to say about Rice Crispies.  

Cocoa Puffs is a brand of chocolate-flavored puffed grain breakfast cereal, manufactured by General Mills. Introduced in 1958, the cereal consists of small orbs of corn, oats, and rice flavored with cocoa. Essentially, Cocoa Puffs are Kix cereal with chocolate flavoring; similarly, Trix has been, for most of its existence, fruit-flavored Kix. Cocoa Puffs are sold in Canada, Latin America, and Europe under the Nesquik brand, via a partnership between Nestlé and General Mills.

Fascinating. Of course, I will also use this phase, Coocoo for Cocoa Puffs, to mean something more. In particular, with the anticipation that comes from pulling together s new cocaine experience, which I have enjoyed off and on for many years. I suppose we are not supposed to go into openly here while we are yet still in an age of discrimination, which will pass some day. I don't really care about that sort of thing. I am not one to elude from with pretense things which I already accept and believe spiritually. Plus, it's getting close to time when I check out anyway. You keep your opinions. Anyway, when an opportunity is on the horizon to imbibe, I like to make a big fuss about it and get all bent out of shape over that simple white cocoa puff stuff in nature. The fulfilling expectations response; the old discrimination squabble game. In part, this is brought on by arrogance toward those omnipotent want-to-be characters out there who extend judgement. Sorry about your luck. But now, with this being said, you can more readily relate to the ending closure for this work. A very popular style in my youth.

Cuckcoo For Cocoa Puffs

Published April 7, 2015. Just returning to writing after a year delay. This is the second title in Suite 21, song number 140. Written with Pro Tools SE, it took about seven days to learn the program well enough again to produce a final cut. That's what happens when you put off writing ... you forget how to do it initially. This whole suite is a study of loops, thus the song title.

Froot Loops is a brand of sweetened, fruit-flavored breakfast cereal produced by Kellogg's and sold in many countries. The cereal pieces are ring-shaped (hence "loops") and come in a variety of bright colors and a blend of fruit flavors (hence "froot", a cacography of fruit). However, there is no actual fruit in Froot Loops and they are all the same flavor.

Fruit Loops

Written Christmas Eve in 2014 using Pro Tools free edition. I discovered this program that year when I bought a keyboard to aid me in entering notes into notation software. You key the note(s) in using the keyboard as opposed to using your computer keyboard or the mouse. I never like the controller aid, but inside the box was Pro Tools free edition, which offered the opportunity to use complex guitar strumming and riffs, if I could ever figure out how to use it. Anywayt this was my first exposure to a DAW  program and I used it for the first time writing this song.

This piece has undergone a number of name changes. Originally I called it Avant Garde Christmas and put a video together to boot. At the time the classical part sounded Avant Garde, but this cannot be compared to true Avant Garde. It just sort of has the same overall character, a bit dark, a lot of nonsense noise, albeit organized and revered highly among this group of classical composers. 

The second title given to this melody was California Dreaming, a popular song honoring California when I was a kid. You see, this was the first melody that I had written in California having moved here four years before from Philadelphia. I wrote a lot of songs in Pennsylvania and was hoping to plant myself in California(I change up every 10 years or so) and write a lot more here. Anyway, using the popular title again seemed to suite my feelings. This is a highly dreamy state, to me at least. To me, new trees and bushes, new bugs, new ocean, new everything it seemed. Moving from east coast to west coast initially seems dreamy, so many things are unique and different here.

As a melody written using Pro Tools it belongs to this collection. For some reason I renamed it Hotel Helvekia Calitazium, which is a chant  you will hear when the vocals are added. Both dreamy and dark, it seemed to fit the bill and got me away from either insulting the Avant Guard enthusiasts or Mamas Papas fans. 

This is the note I left on Facebook Christmas Day 2014:

A typical Christmas theme structure, natural echoing created by notation and voicing arrangement, score available upon request. Merry Christmas 2014.

Hotel Helvekia Calitazium

As an emerging artist in 2006, George Victor Olson marketed himself as a freelance composer choosing to pursue composition as a career. For a little over ten years, George trained in classical, pop guitar, piano, new age, folk, musical theater, jazz, choral and Latin American music. The primary inquiry rotated around the nature of rhythm patterns, which not only differentiate song originality but also define genres in group patterns. In this time the writer has scored, mastered, produced and published 147 instrumental titles under the stage name of Magnificat Sonnets.

Beginning this year, 2017, following the release of the latest suite, Suite No. 21, Arrangements with Pro Tools, the author opted to take on a new direction by assuming a new band name, Glove. Glove represents the departure from taking a formal study approach, to the more popular "inspiration" contributing artist approach or "indie artist" approach. Hey, a selling hit single falling in place off of an inspirational spirit is worth much, much more than many, many study rich but commercially unproductive titles.

Captain's Log is a multigenre arrangement featuring 9 different unique genres, namely, avant guard classical , contemporary piano jazz, contemporary popular guitar, a jazz to blues piece, a traditional Spanish slash salsa piece, an elaborate epic R&B arrangement, metal doomsday variety, a spiritual pop arrangement and a battle ridden soundtrack, plus, as you would expect, in that order.

Captain's Log is George Victor Olson's most accomplished work to date. The International Instrumental is scheduled for release on July 1st, 2017. The pre-release date is June 20' 2017. The Vocal Studio version is scheduled for release on August 1st, 2017. Both versions are available through CD Baby, Last-FM and BandCamp for 7 US dollars.

Glove (George Victor Olson)