This is a progressive pop song in the Finnish language sung by P-Roland, a new artist from Soarin' Tones Entertainment. Lead vocals, backup vocals, rapping, melody composition by P-Roland. Tak Jovendrake(Yours Truly) co-wrote the rhythm section, played all guitars, guitar synths, sang additional backup vocals, programmed the drums using EZDrummer 2, and engineered and produced the song.

©2018 P-Roland, Tak Jovendrake, and Soarin' Tones Entertainment

Juho Juoppo

Around this year's(2019) Valentine's Day, I was working on this song. Initially I was thinking of just putting together something nice and easy and simple, but apparently I have trouble doing easy things. I ended up with a 7-minute long epic power ballad, lol. But my Other-Half likes it, and that's what matters.

Written and recorded: Feb 2019

©2019 Tak Jovendrake and Soarin' Tones Entertainment

Journey To The Cove

This one shares the title "Madman..." with two of my old neoclassical songs. I don't feel like including "From my Ashes", another neoclassical song of mine, in the "Madman" series of songs, because it's really not about that...or, is it?

The "Madman" compositions started almost 20 years ago when I wrote and recorded the first piece "Madman's Opus". Then, a few years later, I recorded "Madman's Opus 2". I might have uploaded the latter on here, but I'm not sure.

It doesn't matter, I've got the newest installment of the "Madman" series, only this time, I've decided to totally renew it all. Thus the title "Madman's Concerto Op.3". It's the third piece of the "Madman" series, hence the title indication "Op.3". But I'm re-recording the other, older songs in the future, too. It could be like some kind of continuous, conceptual group of songs that chronicles the story of this "Madman" who is really based on me, I suppose.

In terms of the actual music, this one in particular has been inspired by Yngwie J. Malmsteen's "Far Beyond The Sun" a little bit. I wanted to include some cool keyboard solos, except I don't play the keyboard, nor do I own one at this time. So I used my Electro-Harmonix(EHX) Key9 pedal for the organ solos, while the string synth is the Synth9 pedal also made by EHX. The result is this kind of intense song, "Madman's Concerto Op.3".

©2019 Tak Jovendrake and Soarin' Tones Entertainment

Madman's Concerto Op.3

What inspired me to create this little piece? Let's just say I was in the mood. I did steal some elements from Andy Timmons' "Cry For You", though. That was a first. Probably not the last.

©2020 Tak Jovendrake and Soarin' Tones Entertainment

When A Heart Breaks

It's kind of a "War Pigs" meets groovy, melodic progressive rock, with a hint of Jethro Tull at one point.

©2020 Tak Jovendrake and Soarin' Tones Entertainment

Never Simple

This song was referred to as "Thunder Steak" at some point. I don't even remember where that came from any more, lol.

I love the tones of the guitars on this song. It's all Marshall based, and I refrained from going for that super high gain extreme metal sound here. Although, I totally get that the guitars are still pretty overdriven. That's all tech talk, so let's talk about the actual song, shall we...

This song is about one of the dragons that exist in the world. It's the Thunder Dragon, one that is in charge of thunder and lightning. The song tells its adventures and struggles as it flies high in the sky, with and through the clouds that bring on thunder and lightning, ready to strike at those whose deserve the punishment of the sacred beast.

But he isn't alone. There are other dragons that exist and fights just might ensue... This is the first installment of my "Dragons" series of songs. I might include this in my "War Of The Worlds" group of songs, but I'm not sure yet. We shall see.

©2020 Tak Jovendrake and Soarin' Tones Entertainment

Thunder Dragon(tentative title)

I must apologize for deleting the previous mix of "War Of The Worlds". Upon giving it a careful listen, I realized that I had made a compositional error, and thus a small section of the song had to be re-recorded. Some of you might have noticed this error, and upon listening to the updated version, will see that the issue has since been rectified. But it really was a minor little mistake, so if you didn't hear it then it's all good, lol. So, shall we try again...

This is one of the longest and most complete songs I've created so far. I've written and even recorded songs that are very long in the past, but this one is something else. It's very well balanced but not at the cost of losing its edge. It has so many different elements, from the classic Judas Priest feel to the modern Meshuggah, and all kinds of things in between and beyond.

This song is about all kinds of mythical beings that live in our world that we don't know about. They exist in our world today, but we deny their existence. But there's a war going on among them, and even a portion of humans are a part of it while the majority live in ignorance. It's a true account of secret wars that have been going on for years, centuries, aeons. Now you get to learn the truth about our world, their worlds, and the clashes of multiple worlds that have been taking place since the dawn of time.

©2020 Tak Jovendrake and Soarin' Tones Entertainment

War Of The Worlds

This is my rendition of a Holiday Classic "O Come All Ye Faithful".

I'm always doing this kind of bastardization of existing pieces of music. What's worse, I get immense pleasure from doing so! But hey, at least I stay true to my heart when it comes to my music these days, not like in, say, 2011. But let's not talk about 2011, that was dark times for me...

For this version of the song, I wanted to get a big sound of the 80's power ballads. That is audible especially in the drums I think, with the reverb and everything. In terms of the arrangement, I've added a bit of jazz fusion flavour because that's the kind of sound that I really like, as some of you might have already noticed.

This song marks my thirteenth Christmas song cover. I started doing these in 2007, and never looked back. I haven't even picked this year's song yet, but I'm sure I'll be completely destroying it beyond recognition as usual, haha.

©2020 Soarin' Tones Entertainment and Tak Jovendrake where applicable.

O Come All Ye Faithful

This is a tribute song I put together in honour of the late Edward Van Halen's work. I had always cited Van Halen as an influence when it came to the compositional side of the things, but I realized upon working on this song that my overall playing had been inspired by Eddie's work much more than I'd initially thought through my other influences, and thus making many of his signature licks and phrases already familiar to me.

For this song, I'm basically channelling Eddie's style but also incorporating my own flavour to indicate that I've been "passed on the torch" to carry, so to speak. The guitar parts were challenging but not nearly as much as sculpting the tone for the snare drum of his brother Alex Van Halen, aka: the ACTUAL Brown Sound. People have associated the iconic "Brown Sound" with Eddie's guitar tone, but it was actually Alex that referred to his ideal snare tone as "Brown" in the first place. I don't know if I've succeeded in getting the snare on this song to sound "brown" enough, but hey, I tried.

By the way, the title "Elegance, Virtue, Honour" comes from Eddie's initials "E.V.H.", if anyone has noticed. Man, I miss the dude. But he lives on in our hearts, and in our music. This song is not a sad song to mourn his death, but a celebration of his life's work. Edward Van Halen was here(and definitely set the bar up pretty damned high while he was at it!), and his legacy lives on.

©2020 Soarin' Tone's Entertainment and Tak Jovendrake

Elegance, Virtue, Honour

Tak Jovendrake(formerly known as Tak: The Axe Kid) - that would be moi - is a Japanese fellow who acquired the skills in rock and metal guitar playing during his full-time residency in Canada. He was the founder of a three-piece rock band Fusillade which, after his departure, changed their name to Liquid(Liquid would later spawn members of a now-defunct Canadian rock band Templar, as well as Carly Rae Jespin's touring musician). Tak has since primarily been a solo artist focusing on instrumental rock/metal for the most part, and has expanded his horizons to explore and incorporate many many other styles of music, such as jazz, electronica, world music, and classical, into his own. 

Tak Jovendrake is, thus, a progressive musician. Though his music often tends to lean toward the metal realm, his sound is not exclusively progressive rock, nor is it strictly progressive metal. It goes all over the map. His more recent project back in Canada with a Vancouver-based composer/guitarist Brendan Blanchard, called Voltophonix, is a prime example of how diverse his playing can be. With Voltophonix, he has shown a different side of his musical talent, one that features a laid-back melodic instrumental folk rock that also involves his acoustic guitar work.

Since the summer of 2018, he has also begun taking on the roles of sound engineer and producer working with a number of musicians in Finland and beyond. He is also in the process of creating an online platform/portal called Sonified Souls Association for Creators of Music featuring musicians and sound engineers of various styles and genres.

Part metalhead, part jazz cat, part classical enthusiast, part bluesman, part folk fellow, part singer, part electronica lover, part exotic musician, part avant garde madman, mostly rocker, always an artist.

That's me: Tak Jovendrake. Welcome to my SoundCloud. :-)

Soarin' Tones Entertainment

Popular tracks