Holiday Music and Electronic Music

So three months after my last post and I am still working on that same one Christmas song. It's been rough. Too much stuff going on. (Although I must admit I also did waste some time unnecessarily). Am I ready to throw in the towel on my plan to have a holiday album out this year? No, not quite yet. But it isn't looking good. I may have to settle on another EP. At worst, I may have to settle on this one song, but that seems far-fetched. The good news is I have to do just a little more recording on this song and then put it all together. The bad news is I'm not sure how I will handle the drum track. Will I play actual drums or will I go with my Yamaha synth drum sounds? I do want to actually play but we'll see.

Sometime in April I took a break from the Xmas song to record something using my Minimoog. This is a pretty amazing instrument in that it is a whole band in itself. Couple some of the melodic tones with a delay pedal and you get some very out-there electronic sounds.

I put together about a 5 or 6 track piece of different Moog sounds and made up a little electronic song. After doing this for a few days I felt the inspiration to do a whole album of songs made only (or almost entirely) on the Minomoog. I'm not saying I've done that already but it is another project that will be in the works.

What I came up with is a type of music that I have been searching for but could not find. I realize there are tons of music out there that I have not yet heard and never will. But based on my searches I have not found what I've been looking for. It all started with a Chernobyl disaster I saw online a few years ago. It had stock footage of Soviet nuclear power films and some very Moog-ish music playing along. The song was undoubtedly electronic and was most likely created on keyboards exclusively. What I don't know is whether the music was part of the film or if it was newly created for the documentary. The film's era is very hard to tell but I would guess it to be somewhere from the late 1960s to the early 1970s. The music fits in perfectly with that era and makes me skeptical that it was newly made for the program. But I cannot find any info about it and there is nothing in the credits.

How do I describe this music? It's outer spacey. It's futuristic in a retro sort of way. It's unsettling. It's early shoe-gazing music. It's sparse. It makes everything seem slow motion. It sounds like it was recorded in wide open spaces, like the glaciers of Iceland. It's atmospheric. It's ambient. It has that lo-fi feel. It gives warning. It can be ominous.

That's what I want to make. I don't have all the synth sounds I would like to have in order to do this. In particular there is a vintage sound which resembles voices singing "ohs" or "ahs" and it sounds really great.

I've listened to artists such as Suzanne Ciani and Klaus Schulze but their electronic art tends to not be very musical. I have no problem with long, drawn-out pieces even if they're not in a static rhythm. But it has to have a feel of musicality and a pulse to drive it. The "I Robot" album by The Alan Parsons Project has a lot of aspects of what I'm looking for, particularly the instrumental passages. I thought Kraftwerk may have been a source but their music sounds too gleeful.

I would like to find some of what I'm looking for from the period of 1969-1977. It has to be out there. But I haven't found it so I will try to make my own. I uploaded a super lo-fi version to my phone from my monitors of the song I made has unofficial working titles of "Moog Song" and "The Day Will Come." Here it is from soundcloud:




That's rather a short piece but I plan to make it a lot longer. I'm envisioning about 4-5 songs for a 40-minute album. And this is a project I believe I can get done before the year is up even if I start a few months from now.

But I really do want to work on the Christmas music. It has not been difficult as I thought it would be. The song I've been working on is rather funky and it keeps me in the spirit of working on it. I don't think it's strange to work on holiday music throughout the year, and it doesn't feel weird telling others that's what I'm doing. So onward I go!

Ambient, Mood & Movie Music

If I should not make it for any reason as a recording artist in my own rite, I would be more than satisfied making music for films or broadcast programs or even commercials. I enjoy writing lyrics and singing even though I find it incredibly difficult to sing on pitch, but I also enjoy creating mood music and letting the instruments do the 'singing.' I am particularly interested in foreboding or suspenseful type music, like the great sounds that can be heard on many if not all the crime drama movies and TV shows of the late 60's through the mid 70's. That stuff is classic. SWAT, Kojak, Mission: Impossible, The Mod Squad, The Mechanic, Death Wish and so many others featured such amazing mood music soundtracks. But I don't want to limit myself to just that era, even the sounds created during that time sets the bar in my opinion.

I have here 2 pieces of original work I created. This first one is more modern sounding and could be used in a variety of applications. It's just a 2 track recording and completely recorded on my Yamaha S90 synthesizer. It could best be described as New Age or Ambient. I'm not sure what other classification I could put this song under. Perhaps Soundtrack. I think Ambient fits best.

This is a short 2 minute piece that I made in 2011. It's different from anything I created up to that point and anything I've done since. It's just a synthesizer track plus a piano track. I call it "Open Sky."




I was going for a simplistic yet foreboding feel. I just completely improvised on the piano part.

This next track has a more 70s feel to it. No wonder with the Wurlitzer and Rhodes electric piano parts! But that's what I was going for. I think it is more than just background music when compared to "Open Sky." It does have more movement to it and a fuller sound thanks to the electric piano parts, electric guitar, electric bass and drumstick beat.

I don't usually start recording any song with drums or percussion but this one did begin with the drumsticks. I was working on another song at the time--probably "Blow Your Mind"--and took a break. I had the vocal mic hooked up to some serious delay and reverb and just started messing around with some drumsticks. I came up with the idea for the cool beat you will hear in this song. I tried playing it in time for about 2 and a half minutes so I could have a decent length recording. After I had that track down I just started layering the other parts on top. The parts on this song were more planned out than on "Open Sky." At least the first half of the song could definitely be used during an on-foot chase or pursuit scene and the second half during some suspenseful or revealing scene. But you listen and decide for yourself.




This is one of my newer projects having been recording just last year in 2012. Would love to make a whole album of just this 70's tinged mood/movie music. The good thing is the songs don't have to be long. They can be 2 minutes and under. Consider this a preview of an album to come then. Perhaps you'll hear this stuff in the theatre or on TV in the near future.

(Edit: I forgot to mention that on 'Coming Apart' there are a few additional percussion instruments I added on there courtesy of my Yamaha S90.)