Everything’s gone green - The world of mistrust music

I’ve been working on the Pitch Black remix for the last week and a half, but I’m getting quite bogged down with it. The problem is that I’ve been too reliant on sample CDs to find something that fits the existing tune (”Rude Mechanicals”) and not really restricting myself to only a few sounds. I use Acid Pro pretty much all the time for getting ideas down quickly, but it’s too easy to become lost in all the options that it gives you. My attempt at this remix is a bit “directionless” at the moment, and I’m probably doing the wrong thing by listening to remixes of other Pitch Black tracks in order to get some direction. A friend of mine - DJ and musician, The Only Michael - who did a Pitch Black remix a couple of years ago, advised me not to listen to other remixes, and to just do what inspires me from the original track.

Just to let you know I’m finally in Music Tech Magazine for winning the Motif XS6 synthesizer! The article is in February’s edition - but in case you don’t want to buy it, the editor sent me a copy of the page, and I’ve attached it here as pdf (the whole page) and a jpeg (click to see the whole pic).

Other news…
the manager of a band from New Zealand called “Pitch Black” has said I can have a go at doing a remix of a track from their new CD, “Rude Mechanicals”. If it’s good enough, it’ll appear on the band’s remix CD and as a download on music sites like iTunes and Beatport. More on that soon when I decide which track I want to have a go at….

Non-music stuff: we took Paul to see a residential school in Shrewsbury today. Absolutely amazing place. Part of a 16th century hall and estate. Class sizes are usually 2 students and one teacher - it’s for kids with autism. He sounds relatively keen on it, but we’ll have a job on convincing the education authority to pay for him. It’s around £30,000 per year!

Page from MTM magazine reproduced by kind permission of Music Tech Magazine/Anthem Publishing/Yamaha UK (c)

And it’s absolutely amazing!!!! I won it in a promo that Music Tech magazine were running on their new Studionet forum. I went down to Yamaha’s R&D offices in West London yesterday and got the official Yamaha training from one of their product specialists. I spent most of yesterday afternoon grinning like an idiot after hearing the sounds the Motif can make and just how incredible the whole thing is. I think I can seriously say goodbye to making music on Acid Pro from now on! It seems to be able to do everything - it’s got 355MB of ROM for the internal sounds, 6000 arpeggios, song and pattern-based recording, backup over Ethernet, full integration with Cubase 4. I can predict some long nights over Christmas getting to grips with this thing!!!!

This is my first post in two months - more about what’s been happening later this month. Needless to say, it hasn’t been very pleasant…. At least I’ll have a nice Christmas present!

I got an email yesterday saying that O’Neill, the surfing, skiing, and snowboarding company, have launched O’Neill TV, featuring all their promo films, profiles, and all sorts of other video footage. I thought it would actually be proper tv station on Sky or the Extreme Channel, but it turned out it’s just a glorified Flash player on their website. I’m not dismissing it though. It looks great, and there are loads of videos on there, especially for all you surf, ski, and snowboard types out there. Plus, it’s got me on there. Actually, it’s got my music on a couple of videos up there.

Three tracks - Croydon Library, Never Alone remix, and Hello - are on the Deep Blue Open 2005 event video, and two - Croydon Library and Never Alone - are on the video profile of Trent Munro (world-famous surfer dude).  I signed a non-exclusive deal with O’Neill Europe a couple of years ago, thinking that I’d just get a couple of DVDs from it, but I’m still getting exposure from it. I guess this O’Neill TV thing is getting a lot of hits, so more exposure for me.

You can play the two clips here:

Trent Munro Profile

Deep Blue Open 2005

Both of these clips show how well my music fit with a variety of visuals. Any film makers out there who need music for their latest project, please get in touch!!!!

I’m something of a perfectionist when it comes to something looking right, and usually I get this nagging feeling in the back of my head telling me that something doesn’t look as good as it should. That explains why I’ve changed the look of this blog about 5 times in the last few weeks. I’ve reused the old “green” header and adopted a more plain-looking body. Hopefully I’ll be satisfied now and not want to change it again.

I’ve been trying to work out what to write here because there’s just been so much going on at home, work, and with the music. When I’ve got everything straight in my head, I’ll post more info here.

Other things: I’ve been helping Paul with some more tunes. He’s finally got back into music-making, so he’s been asking for some help. Expect more of his stuff on myspace soon.  Also,  I came across a great WordPress blog called Svartling.  It’s a comprehensive list of loads of new VST plugins and music-making software. Highly recommended!