Posts tagged with "projects"

Matteo Carcassi: Study in A Minor (Etude No.7)

While study­ing this Carcassi étude — and ana­lyz­ing as many ver­sion as pos­si­ble in aid of that — I real­ized that clas­si­cal music is like wine. They’re both based on a cen­tral theme or taste, and it’s the sub­tle dif­fer­ences between the inter­pre­ta­tion of each per­former or wine mak­er that make them unique and inter­est­ing. That’s why you need to lis­ten to a lot clas­si­cal music (or drink a lot of wine) to devel­op a palate. I bet two dif­fer­ent musi­cians (or even the same musi­cian at two dif­fer­ent points in their career) play­ing the same piece would sound the same to some peo­ple for the same rea­son that two dif­fer­ent mer­lots would taste the same to oth­ers.

This is sup­posed to be played alle­gro, but I’ve yet to hear a ver­sion above 105 bpm that did­n’t feel rushed to me, so I pre­fer to play it andante1. Luckily, I enjoy clas­si­cal music, and I can tell the time I’ve invest­ed in devel­op­ing that foun­da­tion trans­lates over to non-clas­si­cal songs, not only in the extra fin­ger pre­ci­sion but in prac­tic­ing tech­niques too.

I’m still using elec­tric strings2, which I’ve had on longer than any oth­er set, cause I love how crisp and brassy the tone is through­out the range. For a piece like this where the melody switch­es between bass and tre­ble, that becomes real­ly impor­tant.

  1. Also cause I’m not good enough to play it that quick­ly yet. [↩]
  2. XL Chromes, warm/mellow, flat-wound, extra light gauge. [↩]

Singhouse Studios — Sparkle

Singhouse Studios is a voice and per­for­mance school for peo­ple of all ages, and one night every year the stu­dents per­form in a big show. This year, the show — titled Sparkle — was celebri­ty-themed, com­plete with a melange of hits from the last five decades, a red car­pet run­way for all the stars, and even Ottawa’s local pop heart­throb, Alex Lacasse1.

Music by Five Stripe Studios. Adrian and I worked close­ly to make sure the music had the right kind of play­ful ener­gy to focus on the school’s main demo­graph­ic.

I was asked to cre­ate a pro­mo­tion­al video for the stu­dio, so I fol­lowed the per­form­ers to tell the sto­ry of their day, from the back­stage to the main stage. I felt it was as impor­tant to see all the prepa­ra­tion as much as the per­for­mances them­selves, which is why I includ­ed footage of warm-up rou­tines, prac­tice rit­u­als, and dress rehearsals. I love to see the focus so many of the young per­form­ers have, and much of that comes out before they even step into the spot­light.

  1. Who’s been a stu­dent at the stu­dio for years now. [↩]

collab

I’m very pleased to say that I’m now work­ing with Five Stripe Studios, a tal­ent­ed bou­tique music com­po­si­tion stu­dio, to score my films. Music is one of the most impor­tant parts of any film, and the right music can make great footage look even bet­ter.

Choosing the right music also hap­pens to be one of the most dif­fi­cult parts of the sto­ry­telling process. For one wed­ding, I spent a week look­ing for the per­fect song. When I dis­cov­ered it had an inap­pro­pri­ate line (noth­ing vul­gar, just very unfit­ting for a wed­ding), I spent anoth­er week try­ing to find a replace­ment, but even­tu­al­ly went with my orig­i­nal choice, using audio soft­ware to take the line out.

Kyden’s First was a small project we worked on to make sure we were able to com­mu­ni­cate effec­tive­ly at dif­fer­ent stages of the scor­ing process.

It made sense to find a more capa­ble per­son to han­dle this respon­si­bil­i­ty, and I just hap­pened to come in con­tact with the right per­son at the right time. Adrian is the cre­ative direc­tor of Five Stripe Studios, and not only does he write the music, he sings, plays, and records it as well. I met him in Australia when we were much younger1, and he con­tact­ed me after com­ing across my work many years lat­er.

This not only gives me total con­trol over the music, allow­ing me to choose the right instru­ments, tone, pace, and mood, but I have more options with the footage as well, as I some­times found myself leav­ing out a great scene out to match anoth­er scene with a cer­tain part of a song. Adrian is also a very dynam­ic com­pos­er, and can give me wide­ly vary­ing styles and gen­res; exact­ly what I need when work­ing with all the dif­fer­ent things I film.

  1. I still remem­ber us play­ing NHL Hockey on the NES, which would have meant I was in my ear­ly teens. [↩]

Slept Through a Landslide

Jesse Dangerously — Slept Through a Landslide cover

Rap Legend Jesse Dangerously just released his lat­est sin­gle1, a remix of Tired Angels from Krista Muir’s most recent album. He want­ed a bit of breath­ing room between vers­es and asked me to write a ukulele solo, so we hit the stu­dio a cou­ple months ago. I was lucky enough to learn a lot about the record­ing process that had large­ly remained a mys­tery to me.

This was my first time try­ing to write music that was­n’t a cov­er. It was unique chal­lenge, cause it’s hard for me to tell what sounds good vs. what sounds good only to me. I also have a habit of try­ing to fill my arrange­ments with too many ideas instead of fol­low­ing a theme, so this time I tried to build on the hook that Krista sings. Then I added as much vibra­to as I could on my soft cedar-topped nylon-stringed uke to fill out the sound.

I also pro­vid­ed some back­up har­monies at the start of Noah23’s verse, and it’s weird to hear my singing with some real pro­duc­tion. I don’t think I’d rec­og­nize my own voice if some­one did­n’t tell me it was me.

Jesse has the abil­i­ty to piece togeth­er a bunch of mot­ley musi­cal ideas from var­i­ous gen­res, and it’s awe­some to hear some­thing that start­ed out as a sim­ple rap song become more than the sum of it’s parts.

  1. In the cred­its at the bot­tom, the city of each per­former is includ­ed. I love how Rosie’s loca­tion is “lives in a van”. [↩]

Elizabeth and Jane promo video

I was very excit­ed to be work­ing with Liz again when approached me to shoot a pro­mo video for her pho­tog­ra­phy busi­ness. Since she does engage­ments, wed­dings, and pet por­traits, we decid­ed to film all three types of ses­sions.

Liz lists some of her favourite things as her hub­by, her pups1, her shoes, and her Apple prod­ucts, so I includ­ed lit­tle bits of each to give it a per­son­al touch. I also kept the grad­ing crisp and clean with colours that pop out of the screen to match Liz’s style of vibrant pho­tog­ra­phy, of which I’m a huge fan. My main goal, how­ev­er, was show how fun it is to be one of her sub­jects because she has a per­pet­u­al smile and bub­bly per­son­al­i­ty that puts any­one at ease.

  1. She’s Ottawa’s own dog-whis­per­er, and it may be safe to say that she loves dogs as much as I love cats, per­haps even a lit­tle more. [↩]