This week I have been working a lot on getting my demo reels ready to put up on my site.
The audio/visual demo reel especially took a long time as I had never worked with video before.
The audio reel was fun to do and didn’t take nearly as long to create.
With the addition of my demo reels to this site I have now pretty much fully moved all of my film composition stuff to this site from the old soundclick site.
Don’t forget about my Hockey Night In Canada entry… you can still vote or comment here…
I thought I’d write something on my thought process behind my Hockey Night In Canada Theme.
My initial thoughts, when I heard about the contest was that it certainly had be a rock song, without a doubt. What kind of rock? Well I instantly thought of two of my favourite Canadian bands I like. Rush and Arcade Fire. Both bands have rather epic styles that would fit Hockey Night In Canada well.
I also knew that I did not want to do a vocal song with lyrics. First of all I don’t think any song with lyrics or vocals could possibly win. Why? Because I think that putting a voice and words to something that Canadians nationwide will be calling their new anthem makes it too easy to knock down. People will complain about the singer, some people won’t connect with the lyrics. With an instrumental piece the listener can hum along without having words define what they are feeling.
Now for the melody itself I went back to my days in high school and back then I had written a song which I had never put words to and had recorded a rough version of (well back then I thought it was pretty good). It was called Paradise (Bright Red Sky - hence the name of my hockey anthem). People had told me that the piece should be submitted to the Olympics because it really had that epic sport kind of feel to it and I knew that this was exactly the feel I wanted for this hockey theme. So I went back to the piece and totally re-recorded it and gave it a new outlook on life. I added new parts, and tweaked the melody.
What instruments to use? Well thinking of Neil Peart I added pounding drums and then heavy electric guitars doing power chords. For the melody the choice just had to be brass. I used trumpets for the lead and then trombones and french horns as harmonies. During the mixing process I had a struggle.
I wanted super strong drums, super strong guitars, and I wanted the melody to really come through. But when you turn up one then the others would feel too weak, so eventually I turned up everything which of course was the same as what I started with but just louder. So I figured since melody is king as that is what people will remember, in the end I kept the melody on top and with mastering I was actually able to make all the elements come out pretty decently. For the mixing and mastering of this song I referenced a track off of the latest Arcade Fire album Neon Bible. The track is “No Cars Go” and is really the best track on the album and features a full orchestra which is why I used it. If you haven’t heard this song, make sure you do.
And that’s a little bit about the process behind the theme.
As of last night I have uploaded a second version of my Hockey Night In Paradise to the hockey anthem site. I decided to cut the intro all together so it jumps right in and catches people attention. I also made the overall tempo a little bit faster just to make the theme slightly more upbeat.
My Hockey Night In Canada Theme is finished and up on the anthem challenge site! If you don’t know about this contest here is how it works. CBC chose not to renew the old Hockey Night In Canada Theme (CTV bought it) and now CBC is holding a contest to see who can write the next theme. The winner gets $100 000 and gets their song played during every game. As of now there are around 5500 entries from all across Canada so there is a huge amount of competition. I decided to go the epic orchestral rock route. The main melody is actually from a piece I composed about 6 years ago which I have totally revamped for this version. (I originally planned to get it to be the Olympic theme song when I first wrote it)
If you like it please follow this link to vote or comment on the official site. You will have to register but it won’t take more than a minute and you’ll be helping me impress the judges!
Yes that’s right,
I have uploaded a new song to the site called “Hype Machine”,
This is an interesting one.
It’s also one of the songs I am most proud of.
Now as a warning for those who may not be used to strange time signatures, this song is in 9/8 time except to further complicate things I made the chords changes and melody in the verse section in 4/4 time which gives a very interesting effect. You may find during your first listen that everything sounds like a mess, and that it is confusing, and that’s okay but I promise that if you take the time to listen to the song 2 or 3 more times you will suddenly start to “get it”. So give it a try, maybe you’ll get it on the first listen, maybe not..But when you do get it you’ll be happy you did!!
This song was written for a class project where we had to to write a country influenced song. Now me, knowing absolutely nothing about country decided to rebel and basically write a rock song and throw in a banjo for the country element. I actually ended up liking the banjo, so if you listen hard enough you will hear a banjo (pretty far in background) at different points during the song. One other interesting thing to take note of in this song is that in the last chorus you will hear voices yelling “HYPE”. This is actually me and 4 of my classmates yelling as loud as we could at 11:00 in an apartment at night…The neighbors really must have wondered what was going on.
I thought that I would also hold a contest to coincide with the release of the song, so I will take out to dinner anyone who can make a dance to “Hype Machine” and then record it on video! Ready…Get Set…and DANCE!!!
Well it looks like it’s time to upload my second song. First one’s getting lonely.
This song is called “One Last Day” and it was my final project for songwriting class in school.
I wrote this song with the fact in mind that it would be played during the very “last day” of my one year music program. My goal when producing/writing it was to make people in my class cry… while that didn’t quite happen I still think it turned out pretty good.
In other news, I’m currently working on my Hockey Night In Canada Theme Contest entry. CBC is putting on a contest for composers and songwriters to write a new theme for Hockey Night Canada. The winner will get a huge load of money and get their song played during the games (worth way more than the money)
I’ve got about a week and half to get it done. So you can expect to find here on my site soon.
And just so you know… It’s gonna be ROCKTASTIC!
So begins this new journey of me taking on my music career and a lot of that journey will be based around this site. There will be a lot of updates and changes happening to the site in the next couple weeks as I add to and perfect it. So come back often and I shall try to entertain you!
As some of you know I have just finished (today to be exact) my 9 month electronic music production program at Langara College and this site is actually a final project for my music business class. (Shout out to my teacher Jarome, probably the only person who will read this post anytime soon!)
I have many songs I’ve written and will be adding a lot of them to the music player in the short future (I wouldn’t want to oversaturate all my listeners now would I?), but I thought I’d start off by posting a song I wrote/recorded 1 week ago called “Luv Will Make You An EgoManiac”. This song was written for another homework assignment I had where we had to write a heavy metal/industrial/angry influenced song. While this is not exactly heavy metal, it’s the hardest rockin’ thing I’ve done yet! And just so you know, in the last chorus you are hearing a choir of Wesley’s, around 25-30 of them (All separate takes). So enjoy! Oh almost forgot! It’s also going to be featured in the film “Sex In The USA” (Teen Drama) produced by Esther Goodstein.
All right so here's the deal... you can download all of my music up above and I won't charge you anything. I'll let YOU decide what it's worth to you and you can pay what you want by clicking the donate button. You don't need a Paypal acccount, just click the donate button and then the continue link! This is for listening only, this does not apply to using my music for any other purpose such as putting it in a film. In that case you need to contact me!
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