New album to be released by April, 2012

There will be a new album released by April, 2012 with original compositions and exclusive recording production by Kevan Paul. The emphasis is on electric-violin in various fusion styles overlay-ed across a background of jazz-rock, smooth-jazz, and ambient electronic styles. The album will be initially available through Google Play, but will try to get published on iTunes, etc. as the project progresses. At least half of the songs will be added to the YouTube channel (2010media) to experiment with other visual elements and related ideas for the compositions. A more detailed description of the songs will be added to this web page. The name of the album is "Passing Through The Portal" which is also the name of track 4 of the album. The intent of the album is to continue the exploration of using electric-violin in fusion styles, especially where synthesizer sounds can be added and invented. The intent is to go beyond the dance-beat influences and provide an interesting sound-scape to overlay melodic violin to blend into an interesting ambient quality of sound. There are obvious influences from classical, new-age, jazz-rock fusion, and smooth-jazz that tend towards allowing the violin to create effortless melodies. This is the foundation for this album.

New original composition: "Integral House Stimulus Package" (KP2-04)

This original composition by Kevan Paul was completed on the same day that the Wall Street Journal featured an article about a 21st Century architectural wonder nick-named "The Integral House", because the owner is a mathematics professor and author of many college text-books for calculus. He is also a violinist, so this piece fits perfectly with the theme. The result is a musical tribute to the "Integral House" with the word Integral added to the original title. Thanks to Shannon Kyles for generously allowing me to use her photographs. The violinist in the pictures is the owner of the home-concert-hall.

This new composition has many elements that are new to my recording efforts, but not all of the original ideas ended up in the final mix - some of these will be in the next composition. The title of the piece is a phrase that keeps appearing in the economic news, and is somewhat to the point of my wanting to create a stimulus package to help make creative things happen around me. More to the irony of the current situation is that everyone I know needs an economic stimulus package - so let's give one so that we may get one. The piece includes six different sections, which are repeated in various form with a chord pattern that starts with Gm7-F#m-Gma7-Dm-Dm-Em, etc. This is in a jazz-fusion modal form, which defies resolving to maintain the tension. The piano gives the underlying repetition in section 2,4,6, while the violin gives a soulful introduction in section 1. The "electric-guitar" gives us taunting questions throughout the piece, with no definite resolution to these musical statements. The repetitions pattern with the first quarter note rest followed by three quarter notes with varying levels of syncopation, is a deliberate statement of ambiguous rhythmic melody to further confuse and entertain. The statement of unison in the last section resigns itself to the current situation. These are the metaphorical undercurrents of the piece. I wanted to create something that sounded like some of the jazz-rock fusion pieces of the 70's and 80's that I love to listen to, while adding additional soundscapes such as the synthesizer rhythms and the "storm" during the second section. I hope the sun finally comes out - as metaphorically I've been waiting intensely for the spring storms to end and the real warmth to arrive so that I enjoy some outdoor activities in the sun. I happy with this piece because it includes my favorite jazz-rock fusion elements with violin.

New Song "A Better Way to Leave" (KP2-03) on "Going Home"

This new song started with a "pop" drum track at a moderate 104 bpm, and I want to continue to explore the "arppegio" synthesizer further as substitution for the traditional "rhythm guitar" track -- all the notes are there in a guitar chord, you just hear them all at once. Then I wanted to add an electric-violin track that emulated the electric guitar some more, as was introduced in the previous song "Through the Fog". For the violin, I wanted to add 1/5 up pitch and use double-stops for a melody that would further develop the mandolin introduction. It starts as if it is a country-pop song, but then is fused into a original melodic style that keeps the pop-drums and syncopated bass part as a constant counter-point to the violin part. Difficult to blend some of these elements, but I like the overall up-beat feeling that the song delivers. The title implies that there is a better way to leave a situation when there is a choice - pick the better way to leave the conversation, and you will be able to find a way back. Stay positive in thought and action - create peace! That's the meaning of this song.

"Through the Fog" (KP2-02) on album "Going Home"

New Song: "MELTDOWN" (KP1-9.4), composed and arranged by Kevan Paul

Click to Listen:


This song had a lot of different stages in development. The exciting part for me was getting the electric-violin sounds to blend with sounds that are orchestral and neo-classical. The synthesizer parts are created directly from other violin parts that were extracted out later, leaving a unique style of creating synthesizer parts. Another thing that I learned was how to adjust the software-instrument tracks to align with the tempo. This has made a big difference in my confidence in mixing the real instruments with the software-instruments. The drums were created via the Digitech GNX4. I like having the drums throughout even though the style is neo-classical. The violin parts were mixed from multi-take sections over a two-week period.

The theme of the music came from several ideas. The "MELTDOWN" that came to mind, was the recent financial meltdown with the banking industry and the global economic reprecussions that have been set in motion. The global economy is now one form of a "meltdown" that will affect everyone in a negative way, but the MELTDOWN in my original thoughts goes back to the theme of the album, which is about HEALING. There are many times that we feel emotionally drained, and this affects our health in a negative way --- just like the global economic meltdown. When we are emotionally "hi-jacked" by other people's anger and unkindness, we can often feel like we are experiencing an emotional meltdown. Nothing good seems to come from this burst of mental and physical stress, and sometimes we carry our resentment and anger with us until we have a moment of complete emotional meltdown that causes us to feel defeated, alone, and sometimes hopeless. Keeping the peptides in the brain going at a high rate to bring back the emotional state that we are addicted to, can be draining. Everyone has their own set of peptide addictions with their brain -- we are all addicted to our own set of emotions. When we can no longer keep up with ourselves and our "self-fullfilling-prophecies", we can enter a mental state of suspended reality - an emotional MELTDOWN.

Sometimes we cannot change our emotional state to the better state, and our ability to cope with the world, and the demands of living seem to over-power our better selves. Sometimes we refuse to change the course of our thoughts and actions until there is a complete "emotional collapse" or "nervous breakdown". People will sometimes fight themselves over and over again, rather than make the necessary mental or physical adjustments to establish their well-being. And sometimes, our brains cannot heal themselves without chemical intervention -- but so little is known about the brain that we struggle to find a solution from pharmaceutical science. There is never a easy solution to recover from our emotional "meltdowns", but we have to keep trying to find a solution for ourselves -- we all want to be happy and live comfortably with our thoughts.

New Song: (KP1-11.2) Scrub Your Mind, original composition by Kevan Paul

Click to Listen:


This new song was recorded over the last week with the attempt to develop a song form similar to a Sonata form. The piece begins with a solo Electric-Violin with "ambient" reverb and echo (delay), that is very free-flow and melodic, then moves into a rhythmic dance with violin "jam", and finishes with highly modified violin-turned-electro added to pulses of synthesizer patterns with various voices. The "highly modified" violin track would not be recognized as a violin, but gives a unique tone that would also not be recognized as a sythesizer or midi sound either.

The purpose of this piece is to express the different aspects of the electric-violin experiments that I am engaged in; the inclusion of modern free-form ambient instrumentals, straight-up dance rhythms, and electronic analog-to-digital-constructions, are all elements that I want to continue to explore in upcoming music albums. I have a great desire to take some familiar music (such as Christmas songs), and create an album with these combined musical elements. I'm leaning towards a Christmas music album for my next solo instrumental project (hopefully done before Christmas of this year).

The tools that I have been working on this week are Widisoft v1.21 AU - Analog-to-MIDI plugin, and G7 (by Sibelius). I've been having a terrible time with Garageband freezing up, but I finially realized that I only have 1GB of RAM in the Powerbook G4 1.67GHZ that I'm trying to use. This is at least upgradable to 2GB; so I'm now focused on getting this upgrade to see if it helps with the Garageband issues. I don't dare try using other audio tools yet, if I can get Garageband to behave, I'm sure it would be worse to try to use LogicPro, or CuBase (plus I don't know how to use these applications). I'm slowly getting more proficient in the recording process that I'm attempting to define, but I want to take a step-back from the technology "tweaking" and find a good balance between the development of musical ideas and the necessary technical precision.

I've been doing research on the Creative Commons licensing process and will place all of my original recordings and music-videos with a Creative Commons license to allow others to freely distribute and use as long as attribution is maintained. This may not be significant for the first "album" of music presented on this blog, but moving forward into the next few years, I plan on distribution of the music via the JAMENDO website. The JAMENDO site is dedicated to the Creative Commons method of distribution. The recent release of the RADIOHEAD album and music video with a Creative Commons license indicates that this will be moving into a mainstream media distribution mode, and hopefully there will be a convergence of traditional corporate media and creative individuals where the two parties can mutually benefit from the creative process (i.e. share-the-wealth) without being encumbered with copyright litigation. All of my projects will be allowed to be licensed for commercial purposes with the open-contract for mutual benefit, and I will do everything I can to stay within the boundaries of the Creative Commons licensing process and give credit to others whose material I reuse to the purposes of music and art development.

The whole album "Healing, Again, Forever" will be available on JAMENDO for download in about a month.

I'm also planning on a corresponding YouTube music-video for each song that will include as much photographic and graphic data that I have produced, as well as anything that I can find via a Creative-Commons license to remix and give credit to the author; this will hopefully build some bridges toward collaboration -- which is the real goal for this project.


KP1-11.2 Scrub Your Mind by Kevan Paul is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

New Song: (KP1-8.5) SACRED MUSIC (LONELY NIGHTS), composed and arranged by Kevan Paul

Click to Listen:

This song came from a combination of several ideas. The first element was a riff that I kept hearing on the guitar and wanted to incorporate. The second element was the flute and drums as the basis of sacred music for native cultures, especially natives of North America. The third element was finding a process for gathering the melody and chord structure together. The first and second elements were easy because I already had some melodic content in my head that I wanted to develop -- especially the flute and violin trading melodic lines.

The title was changed from "Lonely Nights" to "Sacred Music" during the course of the week that I worked on this piece. The intent for the first title was a reflection of the idea that for someone to produce something on a creative level, there needs to be often lonely and quiet moments in time that allow the mind to assemble and "get-in-tune" with the ideas that are getting the "creative-attention". Then yesterday I heard the quote that "music is love, looking for expression", and I wanted to change the title to reflect that music can be a sacred experience, and can have great healing strength. This is in keeping with the theme of this album of songs. If there needed to be a sub-title, it would be "Lonely Nights", as I think back to all of the time that I've spent in my life practicing music, reading, thinking by myself at night. This is a necessary sacrifice, as I do not have the luxury of being able to go to work everyday as a musician --- my music must be attended to at nights and on weekends. For me, "sacred music" and "lonely nights" go hand-in-hand.


The third element of composition process was the hard one. I have tried several software tools in the course of the last week working on this song, but so far I'm not coming up with a process that works for me. When a composer starts with a melody, the chord structure can be a stumbling block to getting the musical ideas written or recorded. When learning someone's song, it is easier to dissect the chord arrangement as a first step; composing seems to be a bit different than that for me, but I want to follow correct musical principles of arranging the chord progressions, etc. I will continue my investigation into finding the right mix of tools and processes to help me build the original songs and compositions that I want to produce.

New Song: KP1-6.2 SOLAR ENERGY, composed and arranged by Kevan Paul

Click to Listen:



This song is written in a traditional jazz idiom, so it reflects a style developed well by Jon Luc Ponty, Regina Carter, Charlie Bishart, and other great jazz-violinists.

The song title "Solar Energy" reflects the flow of the song, from slow sunrise, to intense noon-day sun, and final sunset. The use of the sun for our daily energy needs is available to all humans on the planet. No more excuses for not building the infrastructure to support this process. We all need to be solar-energy pioneers right now! This is my anthem to that process.

The use of the midi-converted violin melody provides the basis of the synthesizer effects. I started working on this piece in August, but it was not developing as I wanted. Yesterday, it seemed to come together, and the last violin track I used was not edited at all -- this could be considered a live performance from that perspective. No recording tricks on the violin --- that's the real deal.

Remix Song: KP1-5.1 RIVENDELL, by Rick Wakeman

Click to Listen:

This song is short and sweet. I wanted to add violin to this song to demonstrate how acoustic piano and electric-violin work so well together, and move beyond the "classical" music cliches when other sonic elements are added. Of course Rick Wakeman and YES have been doing this for decades. YES has always been one of my favorite bands and I was listening to them extensively when I was a senior in high school (along with Led Zepplin, Moody Blues, etc.).

I recorded this for my brother Rex, as I am anxious to work with him on performing with him in the same style - acoustic piano and electric-violin. He mentioned that he wanted to learn to play the dumbek drum, so I thought "why not add the ceramic-drum sound to this piece?" If you read this brother, I hope this motivates you to find a piano and call me.

This song was re-mixed from the Rick Wakeman album "The Lord of the Rings". Rivendell means the "deep valley of the cleft" (see Rivendell in WikiPedia), and was the valley that Bilbo Baggens stopped with the dwarves before going to the Lonely Mountain. In this case, we are coming back from the lonely mountain, and are traveling back to the mythical "home". I love Rick Wakeman's work, and would like to add electric-violin to some of the other solo pieces -- although I find solo piano soothing, it always beckons me to add violin to it.

Although this is a short piece, it took me all day to rehearse and edit the violin tracks. Rick Wakeman is absolutely masterful on piano, and I wanted to be as precise as possible with this piece --- I would love to perform this live.

Thanks for everyone who has listened to these songs -- there will be about 15-20 songs posted by the end of November, 2008, so keep coming back for more musical analysis, comments on home-recording techniques, and electric-violin experimentation.

Remix Song: KP1-4.2 Baal T'Shuva, by Michael Hedges

Click to Listen:





This was another Michael Hedges solo track from the "Beyond Boundaries" album. I didn't know what the title meant, until I looked it up on WikiPedia. The phrase means "He Who Has Repented", but I don't know what the reference is as far as why Michael gave the song that title.

The title seems appropriate to the message of healing, especially spiritual healing. Repentance can be a very emotional and painful experience, but the after-effects are a feeling of relieve and composure. There is so many moments that need reflection and repentance, For me, I want to repent from procrastinating this recording project --- I started this project last winter, as far as the concept, and the methods of recording. I'm not really sure why it has taken so long to get the project going to do the actual recording and editing, but I have no more excuses.

As I was playing through the song, I kept hearing allusions to the Hallelujah hymn that is sung at Easter time, I don't know if this was sub-conscious or not, but I echoed the allusion in the violin part.

I love the way the guitar sounds (hopeful, full), and this was main reason for choosing this track to add violin and percussion.
Upon request, I've added another link to this song provide connectivity via viddler.

New Song: KP1-3.2 MOVE FORWARD, composed and arranged by Kevan Paul

Click to Listen:


"Move Forward" is an original composition based on a violin theme that has been going around in my head for about six months. The addition of the 104 beats-per-minute drum track gave my original version of the theme a whole new feelling, and I just went where the rhythm wanted to take me while trying to keep the run intact.

I was desperate to find some guitar samples to go with this, but I had to settle for the cheesy GarageBand sample loops for lack of a better option. The intent was to give it a sporadic "heavy-metal" sound in certain sections to give the impression that sometimes you have to just "grind it out" and keep moving forward regardless of the circumstances or how many people are expecting or predicting your failure. When failure is not an option, this is song that I want running around in my head. I had recorded this song last Sunday, and had it running in my head all week. When I get the chance, I want to re-record the guitar tracks with my own electric guitar or from a friend.

The primary violin part is going through the DigiTech GNX4 with IPS (Pitch add = 4th Up). This may seem a little "bright", but I wanted the theme to stand-out. I can't remember what the RaySpace settings were, but this was the first song that I applied RaySpace to after I bought it online from QuikQuak.com,

The recording isn't as perfect as I would like, but the artistic intent is representative for what I was trying to achieve.

Remix Song: KP1-2.2 Rickover's Dream, by Michael Hedge

Click to Listen:


This song is a "re-mix" from a solo guitar recording by Michael Hedges, on his "Beyond Boundaries" album. I added original violin parts that I feel adds a whole new dimension to the song, as well as the synthesizer percussive effects that give the song the "dream-like" essence that keeps true to the title that Michael gave it.

The violin part was essentially a one-take improvisation, with mild editing (I did not hear too many weird notes), and the synthesizer track was deliberately random to give a sub-consciousness effect of the Rapid-Eye-Movement phase of sleep (when the dreams occur).

Dreams are an essential part of daily healing, and the reason I selected this song via the title and ability to add violin tracks (one with dubbing to a second track for the runs and fills).

I can't remember the synthesizer settings or the DigiTech GNX4 settings that I used on this song, so I hope I can replicate if I need to someday. I'm going to use the blog to keep better record of the settings for future reference.