Twelve more songs are on their way from my home studio in Payson, Utah. Breakthrough sounds of the electric-violin combined with several fusion styles will lead the listener down a creative road that will be surprising and original. One or more songs per month is the expected workflow, with a hopeful full release before July, 2009. I will be using a "Creative Commons" license for this work, but will allow commercial use with full attribution rights retained. Stayed tuned.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Three Musical Worlds for Violinists
This is my assessment of music industry opportunities for violinists versus capabilities.
There seems to be three musical worlds that violinists can thrive in. For most violinists these seem to be mutually exclusive musically spheres of involvement. There are many violinists who are very expert in their music knowledge and performance experience, however, there are traditions and preferences that influence and limit the development of a career performer. My assessment does reinforce stereotypes, but since perception can shape reality, this is that best I can do without survey data.
The first world, is the world of the classical music trained and classical music performing violinist. These are generally orchestral performers, with a rare soloist who can master the demands of the repertoire that requires a brilliant memory and a stand-out tonality along with impeccable technique. What a lot of pressure there is for a solo classical performer, and with limited audience. The performance and rehearsal expectations dictate the lifestyle -- busy and competitive, but with a price. The price is not having much time to explore other forms of music, or "programming" that limits the ability to play "by ear" and/or blend-in with other "non-classical" musicians.
The second world, is the world of acoustic folk music with traditional, bluegrass, country, Celtic, Irish, etc. influences. This world provides interesting performance opportunities, but there are limited recording opportunities, and if you are lucky enough to "break-out" of the first world, then you may be a good performer, but limited in ability to "compose" the parts that are required. In this world, the violinists may be asked to perform very limited amount of time with "fills, runs, and harmony-parts". This may be boring for a classical performing musician that can sit down and play an hour-plus piece of music. There may be some income opportunities, but probably not enough to raise a family. buy a house, or create a retirement package - yeah, right.
The third world, is the world carved out by a few very good musicians who have had enough talent and luck to find a career as a solo artist with a record contract. How many violinists are in this category, as compared with other solo instrument artists? Not many in my assessment. Why not? This is where I offer my opinion. The fact is, the violin is a very difficult instrument to record and perform in the current popular genre driven commercial music. This requires a re-assessment by recording engineers and digital signal processing experts to work with violinists to develop a better way to make the violin relevant again in commercial music. Just as the electric guitar has changed the definition of a rhythm section, the electric violin needs to be re-defined. Simply plugging a violin into a guitar amplifier will not work. The reasons are based on the physics of the wave form of the violin as compared to the guitar. This will be the topic of my next post to give my theories about what may change the game and give the violin a chance to compete in a new generation of music. Are the violinists ready to perform in the third world?
There is, no doubt, a number of dedicated violinists who could rise above an amateur status if given a greater opportunity to perform and have enough free time to practice the instrument.
It may be too late for me to create a place in the third musical world (especially in terms of a recording contract), but with home recording techniques and tools, I may be able to leave a legacy of experimentation into many styles of music that are not usually considered available to a violinist. My current genre to experiment with is "electronic-heavy-metal-instrumental", with violin lead solo.
There seems to be three musical worlds that violinists can thrive in. For most violinists these seem to be mutually exclusive musically spheres of involvement. There are many violinists who are very expert in their music knowledge and performance experience, however, there are traditions and preferences that influence and limit the development of a career performer. My assessment does reinforce stereotypes, but since perception can shape reality, this is that best I can do without survey data.
The first world, is the world of the classical music trained and classical music performing violinist. These are generally orchestral performers, with a rare soloist who can master the demands of the repertoire that requires a brilliant memory and a stand-out tonality along with impeccable technique. What a lot of pressure there is for a solo classical performer, and with limited audience. The performance and rehearsal expectations dictate the lifestyle -- busy and competitive, but with a price. The price is not having much time to explore other forms of music, or "programming" that limits the ability to play "by ear" and/or blend-in with other "non-classical" musicians.
The second world, is the world of acoustic folk music with traditional, bluegrass, country, Celtic, Irish, etc. influences. This world provides interesting performance opportunities, but there are limited recording opportunities, and if you are lucky enough to "break-out" of the first world, then you may be a good performer, but limited in ability to "compose" the parts that are required. In this world, the violinists may be asked to perform very limited amount of time with "fills, runs, and harmony-parts". This may be boring for a classical performing musician that can sit down and play an hour-plus piece of music. There may be some income opportunities, but probably not enough to raise a family. buy a house, or create a retirement package - yeah, right.
The third world, is the world carved out by a few very good musicians who have had enough talent and luck to find a career as a solo artist with a record contract. How many violinists are in this category, as compared with other solo instrument artists? Not many in my assessment. Why not? This is where I offer my opinion. The fact is, the violin is a very difficult instrument to record and perform in the current popular genre driven commercial music. This requires a re-assessment by recording engineers and digital signal processing experts to work with violinists to develop a better way to make the violin relevant again in commercial music. Just as the electric guitar has changed the definition of a rhythm section, the electric violin needs to be re-defined. Simply plugging a violin into a guitar amplifier will not work. The reasons are based on the physics of the wave form of the violin as compared to the guitar. This will be the topic of my next post to give my theories about what may change the game and give the violin a chance to compete in a new generation of music. Are the violinists ready to perform in the third world?
There is, no doubt, a number of dedicated violinists who could rise above an amateur status if given a greater opportunity to perform and have enough free time to practice the instrument.
It may be too late for me to create a place in the third musical world (especially in terms of a recording contract), but with home recording techniques and tools, I may be able to leave a legacy of experimentation into many styles of music that are not usually considered available to a violinist. My current genre to experiment with is "electronic-heavy-metal-instrumental", with violin lead solo.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
December Recording and Performing Update
December has been a busy month for rehearsing and performing several Christmas party concerts - mostly in Richfield, Utah area for private parties, with the group LATIGO. We are also going to the studio on January 2nd and 3rd for a marathon recording session to lay-down tracks for the best songs that we perform that are not on the latest CD release "A Cowboy's Life". These tracks should be available via the www.latigowest.com website for sale or streaming sometime in January after some re-mixing.
The Jamendo tracks have received some attention, but the day that my album was published, there were a flood of others at the same time, so those who were following current releases may have missed it. I want to explore the "creative commons" license process to re-mix some violin parts on top of some creative experimental music found on Jamendo that allow for derivative use of the content. Specifically, I will take some of the Tom Fahy tracks and re-do with violin parts -- I find that Tom Fahy group has some very interesting soundscapes that appeal to me as a springboard for some experimental violin sounds --- the vast melodic and almost perpetual motion of some of the songs lends itself to further melodic and rhythmic development. If you are curious go to Jamendo website and search for Tom Fahy, or find under the newage or experimental tags. - Kevan
The Jamendo tracks have received some attention, but the day that my album was published, there were a flood of others at the same time, so those who were following current releases may have missed it. I want to explore the "creative commons" license process to re-mix some violin parts on top of some creative experimental music found on Jamendo that allow for derivative use of the content. Specifically, I will take some of the Tom Fahy tracks and re-do with violin parts -- I find that Tom Fahy group has some very interesting soundscapes that appeal to me as a springboard for some experimental violin sounds --- the vast melodic and almost perpetual motion of some of the songs lends itself to further melodic and rhythmic development. If you are curious go to Jamendo website and search for Tom Fahy, or find under the newage or experimental tags. - Kevan
Monday, December 01, 2008
Now Published on Jamendo!
After finishing the last three songs of the "Healing Again" album, I submitted the eight original compositions to Jamendo, as I thought it would be a good place to start to share the music with others, and hopefully get some exposure with other musicians. On December 1st, Jamendo published the album. I hope that everyone who listens will enjoy the music as much as I enjoyed creating it. I will produce another album to refine the techniques and styles presented here, and continue to use Jamendo and other web-sites that promote new music. I've enjoyed other music that I have heard on the Jamendo web-site, and hope to reciprocate with encouragement and praise for other efforts to produce their own music with a creative-commons license to share with others to the greatest possible extent via the web. THANKS JAMENDO!
Saturday, November 01, 2008
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.
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.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
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.
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.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Sacred Music (KP1-8.5) POSTED to YouTube
Sacred Music by Kevan Paul is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Pandora Playlist for "Neo-Classical Fusion Radio"
Playlist for October 15 - Pandora Playlist for "Neo-Classical Fusion Radio" (see link to listen).
1- Breath of Passion by: Zingaia on: Musical Healing
2- Wine of Alugah by: Therion on: Live Gothic
3- Dancing December by: Katatonia on: Dance of the December Souls
4- Autoregistratzionecx by: Frabrizio Leo on: Cutaway
5- The Jester's Dance by: In Flames on: The Jester Race / Black-Ash Inheritance
6- China Gates, For Piano by: John Adams on: Various Composers, Piano Music of John Adams and Terry Riley
7- Symphony No. 4 ("Heroes"), For Orchestra by: Philip Glass on: "Heroes" Symphony
8- Marimba Dances (3) for Percussion by: Ross Edwards on: Evelyn Glennie: Light in Darkness
9- The Pines of Rome, Symphonic Poem, P. 141 I. on: Ottorino Respighi: Fontane di Roma
10- Free Life by: Dan Wilson on: Free Life
11- Language of Fools by: Tom McRae on: Tom McRae
- good use of string section fills
12-
1- Breath of Passion by: Zingaia on: Musical Healing
2- Wine of Alugah by: Therion on: Live Gothic
3- Dancing December by: Katatonia on: Dance of the December Souls
4- Autoregistratzionecx by: Frabrizio Leo on: Cutaway
5- The Jester's Dance by: In Flames on: The Jester Race / Black-Ash Inheritance
6- China Gates, For Piano by: John Adams on: Various Composers, Piano Music of John Adams and Terry Riley
7- Symphony No. 4 ("Heroes"), For Orchestra by: Philip Glass on: "Heroes" Symphony
8- Marimba Dances (3) for Percussion by: Ross Edwards on: Evelyn Glennie: Light in Darkness
9- The Pines of Rome, Symphonic Poem, P. 141 I. on: Ottorino Respighi: Fontane di Roma
10- Free Life by: Dan Wilson on: Free Life
11- Language of Fools by: Tom McRae on: Tom McRae
- good use of string section fills
12-
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