InTense Productions

I've spent the last month or so finishing up some remixes. A couple are covers of classic songs that I redid with a vocalist that I work with and a couple are originals that were in need of some new ideas.

As much as I love songwriting, I also love remixing. I think the reason being is because I look forward to taking something and putting a whole new slant on it. I like taking songs that are meant for one genre and remixing it for another. I think that when we think of remixes, we think of dance music but I tend to think remixes as rearranging in the biggest sense of the word. The word 'arranging' itself has many different connotations that I think is limiting. In this way I think of remixing, producing and arranging in the same terms.

Most of the originals that I have written have at least one remix; sometimes many. I try to write the best melody and lyric I can initially. Sometimes I have a general feel of the song when I start but then when I do the remix, I try to do something completely different.

If you've written some songs, I urge you to try a couple of remixes. Try to make a ambient piece out of a rock tune, or a sparse acoustic tune from a dance number. You may surprise yourself, I know I have. If remixing isn't your thing, giving your bare vocal tracks to another musician can sometimes result in some great sounding tracks. I know quite a few musicians out there are looking for material like this to hone their remixing chops and you'll

Your Song (Big Strum Remix)

Last post I did for Vox was back in January when I was just getting over a computer crash that put me back a bit. Since that time I've gotten a couple of new websites set up and a couple of blogs. Unfortunately all this work was at the sacrifice of some of my other online pursuits including my space here.

One of the things that I've been looking for is a way to handle all of the things online that I do and try to simplify the process as much as possible. There's Friendfeeder and sites like that but they still only take care of a small amount of sites that I access on a regular basis. Sites like ReverbNation have made an effort but then it still only includes one or two sites. It seems that adding yet another site to simply take care of one or two others seems like I'm just adding to the pile. As a musician online there are literally dozens of sites and social networks that I've set something up on and have invested some time on. In today's music marketplace, this is really the way it has to be.

I understand that to connect to numerous sites, agreements have to be set out between the companies involved, but wouldn't it be great if I could just sign up for a site and then add all of the social networks that I want?

If anyone out there has found anything like this please let me know, cause I'll be the first to sign up.

I recently had a major computer crash and wanted to share my thoughts on the whole subject. The hard drive on my laptop suddenly refused to work and I had to reset the computer losing all of my data. I had a major crash (and believe me, it was major, it took me the better part of a year to make up for it) before and learned my lesson then, so I had backed up most of my stuff. I say most because unless you're one of these people that backs your stuff up everyday, you're going to lose something. So it wasn't major but it was still a pain.

Having that said, I still didn't back up some things that I wish I would have. These include bookmarks, special fonts, and some things within Outlook. You may have other special things that you've out on your computer that you don't think of until something like this happens and you have to start over. Pictures from emails are a big one!

I used to use Outlook all the time before but when I would have to check my email on a different computer, not all of my sent items would be there and I would have to log in to all of my different email accounts separately. Plus, I found getting all of my settings and files transferred to a new computer a pain and counter-intuitive. I now use gmail and get all of my email in one place. You may use another service but it's a good  idea to try and get all of your messages in one place. Not only does it make it easier to access all of your emails, it's also a time saver. In the case of a crash, all of your data is still there and you can still access it without losing a thing. You might also want to use your email to keep copies of important files and documents.

There are also a ton of online data storage solutions now that are available for free. The good thing about these are that they now include lots of free space (up to 5Gb) and they make it really convenient to back your stuff up. If you have files that aren't huge (like video) you can back up your stuff pretty much everyday with just a click of your mouse within a couple of minutes. This way you are safe during the time between major back ups. Remember, you still need to make those back ups.

A couple of final thoughts: try and save all of your stuff in the same place. I know this sounds obvious but a lot of programs will save their files to their own folder and you'll save it there without thinking. Just open a 3rd party app and see where it saves the file. If your computer is set perfectly and want to save it, use a program like Norton Ghost that makes an image of your hard drive and save it to an external drive. Don't rely on System Restore, it's not good enough.

I make an image of the hard drive when I first get a computer. I usually reset it once a year. This seems extreme but you'd be surprised how much stuff piles up within that time. Remember, when it comes to computer crashes, it's not if, but when.

Sorry for the big gap in the posts but I had to take time out writing and recording the flamenco project to do some remixes for some clients. I’m sure I’m like most of the musicians out there who are trying to get their stuff out while keeping other projects on the go (I write about this a lot in my other blog…see link in my links section). At least these were dances remixes and weren’t that far from what I was doing with the flamenco project.

Like I mentioned, it’s a mix of flamenco and dance music and the challenge has been what to keep traditional and what to change. In the end it’s a matter of taste and I ended up making decisions based on the sound in my head. Not very technical, I know but it’s how I operate most of the time. Keep in mind that it took me a long time to get the music to how I wanted it in the first place. If that sounds confusing, the best analogy I can think of is when you’re looking for a gift for a good friend and you want to get them something that’s ‘just right’. The problem is that you don’t know what this is until you see it. I had the same thing with this flamenco project. I kept on writing and making quick demos until I came up with something that I ‘felt’ was what I was looking for. I took many demos and wasn’t a linear process. I’d come up with something that I liked, then the next two songs I’d hate. This process still goes on but I have a better idea of what I want.

Two of the areas where I spent most of the time rewriting were the chord progressions and the beats. These formed the overall feel of the music and I felt that if I got this right, the rest would fall in place. Since I’ve been playing flamenco guitar for so many years, there were other areas where I didn’t need to do as much work simply because I had practiced the genre for so long already. I had already developed a lot of technique. It was all of these years playing songs by the masters that really allowed me to create this CD in the first place since there is no better way to learn than through these great works. It was also the making the ‘rigid’ dance beats to gel with the flamenco rhythms which tend to vary in tempo and timing depending on the song and dancer.  I wanted it to be ‘straight with a live’ feeling. In other words no too overproduced like some dance music.

I ended up using a lot of the house and trance type beats that I had used in remixes that I had done but rearranged the bass lines so they augmented the beat and the guitar. I also used big dance pads and acid type arpeggios. I just made sure that they didn’t get in the way of the guitar and the overall rhythm.

Like I mentioned in my last post, coming up with the chord progressions where a bit more of a problem. I wanted to steer clear of simple repeating 4 bar progressions and include some interesting chord tensions. I didn’t go too crazy with over the top chords and extensions but I wanted to keep that tension that flamenco music has.  I also wanted to extend the form a bit and didn’t stick to traditional flamenco song forms. Flamenco music has strict forms and you can tell the kind of song and where it’s from simply from the form. (I’ll talk about these forms in an upcoming post). I used some of the things that I learned from playing music of Paco Pena, and Paco DeLucia plus added some things of my own that I learnt from playing jazz standards and pop. In short, I ended up listening to and making notes on a lot of different music before finally coming up with something that I was happy with.

I’ve been in the studio all week working on a new solo project. It’s the first project that I’ve done in a while that’s my own and not for a particular client or for the music library. It’s flamenco harmonies and rhythms combined with club and house grooves. I’ve been working on it off and on for about a year and a half, mostly trying to get the sound that’s in my head. I had written tons of songs but only recently felt like I had hit upon what I had imagined in the beginning.

I wanted to combine the fire and tension of flamenco music with the big phat grooves of dance music. I didn’t want to simplify the harmonies though as I sometimes feel that some flamenco that’s been remixed has been ‘simplified harmonically’ and because I feel that a lot of the passion in the music comes from these musical tensions. So instead of sticking to the standard Am G F E ‘Phrygian’ thing, I’ve tried some traditional and not so traditional progressions. Some of the traditional flamenco songs are based on your good ol’ IV V7 I and I‘ve incorporated that but I’ve also tried some jazz and pop chord progressions while still trying to keep the ‘Spanish tensions’.

For example one song I wrote has mostly jazz progressions in the key of Gm. I’ve modulated a couple of times and added some jazz voicings while not making it too jazzy (if this makes any sense). I’ll write out the chord progression in an upcoming blog along with an upload of the song (I’m writing this in a coffee shop and don’t have the material in front of me).

The other major consideration besides the harmonies was how much was going to stay traditional and how many dance elements was I going to add. To generalize I used flamenco guitars and percussion with club bass lines and beats. While there are some songs that strayed a bit from this generalization, most of them fit this scheme. The melodies were all guitar.

I’ll upload the chord progression and songs shortly!

Since this is my first blog I thought that I’d introduce myself and let you all know what to expect from this space. I’m a writer/producer living in Vancouver, Canada. I studied orchestration at university and jazz at college before I went out on the road with a rock cover band. I’ve been writing and producing music for about a decade now and have written in many different styles.

As much as I loved playing live, my true love is writing and producing. I can write in many styles but love some more than others. I ended up writing in all of these genres because I ran a small studio for about 5 years that basically provided background tracks to songwriters.

Most of my clients never played an instrument or knew anything about theory or production so most of the time I ended up playing all of the instruments and co-writing because all they had was a germ of an idea and some lyrics. I always made an effort to make their tracks their own. I not one of those producers that feels he has to put his personal stamp on everything and try to simply do what’s best for the artist and the song. I produced tracks in every style from RnB, to Hip Hop, rock, country and everything in between. I stopped a couple of years ago to focus on my own stuff.

I’ll upload a couple of my tracks soon to give you an idea of what I’m all about. These are all written and produced by myself. Give these tracks a listen and tell me what you think. I have a lot of stuff in a lot of different styles so I’ll be uploading songs in different genres. When it comes to songwriting I do best with middle of the road stuff: RnB, pop and rock that’s ‘radio friendly’.

Basically I’m going to use this blog as much a journal to myself as I am a public forum. I’ll just be talking about the tracks that I’m working on and share some of my thoughts. If you have any thoughts or questions I would love to hear them.