While it’s good to ask around and find out what others use, don’t get so hung up about gear and brands and tools and materials that you forget that dynamic energy that wans to burst out of you because you have something you need to say through your art.
The point I always try to stress to those starting out in any creative endeavor, whether in visual art or music, sculpture or writing, is that you already do possess tools right under your nose that you can utilize in order to create your art.
Here’s a short, jittery, glitchy Latin-fused house music track that screams carnaval and mardis gras using some repetitive phrases and bouncing bass alongside a distorted drum break.
The title comes from a line in William Burgess’ brutal novel (which was turned into a movie) A Clockwork Orange, meant as a slang way of saying “apologies.”
Manila-based musician Cocolulu (AKA Spazzkid)(aka Mark Redito) is releasing an E.P. on my QED RECORDS, and one of his compositions “Panda Extravaganza” caught my ear so to speak. I felt like doing a remix, but he lost his assembly files and only has the final MP3 of the song. So, I built up his track from scratch using Reason, and played with the sounds a bit, and then sent the file to him. Cocolulu added on to it some more and moved sections around. I got the file back and added a few more touches.
I borrowed a live concert DVD of one of my favorite ’80s pop-rock groups Talking Heads. The DVD titled Stop Making Sense inspired me to come up with a cover version of their 1985 hit song, “Burning Down The House,” except with software and big beautiful electropop beats.
It’s a relaxing downtempo instrumental — a collaboration between East and West coast-based Filipinos trying to figure out this country. The song is based on a riff and a series of patches proposed by Ariel and expounded on and sequenced by myself. The result is a light, flowing, driving song which is primarily in E-minor. Very west coast, if you ask me.
Here’s a morose introspection in A-minor, quickly escalating into frenzy. Influenced by musical acts: Air and Plone. This is the soundtrack of a cold, conflicting, melancholic Northern California. It is also the name of a real, honest-to-goodness street in the city I live in.
Presenting the Hymn of De La Salle -College of Saint Benilde, given an electropop/hiphop spin by yours truly (with a touch of neo-classical in the bridge). Of course you realize all these genre labels sound cool, but that I’m really just making those terms up, right? Hahahahaha!!!!
Inspired to write some gothic-sounding electronic rock because of last Friday’s goth gig at Cubao X, I came up with this anthemic tune in a matter of 3 hours using Reason software and channeling all my angst into it.
A full night of music and an Acid42 performance at the Cubao-X venue in Quezon City, Philippines: I actually tried something new tonight, and constructed a few on-the-spot loops for the event. Since the night was primarily a gathering of goths and goth-music lovers, I tried my hand at crafting some moody atmospheres on-the-fly. And some of it worked. When the rest of it was starting to suck, I had to start playing my pre-constructed slow songs. They were still a bit too hip-hoppish and funky for the goth crowd, I felt, but what the hey.
Collaboration with Filipino MC and rapper Syke. The ends result? A hip hop / world music track with doses of electronic yumminess.
