These three New Wave/New Romantic tracks from the 1980s influenced me and inspired me to create electronic music. While there are many more obvious choices I could have included (Depeche Mode, New Order, and Tears for Fears), these songs embody everything about electronica that appeals to me, even if the tracks themselves aren’t electronic.
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2 Creative Tips: Capture All, Delete Nothing
There are two maxims I live by in creating music and ensuring there is a constant flow of ideas in my creative process: Capture All and Delete Nothing. A comprehensive explanation follows on my process.
Video for Emorej’s “Stars (Acid42 WorldMix)” and Pray for His Recovery
Emorej (aka Jerome Llama) took my lyrics and set it to a beautiful melody. I then took the vocal track and constructed a mournful worldbeat track with a little drum-n-bass in the chorus. This worldbeat/ethnotronica remix was produced using Acid Pro and some VSTi’s. I posted the track back in 2009. As I recall, Emorej loved it.
Balalaika or: What to Do When You’re Creatively Stuck
Stuck on a musical idea? Here are 2 possible solutions: share it and sit on it. This is the story of how I got stuck on a song idea and how doing those two actions allowed the song to evolve into something much better than its original.
Creative MIDI Sequencing Tips and “Sitsiritsit Alibangbang”
The track was born during the 2005 recording sessions for my EP “Kodomo”, I asked vocalist Yu:Mi Calderon to sing any old Filipino folk song that she knew by heart. She sang the first verse of “Sitsiritsit Alibangbang” into the microphone, acapella — with no backing track, no fixed tempo and no designated key. I figured, I may someday use it. I wasn’t quite sure what I would do with it though.
Generating Electronica Song Titles
Someone ought to make a song title generator just for electronic music tracks. But no one did. So I went and made my own.
New Track + Video: Severe and Multiply (Acid42 Remix)
Here’s a glitchy, noisy, drum & bass remix I made for a track by artist and former University of the Philippines art professor, Fatima Lasay. The remix takes the original track and slices it into many more more chaotic pieces, adding drums and an overt rhythm section where once there was none. How I did it, follows.
New Track + Video: Lamay
Here’s a new upbeat and jazzy electronic track entitled “Lamay,” which means funeral wake in Filipino. I took the melody from a traditional folk song and put together a joyful, jazzy, energetic arrangement that focuses less on the grief of losing a loved one, and more on the hope of being reunited with the loved one in eternity.
Track + Video: Sobig F Warning
My latest track, “Sobig F Warning” is a downtempo, doom and gloom tune with bells, ethnic percussions, huge monotone bass, and ghostly pads. I named the track after a computer virus, a worm actually, which reared its ugly head in 2003 as an email trojan horse — hence the menacing ambience and the hostile bass.
Remix: Ciudad’s Love Song for David Grohl
Several years back, the quirkily entertaining Philippine indie band Ciudad released an album with the affectionate title: Is That Ciudad? Yes, Son It’s Me. My favorite track was easily an acoustic ballad with Ciudad asking (former Nirvana drummer and now Foo Fighters leader) Dave Grohl to please return to drumming instead of playing guitar. The title of the track? “That Guy from Nirvana is Now With Foo Fighters.” Here’s my unofficial remix of their track.