tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-280071342024-02-19T01:39:29.231-06:00Hybernation Music - The Music of "Fragile Forest"Fragile Forest produces a mix of Progressive Rock, New Age and Ambient instrumentals.
In reality, Fragile Forest is only John S. Hagewood in his cave he calls "Hybernation Studio" pushing all the buttons, and playing all the instruments.John S. Hagewood (aka. Fragile Forest)http://www.blogger.com/profile/09919997150516214076noreply@blogger.comBlogger54125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28007134.post-59626229061051013392012-06-01T14:20:00.000-05:002012-06-01T14:20:09.587-05:00Gino Strikes BackThe year was 1994 (I think). My studio consisted of a bunch of hardware synthesizers, an audio mixer, a few outboard effects such as reverb and a DAT machine to mix down things too. I had recently left my old 4-track behind, in favor of sequencing everything in Cakewalk for Windows, on Windows 3.0, running on a Intel 386-based computer. Compared to my studio today, these were the dark ages!<br />
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But I managed to create some memorable tracks. This is one of them, I think. The title of this track comes from combining the name of recording artist <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gino_Vannelli" target="_blank">Gino Vannelli</a>, whose keyboard sounds and grooves definitely influenced this composition, and the film <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_Strikes_Back" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Empire Strikes Back</a>, which was playing on cable TV the afternoon I decided to finish this track instead of watching TV.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Gino had some serious hair, didn't he?</td></tr>
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I had just purchased a used <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korg_M1" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Korg M1</a> at the time, and though it's 128 factory sounds had already been used on thousands of pop recordings, I was oblivious to this since I was going through a period of time in my life where I listened to absolutely no popular music (if I could help it). The first M1 sound you will here in this recording is still in use today as the theme song to the radio program <a href="http://www.marketplace.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">"Marketplace" from American Public Radio</a>. Anyway, two distinctive M1 sounds are what started out this track at the time, followed by some hard-driving synth bass and slamming drums, and a bit of raw B3 organ. Later on, these sounds are joined by some lead synthesizer and clavinet.<br />
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When I decided to rework this song in Pro Tools 10 recently, I ported only the MIDI tracks over from my PC and started choosing all new virtual instruments to play the parts. Thing is, I simply could not recreate the original vibe with anything other than those two Korg M1 sounds. Lucky for me, <a href="http://www.korg.com/Products.aspx?ct=53" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Korg makes perfect virtual recreations</a> of their <a href="http://www.korg.com/Legacym1" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">M1</a>, <a href="http://www.korg.com/LegacyWAVESTATION" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Wavestation</a>, <a href="http://www.korg.com/LegacyPolysix" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">PolySix</a> and <a href="http://www.korg.com/LegacyMonoPoly" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">MonoPoly</a> synths! Once I dialed in those first two sounds, the original vibe was totally there, ready to be augmented by much better-sounding instruments for the rest of the track.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2QbvLBtbND6u5qZ1kHBZkk1ln2cNyjiGjBaZh6rO2B63DCLwm7n1W0qAMuBsNvjMoQgPVgDQ5r4yjQLNnFHONQ_fRcttLpVwipJjctEjgfBNNS0B3LS2g0wu5-hLN9-79DcH3rg/s1600/Legacy_M1_634254202936700000.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2QbvLBtbND6u5qZ1kHBZkk1ln2cNyjiGjBaZh6rO2B63DCLwm7n1W0qAMuBsNvjMoQgPVgDQ5r4yjQLNnFHONQ_fRcttLpVwipJjctEjgfBNNS0B3LS2g0wu5-hLN9-79DcH3rg/s1600/Legacy_M1_634254202936700000.png" /></a></div>
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One set of instruments that didn't translate very well from the MIDI files was the drum and percussion tracks. They sounded robotic and stiff; and way to repetitive to me. So, I fired up <a href="http://www.toontrack.com/products.asp?item=7" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Toontrack's EZDrummer </a>plugin and started searching for some appropriate grooves in 6/8 time. Luckily, I found a set of MIDI grooves that are part of their <a href="http://www.toontrack.com/products.asp?item=71" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Songwriters' Drumpack</a> series that fit pretty well. The tough part was having to edit and reprogram some of the fills to match the really busy and progressive kinds of fills required for some of the turn-arounds. But once I was done, the track absolutely came alive.</div>
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So, without further delay, here is the track titled "Gino Strikes Back", available on SoundCloud:</div>
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And here is a direct link if you would like to download it: <a href="http://www.hybernationmusic.com/fragileforest/music/Gino%20Strikes%20Back.mp3">Gino Strikes Back.mp3</a></div>
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And just for kicks here is the original mp3 of all those vintage hardware instruments mixed down direct to DAT in the late 90's: <a href="http://www.hybernationmusic.com/fragileforest/music/fragileforest+stayontrail01ginostrikesback.mp3">Original 90's version</a></div>
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</div>John S. Hagewood (aka. Fragile Forest)http://www.blogger.com/profile/09919997150516214076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28007134.post-62907054061339767592011-12-23T12:06:00.010-06:002011-12-24T12:50:49.129-06:00"Happy Christmas" from Fragile Forest and Hybernation Music<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Yes, it's that time of year again. And so this is Christmas...and what have *I* done? Another Christmas "cover tune" of course!</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">This year I recorded John Lennon's classic "Happy Christmas (War is Over)", a song released in 1971. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Xmas_%28War_Is_Over%29" target="_blank">According to Wikipedia</a>, this was a Vietnam War protest song, though I doubt many people realize that (I sure didn't). Over the years, the song has gone on to top the charts of favorite Christmas pop songs.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Quoting from Wikipedia: <i>"The lyric is based on a campaign in late 1969 by Lennon and Ono, who rented billboards and posters in eleven major cities around the world that read: "WAR IS OVER! (If You Want It) Happy Christmas from John and Yoko". In 1971, the United States was deeply entrenched in the unpopular Vietnam War. The line "War is over, if you want it, war is over, now!", as sung by the background vocals, was taken directly from the billboards."</i></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I tried various arrangements with me singing the "War is Over" part, and it just came off cheesy and not "authentic" to my ears. So, I decided to just focus on the main theme of the song, sort of like the Moody Blues did on their holiday album "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_%28The_Moody_Blues_album%29" target="_blank">December</a>", released in 2003. I think the main thing that differentiates my version from all of the many cover versions I have heard is that mine is produced with no guitar whatsoever :-)</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">So, Happy Christmas everyone, and thanks for listening!</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><embed align="middle" allowscriptaccess="sameDomain" bgcolor="#fff" class="MP3" flashvars="playerID=1&bg=0xDCDCDC&leftbg=0x696969&lefticon=0xF2F2F2&rightbg=0x696969&rightbghover=0x000&righticon=0xF2F2F2&righticonhover=0xFFFFFF&text=0x000000&slider=0x808080&track=0xFFFFFF&border=0xFFFFFF&loader=0xAF2910&soundFile=http://www.hybernationmusic.com/fragileforest/music/Happy Christmas.mp3" height="24" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" quality="high" src="http://www.hybernationmusic.com/player.swf" style="height: 24px; width: 290px;" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="290" wmode="transparent"></embed></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.hybernationmusic.com/fragileforest/music/Happy%20Christmas.mp3" target="_NEW">here is a direct link to the mp3 for non-shockwave environments</a></span></div><br />
<img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYoYs4JoznVKr8Gq-IkI4xBhR8prGo0BHi5x2RMMLRar9SMy4P6n-mU7TfjRSzhQREeBxWmkbSg9UbV0dK_TjUf8IqTFQkYfmHLh6VoxbqI1PfkoLIaRPwgfoWYQtNnKmTC8xo-A/s400/Kids_Christmas_2011.jpg" width="400" /><br />
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<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">...And here are the ghosts from my Christmas Cover Tunes past:<br />
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<a href="http://hybernationmusic.blogspot.com/2008/12/trying-not-to-be-grinch-this-year.html" target="_blank">I tried not to be a grinch in 2008...</a><br />
<a href="http://hybernationmusic.blogspot.com/2009/12/what-child-is-this.html" target="_blank">I got kind of deep in 2009...</a><br />
<a href="http://hybernationmusic.blogspot.com/2010/12/merry-christmas-from-hybernation-music.html" target="_blank">Then, I got a little bit controversial last year...</a><br />
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</div>John S. Hagewood (aka. Fragile Forest)http://www.blogger.com/profile/09919997150516214076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28007134.post-44567533666751573632011-08-20T18:32:00.004-05:002011-08-20T18:36:20.576-05:00Serious Music (1979-1983)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://hybernationmusic.com/images/Proclamation-001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_BLANK"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://hybernationmusic.com/images/Proclamation-001.jpg" width="290" /></span></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I have blogged about these individual pieces a lot over the past few years. Some of these compositions I have recorded many times over the last 30 years, with various levels of technology and to varying degrees of success. Some of them I have just recorded for the first time recently. So finally, using SoundCloud, I have gathered them together into a "set" that you can listen to without having to press more than one play button.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Please press play when you have 20 minutes to spare. Headphones are highly recommended. Comments are welcome.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><object height="225" width="100%"> <param name="movie" value="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Fplaylists%2F1041553&show_comments=true&auto_play=false&show_playcount=true&show_artwork=true&color=0093ff"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><param name="wmode" value="window"></param><embed wmode="window" allowscriptaccess="always" height="225" src="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Fplaylists%2F1041553&show_comments=true&auto_play=false&show_playcount=true&show_artwork=true&color=0093ff" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="100%"></embed> </object> <a href="http://soundcloud.com/fragileforest/sets/serious-music-1979-1983" target="_BLANK">Serious Music (1979-1983)</a> by <a href="http://soundcloud.com/fragileforest" target="_BLANK">fragileforest</a></span></div><div><br />
</div>John S. Hagewood (aka. Fragile Forest)http://www.blogger.com/profile/09919997150516214076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28007134.post-6362648439079399742011-08-20T16:33:00.000-05:002011-08-20T16:33:27.056-05:00Catching up with the DAW Wars...and a whole lotta remixing going on<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The <i><b><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_audio_workstation" target="_BLANK">DAW</a> Wars</b></i> continue unabated here at Hybernation Music. I really felt that when I switched to the iMac in the spring of this year, my search for the ultimate DAW (digital audio workstation...ie. software) was over. After years of suffering with the instabilities of Cakewalk Sonar, I felt that once I had switched to the Mac, as I posted here before, <a href="http://www.apple.com/logicstudio/" target="_BLANK">Apple Logic Studio</a> seemed to be <i><b>"the one"</b></i>. It was stable, intuitive and efficient, and it's 64-bit mode worked better than any DAW had for me before. I still liked Pro Tools, and when Pro Tools 9 came out I did start using it more, but it's lack of "offline rendering" and it's limited 32-bit memory space can be a big frustration when working with larger projects with many complex virtual instruments.<br />
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My only real complaints with Logic have been that sometimes the workflow seems a bit "clunky", and the mixer and arrange windows just aren't are visually appealing as some other programs (it hasn't seen an update in a couple of years, which is part of the problem). Then when <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/23/technology/personaltech/23pogue.html?pagewanted=all" target="_BLANK">this year's debacle over Apple's Final Cut X revamp hit</a>, it became a little scary to think about totally putting all my eggs in that Apple-cart (to mix a few metaphors). I feel quite certain that the next release of Logic (probably "Apple Logic X") will be a radical departure, though perhaps not as radical <a href="http://www.macprovideo.com/hub/macprovideo/world-exclusive-logic-revealed" target="_BLANK">as this video suggests</a>. Great, just as I am getting comfortable with it!</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">In the meantime, <a href="http://www.soundonsound.com/news?NewsID=13585" target="_BLANK">Steinberg came out with Cubase 6</a>, which finally offers full 64-bit support on Mac OS X. Though I was impressed with Cubase 5.5 on the PC as I noted in several past posts, when I installed it on the iMac, I was disappointed to learn that is had no 64-bit Mac version. And, to be honest, it was a little unstable on my iMac. It just didn't feel as solid as Logic or Pro Tools. Heck, it didn't feel as solid as <a href="http://www.reaper.fm/" target="_BLANK">Reaper</a>, for that matter.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">But after asking around, I decided to download the fully-functional 30 day trial of Cubase 6, which prompted me to go ahead and buy the reasonable priced upgrade this weekend. Yes, I am impressed. Very stable and efficient. I'm going to be working with it.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">And speaking of Reaper, that program was just gone "4.0", and it continues to knock my socks off, for the money. I guess I bought a $60 license back when it went to 3.0, and you get two full version upgrades for that price! So, my license will continue to be good through all of the 4.x releases. Sweet.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">So, in the last few months, I've been using all of these programs, and below are a few things I have to show for it. I'll be including screen shots of all these DAW's, so let me start out by showing you what the new Cubase 6 looks like (I've not finished a track yet, so just pictures of this one):<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6q87Hid8Dx227s3ie5REtShMZYxAk5t92MPBlFLtWarX49ve3fKPxOh_u6HTa857t-qiqVil4hyphenhyphenHQ8cBVUfAHm2kuByfDRZzYkgAM6NqWBHL18XG5viKJqw8Q3dZELRuwPk1phA/s1600/Cubase+tracking.png" target="_BLANK" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6q87Hid8Dx227s3ie5REtShMZYxAk5t92MPBlFLtWarX49ve3fKPxOh_u6HTa857t-qiqVil4hyphenhyphenHQ8cBVUfAHm2kuByfDRZzYkgAM6NqWBHL18XG5viKJqw8Q3dZELRuwPk1phA/s400/Cubase+tracking.png" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Cubase 6 Tracking Window </i></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9hTjrCcLsjEeu-_-AkoFtJfeUkP9E8Y8AwrD1PhwWOZhP3g9YhyphenhyphenY0XSZ3oTFJyon4joYkb7KTQZomitz63JHq-pG_HUhxM9iH6Fqup1EPEphbZZTKXA_ILvoJ7-7owYeoLpXsIQ/s1600/Cubase+mixing.png" target="_BLANK" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9hTjrCcLsjEeu-_-AkoFtJfeUkP9E8Y8AwrD1PhwWOZhP3g9YhyphenhyphenY0XSZ3oTFJyon4joYkb7KTQZomitz63JHq-pG_HUhxM9iH6Fqup1EPEphbZZTKXA_ILvoJ7-7owYeoLpXsIQ/s400/Cubase+mixing.png" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Cubase 6 Mixing Window</i></div></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
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</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Here is a new little dance number I came up with that I call "Afrikan Techno". I did this one in Reaper:</div><object height="81" width="100%"> <param name="movie" value="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F21530830"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed allowscriptaccess="always" height="81" src="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F21530830" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="100%"></embed> </object> <a href="http://soundcloud.com/fragileforest/afrikan-techno-reaper-mix" target="_BLANK">Afrikan Techno (Reaper Mix)</a> by <a href="http://soundcloud.com/fragileforest" target="_BLANK">fragileforest</a> <br />
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</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjomLmDfau85p5H4z0yrf7A0k_gyMH9ZbNEuFe7nz7cczo4Y71plpsvrHBY8483adil1QuvQ14rGUJ8NaDYwi65bVnSyEK9_uWjsAkMYwZ9vf1fEbVU12FedouDfTeqYPioXcOJjw/s1600/Reaper+4+tracking.png" target="_BLANK" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjomLmDfau85p5H4z0yrf7A0k_gyMH9ZbNEuFe7nz7cczo4Y71plpsvrHBY8483adil1QuvQ14rGUJ8NaDYwi65bVnSyEK9_uWjsAkMYwZ9vf1fEbVU12FedouDfTeqYPioXcOJjw/s400/Reaper+4+tracking.png" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Reaper 4 Tracking Window </i></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMPIt5otl7-C_fUpnRCDqrqd2RqJfFwTPKObInsbouS7Q6TQDWSvbzGzN2jvqYznQyBpZsTmdcz6HETaghuWdXH_KiBedRmCf0HJ7MIYTJnszAQDu63_rhyphenhyphengjlGpOcy4pytw7e-g/s1600/Reaper+4+mixing.png" target="_BLANK" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMPIt5otl7-C_fUpnRCDqrqd2RqJfFwTPKObInsbouS7Q6TQDWSvbzGzN2jvqYznQyBpZsTmdcz6HETaghuWdXH_KiBedRmCf0HJ7MIYTJnszAQDu63_rhyphenhyphengjlGpOcy4pytw7e-g/s400/Reaper+4+mixing.png" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Reaper 4 Mixing Window</i></div><br />
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I did a complete rework of the song "Ancient Violence" (<a href="http://hybernationmusic.blogspot.com/2009/06/ancient-violence.html" target="_BLANK">which I blogged about here two years ago</a>). I did this completely in Pro Tools 9, reworking all of the virtual instruments used. This was an exercise in "getting rid of Native Instrument Kore 2" in a track which was heavily dependent on that technology. <a href="http://www.musicradar.com/news/tech/native-instruments-discontinues-kore-457945" target="_BLANK">Kore 2 is being discontinued</a> by this group of professional rip-off artists who call themselves music technologists. I have a lot invested in their software, but they'll not be getting any more of MY money, I can tell you. But I digress...anyway, I really like the way the new version of this 20-year-old composition came out. It has a completely different vibe than the original version:</div><object height="81" width="100%"> <param name="movie" value="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F19136279"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed allowscriptaccess="always" height="81" src="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F19136279" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="100%"></embed> </object> <a href="http://soundcloud.com/fragileforest/ancient-violence-remix" target="_BLANK">Ancient Violence (remix)</a> by <a href="http://soundcloud.com/fragileforest" target="_BLANK">fragileforest</a> <br />
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One of the first tracks I did on Pro Tools 8 a couple of year ago was this one that I call "<a href="http://hybernationmusic.blogspot.com/2009/09/giving-pro-tools-another-chance.html" target="_BLANK">One Lonely Desert</a>". I felt the need to remix it on the iMac recently, to take advantage of Pro Tools 9 and some recent plug-ins I am really loving, especially<a href="http://www.ikmultimedia.com/trsingles/moreinfo/black76.php" target="_BLANK"> IK Multimedia's Black 76 Limiting Amplifier</a>, which is simply the best track compressor I have ever used! This remix sounds really superior to the original, I think:</div><object height="81" width="100%"> <param name="movie" value="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F19466414"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed allowscriptaccess="always" height="81" src="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F19466414" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="100%"></embed> </object> <a href="http://soundcloud.com/fragileforest/one-lonely-desert" target="_BLANK">One Lonely Desert</a> by <a href="http://soundcloud.com/fragileforest" target="_BLANK">fragileforest</a><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqpg2SofLEUt0Sg2VZMcP0YwYA5yaTOkfL9hJKITDpH5ypcKRwVWzKybg190_EU9iSXS6svCtI6fJDQh3mrZxKVyhTTaZwXPDIh9VnkwSpG8jshi9G144PHsIdA9oMmGHJIq3E5g/s1600/Pro+Tools+9.png" target="_BLANK" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqpg2SofLEUt0Sg2VZMcP0YwYA5yaTOkfL9hJKITDpH5ypcKRwVWzKybg190_EU9iSXS6svCtI6fJDQh3mrZxKVyhTTaZwXPDIh9VnkwSpG8jshi9G144PHsIdA9oMmGHJIq3E5g/s400/Pro+Tools+9.png" width="400" /></a></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: center;"><i>Pro Tools 9 with Tracking and Mixing squeezed together on my 27" monitor</i></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
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</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Lastly, I still use <a href="http://www.propellerheads.se/" target="_BLANK">Propellerhead's Reason/Record</a> duo some as well. It's just so quick and immediate (and is hands-down the best at "cross-platform" session compatibility, due to the closed nature of the system. Something I start on the PC will sound EXACTLY the same and load up with absolutely no issues on the Mac with Reason/Record). I'm really looking forward to those Swedish folks rolling all these feature into one product with the<a href="http://www.propellerheads.se/reason6/" target="_BLANK"> recently announced Reason 6</a>. I recently fired up Reason/Record and remixed this piece I call "<a href="http://hybernationmusic.blogspot.com/2011/02/piano-idea-two.html" target="_BLANK">Piano Idea Two</a>", using the Yamaha C7 grand piano found in the <a href="http://www.propellerheads.se/products/refills/rpi/" target="_BLANK">Reason Pianos Refill</a>:</div><object height="81" width="100%"> <param name="movie" value="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F13187791"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed allowscriptaccess="always" height="81" src="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F13187791" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="100%"></embed> </object> <a href="http://soundcloud.com/fragileforest/piano-idea-two" target="_BLANK">Piano Idea Two</a> by <a href="http://soundcloud.com/fragileforest" target="_BLANK">fragileforest</a><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpj9GIV7O6UE4pB-Kb52Ed2zUX5q763VOkbGTCvpjkbXh0hJYCXScjuXShjjwvZcDJKTqMukpV14d9KFojARM6wytK8rJlgFPwmvY1jY8PAxqSBwHhcp-g1rTiFkqsIzlkerAolw/s1600/Reason+Record.png" target="_BLANK" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="171" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpj9GIV7O6UE4pB-Kb52Ed2zUX5q763VOkbGTCvpjkbXh0hJYCXScjuXShjjwvZcDJKTqMukpV14d9KFojARM6wytK8rJlgFPwmvY1jY8PAxqSBwHhcp-g1rTiFkqsIzlkerAolw/s400/Reason+Record.png" width="400" /></a></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: center;"><i>Reason / Record Duo with Tracking, Mixing and "Rack" on one screen</i></div><br />
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John S. Hagewood (aka. Fragile Forest)http://www.blogger.com/profile/09919997150516214076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28007134.post-2448577110189672682011-07-09T22:56:00.002-05:002011-07-09T23:08:27.533-05:00My 50th Blog Post...and two Piano Solo pieces<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Welcome to my 50th post on the Hybernation Music blog. Wow. Can it really have been five years ago that I decided to take the blogging plunge with my <a href="http://hybernationmusic.blogspot.com/2006/05/welcome-to-hybernation-music-blog.html" target="_BLANK">inaugural blog post</a>. Yes, is was May 12, 2006.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I just want to say I quick "Thank You" to the (few) folks who take the time to read and listen, and occasionally comment, either here or on Facebook. Speaking of Facebook, it's hard to believe that Facebook was barely even around back in 2006 (it was, it just hadn't gone viral yet). I joined Facebook (as myself) about a year after starting this blog, in April of 2007 and didn't have a clue what to use it for. So my first post was: "Visit my blog at <a href="http://hybernationmusic.blogspot.com/" target="_BLANK">http://hybernationmusic.blogspot.com</a>". LOL. I say "it's hard to believe..." because so many people I know, including myself, use Facebook now as a primary mode of communication! </div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I created a "<a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Fragile-Forest/278530706863" target="_BLANK">Fragile Forest Page</a>" on Facebook in January of 2010, sort of as a companion to this blog. Lately when I finish a track, I first post it there and then later, if I feel like it, I blog about it here. In fact, the Fragile Forest facebook page now has over 70+ "followers" (or "friends", or "likes" or whatever the heck they are calling it these days) so I suppose more people listen to my music there than here!</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Anyway, I have decided to make more of an effort to blog every piece of music I work on here. Facebook is hard to navigate and go back and review old posts, due to all the clutter there. This blog is concentrated Fragile Forest, and it's my musical diary. I just need to make myself be more consistent with it.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Tonight, have a listen to these two piano solos. These are the two final pieces <a href="http://hybernationmusic.blogspot.com/2011/06/victory-theme.html" target="_BLANK">I mentioned last time I blogged in this post</a>, which I have revised with a hyperlink to the future.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The first one is called "Searching" and it's actually part three of the "serious music suite" I wrote between 1979 and 1984. At one time I called this song "Song In Search of a Continuing Daytime Drama" since I felt that it was a bit on the sappy side, and the initial arrangement DID actually sound a little like<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadia%27s_Theme" target="_BLANK"> "Nadia's Theme" (the theme from "the Young and the Restless")</a>. In that original version written in 1979, I didn't play the arpeggiated left-hand part...I played simple quarter note triads, similar to "Nadia's Theme". I believe that it was a bit later (very early eighties) after I heard Keith Emerson's soundtrack to the horror film <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferno_%281980_film%29" target="_BLANK">"Inferno"</a> and that spurred the idea for the left-hand part. I remember being in Youngstown, Ohio when this happened, traveling with a top40 band. Isn't it funny how the mind retains some completely trivial bits of detail?</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">This recording was performed last year before I got the iMac, and was recorded into Cubase on the PC. The interesting thing about how I did that recording was that I played the entire piece to a metronome against a strict tempo, with no slowing down or speeding up. Then I went in a manually created all of the tempo variations you hear after the fact. I did this because I intended on orchestrating the piece and I wanted everything to line up perfectly on the bar markers, but then I later decided NOT to orchestrate after all. It was just too much work for someone who knows almost nothing about formal orchestration.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">A few months ago I exported the MIDI file, with the tempo information intact, and then imported that into, you guessed it, Apple Logic Pro 9 on the iMac. I then constructed what I feel is "the perfect piano" sound....or at least as perfect as I can get at this time:</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><ul style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><li><a href="http://www.native-instruments.com/#/en/products/producer/kontakt-4/" target="_BLANK">Native Instruments Kontakt 4 </a>playing <a href="http://www.sampletekk.com/proddetail.php?prod=STDELIVER-036-FORMAT" target="_BLANK">SampleTek's mega piano called "Seven Seas Grand" (a Yamaha C7)</a></li>
<li>IK Multimedia's new compressor called "<a href="http://www.ikmultimedia.com/trsingles/moreinfo/black76.php" target="_BLANK">Black 76 Limiting Amplifier</a>"</li>
<li>Nomad Factor's EQ plugin, the "<a href="http://nomadfactory.com/products/pulsetec/index.html" target="_BLANK">PulseTeq EQs</a>"</li>
<li><a href="http://www.waves.com/Content.aspx?id=270" target="_BLANK">Waves IR-L convolution reverb</a> using their impulse response file that is an actual recording of the Ryman Auditorium from the 7th row.</li>
</ul><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">So, first for tonight, here is "Searching":</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><embed align="middle" allowscriptaccess="sameDomain" bgcolor="#fff" class="MP3" flashvars="playerID=1&bg=0xDCDCDC&leftbg=0x696969&lefticon=0xF2F2F2&rightbg=0x696969&rightbghover=0x000&righticon=0xF2F2F2&righticonhover=0xFFFFFF&text=0x000000&slider=0x808080&track=0xFFFFFF&border=0xFFFFFF&loader=0xAF2910&soundFile=http://www.hybernationmusic.com/fragileforest/music/Searching.mp3" height="24" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" quality="high" src="http://www.hybernationmusic.com/player.swf" style="height: 24px; width: 290px;" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="290" wmode="transparent"></embed></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.hybernationmusic.com/fragileforest/music/Searching.mp3" target="_NEW">here is a direct link to the mp3 for non-shockwave environments</a></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The second solo piano piece in the suite, which was the last piece I wrote and was always meant to be the last one before the reprise, I am calling "Unnamed" because I cannot for the life of me remember what I used to call it. I probably have the old title written down an a piece of paper somewhere...I'm just not sure. I'm also not sure if I've even recorded it before. If I did, I probably recorded it on a Fender Rhodes electric piano....that is the way I first envisioned it. For this recording, I chose to use the exact same Piano sound as I did for "Searching", thinking this would give the suite a little bit of needed cohesiveness.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">So, to end the night (and perhaps put you to sleep, this one is pretty mellow), here is "Unnamed":</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><embed align="middle" allowscriptaccess="sameDomain" bgcolor="#fff" class="MP3" flashvars="playerID=1&bg=0xDCDCDC&leftbg=0x696969&lefticon=0xF2F2F2&rightbg=0x696969&rightbghover=0x000&righticon=0xF2F2F2&righticonhover=0xFFFFFF&text=0x000000&slider=0x808080&track=0xFFFFFF&border=0xFFFFFF&loader=0xAF2910&soundFile=http://www.hybernationmusic.com/fragileforest/music/Unnamed.mp3" height="24" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" quality="high" src="http://www.hybernationmusic.com/player.swf" style="height: 24px; width: 290px;" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="290" wmode="transparent"></embed></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.hybernationmusic.com/fragileforest/music/Unnamed.mp3" target="_NEW">here is a direct link to the mp3 for non-shockwave environments</a></span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrHOUe0BZpvT8qiaYK8rfE7Eq0VKbr3jBE8a6yIFfu2hjpQuIe9zDDnHpen1RJSSpPbm28Lzyna4tR5CrrbsQybjz3pl5YxUWpyZ-V99tLJGunUBNI4DwGdAr8NOht1p14H8YRUw/s1600/YamahaC7" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrHOUe0BZpvT8qiaYK8rfE7Eq0VKbr3jBE8a6yIFfu2hjpQuIe9zDDnHpen1RJSSpPbm28Lzyna4tR5CrrbsQybjz3pl5YxUWpyZ-V99tLJGunUBNI4DwGdAr8NOht1p14H8YRUw/s400/YamahaC7" width="400" /></a></div></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div>John S. Hagewood (aka. Fragile Forest)http://www.blogger.com/profile/09919997150516214076noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28007134.post-28675022796451883152011-06-22T21:19:00.007-05:002011-07-09T23:00:47.861-05:00Victory Theme<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I meant to post this song when I finished it a couple of months ago. I am behind in my blogging!</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">This is a piece of music that I wrote many years ago as part of my suite of "serious music". The other pieces in the suite that I have blogged about are located at these links:</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">1) <a href="http://hybernationmusic.blogspot.com/2010/04/original-version-of-passage.html" target="_BLANK">Passage (original version)</a></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">2) <a href="http://hybernationmusic.blogspot.com/2008/05/short-prog-piece-from-composers-archive.html" target="_BLANK">Intermezzo</a></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">3) Searching (piano solo, <a href="http://hybernationmusic.blogspot.com/2011/07/my-50th-blog-postand-two-piano-solo.html" target="_BLANK">blog post here</a>)</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">4) Victory Theme (this piece)</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">5) <a href="http://hybernationmusic.blogspot.com/2010/04/proclamation.html" target="_BLANK">Proclamation </a></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">6) unnamed piano solo (<a href="http://hybernationmusic.blogspot.com/2011/07/my-50th-blog-postand-two-piano-solo.html" target="_BLANK">blog post here</a>)</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">7) <a href="http://hybernationmusic.blogspot.com/2009/08/passage.html" target="_BLANK">Passage (reprise)</a></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">If I ever finish completely recording this suite, perhaps I will post a "playlist" link where they can be listened to, in order, without clicking all around the place. For tonight, I hope you enjoy listening to "Victory Theme":</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><embed align="middle" allowscriptaccess="sameDomain" bgcolor="#fff" class="MP3" flashvars="playerID=1&bg=0xDCDCDC&leftbg=0x696969&lefticon=0xF2F2F2&rightbg=0x696969&rightbghover=0x000&righticon=0xF2F2F2&righticonhover=0xFFFFFF&text=0x000000&slider=0x808080&track=0xFFFFFF&border=0xFFFFFF&loader=0xAF2910&soundFile=http://www.hybernationmusic.com/fragileforest/music/Victory Theme.mp3" height="24" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" quality="high" src="http://www.hybernationmusic.com/player.swf" style="height: 24px; width: 290px;" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="290" wmode="transparent"></embed></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.hybernationmusic.com/fragileforest/music/Victory%20Theme.mp3" target="_NEW">here is a direct link to the mp3 for non-shockwave environments</a></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Here is the obligatory image that I usually include in my blog posts:</div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_3wasrJxlq8LVj3CmoXHaRlzjZOaBvroekq9VIXplXv6XAFfgqltKDM6Nn-DLOc8zoD_8Aot-7aE4byS-EOO35BpSRLq_F0MFMzy2U2IOPqBXIDQjr-fWy6cXeUmdVTWCAip69A/s1600/Victory.jpg" imageanchor="1" target="_BLANK"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_3wasrJxlq8LVj3CmoXHaRlzjZOaBvroekq9VIXplXv6XAFfgqltKDM6Nn-DLOc8zoD_8Aot-7aE4byS-EOO35BpSRLq_F0MFMzy2U2IOPqBXIDQjr-fWy6cXeUmdVTWCAip69A/s400/Victory.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/farflungphotos/1388060629/" target="_BLANK">image courtesy of Tanya Hall (farflungphotos)</a></i></span></div><br />
<u><b>Technical details of the recording:</b></u><br />
This track was started in Cakewalk Sonar 8.5 many months ago (perhaps more than a year). After letting it bake for that long, I finally ported the MIDI file over to Apple Logic Studio on my iMac, and then re-assigned many of the same virtual instruments used on the PC:<br />
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1) Native Instruments Kontakt 4 (Piano, Electric Piano, Bass)<br />
2) Toontrack Superior Drummer 2 (using the "N. Y. - Hit Factory" drum set).<br />
3) IK Multimedia Philharmonik (Strings)<br />
4) Spectrasonics Omnisphere (String Pad and Vocal Pad)<br />
5) Arturia Analog Factory 2.5 (two lead synth parts)<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.waves.com/" target="_BLANK">High-end Plugin maker Waves</a> have been running serious discounts on their "Renaissance" line of plugins. This is the company that makes plug-in <a href="http://www.waves.com/content.aspx?id=90" target="_BLANK">bundles that cost thousands of dollars</a>. Well, for a ridiculously paltry $38, I picked up their <a href="http://www.waves.com/Content.aspx?id=171" target="_BLANK">Renaissance Compressor</a>, and I'm very glad I did. I ended up using six instances of it on this mix, on drums, bass and master buss, and it really does add punch and warmth in a very subtle and professional way.<br />
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Another thing I did different on this track, that I used to do and just haven't lately since switching to Logic, was that I created a "drum submix" where I broke out the kick, snare, toms, hat and overhead drum "mics" onto separate tracks, and then did different EQ and plugin settings for each track. I also created a separate reverb buss for the drums, feeding just the right amount of post-fader output of each track into this channel. I also used several instances of Toontrack's EZMix plugin on some of the drum tracks to give them some extra sparkle. In the end, this drum mix sounded so good to me, I wanted to go back to all of my recent Logic projects and drop in this drum mix! In fact, I did on one, and Logic's "selective import" feature makes this incredibly easy to accomplish. You can copy pieces and parts of tracks and track settings very easily from one project to another. Very cool. Try THAT in Pro Tools!</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwlbyOYP80zxXMawHz4U5EbmB7o3RFBz9HbiaGkh0kvK1LiqfPzpLekpwSJhGW9_ZwfxMkTep2zvtAPTBXARzux6fQ99fORwNp_L2aUcgAPS4Cnb4wi3TgCa-lrSLxAojL9aqV6w/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-06-22+at+9.27.10+PM+%25282%2529.png" imageanchor="1" target="_BLANK"><img border="0" height="202" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwlbyOYP80zxXMawHz4U5EbmB7o3RFBz9HbiaGkh0kvK1LiqfPzpLekpwSJhGW9_ZwfxMkTep2zvtAPTBXARzux6fQ99fORwNp_L2aUcgAPS4Cnb4wi3TgCa-lrSLxAojL9aqV6w/s400/Screen+shot+2011-06-22+at+9.27.10+PM+%25282%2529.png" width="400" /></a></div>John S. Hagewood (aka. Fragile Forest)http://www.blogger.com/profile/09919997150516214076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28007134.post-39411079531299023302011-04-16T13:39:00.004-05:002011-04-16T13:45:40.911-05:00Deep Space Music: "Lullaby"<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Occasionally, I like to compose and record completely dreamy space-music tracks. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Back in the early eighties, I began listening to a radio program on NPR call "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearts_of_Space" target="_NEW">Music From the Hearts of Space</a>". This program showcased the kinds of artists that created this style of music, long before "New Age" became a "genre". I used to record the programs which aired very late on Sunday night, and then play them back at bedtime every night. To this day, I still listen to this kind of music pretty much every night at bedtime! And although I don't still follow the program, I understand that <a href="http://www.hos.com/" target="_NEW">HOS</a> is still very popular.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">So occasionally, I start playing with a very dreamy, atmospheric synth sound, and something like this piece is born. I call this one "Lullaby", and I hope you enjoy it!</span><br />
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<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><embed align="middle" allowscriptaccess="sameDomain" bgcolor="#fff" class="MP3" flashvars="playerID=1&bg=0xDCDCDC&leftbg=0x696969&lefticon=0xF2F2F2&rightbg=0x696969&rightbghover=0x000&righticon=0xF2F2F2&righticonhover=0xFFFFFF&text=0x000000&slider=0x808080&track=0xFFFFFF&border=0xFFFFFF&loader=0xAF2910&soundFile=http://www.hybernationmusic.com/fragileforest/music/Lullaby.mp3" height="24" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" quality="high" src="http://www.hybernationmusic.com/player.swf" style="height: 24px; width: 290px;" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="290" wmode="transparent"></embed></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
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</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.hybernationmusic.com/fragileforest/music/Lullaby.mp3" target="_NEW">here is a direct link to the mp3 for non-shockwave environments</a></span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7YDwOAuMpHu9GTbuNPiUqFKBLPQmXMXGbWPgMDmIhsWTy5HLQQ-s53C48pfysaaN0JLJ0ckUO_ujcA2k4b98uExJA1LSwhxOTw0If2oubRKn13Emm2M_m14A6_hLnYKg0SzuguA/s1600/hand_holding_finger_bw.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_NEW"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7YDwOAuMpHu9GTbuNPiUqFKBLPQmXMXGbWPgMDmIhsWTy5HLQQ-s53C48pfysaaN0JLJ0ckUO_ujcA2k4b98uExJA1LSwhxOTw0If2oubRKn13Emm2M_m14A6_hLnYKg0SzuguA/s400/hand_holding_finger_bw.jpg" width="317" /></a></div><br />
</div>John S. Hagewood (aka. Fragile Forest)http://www.blogger.com/profile/09919997150516214076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28007134.post-87727591999331772272011-03-28T00:10:00.017-05:002011-03-31T23:13:03.717-05:00Rising Tide<div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: center;"><a href="https://american.redcross.org/site/Donation2?idb=0&5052.donation=form1&df_id=5052" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_BLANK"><img border="0" height="282" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVQD_aEAqXuOL1scS15WEQvz7VA20O1yBE8aDXOc7y4E7zmu_R9g2NMXKU2piM2TmhijWjp7RKmApsu-Wl43ZWZcLJAARF1AO9pdLdYM57oc9Yqb8d6vLp61th8jW6FuWXB12EHQ/s400/japan-tsunami-relief-cropped.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Digital painting by<a href="http://mitchsketch.blogspot.com/2011/03/japan-tsunami-relief.html" target="_NEW"> Mitchell Mohrhauser</a>, USA. Software: Photoshop.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
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</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><a href="https://american.redcross.org/site/Donation2?idb=0&5052.donation=form1&df_id=5052" target="_NEW">Click here to give to Japan Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami Relief via the American Red Cross</a></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Recently, Apple released the<a href="http://www.apple.com/ipad/" target="_BLANK"> iPad 2 </a>to much acclaim and hoopla, and they will no doubt sell a gazillion of them. I have been enjoying my iPad since July of last year when my wife sprung it on me for father's day. I use it mostly for reading books and blogs, surfing, facebooking and email.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Part of Apple's recent announcement included the release of<a href="http://www.apple.com/ipad/from-the-app-store/garageband.html" target="_BLANK"> GarageBand for iPad </a>. Personally, I believe this achievement in software development is a much bigger game-changer than the iPad 2. The day it was released, I scarfed up my copy (for a whopping $4.99) from the App Store and started playing around. Though this is very much a "1.0 release" product, I expect Apple will probably build on this platform and use it to sell all manner of add-ons in the form of "in-app purchases" in much the same way as they sold all those <a href="http://www.apple.com/ilife/garageband/jam-packs.html" target="_BLANK">"Jam Packs"</a> to go along with original <a href="http://www.apple.com/ilife/garageband/" target="_BLANK">GarageBand (for Mac)</a>.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The second day I had the program, I spent about an hour putting this track together. I was sitting in the TV room with my wife and we were jumping from channel to channel soaking up news of the recent catastrophic events in Japan, and looking at videos on the internet as well. Disturbing and surreal. Shocking and startling. So much damage...so many people affected...words just don't do it justice. So if this track, which I call "Rising Tide", sounds a bit dark and foreboding, well now you know why.<br />
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It wasn't until days later that I realized how much this track sounds like the intro to the Genesis song "Mama". Completely unintentional!</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Apple promises a future update to GarageBand for Mac that will allow you to start a track on the iPad and resume working on it on the Mac, in GarageBand OR in <a href="http://www.apple.com/logicstudio/" target="_BLANK">Logic Studio, my confirmed DAW of choice</a>. While this feature isn't there yet, when it does come I suspect that the iPad will finally find a place in the heart of many composers....as a "scratch pad" tool that can be used anytime, anywhere an idea strikes. Very compelling.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">So, here is my first track composed and recorded completely on the iPad. "Rising Tide". Enjoy!</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><embed align="middle" allowscriptaccess="sameDomain" bgcolor="#fff" class="MP3" flashvars="playerID=1&bg=0xDCDCDC&leftbg=0x696969&lefticon=0xF2F2F2&rightbg=0x696969&rightbghover=0x000&righticon=0xF2F2F2&righticonhover=0xFFFFFF&text=0x000000&slider=0x808080&track=0xFFFFFF&border=0xFFFFFF&loader=0xAF2910&soundFile=http://www.hybernationmusic.com/fragileforest/music/Rising Tide.mp3" height="24" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" quality="high" src="http://www.hybernationmusic.com/player.swf" style="height: 24px; width: 290px;" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="290" wmode="transparent"></embed></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
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</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.hybernationmusic.com/fragileforest/music/Rising%20Tide.mp3" target="_NEW">here is a direct link to the mp3 for non-shockwave environments</a></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpyPMCJYZ4hx1B4trWP84GEEGvqwQvkNq4tx1E-mQlDB9H_m7qBIKTBu953bsCV2huBjfV1byLVwWCryeaAmHib_DDDzi0cilDUGwNKXKMyCAUm9hXP0v9Zh8T7nAo-mm48rKNkQ/s1600/RisingTide.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_BLANK"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpyPMCJYZ4hx1B4trWP84GEEGvqwQvkNq4tx1E-mQlDB9H_m7qBIKTBu953bsCV2huBjfV1byLVwWCryeaAmHib_DDDzi0cilDUGwNKXKMyCAUm9hXP0v9Zh8T7nAo-mm48rKNkQ/s400/RisingTide.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">March 31, 2001 update!</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">An update to GarageBand (for Mac) has been released, as promised!</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpIlvFEnvBN_5g3d-OeQzVmuT-_b9DVSmgYdy2IUVZ84qPvXhbsfmjFmGGox8YB9xjIA-tOkUVlBquleV8tdyKbXLRVCdEUF7HASIcKOohxFcMuGzOXyDb_NFxzF3LWK83P0wEnA/s400/garageBandUpdate.png" width="330" /></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Yep, all I had to do was apply this update, then when I launched GB to open the "Rising Tide.band" file I transferred from my iPad via iTunes, I got this message:</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDrrM0wSaFLe5YApF2ZWQz1MoUxdE80jHr5jW0lcf0YcyP6b7locChY-6DGLxucT94pxdH2jJORFca1NHW2EeAxXuqiEEcWm33CK2ZA-3d6UzwF459nt-rdMTSAftv3Vd5Ll0oaQ/s1600/garageBandUpdating.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_BLANK"><br />
<img border="0" height="185" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDrrM0wSaFLe5YApF2ZWQz1MoUxdE80jHr5jW0lcf0YcyP6b7locChY-6DGLxucT94pxdH2jJORFca1NHW2EeAxXuqiEEcWm33CK2ZA-3d6UzwF459nt-rdMTSAftv3Vd5Ll0oaQ/s400/garageBandUpdating.png" width="400" /></a></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">And sure enough, after 10 minutes or so, the project opened. And it played FLAWLESSLY. It sounded EXACTLY like on the iPad (well, better I suppose since the Audio on this iMac is high-end) and it allowed me to do all the wonderful edits GB provides:</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiczZkrqfRLC18fLWGUq1OrU-nAZDuNcwdzHx41iwfupWg-Z5KFXA4L69-DySi9gZuAp56I-6hvmWFWp3qAldfShM9DYFGpuiGSothgpkTougsYRe9sVty6n-kfu9pIKuHuBgzUYg/s1600/RisingTideOnGBMac.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_BLANK"><img border="0" height="272" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiczZkrqfRLC18fLWGUq1OrU-nAZDuNcwdzHx41iwfupWg-Z5KFXA4L69-DySi9gZuAp56I-6hvmWFWp3qAldfShM9DYFGpuiGSothgpkTougsYRe9sVty6n-kfu9pIKuHuBgzUYg/s400/RisingTideOnGBMac.png" width="400" /></a></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Pretty bloody amazing, actually. Now you really CAN use GB for iPad as a mobile musical sketch-pad, and then continue building on your idea with all of the instruments and editing features offered by GB on the Mac, which is an awful lot.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Although GB projects on the Mac can normally be freely opened in Logic, sadly this is not yet the case for these GB for iPad projects. When I tried to open the saved GB file in Logic, it said the "GB Synth" instrument was not found, and that this project had been created with a "new version of Logic". So, I guess there is a Logic update coming down the pike soon that will bring all of this together. Can't wait!</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Actually, I could continue to edit the project in Logic and save it there, I would just have to pick a different Logic instrument (or AU plugin) to replace the missing "GB Synth". Not a big deal if I really wanted to continue working on this track. But, for now, I think I will let the iPad version stand on it's own two feet for the sake of this blog post.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Last year, I took a Laptop, small keyboard, audio interface, headphones and USB hub with iLok and e-Licenser dongles on vacation with us, just in case inspiration struck! This year, I will be able to travel a bit lighter and just take the iPad and some earbuds. Nice.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div>John S. Hagewood (aka. Fragile Forest)http://www.blogger.com/profile/09919997150516214076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28007134.post-9081231078582409662011-03-15T21:40:00.012-05:002011-03-15T22:01:09.341-05:00Excursions<div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><div style="font-family: inherit;"><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="hw">ex·cur·sion</span> <span class="pron">(Ĭk-skûr′zhən) </span><i>n.</i></span></b></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">[Latin excursiō, excursiōn-, from excursus, past participle of excurrere, <i>to run out</i> : ex-, <i>ex-</i> + currere, <i>to run</i>; see kers- in Indo-European roots.]</span><span style="font-size: large;"><i> </i></span></div><ul style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><li><span style="font-size: small;">A usually short journey made for pleasure; an outing.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">Organized outing to a specific place of interest. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">A side trip, usually short, made with the intention of returning to the starting location</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">Round-trip completed within a specified period of time. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">digression: wandering from the main path of a journey</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">The movement of the cone or diaphragm of a speaker. Higher volts or amps will increase excursion.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">Lateral movement of a well logging curve or trace in response to a galvanometer deflection. "Excursion" is often referred to as deflection.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">Moving the jaw from side to side</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">A range of movement regularly of a joint or muscle</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">The Excursion by William Wordsworth, published in 1814, in nine books, a philosophical poem which shows his disillusion with the French Revolution </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">Excursions, Op. 20, is the first published solo piano piece by Samuel Barber. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">Excursions is the latest track by "Fragile Forest" (aka John S. Hagewood), produced entirely in Apple Logic using a variety of virtual instruments including Kontakt, Omnisphere, EZ Drummer, Moog Modular V, M-Tron Pro, Korg Mono-Poly and B4II.</span></li>
</ul><div class="ds-list" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="ds-list" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">enjoy!</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><embed align="middle" allowscriptaccess="sameDomain" bgcolor="#fff" class="MP3" flashvars="playerID=1&bg=0xDCDCDC&leftbg=0x696969&lefticon=0xF2F2F2&rightbg=0x696969&rightbghover=0x000&righticon=0xF2F2F2&righticonhover=0xFFFFFF&text=0x000000&slider=0x808080&track=0xFFFFFF&border=0xFFFFFF&loader=0xAF2910&soundFile=http://www.hybernationmusic.com/fragileforest/music/Excursions.mp3" height="24" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" quality="high" src="http://www.hybernationmusic.com/player.swf" style="height: 24px; width: 290px;" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="290" wmode="transparent"></embed></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
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</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.hybernationmusic.com/fragileforest/music/Excursions.mp3" target="_NEW">here is a direct link to the mp3 for non-shockwave environments</a></span></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhy47nE6LybIyIHpL_Htd-aKWMIbFNI0GIKEY81fEMocT3t0VdAkqJsX6rWjEz4Vdfb7j4RjXd7EsPicmlaBhRiPMD81vFvw9xQf9nT5cvFqzTBHP9d5iBzp4Kn3DDw16YHjCpYjw/s1600/excursions.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="292" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhy47nE6LybIyIHpL_Htd-aKWMIbFNI0GIKEY81fEMocT3t0VdAkqJsX6rWjEz4Vdfb7j4RjXd7EsPicmlaBhRiPMD81vFvw9xQf9nT5cvFqzTBHP9d5iBzp4Kn3DDw16YHjCpYjw/s400/excursions.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>John S. Hagewood (aka. Fragile Forest)http://www.blogger.com/profile/09919997150516214076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28007134.post-16615322638662323092011-02-24T22:05:00.001-06:002011-02-24T22:06:41.558-06:00Piano Idea Two<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">It's been too long since I last wrote something here, and a lot has been going on in Hybernation Studio. Since getting "<a href="http://hybernationmusic.blogspot.com/2010/11/first-track-done-on-my-mac.html" target="_BLANK">Mac Fever</a>" a few months ago, <a href="http://www.avid.com/US/products/Pro-Tools-Software" target="_BLANK">Pro Tools 9</a> was released to much acclaim. I finally scored my upgrade copy a few weeks ago and I was and remain very impressed with this update to the standard in digital audio workstations.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I was also again impressed by how much more stable Pro Tools is on my under-powered iMac than my honking quad-core PC. And I was missing using <a href="http://www.apple.com/logicstudio/" target="_BLANK">Apple's Logic DAW</a>. You see, in December when I was recording my <a href="http://hybernationmusic.blogspot.com/2010/12/merry-christmas-from-hybernation-music.html" target="_BLANK">"Big Christmas Production"</a>, I realized quickly that I had to revert to the PC, since the iMac was just not powerful enough for all those tracks. Since then I have also been working on several other compositions, and experiencing the same thing...I start them on the iMac, and then have to port them to the PC once I exceed eight tracks or so. And since Apple Logic is a "Mac Only" program, well, I just wasn't able to use it, so I have been using Pro Tools almost exclusively.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">That is until Valentines Day came. My incredible wife insisted that I let her treat me to the "iMac of my dreams", and how could I argue? So I scored a 27" iMac with a quad-core i7 processor, 12GB of memory, and a 2TB hard-drive. This is one amazing and beautiful machine, and now I'm able to port those projects BACK from the PC and work on them on this amazing machine. And it looks and feels absolutely amazing!</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGhrFQIG802gu7ED67a98rjhFmTRY8O4VVkBB_TnMUq5Yovf7tFw_izH6G3wSdm-FWVGUCOscv1Ue88N8Ua8sL6BAThwtQzScTYfLB-HRNhtAXX4f4QJzulfTn0bspkasn6Z3G7A/s1600/ProTools9OniMac.png" imageanchor="1" target="_BLANK"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGhrFQIG802gu7ED67a98rjhFmTRY8O4VVkBB_TnMUq5Yovf7tFw_izH6G3wSdm-FWVGUCOscv1Ue88N8Ua8sL6BAThwtQzScTYfLB-HRNhtAXX4f4QJzulfTn0bspkasn6Z3G7A/s400/ProTools9OniMac.png" width="400" /></a></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">But I'm still in the "Pro Tools vs. Logic debate" internally. Logic is incredibly intuitive (like the Cakewalk/Sonar I grew up with), and it's way more CPU-efficient than Pro Tools. And Logic now has a full 64-bit version, so those extra 8GB of memory don't go to waste! (Pro Tools 9 is STILL only a 32-bit program, so it can only address 4GB of memory at the most). So, I have begun to re-explore Logic, and I'm reading another book on the subject and planning on starting and finishing all new projects in Logic for the time being.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">This little project I'm posting tonight was one of those 10-minute deals. I had <a href="http://www.propellerheads.se/products/record/" target="_BLANK">Propellerhead's Record/Reason</a> up on the new iMac, I thought of a quick idea, and I played around with it for 5 minutes, building up a little arrangement in my head. Then I hit record and played it through, only to notice that I didn't really hit record. Then I REALLY hit record and played it through, and that was IT! Done.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I posted the rough mix on Facebook and got some positive feedback, so this lead me, tonight, to import the MIDI file into Logic and remix it. I removed four notes that seemed superfluous, added some compression and EQ, and chose a different piano sound. Ironically, after auditioning several of my favorite multi-gigabyte pianos from <a href="http://sampletekk.com/" target="_BLANK">SampleTekk</a>, none of them seemed quite right. I ended up going back to Reason and using Sonic Reality's new refill called "<a href="http://www.esoundz.com/details.php?ProductID=4651" target="_BLANK">Classic Rock Piano</a>". I added IK Multimedia's <a href="http://www.ikmultimedia.com/trsingles/moreinfo/moreinfo2.php" target="_BLANK">T-Racks 3 Vintage Compressor 370</a> to the master buss, and bounced the Rewire track down to audio prior to mixing. The whole thing took me less time to accomplish than to type the last few paragraphs. Like I said "intuitive".</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Here is what Logic looked like when I was done:</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5EL4Hzmi3wJXo71uEJnQD_hd6VB5N1jI8QEBX8MPoFvYFOkL_GJa7zXxLlRpEXl-50sqVhjOjSK8yfqKqqa0w6964s48-cMGNcxWzgM7yVQU6tV1cfjguGW-Ur6MzPyiID9eY-w/s1600/Logic-PianoIdeaTwo.png" imageanchor="1" target="_BLANK"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5EL4Hzmi3wJXo71uEJnQD_hd6VB5N1jI8QEBX8MPoFvYFOkL_GJa7zXxLlRpEXl-50sqVhjOjSK8yfqKqqa0w6964s48-cMGNcxWzgM7yVQU6tV1cfjguGW-Ur6MzPyiID9eY-w/s400/Logic-PianoIdeaTwo.png" width="400" /></a></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">So, here is "Piano Idea Two", an exercise in simplicity.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><embed align="middle" allowscriptaccess="sameDomain" bgcolor="#fff" class="MP3" flashvars="playerID=1&bg=0xDCDCDC&leftbg=0x696969&lefticon=0xF2F2F2&rightbg=0x696969&rightbghover=0x000&righticon=0xF2F2F2&righticonhover=0xFFFFFF&text=0x000000&slider=0x808080&track=0xFFFFFF&border=0xFFFFFF&loader=0xAF2910&soundFile=http://www.hybernationmusic.com/fragileforest/music/Piano Idea 2.mp3" height="24" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" quality="high" src="http://www.hybernationmusic.com/player.swf" style="height: 24px; width: 290px;" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="290" wmode="transparent"></embed></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><a href="http://www.hybernationmusic.com/fragileforest/music/Piano%20Idea%202.mp3" target="_NEW">here is a direct link to the mp3 for non-shockwave environments</a></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div>John S. Hagewood (aka. Fragile Forest)http://www.blogger.com/profile/09919997150516214076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28007134.post-49205535851178026672010-12-18T14:10:00.004-06:002011-12-24T13:01:16.551-06:00I Believe In Father Christmas<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJBt1eZPc23fdPWd275eMIOBjuWyOx_YbNyDZuVzCFx_-7P1UwYgBFHX1HaByWuWIDWRez7RNRkLlsFBXitgaJwm4MNZR2x17hYwBY7PLaVMFoU-qrLs_KuK4FRNJEgJepST7KNg/s1600/pic1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_BLANK"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJBt1eZPc23fdPWd275eMIOBjuWyOx_YbNyDZuVzCFx_-7P1UwYgBFHX1HaByWuWIDWRez7RNRkLlsFBXitgaJwm4MNZR2x17hYwBY7PLaVMFoU-qrLs_KuK4FRNJEgJepST7KNg/s400/pic1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">If you have been reading my blog for the last few years, you probably know how I feel about Christmas, since I have blogged about it before. I suppose having two children has probably softened me up a little bit about this whole Christmas thing :-)</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Last year, I got kind of deep and personal, and posted a synthesized rendition of one of my favorite carols, <a href="http://hybernationmusic.blogspot.com/2009/12/what-child-is-this.html" target="_BLANK">"What Child Is This"</a>.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">In 2008, I posted a much less serious cover of Peter Tchaikovsky's <a href="http://hybernationmusic.blogspot.com/2008/12/trying-not-to-be-grinch-this-year.html" target="_BLANK">"Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies"</a> (be sure to listen to it all, as it has a surprise genre-spanning ended).</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Doing "cover tunes" is fun. I don't do it that often, but I always learn from the experience. This time, I actually learned a song (note-for-note) that I have always loved, and previously only dabbled with. I did the entire learning and recording session in one four-hour span, with a single hour-long follow-up session of final overdubs and the mixdown. The song is<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Believe_in_Father_Christmas" target="_BLANK"> "I Believe In Father Christmas"</a>, recorded and released by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Lake" target="_BLANK">Greg Lake</a> in 1975, and then again by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerson,_Lake_%26_Palmer" target="_BLANK">Emerson, Lake and Palmer</a> in 1977, and yet again in 1993. In addition to the Wikipedia link above, you can read more trivia about this song, and about the controversy it created at <a href="http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=4121" target="_BLANK">this songfacts link</a>. </div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Bottom line is, I believe that lyricist <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Sinfield" target="_BLANK">Peter Sinfield</a> left the lyrics to this song ambiguous on purpose. Unlike some of his other blatantly atheistic lyrics (for instance, in ELP's "The Only Way" from the album "Tarkus") the lyrics to Father Christmas, the middle verse anyway, can be interpreted several ways. In an attempt to make my version a little less ambiguous, I altered the lyrics in very subtle ways (just one word really, and a couple of pronoun substitutions is all, hardly worth mentioned actually...in fact, forget I mentioned it).</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I will let you draw your own conclusions. I hope you enjoy my rendition of this timeless holiday classic. The lyrics, as I sang them, are posted just below the song links.</div><br />
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><embed align="middle" allowscriptaccess="sameDomain" bgcolor="#fff" class="MP3" flashvars="playerID=1&bg=0xDCDCDC&leftbg=0x696969&lefticon=0xF2F2F2&rightbg=0x696969&rightbghover=0x000&righticon=0xF2F2F2&righticonhover=0xFFFFFF&text=0x000000&slider=0x808080&track=0xFFFFFF&border=0xFFFFFF&loader=0xAF2910&soundFile=http://www.hybernationmusic.com/fragileforest/music/FatherChristmas.mp3" height="24" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" quality="high" src="http://www.hybernationmusic.com/player.swf" style="height: 24px; width: 290px;" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="290" wmode="transparent"></embed></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><a href="http://www.hybernationmusic.com/fragileforest/music/FatherChristmas.mp3" target="_NEW">here is a direct link to the mp3 for non-shockwave environments</a></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><u><i>I Believe In Father Christmas (Lake/Sinfield)</i></u></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>They said there'll be snow at Christmas</i></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>They said there'll be peace on earth</i></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>But instead it just kept on raining</i></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>A veil of tears for the virgin's birth</i></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>I remember one Christmas morning</i></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>A winters light and a distant choir</i></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>And the peal of a bell and that Christmas tree smell</i></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>And their eyes full of tinsel and fire</i></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i><br />
</i></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>They sold me a dream of Christmas</i></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>They sold me a silent night</i></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>And they told me the fairy stories</i></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>Still I believe in the Israelite</i></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>But they believed in father Christmas</i></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>And they looked at the sky with excited eyes</i></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>'till they woke with a yawn in the first light of dawn</i></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>And they saw him and through his disguise</i></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i><br />
</i></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>I wish you a hopeful Christmas</i></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>I wish you a brave new year</i></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>All anguish pain and sadness</i></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>Leave your heart and let your road be clear</i></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>They said there'll be snow at Christmas</i></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>They said there'll be peace on earth</i></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>Hallelujah noel be it heaven or hell</i></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>The Christmas we get we deserve</i></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh861MEAhpeMynBCO0cFcoB0eSWYpRtUE_wJ9fTxmrCFH4T5tLuWV-64aYXoJKq66HV_k8rmDmulgv-Wyeg02t2a-N9qa-POX2DTqwhCDyoupzrmsBVGtDIJVQLMU484Zxq2r3kfQ/s1600/pic2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_BLANK"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh861MEAhpeMynBCO0cFcoB0eSWYpRtUE_wJ9fTxmrCFH4T5tLuWV-64aYXoJKq66HV_k8rmDmulgv-Wyeg02t2a-N9qa-POX2DTqwhCDyoupzrmsBVGtDIJVQLMU484Zxq2r3kfQ/s400/pic2.jpg" width="265" /></a></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div>John S. Hagewood (aka. Fragile Forest)http://www.blogger.com/profile/09919997150516214076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28007134.post-61185559985617150422010-11-24T23:55:00.002-06:002010-11-25T13:48:00.652-06:00First track done on my Mac<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLgsxzavF6P-uPJnnfvgOS7rhKMxVLnsvhg4o-J1O5MDCY6DWIDNHxUGbCAbv-K_xpcaSyIEmHTQ3biM7hEd-Z79doY56QzTHyazWqas7IHCz5_TmwiMCSJFn6-isGlzkTrHo5KQ/s1600/hybernationstudio.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLgsxzavF6P-uPJnnfvgOS7rhKMxVLnsvhg4o-J1O5MDCY6DWIDNHxUGbCAbv-K_xpcaSyIEmHTQ3biM7hEd-Z79doY56QzTHyazWqas7IHCz5_TmwiMCSJFn6-isGlzkTrHo5KQ/s400/hybernationstudio.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
Yep, you heard that right. Hybernation Studio now has a Mac. A 21.5" iMac with an Intel Core 2 Duo processor running at 2.66gHz, with 4GB of RAM, to be specific.<br />
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I bought this used machine on a whim for a paltry $600, from a friend who no longer needed it after getting himself a MacBook Pro. I was thinking it would just be an experiment. A Toy. Something to mess with, and entertain the kids with using Photo Booth.<br />
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Little did I know I would fall in love with this unbelievably stable platform. I've been a PC user for my entire life, and have always stood by them. I still love them. Windows 7 64-bit is, without a doubt, the best and most stable Windows platform ever. But, now I see why everyone was telling me I needed to try a Mac.<br />
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So of course now I am wanting a full-blown 27" Core i7 iMac pretty bad, after acquiring Apple's DAW program "Logic Express". Logic is so intuitive and feature-rich. And incredibly stable. I believe it is my new favorite DAW, edging out Pro Tools. So, I'm willing to live with the somewhat limited hardware of this current Mac I own (compared to my quad-core PC) and will probably continue to use it as the platform of choice for composing, just because it's so incredibly stable, and Logic is so unbelievably productive for me. "It just works". Help, I'm turning into a Mac Fanboy!<br />
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This track is the first one I recorded completely in Logic on the Mac. Enjoy!<br />
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<embed align="middle" allowscriptaccess="sameDomain" bgcolor="#fff" class="MP3" flashvars="playerID=1&bg=0xDCDCDC&leftbg=0x696969&lefticon=0xF2F2F2&rightbg=0x696969&rightbghover=0x000&righticon=0xF2F2F2&righticonhover=0xFFFFFF&text=0x000000&slider=0x808080&track=0xFFFFFF&border=0xFFFFFF&loader=0xAF2910&soundFile=http://www.hybernationmusic.com/fragileforest/music/Eagle.mp3" height="24" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" quality="high" src="http://www.hybernationmusic.com/player.swf" style="height: 24px; width: 290px;" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="290" wmode="transparent"></embed><br />
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<a href="http://www.hybernationmusic.com/fragileforest/music/Eagle.mp3" target="_NEW">here is a direct link to the mp3 for non-shockwave environments</a>John S. Hagewood (aka. Fragile Forest)http://www.blogger.com/profile/09919997150516214076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28007134.post-42906826331137815782010-05-14T22:30:00.003-05:002011-06-22T19:16:35.064-05:00Jamming on Indian instruments<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJE1bzrDPtR5OsEtRsRCK3bnL9WmZzkCiaQtV0sgCxK5UcY67iwz7h7-97cW0PTg2CWtq63hVFMox2idpYg3ev2gFzxiWtskfrs-RD6x9_psR5mAl94YMpZ-tnknCNEqOhdW2ANA/s1600/morocco-desert-walker1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJE1bzrDPtR5OsEtRsRCK3bnL9WmZzkCiaQtV0sgCxK5UcY67iwz7h7-97cW0PTg2CWtq63hVFMox2idpYg3ev2gFzxiWtskfrs-RD6x9_psR5mAl94YMpZ-tnknCNEqOhdW2ANA/s400/morocco-desert-walker1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<!-- https://picasaweb.google.com/103101768503810314786/Inspiration#5562520921868387330 --><br />
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I've always liked the sound of the "trademark" Indian instruments such as Tanpura, Sitar and Tabla. Well at least since I was a youngster and first heard George Harrison experimenting with them to great effect. So I was delighted last year when Native Instruments released their Kore Soundpack entitled "North India", which contained these and other Indian instruments. I won't say they are "authentic" because, to be honest, I wouldn't really have any way of knowing! But they advertise that they are, and they sure sound that way to me.<br />
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This track was just me experimenting with the three instruments that I mention above, and then layering in some more conventional western sounds....synthesized voices, electric guitar, drums, percussion and big Moog Synth bass. I must warn you that this track doesn't really "go" anywhere, it just presents a few simple melodies and provides an ambiance that is a blend of eastern and western tonalities.<br />
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I tried to get my son Jonathan to "name that track" a few days ago in the car, playing him an earlier mix. When he first heard the "vocal synth drone" part he said "Hey Daddy, that sounds like a bunch of Indian guys burping!". Funny, but not a great title for the track. I couldn't think of anything either, so I just stuck with my working title, which was "Jamming India".<br />
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Enjoy!<br />
<embed align="middle" allowscriptaccess="sameDomain" bgcolor="#fff" class="MP3" flashvars="playerID=1&bg=0xDCDCDC&leftbg=0x696969&lefticon=0xF2F2F2&rightbg=0x696969&rightbghover=0x000&righticon=0xF2F2F2&righticonhover=0xFFFFFF&text=0x000000&slider=0x808080&track=0xFFFFFF&border=0xFFFFFF&loader=0xAF2910&soundFile=http://www.hybernationmusic.com/fragileforest/music/JammingIndia.mp3" height="24" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" quality="high" src="http://www.hybernationmusic.com/player.swf" style="height: 24px; width: 290px;" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="290" wmode="transparent"></embed><br />
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<a href="http://www.hybernationmusic.com/fragileforest/music/JammingIndia.mp3" target="_NEW">here is a direct link to the mp3 for non-shockwave environments</a>John S. Hagewood (aka. Fragile Forest)http://www.blogger.com/profile/09919997150516214076noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28007134.post-84207840248398661592010-04-25T20:51:00.018-05:002010-04-27T21:01:43.748-05:00The original version of "Passage"<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0EeELgL-iIt0pUYRd59xUVg4gALEzRBcWdzxS31b_n8jBHYrrJDZ6mxJnR4xPec6IJ9pdxwhO1fr1H7zD9TgodZM2wGJW0L-20Jvm50yHlhnbTIJ9LlrRyCPvHNHHFGQExECCIw/s1600/passage_aarset.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 283px; height: 283px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0EeELgL-iIt0pUYRd59xUVg4gALEzRBcWdzxS31b_n8jBHYrrJDZ6mxJnR4xPec6IJ9pdxwhO1fr1H7zD9TgodZM2wGJW0L-20Jvm50yHlhnbTIJ9LlrRyCPvHNHHFGQExECCIw/s400/passage_aarset.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5464258259656214722" /></a><br />
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I have blogged quite a lot about this composition in the past, which you can read <a href="http://hybernationmusic.blogspot.com/2009/08/passage.html" target="_BLANK">here</a>, and also referenced <a href="http://hybernationmusic.blogspot.com/2008/05/short-prog-piece-from-composers-archive.html" target="_BLANK">here</a> and most recently <a href="http://hybernationmusic.blogspot.com/2010/04/proclamation.html" target="_BLANK">here</a>.<br />
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I decided it would be good to record the "original version" as it was composed for that Freshman Composition class at the Belmont College School of Music in 1979. This is pretty much exactly what I heard in my head at the time, and the music is exactly what I played for the class (if my 30 year old memory can be trusted). As I mentioned previously, I eventually want to showcase the entire "Suite" of "Serious Compositions" which I wrote between 1979 and sometime in the early 80's in a single blog post, and I only have a few more pieces to record before I can do that. But this is the piece of music that started it all, and this was my very first attempt at actually "composing" (not to be confused with the art of "songwriting" which I gave up on years ago!).<br />
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Recently, my amazing wife insisted I buy myself a really top-end laptop computer on which I can do my music "anywhere, anytime". After looking around at commercial laptops such as Dell, HP, Toshiba, etc, and reading music blogs (including many horror stories) and otherwise researching this, I decided to stick with <a href="http://adkproaudio.com/" target="_BLANK">ADK Pro Audio</a>, where I purchased my main studio computer over two years ago. I have nothing but great things to say about Scott and his whole crew based on my past experiences...they are fabulous people with a passion for great, continuing customer support long after the sale. They sell computer systems specifically for the Digital Audio market, and they are extremely well respected in their field. Scott fixed me up with a killer laptop based on an Intel Core i7 M620 processor, with 8GB RAM and all the fixings, as we say here in the south (the "K" in ADK does stand for "Kentucky" after all!).<br />
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I was thinking that this new addition to <a href="http://hybernationmusic.blogspot.com/2006/07/experimental-1-dark-and-pink.html" target="_BLANK">"Studio B"</a> would give me the ability to "start things", but that I would probably still transfer the projects down to <a href="http://www.hybernationmusic.com/images/HybernationStudio-2006-06-08.jpg" target="_BLANK">"Studio A"</a> to finish them. Well, I had no idea how much processor speeds have improved in the two years <a href="http://hybernationmusic.blogspot.com/2007/11/totally-out-of-my-box-on-this-one.html" target="_BLANK">since I bought my quad-core machine from ADK</a>! This laptop will do everything my big machine will do, and without breaking a sweat. It actually runs Pro Tools better than the other machine (still not completely sure why that is).<br />
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I recorded this version of "Passage" in Pro Tools 8 M-Powered using Kontakt 4 for the Rhodes and CP-80 piano sample that makes up the main "piano" part. The synths you hear are all from the CPU-hungry folks at <a href="http://www.arturia.com/evolution/en/products.html" target="_BLANK">Arturia</a>, specifically the Moog Modular V (Taurus bass sound), the Jupiter V (String machine sound), and the Arp 2600 V (lead sound). I laid on the mastering and EQ plugins pretty heavy while mixing this down, and saw my CPU meter holding steady at less than 20%. Amazing.<br />
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In the few weeks since Studio B got this upgrade, I've only spent a couple of hours in studio A! I actually did start and finish this piece completely on my new laptop. Amazing technology. What a great time it is for musicians to be alive.<br />
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A HUGE "THANK YOU" to my lovely and amazing wife LoriLea for upgrading "Studio B"!<br />
<br />
Hope you enjoy this "Original Version" of "Passage", composed in the 20th century...recorded well into the 21st!<br />
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<embed class="MP3" wmode="transparent" style="height:24px;width:290px;" src="http://www.hybernationmusic.com/player.swf" quality="high" bgcolor="#fff" width="290" height="24" align="middle" allowScriptAccess="sameDomain" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" flashvars="playerID=1&bg=0xDCDCDC&leftbg=0x696969&lefticon=0xF2F2F2&rightbg=0x696969&rightbghover=0x000&righticon=0xF2F2F2&righticonhover=0xFFFFFF&text=0x000000&slider=0x808080&track=0xFFFFFF&border=0xFFFFFF&loader=0xAF2910&soundFile=http://www.hybernationmusic.com/fragileforest/music/Passage (original version).mp3"></embed><br />
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<a href="http://www.hybernationmusic.com/fragileforest/music/Passage (original version).mp3" target="_NEW">here is a direct link to the mp3 for non-shockwave environments</a>John S. Hagewood (aka. Fragile Forest)http://www.blogger.com/profile/09919997150516214076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28007134.post-39406472614290369462010-04-01T21:17:00.019-05:002011-06-22T18:55:31.962-05:00Proclamation<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgJXzoncJyzPcshUAmlWHCLgMFrCy0lnlIAC0suJAZRrn1-qUS4Vb3fHdqa72v_eqqzD-aXXs1XCtAjw8AqRpCLO2i_X6KQxDX-DX5NRnbSlJjzcdINiR5nPkvwHjjW8xrgtnSvg/s1600/14568475.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" target="_NEW"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5455370132228655570" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgJXzoncJyzPcshUAmlWHCLgMFrCy0lnlIAC0suJAZRrn1-qUS4Vb3fHdqa72v_eqqzD-aXXs1XCtAjw8AqRpCLO2i_X6KQxDX-DX5NRnbSlJjzcdINiR5nPkvwHjjW8xrgtnSvg/s400/14568475.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; height: 268px; width: 400px;" /></a><br />
<br />
The year was 1981. February. I had been on the road touring with <a href="http://photos-g.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-ak-snc1/v273/38/33/626645984/n626645984_1536208_7588.jpg" target="_NEW">"Amy and Members Only"</a> for several months, my first "professional musician" job. We landed this really sweet gig in <a href="http://www.stratton.com/index.htm" target="_NEW">Stratton, Vermont</a>, where Olympic skiers train, to play a one night party for the U.S. Olympic Team. Payment was 6 days worth of lift tickets and lodging in a huge chalet for the whole band.<br />
<br />
First day there, me and the bass player, Dow Tomlin, took some skiing lessons, since we were the only two newbies. It went pretty well, and by the end of the day we were doing the beginners slopes, him more successfully than me by far. I have never had a good sense of balance, and NOTHING about downhill skiing felt intuitive to me (plus I hadn't and still haven't ever been water skiing). I could get down and only have 3 or 4 major falls or tree crashes with each run.<br />
<br />
Second day there, back at it that morning, my hardware kept malfunctioning and one or both skis would pop off when I would put any stress on them. They tried to tune them twice but it kept happening to me. Then it happened at a very bad time and I took a horrible fall, dislocating my "trick shoulder" which I had major surgery on just 18 months prior. Not good. As I writhed in the snow in excruciating pain, bellowing at the top of my lungs, I was finally able to pop it in myself, and then I somehow got down the rest of the way and went to see the on-site doctor. Well, he took one look at my surgical scar and dished out a huge bottle of pain-killlers. No more skiing for me this week.<br />
<br />
With several days alone in the chalet with my keyboards, I decided to continue composing additional sections to the suite of "serious music" that I had started in college, and which I blogged about <a href="http://hybernationmusic.blogspot.com/2009/08/passage.html" target="_NEW">here</a> and <a href="http://hybernationmusic.blogspot.com/2008/05/short-prog-piece-from-composers-archive.html" target="_NEW">here</a>. I had actually started a slow and very melodic piano-solo piece and finished it in my head for a third "movement", but since I couldn't actually play very well with my arm in a sling, I started writing a fourth movement, one I envisioned as being a very strong Proclamation of life. <br />
<br />
I stumbled upon some very cool chords...the right hand playing F major and Bb major, over the left hand playing Bb and Eb (a 4th higher than the tonic). Sounded very progressive to me at the time...still does actually. Probably borrows quite heavily from Keith Emerson and Aaron Copeland, not surprisingly. Some shifting time signatures, and then a B-section in 5/4. I wrote it all down on staff paper, and got very excited about this piece. I remember that the guitar player, Dan Searles, loved the B-section and couldn't get enough of it. That is, until I kept playing (through headphones of course) after everyone else crashed. They would yell down, "Hey John, that clunky sound is keeping us awake" -- me banging the keys!<br />
<br />
The amazing thing is that I have managed to keep up with the hand-written scores of this piece for the last 30 years. You can view the <a href="http://hybernationmusic.com/images/Proclamation-001.jpg" target="_NEW">A-section here</a>...and the <a href="http://hybernationmusic.com/images/Proclamation-002.jpg" target="_NEW">B-Section here</a>. Notice the pretentiousness on page one: "Sonata #1 for Polyphonic Synthesizer and Piano". LOL!!! and "Part 1 - Exposition". Ah youth...pretentious and didn't care a bit.<br />
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Now, those of you that listened to the the song <a href="http://hybernationmusic.blogspot.com/2009/08/passage.html" target="_NEW">"Passage"</a> earlier may notice that the final section of Passage is exactly like the B-section of this piece, Proclamation. Here is the story. Originally, Passage was JUST the A-section, repeated twice. It only had to be 16 measures long to meet the requirements of the Freshman Music Comp class! But as the years went by and I continued to work on this "suite", I started playing a "reprise" version of Passage that ended with the 5/4 section of Proclamation, and that is actually what I recorded a few months ago for that other posting. Perhaps soon I will record the original Passage and the other three pieces in the suite and put them all up on one page so they can be listened to in order.<br />
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Anyway, for tonight, here is "Proclamation". Enjoy<br />
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<a href="http://www.hybernationmusic.com/fragileforest/music/Proclamation.mp3" target="_NEW">here is a direct link to the mp3 for non-shockwave environments</a><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgp4IPUbvMoy3KC8WhlKlCdCkHZI13GY5QMZEo_xuEm1EocLni_LzC9gAy94LJPNdHha6GiKmwYsfgEKqYF3XG6JhLO79qQdh_xv_2Asf6BlzW8IGHy4ZT3hvfg5Jvyi7dwCcJ70g/s1600/sunbowl-at-stratton-mountain-vermont-ken-ahlering%5B1%5D.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" target="_NEW"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5455369314915319362" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgp4IPUbvMoy3KC8WhlKlCdCkHZI13GY5QMZEo_xuEm1EocLni_LzC9gAy94LJPNdHha6GiKmwYsfgEKqYF3XG6JhLO79qQdh_xv_2Asf6BlzW8IGHy4ZT3hvfg5Jvyi7dwCcJ70g/s400/sunbowl-at-stratton-mountain-vermont-ken-ahlering%5B1%5D.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; height: 300px; width: 400px;" /></a><br />
<a href="http://ken-ahlering.artistwebsites.com/featured/black-bear-ken-ahlering.html" target="_BLANK"><i>Painting courtesy of Ken Ahlering</i></a>John S. Hagewood (aka. Fragile Forest)http://www.blogger.com/profile/09919997150516214076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28007134.post-13602333911784555272010-01-18T21:01:00.009-06:002010-04-27T21:10:38.309-05:00Pulsation - first new track for 2010Here is a happy little tune I tossed together in <a href="http://www.ableton.com/live-8" target="_NEW">Ableton Live 8</a> the other night, using Rob Papan's <a href="http://www.robpapen.com/blue.html" target="_NEW">Blue</a> and <a href="http://www.robpapen.com/predator.html" target="_NEW">Predator</a> synths, joined by an <a href="http://www.native-instruments.com/#/en/products/producer/absynth-5/" target="_NEW">Absynth5</a> pad sound processed through a trippy <a href="http://www.camelaudio.com/camelspace.php" target="_NEW">CamelSpace</a> effect, <a href="http://www.arturia.com/evolution/en/products/arp2600v/intro.html" target="_NEW">Arturia's Arp 2600V</a> and using the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_TB-303" target="_NEW">Roland TB-303</a> sounds from the <a href="http://www.toontrack.com/products.asp?item=55" target="_NEW">Electronic Expansion for EZDrummer</a>.<br />
<br />
Ableton Live 8 is yet another contender in the "great DAW race" at Hybernation Music. I've have had a copy of Live "Lite" for years which I got for free with an audio interface. When Live Lite 8 came out last year I thought I would give it another try. Their integration with Propellerhead's Reason is very good, second only to Pro Tools 8, but their real claim to fame with "Live" is the "Session View", which is an interactive clip-based way of working that lends itself to spontaneity and the whole "DJ" thing. While the "DJ" thing interests me not in the least, I do always appreciate experimenting with other ways of working while composing which might produce ideas that otherwise wouldn't be realized, and Live 8 definitely offers that!<br />
<div align="center"><br />
<img style="width: 556px; height: 326px;" src="http://cdn1.ableton.com/resource/a2480623c960d6cab1c9e5297717fc4f/session_view.png" border="0" alt="Ableton Live 8 Session View" /><br />
<span style="font-style:italic;">Ableton Live 8 Session View</span><br />
</div><br />
So I began this piece by recording several bubbly little pulsating parts into the Session View and chaining them together that way. As this evolved into no less than 5 of these parts coming and going, I then added the lead lines using the more conventional "Arrangement View" which works pretty much the way all the other "linear" DAW's do. Having used a very simple "guide track" for the electronic drums, I then had a great time auditioning various TB-303 patterns in EZDrummer and stringing my favorite ones together to create the finished drum part.<br />
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This whole process took about 3 hours, spread out over 2 nights.<br />
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I wondered after-the-fact if it needed a proper "bass part", but I didn't labor over the idea. I just decided to mix it down and get on with it. So here it is. I call it "Pulsation". Enjoy!<br />
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<a href="http://www.hybernationmusic.com/fragileforest/music/Pulsation.mp3" target="_NEW">here is a direct link to the mp3 for non-shockwave environments</a>John S. Hagewood (aka. Fragile Forest)http://www.blogger.com/profile/09919997150516214076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28007134.post-21417808501450723642009-12-23T20:17:00.015-06:002011-12-24T12:59:19.246-06:00What Child Is This ?I've never been a big fan of Christmas. Ask anyone who knows me and they'll say I'm a scrooge, and I suppose they are right. Part of this is most likely due to the sad fact that December 25th is also my birthday. For the most part, this was a huge rip-off when I was younger. Did I get twice the gifts at Christmas time as people often suggested? No, I was lucky if people even remembered my birthday. And the whole Santa Claus thing has always totally ticked me off...people basically lying to their kids and trying to get them to really believe this whole pagan fantasy thing, whilst side-lining the REAL reason for Christmas: Christ.<br />
<br />
But that's not the whole story. Some of my most stressful and sad memories were formed during the holidays. Seems like a lot of people die around this time of year, and we also tend do a lot of "reflecting" as the year-end draws close, making us miss people who died during the year, or even years before.<br />
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And then there is the shopping, and the traffic, and the crappy weather that sets in this time of year in Nashville (cold, gray, wet and hardly ever white). And worst of all, there are the "Social Events" and all the STRESS that they bring with them. Yep, I must admit, I pretty much hate it. "You're a mean one, Mr. Grinch".<br />
<br />
But then, musically, I do have this little soft spot for it. There's the "Carol Candlelight" services that are always beautiful and awe inspiring. There's the radio playing John Lennon's "<a href="http://hybernationmusic.blogspot.com/2011/12/happy-christmas-from-fragile-forest-and.html" target="_BLANK">Happy Christmas (War is Over)</a>" and ELP's "<a href="http://hybernationmusic.blogspot.com/2010/12/merry-christmas-from-hybernation-music.html" target="_BLANK">I Believe in Father Christmas</a>". I even like the Carpenters' "Merry Christmas Darling" (shhhh, don't tell). And although I despise the horrendous "Christmas elevator music" you hear while shopping, there have been many good Christmas albums I have listened to over the years. Just last year I discovered what has to be the most unique one ever, an album called "Chris Squire's Swiss Choir" which blends an adult choir from Switzerland with Yes bassist Chris Squire's arranging a vocal skill, along with some other great progressive rock players. Great stuff.<br />
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<hr /><br />
Of course the <span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic;">real reason for Christmas is important and vital</span></span>. I believe that choosing to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ is the most important decision a person can ever make. <br />
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As we celebrate the birth of Jesus, we should also celebrate the <span style="font-weight: bold;">Reason</span> for his coming, and how much his life and sacrifice means to mankind. It is everything. He is the way, the truth, and the light, and yes for a time he was also a precious, helpless baby. <br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />
What child is this?</span> Emmanuel. God is with us. The word become flesh.<br />
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<embed allowscriptaccess="sameDomain" bgcolor="#fff" class="MP3" flashvars="playerID=1&bg=0xDCDCDC&leftbg=0x696969&lefticon=0xF2F2F2&rightbg=0x696969&rightbghover=0x000&righticon=0xF2F2F2&righticonhover=0xFFFFFF&text=0x000000&slider=0x808080&track=0xFFFFFF&border=0xFFFFFF&loader=0xAF2910&soundFile=http://www.hybernationmusic.com/fragileforest/music/What Child Is This.mp3" height="24" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" quality="high" src="http://www.hybernationmusic.com/player.swf" style="height: 24px; width: 290px;" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="290" wmode="transparent"></embed><br />
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<a href="http://www.hybernationmusic.com/fragileforest/music/What%20Child%20Is%20This.mp3" target="_NEW">here is a direct link to the mp3 for non-shockwave environments</a><br />
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<div align="center"><br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">What child is this, who, laid to rest<br />
On Mary's lap, is sleeping?<br />
Whom angels greet with anthems sweet,<br />
While shepherds watch are keeping?<br />
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This, this is Christ the King,<br />
Whom shepherds guard and angels sing:<br />
Haste, haste to bring him laud,<br />
The Babe, the Son of Mary!<br />
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Why lies he in such mean estate<br />
Where ox and ass are feeding?<br />
Good Christian, fear for sinners here,<br />
The silent Word is pleasing.<br />
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So bring Him incense, gold, and myrrh,<br />
Come peasant king to own Him,<br />
The King of kings, salvation brings,<br />
Let loving hearts enthrone Him.<br />
<br />
Raise, raise the song on high,<br />
The Virgin sings her lullaby:<br />
Joy, joy, for Christ is born,<br />
The Babe, the Son of Mary! </span><br />
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<img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5418642385515567698" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-JaKU5MYI6EfS0Ryc8CQBX_R_eflxXX-lS4nFYvhBl4vPgNOAXYk5QJ4b0RwgeOOYmqfVPiUsRQ3PyK-oQfGeWRdmldzN0jnrNK6MnAmJ4dpiaqcgftWMw-H_VoRattbUzy3qEw/s400/baby_jesus_8.jpg" style="height: 400px;" /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><a href="http://lizlemonswindle.blogspot.com/" target="_BLANK">painting courtesy of Liz Lemon Swindle</a></i></div>John S. Hagewood (aka. Fragile Forest)http://www.blogger.com/profile/09919997150516214076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28007134.post-26076605627621170052009-12-18T13:12:00.001-06:002009-12-18T13:15:41.380-06:00It isn't ALL about computer music here at Hybernation Studio!<img style="width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3TOSXwssR9WezE66xcpVEvlmOxCUFabIOs1powgVbhJxPfMs1BRckL7IIrG_dxCiLqYJu67YFfoGGT5Vb3ik2M1xbX-vamQe8YZjBpQ7Id0Zgo1pAY_Lon-eBY_xXOSgsbT8z2A/s400/IMG_0350%5B1%5D.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5416652137084624098" border="0" /><br /><br />Just so you know, I do have a few vintage instruments (and otherwise non-computerized things) here at Hybernation Studio.<br /><br />Pictured above is a 1956 Hammond M3 organ, recently acquired from my good friend and musician extraordinaire <a href="http://www.myspace.com/dantracey" target="_NEW">Dan Tracey</a>. On the bench is the Ovation acoustic/electric guitar I bought just before my son was born 6 years ago. <br /><br /><img style="width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfzBbbfoVPtpp_e1FqYWnHTqWYqeNLi_U_DSQ_DEfAxdvIDNlxQ-qAmn7sLxm4S-jNVdg3qnuYkX6Tq6XbG8a9C1YYPhlHW_Ur1j0BUpirCKHz_rkJqfoJpyVXTrYsRQbUulZ7XA/s400/IMG_0372%5B1%5D.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5416654685100365250" border="0" /><br /><br />And left over from my days on the road, above is my 1980 model Rhodes 88 Suitcase. After carrying this beast all over the country for three years, I just couldn't bear to part with it (not for a fraction of the purchase price anyway). Honestly though, nothing else sounds like a real Rhodes (or Hammond for that matter). Though I seldom use these two vintage keyboards in recordings, it's still nice to have them around to provide that "vintage vibe" to my recording space.John S. Hagewood (aka. Fragile Forest)http://www.blogger.com/profile/09919997150516214076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28007134.post-46245073490187254082009-12-08T00:01:00.006-06:002012-12-08T13:48:27.566-06:00Imagine...it's been 29 years<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGRfGSvqdZtbHENQjZoIPhTgaHeF0asEy1OjKH3s9gWcj-65j8bhuzO2mLulfxbWK2uWHC9nWKU6mCagHSLCxQ3C8TvqYDAuKHejwB_02c1Id06O7-UCciqDVy_1Lls244I7VSiQ/s1600-h/Lennon2.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" target="_NEW"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5411220980259994354" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGRfGSvqdZtbHENQjZoIPhTgaHeF0asEy1OjKH3s9gWcj-65j8bhuzO2mLulfxbWK2uWHC9nWKU6mCagHSLCxQ3C8TvqYDAuKHejwB_02c1Id06O7-UCciqDVy_1Lls244I7VSiQ/s400/Lennon2.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; height: 400px; width: 286px;" /></a><br />
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In December of 1980, I had just dropped out of college as a music major to join a traveling top-40 band. We spent the holidays learning five sets of music prior to beginning what would be my first tour, and the beginning of my 3-year stint as a "Professional Lounge Musician".<br />
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We had to learn a wide variety of music for the types of clubs we would be playing, not just the current "top 40" and "dance" music, but also a "dinner set" (the early set) which needed to contain mostly laid back stuff and ballads. I suggested we learn "Imagine" by John Lennon, and everyone agreed it would be a good one....so we did. I sang it. In my mind, this was to be one of the high-points in the evening gigs. This was not to be...for a while.<br />
<br />
About 3 weeks before the end of our 8 week rehearsal period, I walked into rehearsal to a bunch of very sad people. I was not into "news" so I hadn't a clue what had transpired the evening before, on December 8th, 1980. John Lennon had been shot and killed outside his home in New York City. An icon...no, a living legend was gone. I was devastated, and we all agreed to can rehearsal for that evening. I cried...a lot. I got very drunk. Then I cried some more. For days it seemed. I tried to watch some of the "tributes" and such that were on TV, but I couldn't. Every time "Imagine" came on the radio, for weeks to come in fact, I cried.<br />
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Since age 8 in 1969, I had been a huge Beatles fan. My first two LP's were "Let It Be" and "The Beatles Again" (the US-only LP that was a collection of singles, including included "Hey Jude", "Paperback Writer", and "Lady Madonna"). I had always said that Paul was my favorite Beatle...his first solo album was the 3rd LP I acquired. But I loved plenty of John's songs as well, and I always held out hope that they would re-form in the 80's, and conquer the world all over again. I was actually quite SURE that this would happen. When John "retired" in NYC I got a little worried, <a href="http://abbeyrd.best.vwh.net/satnite.htm" target="_NEW">but then those rumors of "what almost happened" on Saturday Night Live</a> kept the flame alive.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_JxPYaNpf6rLPy5d_58NvoUzil4vboKx8lJfleS8GMVPj6upf6igHaadNc_kVhC8R2uUpLT-zagXj1Lmz577RN_KEVPIVcRZVJLSLCDkbTWHm2LjlsjbLJfNcGynOFxNZNDb1Jw/s1600-h/Lennon1.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" target="_NEW"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5411220903115230354" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_JxPYaNpf6rLPy5d_58NvoUzil4vboKx8lJfleS8GMVPj6upf6igHaadNc_kVhC8R2uUpLT-zagXj1Lmz577RN_KEVPIVcRZVJLSLCDkbTWHm2LjlsjbLJfNcGynOFxNZNDb1Jw/s400/Lennon1.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; height: 398px; width: 400px;" /></a><br />
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With John's passing, part of me died. No chance of a Beatles reunion now, for one thing. For another, I carried around this visceral fear and loathing for this type of evil that I never really admitted, before now, could exist in the world. How could ANYONE be so evil as to deprive the world of someone like John Lennon? It was just unimaginable.<br />
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Even five years later, I recall seeing TV shows marking the December 8th date and crying. My sadness was not for myself, or for John, or Julian, Sean or Yoko. My sadness was for a world so pathetic that something like this could happen. For a world that would never again know the magical synergy that was The Beatles. I'm sure I sound like I'm being overly dramatic here, but as I write this, the feelings are as fresh and real as they were 29 years ago.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLKs5lt6ib4Ggc9kjWCAXJD4jQLbOnmgFdGq4tq0JFU0eEU5asNf84_xMN3fhzZkGIkWsSc4pp-Asts8bq95DI-H7EIU5LFcizzDebihBsoGKHzvUZnpqEkNYx5Go3QBZRqmTYzQ/s1600-h/Lennon3.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" target="_NEW"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5411221042394013554" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLKs5lt6ib4Ggc9kjWCAXJD4jQLbOnmgFdGq4tq0JFU0eEU5asNf84_xMN3fhzZkGIkWsSc4pp-Asts8bq95DI-H7EIU5LFcizzDebihBsoGKHzvUZnpqEkNYx5Go3QBZRqmTYzQ/s400/Lennon3.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; height: 400px; width: 281px;" /></a><br />
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So flash back to the spring of 1981. After three months on the road with "Members Only", a show band fronted by singer Amy Runion, the band started asking me, "hey can we go ahead and play <span style="font-style: italic;">Imagine</span> now". I said I would try. The first few nights were hard, but I made it through, then it got easier. We didn't waste this song on the "dinner set", which was often played for 3 people, 2 of them waitresses. We actually saved it for a "slow dance" number in the rocking-out last set, and it was amazing to see the dance floor FLOOD with people during the first few chords of the song.<br />
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People LOVED it. Almost every night, I had someone come up to me after the last set was over and tell me how much they enjoyed us playing "Imagine". Some said "I've never heard a band play that song in a club". Some people begged us to play it one more time before we went home. During the summer of 1980 when we spent 12 weeks at the same resort, we began to get requests for "Imagine" from the regulars, and would sometimes end up playing it 3 times in one evening!<br />
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All for this little three minute song with about 6 chords in it. This simple little ode to world peace, written by a man who may have actually been capable of furthering that concept, had he not been so rudely interrupted.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSUVRBfilrj24OJYTdOZgt4qWq73dkNDOXVZVA64TD3Xr9m0hXZr_WCwAnYQ6f602RmRgbxqssqvuighMdCNCmyfuvRkj_rrSgHs39B_8AkEr_Sg0wjAy2wVjg1IVI2j218EYgrA/s1600/AmyWithMembersOnly.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="285" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSUVRBfilrj24OJYTdOZgt4qWq73dkNDOXVZVA64TD3Xr9m0hXZr_WCwAnYQ6f602RmRgbxqssqvuighMdCNCmyfuvRkj_rrSgHs39B_8AkEr_Sg0wjAy2wVjg1IVI2j218EYgrA/s400/AmyWithMembersOnly.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-style: italic;">"Members Only" was Randy Runion, Dow Tomlin, Amy Runion, me and Dan Searles</span><br />
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I first recorded "Imagine" almost four years ago, but I was never happy with the mix. Listening back to that original mix <a href="http://hybernationmusic.blogspot.com/2006/06/cover-tunes-with-dale.html" target="_NEW">which you can hear here</a>, I can't believe how bad it sounds to me now. So, I decided recently to completely remix it. I think the new mix is <span style="font-style: italic;">light-years</span> better than what I produced originally.<br />
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All the MIDI parts (just 5) were recorded with new virtual instruments. The biggest difference there is that the modern "pad synth" sound was replaced with a more retro sounding "Mellotron Strings" sound, produced by <a href="http://www.sampletron.com/" target="_NEW">IK Multimedia's SampleTron</a>.<br />
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The Hammond is a different sound altogether, a sound called "Preston!" from <a href="http://static.kvraudio.com/i/b/b4.jpg" target="_NEW">Native Instruments B4II</a>, obviously named after Billy Preston, a man often referred to as "The Fifth Beatle". The bass guitar sample is a vastly superior sound to what I had back then, a 3GB sample of a Fender Precision from Native Instruments called the <a href="http://static.kvraudio.com/i/b/scarbee-pre-bass-amped.png" target="_NEW">Scarbee Pre-Bass</a>. The drums are the <a href="http://hangout.altsounds.com/attachments/gear/1026d1249922435-ez-drummer-superior-drummer-2-0-add-on-drumkit-modules-nash2.jpg" target="_NEW">EZDrummer engine playing the "Nashville" expansion</a>, while the drum part itself is me playing drums on the keyboard, as recorded back then. In fact, ALL of the actual MIDI notes are exactly what I played back then with no editing. For the Piano, I used the same sample as before (a 7GB sample of an upright piano from <a href="http://sampletekk.com/proddetail.php?prod=STDELIVER-021-FORMAT" target="_NEW">SampleTekk called "Vertical Pop"</a>). And the vocals are the same tracks as before. They were recorded using an <a href="http://www.microphonereviews.com/product-reviews/condenser-microphones/akg-c-3000-b-condenser-microphone.html" target="_NEW">AKG C3000B microphone</a> through an older DBX tube pre-amp.<br />
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So, I imported all of this into <a href="http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/ProToolsMPowered8.html" target="_NEW">Pro Tools 8 M-Powered</a> (which I should probably admit is fast becoming my DAW of choice, over both Cubase 5 and Sonar 8) and started completely over on the mix. First re-working the MIDI instruments used, then completely re-thinking the vocal effects and the effects on the instruments. I used a LOT less reverb on everything, in fact the piano, bass and organ are completely dry, and there is some intentionally fake-sounding reverb on the Tron (to give that Moody Blues strings effect)....I was going for a real "live-in-the-room-with-you" band sound.<br />
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For the vocals, I used a rather complex (for me) effect chain of EQ + compressor + De-Esser + Reverb.<br />
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I left every bit of the "slop" in the timing on the MIDI parts and didn't fix a thing. I was tempted on a couple of parts where the bass and kick are not completely tight, and especially tempted to just completely quantize the drum part, but I resisted the urge. I wanted this to sound natural....like me in the studio laying down this classic track with very little editing or other studio trickery. And it is.<br />
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I hope you enjoy my latest rendition of John Lennon's timeless classic, "Imagine".<br />
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<embed align="middle" allowscriptaccess="sameDomain" bgcolor="#fff" class="MP3" flashvars="playerID=1&bg=0xDCDCDC&leftbg=0x696969&lefticon=0xF2F2F2&rightbg=0x696969&rightbghover=0x000&righticon=0xF2F2F2&righticonhover=0xFFFFFF&text=0x000000&slider=0x808080&track=0xFFFFFF&border=0xFFFFFF&loader=0xAF2910&soundFile=http://www.hybernationmusic.com/Imagine/Imagine-2009.mp3" height="24" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" quality="high" src="http://www.hybernationmusic.com/player.swf" style="height: 24px; width: 290px;" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="290" wmode="transparent"></embed><br />
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<a href="http://www.hybernationmusic.com/Imagine/Imagine-2009.mp3" target="_NEW">here is a direct link to the mp3 for non-shockwave environments</a><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio_D6S2M-ZzJMy_5JjiFXZP1pa_JplSC8-x-uoDF4h6uPzjitJ5bYE0OH8z_BBq1MawKC3ROrBafJ5O3Ygm41Wx8wmhtCp7x2n41QtJsBf5-Xn_HI81vnWZqRqG8LZWew4xdEYVg/s1600-h/John.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" target="_NEW"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5411231900661595826" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio_D6S2M-ZzJMy_5JjiFXZP1pa_JplSC8-x-uoDF4h6uPzjitJ5bYE0OH8z_BBq1MawKC3ROrBafJ5O3Ygm41Wx8wmhtCp7x2n41QtJsBf5-Xn_HI81vnWZqRqG8LZWew4xdEYVg/s400/John.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; height: 268px; width: 400px;" /></a>John S. Hagewood (aka. Fragile Forest)http://www.blogger.com/profile/09919997150516214076noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28007134.post-6686866997312674952009-10-19T21:07:00.012-05:002010-04-27T21:20:13.396-05:00Scary, my elbow is giving me song ideas<img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 367px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBh3whj4Ik3KPioYYN9Di98lMFZZ8yASL0EcOXYHkRgqr9rYzYHa1QylZpgBkE7CezYLIK1bJ9IXAAeplRCcGVPsfaRRJnbx-xo-SzWxw2r3hFnOLmBa-YBc0xFvvHgyeUgLTC5w/s400/Haunted-House-halloween-250818_1024_768.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5394499231395068962" /><br />
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Scary things happen in the studio sometimes. Usually it's late at night, but this time it was Saturday afternoon. I was messing around with Ultra Analog VA-1, which I raved about <a href="http://hybernationmusic.blogspot.com/2007/11/totally-out-of-my-box-on-this-one.html" target="_NEW">in an earlier blog post</a>. I was diligently trying to get it's sounds to load up in <a href="http://www.tweakheadz.com/reviews/review_of_kore2.htm" target="_NEW">Native Instruments Kore2</a>, and not having much luck. While Kore2 was doing an exhausting and subsequently futile scan of my whole hard drive, I leaned forward and rested my elbow on the keyboard, and my chin on my hand (you know, the famous pose of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thinker" target="_NEW">"The Thinker"</a> statue, only in front of a keyboard (the kind with 88 black and white keys) and two 24 inch monitors...<br />
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Well, my elbow held down three simple notes, the A, B, and C right there at middle-C on the keys, and VA-1 was on the initial sound, an arpeggiated sound that was the starting point for the song in that other post mentioned above. What emanated from my headphones was a mesmerizing little figure in 9/8, actualy A-B-C repeated as eight notes in three ascending octaves. Well, it immediately sounded like something in the key of A minor to me, so I reached over to my hardware keyboards and started jamming. Yes, I still have some of those hardware keyboards around, the kind that make sound all on their own without being hooked up to a computer: an <a href="http://www.vintagesynth.com/misc/qs81.php" target="_NEW">Alesis QS 8.1</a> and a <a href="http://www.synthesisers.co.uk/vr760.htm" target="_NEW">Roland VR-760</a> (which incidentally, <a href="http://www.ajalon.net/threshingfloor/images/tourpics/Neal%20Morse%20Intense.jpg" target="_NEW">Neal Morse plays live</a>).<br />
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Later that afternoon, I couldn't get that little figure out of my head, so I fired up Pro Tools and recorded a bit of it. Then I started playing with the <a href="http://davidfranz.berkleemusicblogs.com/category/boom/" target="_NEW">Boom drum machine plugin</a>, or "dumb machine" as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chester_Thompson" target="_NEW">drumming legend Chester Thompson</a> once referred to them in a clinic appearance I attended. Rather than using any canned patterns in Boom, I wanted to play some things in real-time and loop them, and I actually created three separate instrument tracks with three different Boom sounds on them. Then I realized just how hard it is to play along to something in 9/8 when each eighth note has the same accent amount. Impossible. There is no meter. Where the heck is the downbeat?<br />
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Actually, the effect I got was kind of cool, in an <a href="http://www.alanparsonsmusic.com/" target="_NEW">Alan Parsons</a> sort of way. I love the way <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Robot_%28album%29" target="_NEW">"I Robot"</a> starts....you can't figure out "where one is" until the drums finally kick in. I sort of recreated this effect by playing several drum patterns at the beginning that were definitely NOT in 9/8, and then after a few bars it all comes together and syncs up.<br />
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The track rundown showing plugins used looks like this:<br />
<ol><li>Ultra Analog VA-1 - Arpeggios<br />
<li>Boom - basic rhythm<br />
<li>Boom - "Urban" fills<br />
<li>Boom - kick/clap sound ala Peter Gabriel<br />
<li>EZDrummer Latin Percussion - shakers<br />
<li>EZDrummer Latin Percussion - wind chimes and fills<br />
<li>Vacuum Synth - Bass<br />
<li>Ultra Analog VA-1 - spooky lead sound<br />
<li>Structure - String sound, a mix of real and synthesized<br />
<li>Xpand!<sup>2</sup> - Electric Guitar<br />
<li>Rob Papen's Blue - Phased Synth Pad<br />
</OL>As usual lately, I played this track for my son Jonathan first, just this afternoon, and ask him to help me name it. After he heard the whole song, I soloed the "spooky lead synth" sound and said "doesn't that sound kind of spooky". He said "let's call it Haunted House". Alright then, just in time for Halloween, here is "Haunted House".<br><br>
<embed class="MP3" wmode="transparent" style="height:24px;width:290px;" src="http://www.hybernationmusic.com/player.swf" quality="high" bgcolor="#fff" width="290" height="24" align="middle" allowScriptAccess="sameDomain" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" flashvars="playerID=1&bg=0xDCDCDC&leftbg=0x696969&lefticon=0xF2F2F2&rightbg=0x696969&rightbghover=0x000&righticon=0xF2F2F2&righticonhover=0xFFFFFF&text=0x000000&slider=0x808080&track=0xFFFFFF&border=0xFFFFFF&loader=0xAF2910&soundFile=http://www.hybernationmusic.com/fragileforest/music/Haunted House.mp3"></embed><br><br>
<a href="http://www.hybernationmusic.com/fragileforest/music/Haunted House.mp3" target="_NEW">here is a direct link to the mp3 for non-shockwave environments</a>John S. Hagewood (aka. Fragile Forest)http://www.blogger.com/profile/09919997150516214076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28007134.post-78327751989050960702009-10-02T22:08:00.012-05:002010-04-27T21:20:55.381-05:00Winter DreamYes, I know it's not winter yet...in fact it's turning into a beautiful fall here in Middle Tennessee, and I'm in no hurry for winter to get here! But I continue to let my son Jonathan name my tracks as I finish them and audition the early mixes in the car with him. He decided this one was to be called "Winter Dream", so who am I to argue?<br />
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I started this track using Reason 4.0 in "<a href="http://hybernationmusic.blogspot.com/2006/07/experimental-1-dark-and-pink.html" target="_NEW">Studio B</a>" about a year ago. After laying out the initial parts and the haunting piano melody, I thought it had a striking resemblance to something that <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_O%27Hearn" target="_NEW">Patrick O'Hearn</a> might have been doing in about 1989. So my working title was "O'Hurt Me". Often my working titles make no sense at all to anyone but me.<br />
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Recently the final version of <a href="http://www.propellerheads.se/products/record/index.cfm" target="_NEW">Propellerhead's Record 1.0</a> software, which I raved about <a href="http://hybernationmusic.blogspot.com/2009/07/new-software-and-hardware.html" target="_NEW">in an earlier post</a>, arrived in my mailbox and so the last few weeks I've been having a bit of a "battle of the DAW's" here in Hybernation Studio. I seem to be rotating projects between <a href="http://hybernationmusic.blogspot.com/2009/09/giving-pro-tools-another-chance.html" target="NEW">Pro Tools</a>, <a href="http://hybernationmusic.blogspot.com/2009/09/heroes-revisited.html" target="_NEW">Cubase</a> and Record! This track I finished in Record, since importing the Reason 4.0 file and converting to Record's format is so easy. In fact "easy" is the one word that perfectly describes Propellerhead's new product. Anything I want to do, for the most part, I can figure out within a couple of minutes without ever looking at the manual. With Pro Tools and Cubase, I am continually referencing the copious documentation (granted they are both deeper programs than Record). But with Record, they really went out of their way to make the software incredibly easy to use and intuitive. And it still manages to be a very powerful and professional tool.<br />
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So, this is officially the first track that I have completed using Record. This is also another first....the first track I have ever actually PLAYED all of the drums on...on my<a href="http://www.roland.com/products/com/TD-9K/images/top_L.jpg" target="_NEW"> Roland V-Drum kit</a>, triggering drums sounds from the <a href="http://www.propellerheads.se/products/refills/rdk/" target="_NEW">Reason Drum Kit Refill 2.0</a>. I'm not talking about the many percussion tracks, just the "rock drums" that come in the "B section" and again at the end of the song. Ok, so it's primarily just the kick and snare, and some cymbals, but it really is "all me" playing them. Alright, I admit I did quantize the part later to clean up the timing, and I edited a few mistakes, but other than that...<br />
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Alright granted, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_White_%28Yes_drummer%29" target="_NEW">Alan White</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Bruford" target="_NEW">Bill Bruford</a> don't have anything to worry about. Learning to play drums is hard, they say especially so for keyboard players. I've only been at it for about four years. Really makes me miss <a href="http://hybernationmusic.blogspot.com/2009/07/last-track-i-recorded-with-alan-wiseman.html" target="_NEW">Alan</a>, trying to pound it out myself.<br />
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Record is different from Cubase and Sonar in one large way: everything happens in just three windows. I usually put the "track" window on the left monitor:<br />
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAcgUfyX4b76eiGS0-uRntSolLJ3gzB2kj77hhz-VJGq3XaAtjDVm7m9oQyvg5LiTVOPjixWm7AUeq0mIhHm6hBFctbyUilE89kyVjAHMAgAu-u3h0A6LVOgWNYxQ_RVeoGf-z8A/s1600-h/WinterDream1.jpg" target="_NEW"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 225px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAcgUfyX4b76eiGS0-uRntSolLJ3gzB2kj77hhz-VJGq3XaAtjDVm7m9oQyvg5LiTVOPjixWm7AUeq0mIhHm6hBFctbyUilE89kyVjAHMAgAu-u3h0A6LVOgWNYxQ_RVeoGf-z8A/s400/WinterDream1.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5388209878438577858" /></a><br />
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And then I put the "rack" and "mixer" windows side by side on the right monitor:<br />
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhf7k86_Kr5008SHqLWk19t6ifhQ-sSklkstC-TFKzuyVh0npYesPKDcvJPQq46nWMgsRp-joUTvVx1CXty_bKFNs022gkd8xGZKlYSYi2nwqsMO4kwOFMnEcGfOdA1TS1kBJgz9g/s1600-h/WinterDream2.jpg" target="_NEW"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 375px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhf7k86_Kr5008SHqLWk19t6ifhQ-sSklkstC-TFKzuyVh0npYesPKDcvJPQq46nWMgsRp-joUTvVx1CXty_bKFNs022gkd8xGZKlYSYi2nwqsMO4kwOFMnEcGfOdA1TS1kBJgz9g/s400/WinterDream2.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5388210094665338626" /></a><br />
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<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSxrB2cSlQ9PQVYSmhzgLvxhVkXTnFDrO0vpSIvvt3ZA8dPghBUZdKWDy_lhZbpou-i5avKFKnxR1_WQuKx6ve2UHHtDLAHV_gv1R0hmf3Ay3C5MBYDusWNRrAUbjKHD9QamxtfA/s1600-h/WinterDream3.jpg" target="_NEW"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 375px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSxrB2cSlQ9PQVYSmhzgLvxhVkXTnFDrO0vpSIvvt3ZA8dPghBUZdKWDy_lhZbpou-i5avKFKnxR1_WQuKx6ve2UHHtDLAHV_gv1R0hmf3Ay3C5MBYDusWNRrAUbjKHD9QamxtfA/s400/WinterDream3.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5388210243935237090" /></a><br />
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As I explained previously, the "<a href="http://www.propellerheads.se/products/record/index.cfm?fuseaction=get_article&article=mix" target="_NEW">virtual mixer</a>" in Record is quite awesome, it being modeled after the classic <a href="http://mixguides.com/consoles/product_features/technology-ssl-xl9000k-0302/" target="_NEW">Solid State Logic XL 9000 K Series</a>, a piece of kit that will run you in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. I'm not really an audiophile with "golden ears" but I can tell you that this mixer sounds very good for what it is. The only thing I can't really come to grips with is the "master buss compression". I just couldn't make it do what I wanted on the final mix. So I ended up exporting out a 24-bit WAV file (uncompressed) of the final mix, importing this into Sonar and using the excellent <a href="http://www.voxengo.com/product/elephant/" target="_NEW">Voxengo Elephant</a> plugin to "master" the song, adding compression and limiting. This plugin is amazingly transparent, giving you that "loud" sound without colorizing the mix in any way.<br />
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I should also mention that this track resembles the one I call "<a href="http://hybernationmusic.blogspot.com/2009/06/ancient-violence.html" target="_NEW">Ancient Violence</a>" in several ways. I believe I actually had that 20 year old composition in mind when I started this one, intentionally going for the same kind of vibe. I guess there is no law against ripping off oneself is there!<br />
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Here is "Winter Dream". Enjoy...and stay warm.<br />
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<embed class="MP3" wmode="transparent" style="height:24px;width:290px;" src="http://www.hybernationmusic.com/player.swf" quality="high" bgcolor="#fff" width="290" height="24" align="middle" allowScriptAccess="sameDomain" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" flashvars="playerID=1&bg=0xDCDCDC&leftbg=0x696969&lefticon=0xF2F2F2&rightbg=0x696969&rightbghover=0x000&righticon=0xF2F2F2&righticonhover=0xFFFFFF&text=0x000000&slider=0x808080&track=0xFFFFFF&border=0xFFFFFF&loader=0xAF2910&soundFile=http://www.hybernationmusic.com/fragileforest/music/Winter Dream.mp3"></embed><br />
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<a href="http://www.hybernationmusic.com/fragileforest/music/Winter Dream.mp3" target="_NEW">here is a direct link to the mp3 for non-shockwave environments</a>John S. Hagewood (aka. Fragile Forest)http://www.blogger.com/profile/09919997150516214076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28007134.post-79418901670665877472009-09-23T22:02:00.015-05:002010-04-27T21:21:38.099-05:00One Lonely Desert (giving Pro Tools another try)<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTLiQ_CQ-uQ1OFTYV0LFzI85xlqCqGrcOPB8_3H4tcNesDIJxCgeu-GFkr3qz3y7qwdkzidE8EN0ssj1Mr2sz58zKEdBPhEbu-3G-nQjHmq8O8taY_J9RpXDeLShTnuCxzdMHnOw/s1600-h/LonelyDesert.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 266px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTLiQ_CQ-uQ1OFTYV0LFzI85xlqCqGrcOPB8_3H4tcNesDIJxCgeu-GFkr3qz3y7qwdkzidE8EN0ssj1Mr2sz58zKEdBPhEbu-3G-nQjHmq8O8taY_J9RpXDeLShTnuCxzdMHnOw/s400/LonelyDesert.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5385219895395650770" /></a><br />
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<a href="http://www.digidesign.com/index.cfm?navid=349&langid=100&itemid=33116" target="_NEW">Pro Tools</a> and the company behind it, <a href="http://www.digidesign.com" target="_NEW">Avid/Digidesign</a>, has been in the news a bit lately. It's really pretty amazing actually, that a company that until recently only catered to "Music Industry Professionals" has done an about face in just a few years. It started a number of years ago when they began selling <a href="http://www.digidesign.com/index.cfm?navid=28&langid=100&" target="_NEW">Pro Tools LE</a> and their series of <a href="http://www.digidesign.com/index.cfm?langid=100&navid=104&itemid=23596" target="_NEW">project studio interfaces</a>. Given a decent Mac or PC, one could get into a system like this for way less than the original Pro Tools "HD" systems. Like $1K to $4K for an LE system (even less later) compared to something in the $10K to $40K price range for the HD systems that practically all major recording studios run. With Pro Tools LE, like the more expensive HD systems, you bought the rather pricey interface and the software came bundled with it.<br />
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Then came the software only <a href="http://www.digidesign.com/index.cfm?navid=35&langid=100&itemid=4901" target="_NEW">"Pro Tools M-Powered"</a>, which is what I own, which is basically Pro Tools LE designed to run on the more generic M-Audio interfaces instead of the proprietary Digidesign ones that only run Pro Tools. As I've said before, it's really quite a lot of DAW power for the money ($249). I'm running it on a $99 <a href="http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Audiophile2496.html" target="_NEW">M-Audio Audiophile 2496 Interface</a> (which also runs Cubase, Sonar, etc). This was a version of Pro Tools for the project studio person who already owned an M-Audio interface, either <a href="http://www.m-audio.com/index.php?do=products.family&ID=FWinterfaces" target="_NEW">FireWire</a>, <a href="http://www.m-audio.com/index.php?do=products.family&ID=USBinterfaces" target="_NEW">USB</a> or <a href="http://www.m-audio.com/index.php?do=products.family&ID=PCIinterfaces" target="_NEW">PCI</a> (of which there are many, and they have been popular for quite some time).<br />
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But in the last couple of weeks, things have REALLY changed. M-Audio is now selling something called <a href="http://createdigitalmusic.com/2009/09/09/pro-tools-essentials-and-the-big-picture/" target="_NEW">"Pro Tools Essentials"</a> which is a limited version of Pro Tools M-Powered that is bundled with several different pieces of M-Audio hardware, targeted squarely at beginners. This is truly "Garage Band meets Pro Tools"...Pro Tools for the masses...and you can now buy these packages for $99 to $149 at <a href="http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=9470609&st=Pro+Tools&lp=8&type=product&cp=1&id=1218110869112" target="_NEW">places like Best Buy</a>, just one aisle over from that silly "Rock Band" and "Guitar Hero" trash that kids are going nuts over. From a marketing perspective, it's really quite clever: those 9 to 12 year old kids that are playing the games today may at some point decide they want "the real thing" and here it is -- A fully professional, though somewhat limited, recording rig that hooks up easily to your computer, and costs less than most gaming consoles. Pretty Sweet!<br />
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<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgYuJgXO-fx191OcCvs5EplIGb6ThslB8eHPgrUTIJo972h2DjEs15csQyxE75rDF2rYDU2wEY-rUrdrvg4eWam4CPL7H5EdfNgnltKj27RPVOkfVkpczEBQ_XRkMxfzZ8sWibVQ/s1600-h/keystudio%5B1%5D.jpg" target="_NEW"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 238px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgYuJgXO-fx191OcCvs5EplIGb6ThslB8eHPgrUTIJo972h2DjEs15csQyxE75rDF2rYDU2wEY-rUrdrvg4eWam4CPL7H5EdfNgnltKj27RPVOkfVkpczEBQ_XRkMxfzZ8sWibVQ/s400/keystudio%5B1%5D.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5384878725335211154" /></a><br />
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OK, enough news and advertising links!<br />
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So, in the last few weeks I've been really stretching my brain and learning Cubase as well as digging back into Pro Tools, which I have managed to get "stable" in both Vista64 and Windows 7x64. The key to stability with Pro Tools is what RTAS instruments you use (RTAS stands for "Real Time Audio Suite" and it is Digidesign's proprietary instrument and effect plug-in architecture). RTAS for Pro Tools = VST for everybody else, well except for Apple Logic, they have their own format as well, something called "AU". Most of the Virtual Instruments I have purchased say they support RTAS, but many of them are not really "approved" by Digidesign, and those are the ones that make Pro Tools unstable!<br />
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So, I got to thinking I would try to do a track using ONLY the virtual instruments that come with Pro Tools 8 M-Powered, and this is what came out of that. They say that placing limits on the tool set you use, in any medium, will often foster creativity, and in this case it seemed to work for me. One thing is certain, I am "spoiled for choice" when it comes to software instruments!<br />
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The guitar parts were produced using the excellent <a href="http://www.digidesign.com/index.cfm?navid=175&itemid=5223" target="_NEW">Structure Free</a> sample playback unit, which I also used for one of the string synth parts. The other string synth / pad part was done with <a href="http://davidfranz.berkleemusicblogs.com/2009/02/04/pro-tools-8-new-instrument-review-xpand2/" target="_NEW">Xpand2</a>. I used two instances of <a href="http://davidfranz.berkleemusicblogs.com/category/vacuum/" target="_NEW">Vacuum</a>, a virtual analogue modeled synth, one for bass and the other for the lead synth sound. I used the <a href="http://davidfranz.berkleemusicblogs.com/2009/03/01/pro-tools-8-new-instrument-review-mini-grand/" target="_NEW">Mini Grand piano plug-in</a> as well. On many of these instruments I also used the out-of-the-box effects plug-ins for things like Chorus, Delay, Reverb, and Compression.<br />
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Lastly, I used the new <a href="http://davidfranz.berkleemusicblogs.com/category/boom/" target="_NEW">Boom drum machine plug-in</a>. This one is very cool and nostalgic for me. It's modeled very much after the Roland-type drum machines from the 80's, of which I once owned two, a <a href="http://www.vintagesynth.com/roland/707.php" target="_NEW">TR-707</a> and a <a href="http://www.vintagesynth.com/roland/626.php" target="_NEW">TR-626</a>. Even before those "sample-based" units came along, Roland made units like the <a href="http://www.vintagesynth.com/roland/cr78.php" target="_NEW">CR-78</a>, <a href="http://www.vintagesynth.com/roland/808.php" target="_NEW">TR-808</a> and <a href="http://www.vintagesynth.com/roland/909.php" target="_NEW">TR-909</a> which had all analogue circuitry. These distinctive sounding units are still used today, especially in Hip Hop, Rap, Chill and D&B styles of music. The sound set I used in Boom sounds a bit like a TR-808 or a CR-78.<br />
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<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIrjpuw6krk2_DSFQgxFEet9yRl6Ii9N7sLPx9N5JRPNng3ThffPhyrLlzRprznfsuCKAsz3rcYpi6jSn_jBALavNDWwTpe-8pTmfWwu9BFRGowv9F8JrG7jjZLWZxY3CEsaDZlQ/s1600-h/707%5B1%5D.jpg" target="_NEW"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 261px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIrjpuw6krk2_DSFQgxFEet9yRl6Ii9N7sLPx9N5JRPNng3ThffPhyrLlzRprznfsuCKAsz3rcYpi6jSn_jBALavNDWwTpe-8pTmfWwu9BFRGowv9F8JrG7jjZLWZxY3CEsaDZlQ/s400/707%5B1%5D.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5384873810482250306" /></a><br />
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I learned to program drum beats in 1986 on the above unit, a TR-707. The interface was just amazingly "immediate" and became very popular and imitated by other manufacturers. So, when I saw the user interface for Boom I felt right at home!<br />
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<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4X_j9bs0d8bcph6gh140D2dX-tHc1GImCYjILJ4HT6iT7MOPeFkUFBCxa2XuFGsdfILZYxFYQNLVruyBtVOkHOOfibCGqjTSkgUoc1EemwB0xy9bdEiaUdi7wAcZ3-9Dq4-PixQ/s1600-h/df_pt_blog_boom_small%5B1%5D.jpg" target="_NEW"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 231px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4X_j9bs0d8bcph6gh140D2dX-tHc1GImCYjILJ4HT6iT7MOPeFkUFBCxa2XuFGsdfILZYxFYQNLVruyBtVOkHOOfibCGqjTSkgUoc1EemwB0xy9bdEiaUdi7wAcZ3-9Dq4-PixQ/s400/df_pt_blog_boom_small%5B1%5D.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5384874482030834354" /></a><br />
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I don't have much to say about this track, other than it's kind of a happy, trippy little bit that started as a "guitar idea", so I called it "Guitar Idea One" for lack of a more inventive title (and because this little ditty probably doesn't deserve a more inventive title). But the morning after I first mixed it, I was playing it in the car, as I often do to see how the mix sounds outside of Hybernation Studio, and my 6-year-old Jonathan said "Daddy, what's that song called". I told him I didn't really have a name and would he like to name it? So, he listened in complete silence for 4 minutes and then said "I like it, I want to call it 'One Lonely Desert'". Ok, Jonathan, "One Lonely Desert" sounds good to me!<br />
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The "genre" is a little hard to pin down...I guess you could call this "progressive acoustic ambient chill" music.<br />
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Enjoy!<br />
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<a href="http://www.hybernationmusic.com/fragileforest/music/One Lonely Desert.mp3" target="_NEW">here is a direct link to the mp3 for non-shockwave environments</a>John S. Hagewood (aka. Fragile Forest)http://www.blogger.com/profile/09919997150516214076noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28007134.post-80741293771956057162009-09-07T22:00:00.008-05:002011-09-11T21:36:57.483-05:00Heroes, revisited<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicFFQ_L5L07F12rWH9mpudgGNsiNty9_q6ZDAYhEi4MwMZ5wuNpFxCyyruBoPgxHzkdLp_C6c44WP2r3wQiCGQ-HFqt03iIKc8TIPZUEFAARFOpE8v8gkpX-cyfTWL6KsbM5WywQ/s1600-h/Heroes.jpg" target="_NEW"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5378927605328300290" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicFFQ_L5L07F12rWH9mpudgGNsiNty9_q6ZDAYhEi4MwMZ5wuNpFxCyyruBoPgxHzkdLp_C6c44WP2r3wQiCGQ-HFqt03iIKc8TIPZUEFAARFOpE8v8gkpX-cyfTWL6KsbM5WywQ/s400/Heroes.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; height: 290px; width: 400px;" /></a><br />
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As I began thinking about the 9/11 anniversary this week, I wanted to do a track in honor of the "heroes". Not just something to honor the incredible bravery of the FDNY and NYPD that served on that day, many making the ultimate sacrifice, but also to honor those heroes all around us who serve every day, usually unnoticed. <br />
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I remembered that I <a href="http://hybernationmusic.blogspot.com/2008/02/heroes.html" target="_NEW">cranked out a quick track a while back and called it "Heroes"</a>, but in reality, I didn't give it that huge, heroic sound that it deserves. That takes time, and for some reason I just didn't feel like spending the effort back then.<br />
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So, I resurrected this track and completely redid it, probably spending about 20 hours reworking it in <a href="http://www.steinberg.net/en/products/musicproduction/cubasestudio5_product0.html" target="_NEW">Cubase 5 Studio</a>. This program continues to be an absolute pleasure to work with and is rock solid. It still hasn't really crashed on me a single time (though my sound card did start misbehaving and causing the BSOD one night, forcing me to reinstall the sound card driver). Though the interface in Cubase is not as visually interesting and "pretty" as the one in Sonar, I'm now realizing that Cubase is MUCH easier to look at for long periods of time. All the "3D-ness" in Sonar becomes completely distracting after a while and as much harder on the eyes that the generally 2D look of Cubase.<br />
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About the only part that remained completely intact from the first incarnation of this composition is the piano part, which was rendered using <a href="http://www.sampletekk.com/proddetail.php?prod=STDELIVER-026-FORMAT" target="_NEW">SampleTekk's "The Big One"</a> piano library. The other tracks were cleaned up, overdubbed and rearranged, and some totally new elements were added, such as bass guitar and drums. I made heavy use of the <a href="http://ja.wikizic.org/1-038-038543-Steinberg-Halion-Symphonic-Orchestra.jpg" target="_NEW">Halion Symphony Orchestra</a> plugin that came with Cubase 5, and also used <a href="http://www.ikmultimedia.com/philharmonik/moreinfo/moreinfo1.php" target="_NEW">IK Multimedia's Miroslav Philharmonik</a> on several tracks.<br />
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I think the end result sounds quite "heroic". Let me know what you think?<br />
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<embed align="middle" allowscriptaccess="sameDomain" bgcolor="#fff" class="MP3" flashvars="playerID=1&bg=0xDCDCDC&leftbg=0x696969&lefticon=0xF2F2F2&rightbg=0x696969&rightbghover=0x000&righticon=0xF2F2F2&righticonhover=0xFFFFFF&text=0x000000&slider=0x808080&track=0xFFFFFF&border=0xFFFFFF&loader=0xAF2910&soundFile=http://www.hybernationmusic.com/fragileforest/music/Heroes.mp3" height="24" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" quality="high" src="http://www.hybernationmusic.com/player.swf" style="height: 24px; width: 290px;" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="290" wmode="transparent"></embed><br />
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<a href="http://www.hybernationmusic.com/fragileforest/music/Heroes.mp3" target="_NEW">here is a direct link to the mp3 for non-shockwave environments</a><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_TW5xmwRS_aBTEZdfhuwUW4haruzvNYdEJ5iRc_OsgY3_ngBGRlDe7RnopcfiqzH70hM4cro8pmVcr9k4huLbNGTSgeqb20arEYSQ3ErlCn0G4ME8jU8EmtMdyPn229dO4J9V0Q/s1600-h/9-11_firemans_flag_full-jpg.jpeg" target="_NEW"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5378927497883406594" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_TW5xmwRS_aBTEZdfhuwUW4haruzvNYdEJ5iRc_OsgY3_ngBGRlDe7RnopcfiqzH70hM4cro8pmVcr9k4huLbNGTSgeqb20arEYSQ3ErlCn0G4ME8jU8EmtMdyPn229dO4J9V0Q/s320/9-11_firemans_flag_full-jpg.jpeg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; height: 320px; width: 240px;" /></a>John S. Hagewood (aka. Fragile Forest)http://www.blogger.com/profile/09919997150516214076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28007134.post-75079823952217813552009-09-05T21:47:00.008-05:002009-09-06T07:13:08.461-05:00Fun with the Delay Lama (total silliness)<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT1gYWtCWeEVR0AE9RBVPbN8nJhV3EUSt5Kb19MH3-XYunMFqr5Lm59tGC88nKJYOInVzn-95jtcmV6ZhDJ-xoVrvFDA7AEaOe4mm8X4L9x9V1_L-iPQAieA5UmGqYoTyk9gQZsg/s1600-h/screenshot_big%5B1%5D.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 267px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT1gYWtCWeEVR0AE9RBVPbN8nJhV3EUSt5Kb19MH3-XYunMFqr5Lm59tGC88nKJYOInVzn-95jtcmV6ZhDJ-xoVrvFDA7AEaOe4mm8X4L9x9V1_L-iPQAieA5UmGqYoTyk9gQZsg/s400/screenshot_big%5B1%5D.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5378195632744180610" /></a><br />When I first started getting into VST instruments (back in 2005) I was looking around for freebies one night, and I discovered a VERY unique little plugin called "Delay Lama", from <a href="http://www.audionerdz.com/" target="_NEW">AudioNerz</a>. Here is the description from their site:<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;"><blockquote>Delay Lama is the first VST-instrument to offer both vocal synthesis and a real-time animated 3D interface. Its advanced monophonic vocal synthesis engine enables your computer to sound just like an Eastern monk, with real-time, high resolution control over the vowel sound. What's more, the plug-in window displays a 3D animation of a singing monk, that reacts directly to your input!</blockquote></span><br /><br />As I played with it that night I was extremely entertained. It was FUNNY, it was MUSICAL, and it was very very clever. Last year I was fooling around with a couple of synths and decided to actually try to create a short track using Delay Lama, and here it is. This is NOT to be taken seriously, folks!<br /><br />You really have to SEE this thing in action to appreciate it, so I recorded the VST window to a shockwave file during the playback using the open source <a href="http://camstudio.org/" target="_NEW">CamStudio</a> software. Watch the little fellows face as he sings. Amazing! Especially toward the end when he really gets going.<br /><br />I had technical difficulties embedding this video into blogger.com, so when you click the link below, a new page will open and hopefully you will see the video and hear the audio, after a short pause during which the shockwave file downloads.<br /><br /><a href="http://hybernationmusic.com/DalyLama/" target="_DL">Click here to view/listen to "Fun With the Daly Lama"</a><br /><br />(and yes, I know it's really spelled "Dalai Lama", but I didn't want to get sued or anything...he looks like a pretty intense and powerful man)John S. Hagewood (aka. Fragile Forest)http://www.blogger.com/profile/09919997150516214076noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28007134.post-43750609951004381642009-08-29T01:00:00.004-05:002011-07-22T22:58:49.692-05:00Ancient Violence<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEji8H0wxhfqMCsnrjzpu4HfZAQEXpUTgSAeBbxJsPCulOM3zCac-9UZ1up_bMqarcXLzREieHn9IEgfOlrwQQh-D1ChCZhQu6D4Kj-1yjelOehjSHhNtMktKpNVZw6m4B1VTiF8VA/s1600-h/china.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" target="_NEW"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5346904115064280002" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEji8H0wxhfqMCsnrjzpu4HfZAQEXpUTgSAeBbxJsPCulOM3zCac-9UZ1up_bMqarcXLzREieHn9IEgfOlrwQQh-D1ChCZhQu6D4Kj-1yjelOehjSHhNtMktKpNVZw6m4B1VTiF8VA/s400/china.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; height: 266px; width: 400px;" /></a><br />
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I wrote this piece of music 20 years ago when the news was all about Tienanmen Square. I was deeply affected by the images and stories being shown in the media, and I was of course appalled by the Chinese government's response to the pro-democracy protests. As a young man, the whole idea of this kind of basic lack of freedom was incredibly alien to me. As an older man, I'm appalled at the lack of progress made towards democracy and human rights in many parts of the world. I can only pray that the next 20 years will see more progress toward peace and freedom in China, not to mention Korea, Palestine, Iran...I guess the list could be long indeed.<br />
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I started this track a couple of months ago in <a href="http://www.reaper.fm/" target="_NEW">Reaper</a>, making heavy use of Native Instrument's very unique <a href="http://nativeinstruments.com/en/#/en/products/producer/kore-soundpacks/true-strike-tension/" target="_NEW">True Strike Tension Kore soundpack</a> and <a href="http://toontrack.com/products.asp?item=10" target="_NEW">EZDrummer's Latin Percussion Expansion</a>. The main melody line, a rather haunting vocal synth, was produced with <a href="http://tone2.com/html/gladiator_2_vsti_au_synthesize.html" target="_NEW">Tone2's Gladiator 2</a> synth. Today after I installed <a href="http://www.steinberg.net/en/products/musicproduction/cubasestudio5_product0.html" target="_NEW">Cubase 5 Studio</a>, I imported the MIDI file and reassigned the same virtual instruments and got to cutting, pasting and tracking some new overdubs. I worked probably 5 hours on this track in Cubase today without a single crash, hiccup, glitch or unexplained behavior. Those clever German software developers, I gotta hand it to them...this is one smooth and slick program!<br />
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I didn't expect to finish this tonight, but I did. Wow....two blog posts in one night, that is a first for me.<br />
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Warning: This song is NOT pretty. But then Ancient Violence never is.<br />
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<a href="http://www.hybernationmusic.com/fragileforest/music/Ancient%20Violence.mp3" target="_NEW">here is a direct link to the mp3 for non-shockwave environments</a><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6j4IftlMGjLLA_QxY_xkFjYTwIQWIpbd-fT1eKVPnDvLijfQAnomQMyqkB0ZATqlxkIm3KsrRAt_JjC1zjRFFJ_aZ1sGmsrBBvcp0wFQoAbbifOrfeATFWw1n5h2_8MzFk7b1-Q/s1600-h/AncientViolenceScreenShot.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" target="_NEW"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5375261191323324834" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6j4IftlMGjLLA_QxY_xkFjYTwIQWIpbd-fT1eKVPnDvLijfQAnomQMyqkB0ZATqlxkIm3KsrRAt_JjC1zjRFFJ_aZ1sGmsrBBvcp0wFQoAbbifOrfeATFWw1n5h2_8MzFk7b1-Q/s400/AncientViolenceScreenShot.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; height: 112px; width: 400px;" /></a><br />
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***EDIT: remixed in Pro Tools 9 on the iMac in July 2011, using many different sounds, including some African drums at the end:<br />
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<embed align="middle" allowscriptaccess="sameDomain" bgcolor="#fff" class="MP3" flashvars="playerID=1&bg=0xDCDCDC&leftbg=0x696969&lefticon=0xF2F2F2&rightbg=0x696969&rightbghover=0x000&righticon=0xF2F2F2&righticonhover=0xFFFFFF&text=0x000000&slider=0x808080&track=0xFFFFFF&border=0xFFFFFF&loader=0xAF2910&soundFile=http://www.hybernationmusic.com/fragileforest/music/Ancient%20Violence(256kb%202011%20remix).mp3" height="24" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" quality="high" src="http://www.hybernationmusic.com/player.swf" style="height: 24px; width: 290px;" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="290" wmode="transparent"></embed><br />
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<a href="http://www.hybernationmusic.com/fragileforest/music/Ancient%20Violence(256kb%202011%20remix).mp3" target="_NEW">here is a direct link to the mp3 for non-shockwave environments</a>John S. Hagewood (aka. Fragile Forest)http://www.blogger.com/profile/09919997150516214076noreply@blogger.com0