"Happy Christmas" from Fragile Forest and Hybernation Music

Yes, it's that time of year again.  And so this is Christmas...and what have *I* done?  Another Christmas "cover tune" of course!

This year I recorded John Lennon's classic "Happy Christmas (War is Over)", a song released in 1971.  According to Wikipedia, 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.

Quoting from Wikipedia: "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 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 "December", 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 :-)

So, Happy Christmas everyone, and thanks for listening!

here is a direct link to the mp3 for non-shockwave environments

...And here are the ghosts from my Christmas Cover Tunes past:

I tried not to be a grinch in 2008...
I got kind of deep in 2009...
Then, I got a little bit controversial last year...

Serious Music (1979-1983)

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.

Please press play when you have 20 minutes to spare.  Headphones are highly recommended.  Comments are welcome.

Serious Music (1979-1983) by fragileforest

Catching up with the DAW Wars...and a whole lotta remixing going on

The DAW Wars 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, Apple Logic Studio seemed to be "the one".  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.

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 this year's debacle over Apple's Final Cut X revamp hit, 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 as this video suggests.  Great, just as I am getting comfortable with it!

In the meantime, Steinberg came out with Cubase 6, 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 Reaper, for that matter.

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.

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.

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):

Cubase 6 Tracking Window

Cubase 6 Mixing Window

Here is a new little dance number I came up with that I call "Afrikan Techno".  I did this one in Reaper:

Afrikan Techno (Reaper Mix) by fragileforest

Reaper 4 Tracking Window

Reaper 4 Mixing Window

I did a complete rework of the song "Ancient Violence" (which I blogged about here two years ago).  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.  Kore 2 is being discontinued 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:

Ancient Violence (remix) by fragileforest

One of the first tracks I did on Pro Tools 8 a couple of year ago was this one that I call "One Lonely Desert".  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 IK Multimedia's Black 76 Limiting Amplifier, which is simply the best track compressor I have ever used!  This remix sounds really superior to the original, I think:

One Lonely Desert by fragileforest

Pro Tools 9 with Tracking and Mixing squeezed together on my 27" monitor

Lastly, I still use Propellerhead's Reason/Record 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 recently announced Reason 6.  I recently fired up Reason/Record and remixed this piece I call "Piano Idea Two", using the Yamaha C7 grand piano found in the Reason Pianos Refill:

Piano Idea Two by fragileforest
 

Reason / Record Duo with Tracking, Mixing and "Rack" on one screen

My 50th Blog Post...and two Piano Solo pieces

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 inaugural blog post.  Yes, is was May 12, 2006.

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 http://hybernationmusic.blogspot.com".  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! 

I created a "Fragile Forest Page" 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!

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.

Tonight, have a listen to these two piano solos.  These are the two final pieces I mentioned last time I blogged in this post, which I have revised with a hyperlink to the future.

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 "Nadia's Theme" (the theme from "the Young and the Restless").  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 "Inferno" 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?

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.

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:

• Native Instruments Kontakt 4 playing SampleTek's mega piano called "Seven Seas Grand" (a Yamaha C7)
• IK Multimedia's new compressor called "Black 76 Limiting Amplifier"
• Nomad Factor's EQ plugin, the "PulseTeq EQs"
• Waves IR-L convolution reverb using their impulse response file that is an actual recording of the Ryman Auditorium from the 7th row.

So, first for tonight, here is "Searching":

here is a direct link to the mp3 for non-shockwave environments

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.

So, to end the night (and perhaps put you to sleep, this one is pretty mellow), here is "Unnamed":

here is a direct link to the mp3 for non-shockwave environments

Victory Theme

I meant to post this song when I finished it a couple of months ago. I am behind in my blogging!

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:

1) Passage (original version)

2) Intermezzo

3) Searching (piano solo, blog post here)

4) Victory Theme (this piece)

5) Proclamation

6) unnamed piano solo (blog post here)

7) Passage (reprise)

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":

here is a direct link to the mp3 for non-shockwave environments

Here is the obligatory image that I usually include in my blog posts:

image courtesy of Tanya Hall (farflungphotos)

Technical details of the recording:
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:

1) Native Instruments Kontakt 4 (Piano, Electric Piano, Bass)
2) Toontrack Superior Drummer 2 (using the "N. Y. - Hit Factory" drum set).
3) IK Multimedia Philharmonik (Strings)
4) Spectrasonics Omnisphere (String Pad and Vocal Pad)
5) Arturia Analog Factory 2.5 (two lead synth parts)

High-end Plugin maker Waves have been running serious discounts on their "Renaissance" line of plugins.  This is the company that makes plug-in bundles that cost thousands of dollars.  Well, for a ridiculously paltry $38, I picked up their Renaissance Compressor, 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.

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!

Deep Space Music: "Lullaby"

Occasionally, I like to compose and record completely dreamy space-music tracks.  


Back in the early eighties, I began listening to a radio program on NPR call "Music From the Hearts of Space".  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 HOS is still very popular.


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!

here is a direct link to the mp3 for non-shockwave environments

Rising Tide

Digital painting by Mitchell Mohrhauser, USA. Software: Photoshop.

Click here to give to Japan Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami Relief via the American Red Cross

Recently, Apple released the iPad 2 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.

Part of Apple's recent announcement included the release of GarageBand for iPad . 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 "Jam Packs" to go along with original GarageBand (for Mac).

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.

It wasn't until days later that I realized how much this track sounds like the intro to the Genesis song "Mama".  Completely unintentional!

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 Logic Studio, my confirmed DAW of choice. 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.

So, here is my first track composed and recorded completely on the iPad. "Rising Tide". Enjoy!

here is a direct link to the mp3 for non-shockwave environments

March 31, 2001 update!

An update to GarageBand (for Mac) has been released, as promised!

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:

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:

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.

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!

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.

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.

Excursions

ex·cur·sion  (Ĭk-skûr′zhən) n.

[Latin excursiō, excursiōn-, from excursus, past participle of excurrere, to run out : ex-, ex- + currere, to run; see kers- in Indo-European roots.]

• A usually short journey made for pleasure; an outing.
• Organized outing to a specific place of interest.
• A side trip, usually short, made with the intention of returning to the starting location
• Round-trip completed within a specified period of time.
• digression: wandering from the main path of a journey
• The movement of the cone or diaphragm of a speaker. Higher volts or amps will increase excursion.
• Lateral movement of a well logging curve or trace in response to a galvanometer deflection. "Excursion" is often referred to as deflection.
• Moving the jaw from side to side
• A range of movement regularly of a joint or muscle
• The Excursion by William Wordsworth, published in 1814, in nine books, a philosophical poem which shows his disillusion with the French Revolution
• Excursions, Op. 20, is the first published solo piano piece by Samuel Barber.
• 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.

enjoy!

here is a direct link to the mp3 for non-shockwave environments

Piano Idea Two

It's been too long since I last wrote something here, and a lot has been going on in Hybernation Studio. Since getting "Mac Fever" a few months ago, Pro Tools 9 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.

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 Apple's Logic DAW. You see, in December when I was recording my "Big Christmas Production", 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.

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!

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.

This little project I'm posting tonight was one of those 10-minute deals. I had Propellerhead's Record/Reason 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.

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 SampleTekk, none of them seemed quite right. I ended up going back to Reason and using Sonic Reality's new refill called "Classic Rock Piano". I added IK Multimedia's T-Racks 3 Vintage Compressor 370 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".

Here is what Logic looked like when I was done:

So, here is "Piano Idea Two", an exercise in simplicity.

here is a direct link to the mp3 for non-shockwave environments