Posts tagged: News
Told you there’d be more updates soon!
Now that YouTube recently modified its policies to allow videos up to fifteen minutes in length as opposed to ten, I can finally put up what was easily one of my favourite little personal projects to work on this past year.
In 2009, I watched Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s magnificent documentary film, Home. I was moved by the strength of the narrative, by the staggeringly beautiful footage, and by the organic and appropriate musical score.
In 2010, as a composer seeking to respond to this creation, I decided to re-write the music as I might have done it. In the interest of brevity, I first re-edited the film into a briefer ten-minute version to keep it reasonably sized. Once that was done, I set out to write a new musical score for the cut — one that was wholly my own, yet influenced by Armand Amar’s original and by other stellar documentary composers like George Fenton.
I’ve left only the opening narration intact from the original to introduce the story — all other audio, including sound effects, is all produced by yours truly, and it is my pleasure to finally present you with the results!
So remember how I made a few of my tracks available for purchase via BandCamp not too long ago? Well it was a good test of the service and I’m quite happy with it, so I’ve decided to expand my catalogue a bit…
As of today, not only is my entire Demo Reel updated with some new tracks, but the whole thing is available for purchase on BandCamp — as an album or individually, whatever suits your fancy. Oh, and I lowered the prices. $0.70 per track or all twelve for $7.99.
Why the hell would you want to buy the music when you can listen to it for free on SoundCloud? Well, because you can take it with you wherever you go, you can support my work, and most importantly: you can get the tracks in whatever audio format you prefer — including fully lossless WAV if you want maximum fidelity.
Check it out if you like, and stay tuned for some more updates very soon!
What happens when you’re restricted to just one octave of a single instrument? Well…this!
These tracks are created with nothing more than a single octave from a xylophone patch (specifically, the freebie patch from the upcoming Spitfire percussion collection), and there are no external effects or processing plugins applied to the sound. Even the reverb is just what’s built-in to the samples.
It’s an exercise in creative writing under stiff restrictions. Lots of fun!
Xylophonics Experiment by Mathazzar
In other news, I was in a car accident recently so that was kind of an unpleasant way to end my semester, but no injuries so that was a relief. On the bright side, it’s spring time and I’m looking forward to some opportunities to actually enjoy the weather. Maybe I’ll do a photo album of pictures to show you all what spring looks like in my neck of the woods.
Some big and small projects, mostly personal ventures, lined up for the next few months to keep me busy while I wait for that next major project to drift my way. Been doing a lot of film work recently and worked with some truly gifted directors, so I’m hoping that I can showcase some of that work in the near future as distribution starts.
This has been a very busy Easter weekend for me (happy Zombie Jesus Day, by the way!) and after a whole lot of music writing, it occurred to me that I haven’t been very nice about sharing new music with you guys. In the past, when people have asked me where they can go to buy a track of mine for their listening enjoyment on the go, I’ve thus far been able to do little more than shrug and apologize — but those days are finally behind me!
I looked into several online distribution services including CDBaby, Reverbnation, Tunecore, etc. but most of them are geared toward broad-scale spreading of material across all the major marketplaces, which doesn’t really appeal to me. I want to be able to have more flexibility with what I’m charging, and especially for what I’m charging for.
Enter Bandcamp.
To shorten a long story, Bandcamp is one of those wondrous services that you come across and instantly fall in love with. It provides an excellent set of tools, gives you incredible flexibility, and stays the hell out of your way while you make use of it. So thank you, Bandcamp, for allowing me to share some of my music commercially.
So here’s the deal: I’ve put together an EP of the tunes I get asked for most often. Many of them are ones that are available for listening on the Demo Reel, but there are a couple of tracks that have never been publicly released before, and even a bonus track for those who grab the whole album. And the best part? You’re not just getting a cheap Mp3, you can choose between FLAC, OGG, MP3 (@320kbps) and a few others so you can listen to your favourites in pristine lossless glory. Neat, eh?
In terms of pricing, I’ve tried to strike a balance between fairness and accessibility. Because the point of this is to give you folks a way to get my music to go while providing an opportunity to support my continuing work in the process, I’m letting you pay whatever you can for it, with a minimum of just $0.89USD. Which is less than what iTunes would have made me charge…for a lower quality audio file — and it would have taken some of the proceeds. With Bandcamp, you can feel confident that every penny is going straight toward supporting the artist (hello) and making sure that I can keep making great music.
And that’s my story. So have yourselves a great Easter, and those of you interested in taking a look at this new album, I am more than happy to direct you:
http://mathazzar.bandcamp.com/
Your support, as always, is greatly appreciated. Spread the word and enjoy!
Not too long ago I finished work on a great little short film called I Believe In Mary Black, and since the film is completed and ready to get some screenings around my area, I wanted to put together a selection of the best cues I wrote for it and assemble them into a short EP album. So I did.
The music is dark and rich, with shades of Christopher Young’s similar work for horror scores. I really enjoyed working on the project, so I’m quite proud to show you the results. You can find the album in the Portfolio, or you can listen here:
I Believe In Mary Black (Original Soundtrack) by Mathazzar
If you like what you hear, I’ve added a small Donation button at the bottom of the Contact page, so you’re welcome to drop by any time you have some spare change you’d like to contribute to keeping me up and running. It’s greatly appreciated.
Hi all!
First of all, thanks again for being such diligent listeners. It feels like just the other day I was mentioning how amazing it was that I had already gotten 1,000 plays on SoundCloud, and just now I’ve looked and the number is well over 1,500 now. I’m humbled and overjoyed. And I promise I’ll stop counting now, it just made me excited.
You’ll also notice, by the way, that I’ve brought the live chat box from the main site over here to the Journal as well, so if you’re talking to me and you decide to pop over here, you won’t lose the conversation. Because I care.
Anyway, to celebrate all this good stuff, I’ve put up a brand new track and pushed it to the forefront of my Demo Reel for your listening enjoyment. It’s from a game project I’m helping with and it was a lot of fun to put together, so I hope you enjoy it!
Oh, and if you’re feeling lazy, you can just listen to the new track here:
Gah, what have I done?!
Er, well I’ve basically decided that the easiest way for me to keep the Journal updated and give it a major facelift in the process is by porting it over to Tumblr. So welcome to the new place, make yourselves comfortable.
I had to manually re-publish all the old posts in order to bring them over here properly, so pardon me if your RSS feed accidentally got a bunch of ghost duplicates — that was my mistake, won’t happen again. Now that everything’s up and running (and looking good), I’m hoping to polish up some loose ends and then let the updates start flowing more frequently. Speaking of RSS, you can keep the same feed subscription as always if you’re a subscriber of mine from before — Tumblr’s serving everything to that address, so there’s no need to update anything on your end. I’m nice like that.
Tumblr is lovely and the fact that I can post updates on the go from my iPhone is a nifty and convenient perk of the service. Some Twitter fun still to come on the main site, but in the meantime I just wanted to introduce the new Journal. I’ll do my best to find a way to integrate the two sites a little better…it’ll probably be nothing more fancy than a link headed back to the main site.
For those of you who have asked about the GCFC Match-Up report, I’ll post the final installment back on YC as soon as I can — I’m just waiting on some photos from the recording session and then I’ll write everything up.
Stay classy.
It’s been a busy few weeks, so pardon me while I screw my head back on and regroup a bit here.
The GCFC Match-Up went exceedingly well — beyond even my wildest expectations. Working with a real orchestra, and a talented one, is an unimaginable treat, and I have to give a special thanks to Darren Fung and Victor Davies from the GCFC and Dennis Patterson from the Glenn Gould Recording Studio at the CBC Headquarters for being so supportive, helpful, and encouraging throughout the process. I could go into wild details about the proceedings and the process of scoring the film, but I’ve already done that here, so take a look if you’re interested.
Since the match-up, I’ve been keeping busy with a healthy combination of schoolwork and musical experimentation. I was recently called up to do a spec track for a company that may or may not end up engaging my services down the road, and since I hate to update without having some music to share, I offer you all a chance to take a listen:
The track has also gone up on my demo reel if you prefer checking it out there. Speaking of which — and I know I’ve already gushed about this on Twitter — I already have over 1000 plays on SoundCloud since switching the demo reel over to it! All I can say is that I’m honoured and humbled that so many people are listening to my work; I truly hope you’re enjoying it! If you are, remember to follow me on Twitter so you can keep up to date with fresh news…I update that a lot more frequently than this Journal, I’m ashamed to admit.
Okay okay, I’ll get to the “pleasant honking” bit. I don’t have a new technique for surreptitious molesting. I’m sorry. I do, however, have a new instrument that I’m thrilled to be playing! I recently inherited a clarinet (his name is Melvin, it says so on his case — Melvin the Magnificent, to be precise) and have been thoroughly enjoying the process of trying to learn to make passable sounds on him without any formal instruction.
Incidentally, I’m not schizophrenic.
I am proud to report that I was (fairly inconsistently) making proper clarinet noises after about half an hour, and now, several days on, I can play some pretty respectable little riffs. My bigger interest lies in the variety of wild and unusual sounds I can get out of the instrument though, which thus far has yielded some, uh, interesting sample recordings. Turns out Melvin does a pretty good Duduk impression.
Anyhow, back to work. Thanks for checking in! :)
How are those New Years resolutions holding up, people?
I don’t make any, so I can’t offer you my own answer, but I can say that this has already been a year of new beginnings for me — and it’s only been half a month! After a 5 year pause, I’ve finally taken up my Kung Fu training again which is making me feel very good and physically refreshed. I did 7 years leading up into my highschool years and then the studio closed, so I’ve been waiting ever since to find a new place that I like…I think this one is it.
In musical news, I’ve been gifted with a marvelous opportunity by the wonderful GCFC (Guild of Canadian Film Composers). They’ve set up a partnership program between them and the CFC wherein a number of applicants (composers) are paired up with emerging directors from the CFC (Canadian Film Centre) every year to score a small exercise and have it performed and recorded with a live orchestra! This year, I was among the 4 chosen from across Canada to participate, and am absolutely thrilled to be working on a wonderful and dramatic segment of film. I had my spotting session with the director yesterday afternoon and have promptly buried my nose in the footage to begin immersing myself in it. I figured that I should let the world know though before hiding away in the studio again…so here’s me sharing what is truly an amazing opportunity for which I am very grateful to the GCFC.
I cannot actually show the video, but once the score is written and recorded, you can bet that the audio will be up on my demo reel for your listening enjoyment. Expect something minimalistic and challenging…the film is pretty intense stuff!
Another interesting development is that I am mourning the loss of my old phone. The wonderful Samsung E747F that served me so well for two years has finally keeled over and died — after a prolonged period of erratic behaviour, decreasing battery life, and other strange manifestations of senility. Indulgence is a good cure for grief, and so I indulged…which is to say that I’m now the happy owner of an iPhone. Actually, I had to leave my old service provider and switch to a new one just to be able to get it without paying an arm and my firstborn child (long story short: apparently service loyalty is not as valuable as I expected…). In any case, I have been enjoying the myriad bounties of the App Store and the fun and friendly interface of the phone. If you were planning on getting in touch but didn’t up until now, please reconsider — give me a call! I’m always happy to hear from people and it’s an excuse to use all the free minutes I get this month with the new phone.
…But I will never forget you, dear Samsung.
Also: my review of Brothers, by Thomas Newman, went up on Tracksounds so you are welcome to check it out. If you’re interested in my views on more scores, make sure to look back in the archives too, there’ve been a bunch of other reviews that I didn’t post about here.
Anyhow, it’s back to the manuscript for me — I’ll check in soon!
