So, this is 100% not a political diary...sorry about that. But it is something I have been working on for a long time and I am extremely proud of what me and my fiancee have done.
First of all, I am no musician. I do not know how to read music, I know nothing about it, my fiancee has tried on multiple occasions to no avail. I get lost in translation and end up asking a lot of stupid, irrelevant questions and my wonderful, patient, awesome fiancee throws her hands in the air and we both kinda give up. I do wish, in retrospect, that I had some sort of formal musical training, because throughout my adult life I always wanted a musical outlet. Its hard having music running through your head, a drum beat, a rythm, a melody, a tune running through your head with absolutely no way to express it. I was always jealous of those that could just pick up and bare their soul with the instruments they play. I just never had the opportunity to learn how, and now that I am an adult, I have an unfortunate mental block every time I try to learn.
This was before I ended up getting a tablet as a present for christmas and found a wonderful way to express myself musically without having to know the first thing about music besides what sounds good together.
Now, I make no claim on being some sort of musician. The music I have made with the app I found is not written by me, no. They are pre-written loops.
But, the expression comes in because I get to arrange the music. Basically, the app (aptly called Music Maker Jam) lets you download styles of music and has preset "instruments" that come with said styles, such as drums, FX, synth, lead, bass, etc etc. The user then gets to pick the instruments, which then produces a loop. These loops stack on each other into parts. Parts can be made into songs.
With this app, I taught myself how to arrange music that I would want to listen to. When I first discovered the app about 6 months ago, I was terrible at it and mostly gave up, but persistence and a lot of marijuana helped me practice and learn what I was doing. I may not have the words, musically, for what I did, but there was a bit of a knowledge I gained about the way good dubstep (and electronic music in general) is supposed to sound. Its hard for me to put into words that other people can understand, but when you can get a song to pop off at the exact right moment is such an amazing feeling.
My fiancee helped me understand a little bit about the flow of a song, which helped a lot during my creative process in making this album (which actually started off as an EP but I added to it recently and got enough songs for a pretty full sized album). She also arranged two songs, one of which is the central theme of the album.
Going forward with this thing -- my fiancee and I have big plans for these songs. We have also always wanted to break into animation, and we were thinking of making an animated youtube action series and putting these songs in as a musical backdrop. My fiancee is a fucking fantastic artist, and we want to make some american style post-apocalyptic animation using these songs as inspiration.
Now as far as the genre of the music my fiancee and I have arranged -- it is dubstep with an 8bit flare. An acquired taste, I believe. If you have never listened before, you'll want to turn your speakers way down, the first time listening can be a little loud, and, frankly, cacophonous if you are not used to the genre. If you have heard and like the genre please feel free to give this a listen. They are rough cuts, of course, I have a lot of cleaning up to do, but they are pretty polished, imo.
So, without further ado, I present to you...
The Electortionist
Advance!
Burn
The Electortionist (by EllieV)
Mystic Grotto
B-side
Protect Winter's Aura
The Dead Sea
Defeat the Ice Fortress!!
We Summon the Strength
Aurora Borealis (by EllieV)
(sorry can't figure out how to embed)
I'll completely understand if you want to skip this all together. But I am proud of it. I want to share it. I don't have many facebook friends, I don't twitter all that much. This is the only place I can think of to share this...