Deep House

In the Studio

Musician, Personal

One of my older students asked me yesterday what my studio looked like. I’m sure he was imagining the puffy egg cartons on the walls, a rolling desk chair, a gigantic mixing board, and a plate glass window.

We had been talking about recording, and he was interested in what I am doing right now, so we’d had to listen to the track I’m working on (“Saint Clement’s, Forestbury“).

At one point, I guess it must’ve been about 15 years ago, my studio did indeed take up a small room of its own — a full-size digital piano, a smaller controller keyboard, digital sound modules in a rack, a mini disc deck (and before that, a DAT deck), a big lunky computer, etc. I still use versions of all those things and more; but as we know, electronics have gotten much smaller and much more powerful. I use an iPad Pro, an Akai MK3 mini, and a Sennheiser condenser mic.

A picture sounds 1000 notes, so here is a photo of my studio and workstation these days; including my recording engineer, Eli.

No vocals today, so we didn’t have the mic set up.

Medieval Tavern Chill

Musician

As you probably know, I’m a musician.

Like, that’s my job and I’m on salary. As well as creating and playing music, I teach privately, just outside New York City. Piano and organ are my primary instruments, but I teach other music-y things too.

I always like to have a fun project going, something diverting and unusual. I realized that in the car I’ve been listening to the “Chill” station on SiriusXM more often. I also love medieval music.

“Well, why not?” I thought. So, I’m working on a project that is essentially chill/electronica/downtempo/deep house, but takes melodies and inspiration from medieval English and Welsh music. How’s that for specific? LOL

I normally use PreSonus Notion for classical (etc) composing and recording, but for this, I decided to use GarageBand. Seemed fun, more appropriate, bit of a novelty for me. I even bought myself a new Bluetooth controller keyboard. =)

I’m approaching it differently than the usual hobbyist would. While I am using loops (because that’s the nature of the music), I’m not using premade Apple (etc) loops. That is, I am playing and recording my own stuff.

Perhaps my more classical approach will show up in the sound. For instance, I’ve used the chord progressions from the original Welsh and English tunes, but funked them up; and I have a particular Mozart jam from the Requiem that I want to get in there somewhere.

I’m thinking of doing eight, but I’ll post a recording when I get this first track done.