I currently live back in London, and work as an artists' manager for an international artists' management company. In 2006 I decided to try to turn my life-time hobby - music production - into something a bit more serious. Rather than the software teaching me how to "produce" music, I had a great time writing examples of all different types of music - from dance to ethic to folk - showing what you can do with software AND a bit of good old-fashioned musical education! I'd begun to assume the reason everyone was churning out so much drum-and-bass, was because no-one could remember how to write harmony any more, so they'd "invented" music where the complicated bits just... er.. didn't exist...
So, I tried to approach each piece using simple musical ideas, straight-forward but effective, using standard classical music compositional guidelines, rules of harmony, melody/counterpoint etc. The result, I think are quirky, attractive, idiosyncratic, and hopefully original-sounding enough to catch someone's ear.
Billie Jean - the deliberately obscure introduction suggests "a coming in from the cold, returning from the Wilderness", and launches with a new spin on the old guitar riff, and a remix full of musical sleight of hand. For the afficionados amongst you - this remix is in F sharp harmonic minor, the original was F sharp melodic minor. It wouldn't surprise me if Michael Jackson had found it difficult to put together an original come-back project. The producers he worked with in his hey-day - Quincy Jones, George Martin - would have known exactly the difference between melodic and harmonic minor, and how most effectively to use them. I wonder how many of his current music production advisers do..? The point of this remix is to try to illustrate this, whilst having fun quoting (in the harmonic, not the melodic) some fragments from QJ's classic original arrangement.
Maddy Prior's "Mother and Child (Radio and Club mixes) were the very first full remixes, done on a laptop in 2006 hence the poorer sound quality. They were a labour of love, with the Club mix including 5 ground-bass lines and a Chinese Gong as part of the musical surprises. A ground bass is like a "round" - so the next bass-line starts half way through the first.
"Let all Mortal Flesh Keep Silence" was remixed at the end of 2007 from American Mezzo-Soprano Cynthia Clawson’s original acapella, using a combination of the original 15th Century Gregorian harmonisation, balanced with an "alla Cafe del Mar" minemalist bass-line, sprinkled with some subtle picardy-third suggested harmonics, just to keep things interesting.
Other remixes include a couple of commission examples, some slightly more serious scores, and examples of a couple of great tracks such as Ray of Light, Vogue and War of the Worlds I couldn't resist attempting (despite limited studio resources available) just to show how much you can achieve in creating totally new-sounding versions, despite basic software, if you've know how the nuts and bolts of music work. I hope you enjoy listening to them as much as I enjoyed writing them.
To you for taking the time, and to all my friends and colleagues who have encouraged me this far - thanks! xxx Simon
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