MI7®

Hello world.

 I've added a new track that I created for Panu Moon (ccmixter.org/people/panumoon/profile) - a more folksy traditional track than I have posted here before, but one that hits very close to home for me.

Hope you get a chance to listen to it - it features all "vintage" instruments (e.g., very nicely sampled instruments played on my MIDI keyboard):

• Bass - Kay Hollowbody
• Harmonium keys
• Challen piano
• Hammond RT3
• Vintage drum kit

/ Mikael

I just finished up a longer collaborative project with two other musicians here at MI7.

It's called "Ghosts Inc." and is instrumental illbient type of music.

We have five tracks posted on the profile right now, and I would be very interested in hearing your comments on the music.  See community.mi7.com/profile/12178 for more info.

Thanks.  

And again, for those of you who don't know me, by "remix" I mean "re-interpretation".  :)

I was lucky to get a chance to work on another original track by rocha here at MI7 (community.mi7.com/profile/1463), and this is the result.

So I have this problem with the number of available hours not matching the number of hours I believe I need to get stuff done. 

My personal workaround is to spend as little time as possible on anything without completely compromising the work.  In that spirit, I've done a few remixes at ccmixter (ccmixter.org/people/colab), and have tried to keep them to about 6 hours of work (usually a Friday and Saturday night).

That means that there's a bunch of work out there in draft form that may come back to life at some point in the future and be refined then.  Until that time though, consider them ideas and a direction of where I'm going right now.

Just added two tracks from my work-forever-in-progress called "Fat Tuesday". 

I have had these two tracks around since I started working with Reason back in 2004, and they've followed me around in different shapes and forms ("loecus" was called "locust" at one point and had vocals for several version, if you can believe it).

Anyway - I'm getting close to nailing this sucker down.  Have settled on a number (14 tracks) and have been reworking all of them to make sure they're current.  These two are a preview of sorts while I get my act together.

This is a collaboration between MI7 artists Blake (guitars, noise and spoken vocals), Jenny G (vocals) and myself (instrumentation, drums and effects).

After my previous take on Blake's "Exoskeleton Landslide", we agreed to take a stab at "Lost ...", and I had this idea of having female vocals added to it - to which Jenny generously contributed.

It's a long track - 8 minutes long - but it should be worth the listen.

For more information, see:

- Blake (community2.mi7.com/profile/2525); and

- Jenny G (community2.mi7.com/profile/9076)

I just uploaded a work-in-progress song called "Salt".  The instrumentals are from a track I made for the RWR site - and decided to continue working on.

I have an idea in my head that won't go away, which is to go back to my Scandinavian jazz piano roots and make a few tracks around piano improv set to electronic rhythms.  This may end up as part of that project if I end up going down that road.     

I just wrapped up another collaboration track, this time with MI7 musician Blake (http://community.mi7.com/profile/2525), who allowed me to add instruments and rhythms to his most excellent experimental track.  The original is one heck of a piece - perhaps challenging to listen to, but contains a lot of depth - and I was very fortunate to get a chance to play around with it.

I recommend you to stop by at Blake's page - he's got some really good pieces there.

For this version, I went with more of a radio edit - made it shorter and moved it a bit away from experimental to ambient instrumental.  It was a real pleasure working on.

A while back, I had the audacity to ask Doghouse Riley (http://community.mi7.com/profile/8891) if I could take a stab at one of his songs; and he in turn had the poor sense of judgement enough to agree. 

This is the result of taking a perfectly up-beat and happy song and putting it through the "colab" wringer.

Let that be a lesson to all of you.

Oh.  And thanks, I guess. 

Here's another collaboration just wrapped up.  I was really happy to get a chance to work on an atmospheric/ambient/noise track from Synthetic (http://community.mi7.com/profile/7647), something that really reminded me of some of the best instrumental tracks from CV and others in the mid-to-late 80s.

I added instruments and rhythms to it, created a few versions, and we ended up on this one.  Might need just a bit more tweaking, but I'm pretty pleased with where it sits right now.

Huge thanks to Synthetic for allowing me to play around with his track.  Hopefully we'll be able to share more along these lines in the future.

This was an interesting one.  I had come across Rocha's music here at MI7 earlier (http://community.mi7.com/profile/1463) and was incredibly taken by his track "Peace".  So much that I just had to do a track based around it.

Using the full track and the (in)famous "Paul's Extreme Sound Stretch" program, I created a background atmospheric track and started adding instruments and rhythms to it.

The result is this track.  Hope you enjoy, and I strongly recommend you to stop by Rocha's page for more listening.

I just posted a new track - DJ Rkod (community.mi7.com/profile/7943) had recently offered to do a remix of my "Ghosts at the table" track, and I happily agreed.

I'm really happy with the outcome - partly because it's a great track that manages to show respect for the original while clearly adding Rkod's inimitable touches - but also because it shows what this community is about. 

Collaboration between musicians (musicians, producers, singers, ...) is only as difficult as reaching out and asking; and Rkod is one of the people who demonstrates that as well as anyone.

Status of the MI7 community?  Alive and well, thank you very much.  :)

Recently I was invited to do a version for the "Milann Remixed" project, and today I uploaded the first version of two. 

The song "Geisha" is written and performed (guitar, vocals) by Milann, and I have added all other instruments and rhythms.  This version retains the full structure of the original, which you can listen to at: community.mi7.com/profile/7906

Over the next day or so, Milann will upload my second version to his "Milann Remixed" page, which you can visit at community.mi7.com/profile/8217

This was a great way to collaborate on a musical project, and I really applaud Milann for reaching out to people to work on his original music, and being OK with his music being tampered with.  :)

BTW - I know some of the other people who are working on remixes, and they are pretty stellar musicians.  Keep your eyes open for their versions over the next weeks.  :)

I mentioned earlier that the RealWorldRemixed.com site has uploaded a new sample pack, and just wanted to get into a bit more detail.

The sample pack is for "The Imagined Village", which is described as: "... an ambitious reinvention of the English Folk tradition, embracing the modern-day nation in all its cultural diversity. "

The song they've chosen for the sample pack is "Cold Hailey Rainy Night", which you can listen to here (scroll down just a bit)

It's only been available for just over a week, and there's already been a number of really interesting takes on it (my favs this far are Infinite Fidelity, Audiotechnica and Babastank's versions)

Anyway - this is a great example of how you can take a 300 year old song and open up practically endless possibilities for where to take it.  Go have a look, and hopefully, make a version yourself.