Posts Tagged ‘Music’

New String Arrangement for Skid Row Cover:
18 and Life

Tweex Music is back again with a very exciting update!  Fans of 80’s rock will love this as it covers one of Skid Row’s classic songs, 18 and Life.  People who generally despise 80’s rock will love this as it doesn’t sound anything like an 80’s rock song!

A very talented pianist and vocalist, Tucker, is working on an album of tracks and this cover is to be released with it.  Tucker, along with his producer, Ryan Sutton, decided to pull some Skid Row into the mix and originally planned this to be a simple piano, string, vocal arrangement.  Well, one thing led to another and the track evolved into this awesome OneRepublic vibe!  Check it out here:

The string arrangement was a blast to work on.  If you listen to the words of the original, it’s actually quite a depressing song.  So with that in mind and after talking to Jason about it a little, I set out to make the strings somber and emotional, but still with a small ray of hope.  The end result was a massive success with all of the other elements in there: the electric guitar, the flawless piano playing, the driving drums, and the beautiful vocals!

Enjoy the music and check back soon for some exciting releases!

Tweex Music Website Gets New Design!

T|M is back this week with some exciting additions!  Website redesign, new music, new videos, and a new sleek look is what has been brought to the table! After spending some time looking over the site, there have been some changes that have been screaming at me, so I decided to go ahead and work on redesigning a few of the pages.

First challenge was the MUSIC Page.  The old version was stale and contained a lot of text.  Most importantly, it didn’t showcase the music that T|M has done over the past few years at all, really.  So, after some thought and hard work, the page has been completely over hauled to allow listeners to hear a LOT of the work that Tweex Music has produced most recently.  You can check out the “Commercial Music” section that features music from advertisements, film, TV, theatre, podcasts, and much more.  If that doesn’t tickle your fancy, “Personal Projects” will allow you to listen to pieces that I’ve done for fun here and there!  And if all else fails, “Video Game Remixes” will let you escape in nostalgia to a time you may have spent as a kid!

Some of you may have already noticed that the old SFX Page has suddenly disappeared.  Fear not!  This was by design…or re-design rather.  What has replaced it is the new and sleek VIDEO Page.  All the audio work that T|M has done for a video can be found here!  Thumbnails for all the different productions has been made to help get rid of the wall of text that plagued the old SFX page.  The new layout really helps show the diversity of the productions that T|M has worked on!

Finally, the CONTACT Page was tackled!  A brand new layout very similar to the new VIDEO Page helps show everyone the MANY ways that you all can contact me to talk about productions you may be working on, projects that may need audio, or just to chew the fat about the latest episode of Grey’s Anatomy…uh, I mean the Speed channel.

All the pages have never before seen/heard content on them.  Check out the new music and videos and enjoy the brand new layout!

SFX Design and Music Pages on Tweex Music Temporarily Down

Hello all!  This is a short message to say that the Music and SFX Design pages are temporarily down for the time being.  They are undergoing maintenance and redesign but they will be back up and running very soon with some very cool additions!

Don’t go too far!

Tweex Music Writes New Music and Shound Design for Animation:
Marcel et Marceau

Tweex Music brings a very exciting update this week: a brand new animation short film entitled Marcel et Marceau.  The film was directed and animated by a man named Manuel Escotet, a very talented animator and recent graduate from Animation Mentor.  This piece was his final thesis project, and it turned out exceptionally well!

The film follows the story of two mimes: Marcel and Marceau.  They find themselves competing with each other on the same river walk area in Paris.  What starts out as a competition to win the crowd quickly turns into a bitter rivalry between them and hilarity ensues!

Manuel and I began working together back in April so we could begin brainstorming how the sound and music would tell the story.  Manuel was very interested in the idea of having French music be the primary genre.  In addition to the French sound, I had the idea to infuse other genres in the piece.  Latin/flamenco, orchestral, and heavy metal all made an appearance in the film.  The eclectic mix of genres helped breath more life into the story!  See for yourself:

The animation was submitted to an animation film festival and we are still waiting to hear back.  Any news we hear will be posted here on the T|M website, so don’t go far!  As always, you can find the animation on the SFX Design page.  There are exciting project updates coming very soon!  Until then, enjoy.

New Before/After Media Series Installment!

Tweex Music is FINALLY back this week with a new Before/After installment for you!  There have been a few project in the last few weeks that has had the studio going full speed.  I’m looking forward to presenting it all soon!

In the meantime, T|M brings you a great Before/After example coming from the “Dawg Talk” project that Tweex Music worked on.  When T|M signed on with the production, the theme song was the concentration.  After talking with the director of the project, we decided that we wanted something simple, but also something that sounded like a marching band.  We went through a lot of different ideas, but the melody concept we finally found came from a simple piano recording.  From there, the production took form.  Listen to the Before/After here:

As you can hear, the two sound very VERY different.  They even convey different tones/feelings.  There aren’t many directors out there who have the ability to imagine what something like this would sound like with just a piano representation, but John Kundert-Gibbs is one of those.  The final product came out splendidly and the evolution of the piece is nothing short of monumental!

Be sure to check back VERY soon.  A couple new projects are about to be released and you will not want to miss them!

T|M Composes New Theme Music for Podcast Series:
LiveWareNetwork

Tweex Music brings new music and the announcement of a new GU and T|M podcast series this week!  We have been in the process of developing a new podcast show for a while and Friday was the day that the pilot episode was released.  The show is called LiveWareNetwork and it focuses on the VG industry, but in a very different way.  LWN reports, previews and reviews downloadable/indie games from the Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, and the WiiWare Channel.  If the game industry follows the paths of the music and movie industry, independent games have quite the future ahead of them, and we want to make sure people know what to look for!  The show will air every other Friday, so expect to see another episode on April 30th.  You can listen to the show or you can subscribe to the iTunes channel.  I highly recommend iTunes as it will let you download each episode as SOON as they are released!

When we were discussing the concept of the show, I began to think about what kind of music would match the tone.  Indie music is only defined by how diverse it can truly be, so one particular genre would never fully define it.  I found inspiration from the Katamari Damacy franchise and the truly incredible music that has come from it.  From that spawned the idea for the theme song that we are now using.  I wanted to create a track that was ridiculously catchy, memorable, and that had infusions of many different genres in it.  Well, I am quite happy with what we have as it contains acoustic guitar, electric guitar, vocals, mandolin, electro drums, acoustic drums, human beat boxing, organ, piano, orchestral strings, synth leads, a horn section, and whistling.  To hear just how well this worked, take a listen here:

Like the other podcast shows that GU has, we wanted to create internal cues for the episodes to help accent the change in segments.  LWN required 4 different cues that all came out very well!  Each cue represents a certain section of the main theme.  And before any of you comment, yes, I know that the beginning of the fourth cue sounds like the beginning of “Free Bird”…..it wasn’t intentional .  Take a listen to them here:

LWN has already been received VERY well and we are excited to see how it will grow.  In the meantime, enjoy the music, check out the podcast, and subscribe to the iTunes channel!  Also, check back here soon as T|M has a couple new projects that will be released.  You can look forward to a new string arrangement for a old pop song and a new animation with custom sound and music!  Don’t go too far!

New Voice Actress Interview from Final Fantasy XIII AND New Music:
Oerba Yun Fang

T|M is back this week with the announcement of a new interview.  This time around, Gaming Union in association with Tweex Music has produced a conversation with Rachel Robinson, the voice of Oerba Yun Fang from Final Fantasy XIII.  Rachel talks about her past in voice acting, her experience in voicing Fang, and some funny stories from the recording booth!  She is a great actress and brings a lot of information to the table for anyone interested in the “behind the scenes” from one of the biggest VG titles in 2010.  Make sure that you listen to the interview: FANG INTERVIEW.

T|M and GU produced a new promotion for the show to remind people to tune in and ask questions.  This gave us the opportunity to compose a new piece of music!  This interview falls under the Final Fantasy Union podcast series, so we wanted the promo music to reflect the FFU Main Theme.  Well, after some work and discussion, we created something that sounds incredible.  For those of you who just want to rock out to the music, you can listen to it right here:

This is actually the THIRD Final Fantasy XIII interview that GU and T|M have produced.  You can hear the two previous interviews, Snow (Troy Baker) and Lightning (Ali Hillis), on the Gaming Union site, iTunes, or you can simply click on their names here in the post!  Be sure to listen to them as they really help give a great idea as to what goes into these kinds of projects!  There are also other interviews to come, so check back soon on the GU site.  In the meantime, enjoy!

New Remix Under Review Installment:
Flying with the Funk

T|M is back this week with a new installment of Remix Under Review and this time around, we’re taking things back into the past with a classic: Donkey Kong Country.  I have been a huge fan of this game every since I bought it for my SNES years ago.  OCRemix came out with a remix album a few years back for the game and there is one track from the project that is still one of my favorite remixes of all time.  It was done by composer and remixer Jordan “bLiNd” Aguirre and his track is called Aerofunknamics AND is a slammin’ house track!  Well, years after the remix was released, I decided to do a remix of the source material myself.

The source tune:

The Remix:

This remix represents one of the first tracks I did in Logic but there is also a healthy dose of Reason in there as well.  The main elements of the track came from several different third party plugins.  The drums primarily came from Sylus RMX with some additional help from Native Instrument’s Battery; the main synth lead came from Native Instrument’s Pro-53;  the bass came from one of Logic’s preset samples; the majority of the synths came from Reason, and most of those came from the Thor sample collection.

When I sat down to do this track, it actually started out as an original track and not a remix.  After working on it a little, I heard the theme song from the game fit into the track, so I decided to turn this into a full fledged remix.  Since I haven’t done a lot of just straight up electro Drum n’ Bass tracks, I wanted to try something using the new production tools I had at my disposal.  It was great to dive into the genre.  The automation with the LFO, filtering, gating, and everything else was a blast to work with.  I’ve never used the mod wheel on my keyboard as much as I did for this track!  This track, while it has the melody line in throughout, was an attempt to pay more attention to the textures of the sounds and the soundscape of the whole track.  I’m quite pleased with the results.  This track also marks the first ever synth solo that I’ve done for a song.  Not being much of a piano player, I can can say with complete pride, that the solo was played live with minimal quantization!  All in all, I feel the track turned out very well.

This ends another episode of Remix Under Review!  As always, be sure to check back soon for new updates as they will be here very soon!

Tweex Music Composes New Music for Delta Airlines Commercial

Tweex Music is back this week with a new airline commercial for you!  This time around, T|M presents new music for Delta Airlines.  Tweex Music did a another spot for Delta back in 2008 and had music from my debut album, Alter Ego, featured in the spot, which you can LISTEN TO and DOWNLOAD for free!

This time around, T|M was able to compose an original piece of music for the spot.  The idea was to come up with something peppy but also laid back.  Being a big fan of genre fusion, I decided to create a piece that had classical elements (chamber strings), contemporary guitar solo, electronic synths, and tribal/ethnic percussion.  If you had to categorize the piece, it would probably be in the ever so popular Classic-Hop-Contemp-Electro-World genre!  Or as we in the business like to call it, “Indie” .  The final product came out quite well.  Check it out for yourself:

As always, the spot can be found of the SFX PAGE along with all the other airline spots that T|M has had the priveldge to work on!  Tweex Music continues to keep very busy and has some exciting updates on the way so be sure to check back soon!

Interview with Shanelle Gray, Actress for Kingdom Hearts and New Music!

T|M is proud to present the first of several interviews done alongside Gaming Union!  This first interview comes from the Kingdom Hearts game series and features the talent of Shanelle Gray, who voices the character of Larxene from Kingdom Hearts 2 and Re: Chain of Memories.  Shanelle talks about her involvement in the series, how she got into the franchise, her background in voice acting, and what the future may bring for her and her fans!

GU released a promo for the interview that features a new composition from T|M.  The track is orchestral in nature and follows the same genre as the Kingdom Hearts Union main theme (which can be heard HERE).  For those of you who have played KH, the music was crafted to sound much like the battle music that might be heard in a KH game in a location like Traverse Town or something similar.  You can hear the promo here: LARXENE INTERVIEW PROMO.  And you can hear the music by itself here:

The interview can be found in several places.  You can listen to it directly here: LARXENE INTERVIEW.  You can also subscribe on iTunes to the podcast series that produces all the interviews.  GU has released a few other interviews such as Richard Epcar and Quinton Flynn, and I strongly recommend checking them out.  There are many more on the way, so subscribe so you can check them out as they are released!

New updates coming very soon!