This is what happens when I try to say “Salut! Je m’appelle Justin. J’adore la musique!” into my translation app. Apparently my French accent is terrible.
An update of sorts!
How many days must go by without a blog post for the blog to be considered defunct? 115? Good, because it’s only been 114 days since I last updated this tumblr thing! Phew.
I thought I’d fill my fairly fine followers in on my recent musical doings. Basically, I’ve been writing. A lot. A lotta lot. My creative juices have been flowing like some kind of futuristic water flow machine! (edit: they tell me this is called a faucet.) Anyway, my slacking comes in the form of taking too long to actually finish songs and such. I start work on a project, but then my juicy creative writing juices kick in and I start work on another project. I will fix this. I put a picture of Mr. T on my desk to keep me motivated.
Things I’m working on:
- An acoustic EP.
- A new instrumental mini-EP.
- I currently have enough songs to fill at least two full albums. I hope to get into a full studio eventually and make a sweet ass record complete with full band.
- A cover medley of my favourite Jennifer Lopez songs.
If you haven’t heard already (I’m sure it’s been all over national news), you can now download Lovers Bloom for free here. Hurrah!
Keep watching the skies and remember to have your pet hedgehogs spayed or neutered. Cheers!
This little guy (I refer to my songs as people now) exemplifies my affinity for somewhat Celtic-infused pop rock, as well as my affinity for rudimentary piano parts that even piano-challenged Justins can play. This is a snippet of a song I’ve been working on; let’s call it the bridge. Fun and catchy, just like the flu I just got over!
Well, this one’s kinda embarrassing. Or hilarious, if you find poorly edited Windows Movie Maker videos humorous.
I just came across this bad boy; another media composition project with specific guidelines. For some strange reason, my composition for film teacher made us put our movie editing skills to the test. My non-existent movie editing skills were still nowhere to be found. Basically, we had to create a two minute video (from pre-filmed clips) that was continuous and had a theme, and then score our own video. I went with the tried and true 2-minute “Save the environment kids! Here’s some cheesy clips to motivate you!” documentary theme. This involved endless hours of the night spent searching for stock footage and public domain videos that had ANYTHING to do with the environment. Hence the just barely continuous mess of mismatched resolutions and cheesy transitions that managed to earn me an A++ (that second + was a typo).
Try to enjoy!
Good evening Tumblrsphere!
A few years ago I put together a little demo CD to send off to music production libraries with samples of cheesy tunes you would expect to hear in, say, a corporate training video or a commercial for a local cash-for-gold business. I have to admit, each of the samples took me all of maybe 20 minutes to throw together. Half of that time was probably spent watching videos of cats being silly on the internet. They’re so silly!
Anyway, this one is kinda noteworthy methinks. Partly for the fact that it is an example of my extremely rudimentary piano playing skills. Partly for the fact that it sounds like it could be the theme to the olympics. And partly for the fact that I made a one-bar drum loop that is repeated ad infinitum because I was lazy and had more important matters on my mind (have you seen that one video where the cat is on the robotic vacuum and it carries him to the dog and then he swipes at the dog and then the robotic vacuum spins around and carries him away? Classic.).
I swear next week’s post (apparently this is a weekly thing now) will be more interesting and involve less laziness on my part.
Everyone likes reminiscing about my old school projects!
This one’s from my composition for film class. We were given three different advertisements for a film awards event and had to compose vastly different music for each. I went all out epic orchestral on this one, and it kinda turned out somewhat interesting. The other two weren’t as epic sounding so I won’t share them. Nobody likes non-epic music.
This will make you want to drink beer. Even if you don’t like beer. Even if you are celiac and the mere thought of beer makes your stomach feel like sandpaper.
This is another snippet of a full song (you steal it and I steal your soul!). It’s amazingly fun to play, with the quick chord changes and Celtic-inspired hook. The only thing that takes away from the intensity is the fact that my digital violin sounds more like a bagpipe than a violin. I hope you are now picturing me rocking out to this on bagpipes.
Who remembers this McClassic? Back when I was a wee lad (3 years ago), CBC held a contest to choose a new theme for their classic sitcom called “Hockey Night In Canada”, which I believe was about six friends living in New York City and the crazy antics they get up to. I, being the music loving wee lad I was, decided to enter this contest and win the fame, riches, and scantily clad women it promised as a prize.
This was what I came up with over the course of 42 minutes. The finalists were chosen by the people; the themes with the most votes went on to the finals. A winner was then chosen by a team of judges who deep down knew nothing would ever top DA DA NA DA DAAA. For majority of the time the contest was open, my theme actually consistently stayed in the top 5 rated themes. But then the voting system got broken, people started using voting bots and all sorts of hax0rz, and all hockey hell broke loose. It was a sad day for fair and reliable internet voting systems.
In the end, I didn’t win. Hence the lack of fame, riches, and scantily clad women. But I came out of it with a sweet “Rock Theme” to license out to any sports network I so desire! Look for it as the new theme of “Channel 5 Public Access Thursday Night Seniors Bingo”.
One time I wrote a short musical theme for a TV show. Said TV show is nationally syndicated. Said TV show is a reality show about two homosexuals who travel across Canada solving the various dilemmas of members of the LGBT community. Who could forget the classic episode where they come to the rescue of an aspiring drag queen who just once wants to compete in a drag contest?
It’s called “Chris and John to the Rescue!” and airs on OutTV. They wanted a theme for a Halloween episode, so I gave them the cheesiest, most generic spooktastic action-packed 40 seconds of Halloween excitement that I could muster. I’ve actually never seen the episode due to not having OutTV and online streams of the show being non-existent. But I swear I did it! Here’s proof:
So if any of my 3 faithful blog readers happen to be watching OutTV on a lazy Sunday afternoon and come across an episode of Chris and John called “Unhaunt My House!”, put a videocassette in your videocassette recorder and hit the record button (the one with a little red dot on it).
Anyway, check out the 40 seconds of cheese. People who are easily spooked, BEWARE! Muahahahaha.
Pretty sure I’m not even playing this right. Just basically improvising from memory. But it sounds piratey and almost epic. And it makes me/you want to drink rum. That’s all that matters.
