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Consulting Sessions If you have an idea for an uplifting project, we can help assess, create and design a plan for how to move forward, including biudget and copyright concerns. -Composing to picture Clients have found this type of session to be revealing and inspiring and sometimes leads to a working relationship with us. The sessions incur a flat fee for consulting, and are designed so you can work wit hus or others beyond the consuilting stage..
New Creative Partner H. Centeno-Garcia
REVsound is happy to announce a new member of our creative / technical team. Hector Centeno-Garcia, a deeply talented composer and audio engineer from Mexico City, is slated to start working on production projects in the studio commencing in the next couple of months. Hector and I had corresponded by email while he operated from Mexico then later met here in Toronto at a meditation retreat. Some of Hector's work can be sampled at www.hcenteno.net.top of page Recent Writing & Production Projects
Let's Be Naughty Tonight Chad Gendron is a prolific songwriter who was very active in the late 80's / early 90's Toronto Music scene and has since become an expert on Canadian Culture and a key figure in Queen Street West's business community, as owner of the very successful Valhalla Cards & Gifts and other endeavors. Click here for his "Canadian Culture Thing" blog. Click here to check out Valahala Cards & GIfts. These days he is turning his attention back toward the music scene with a Christmas Song "Let's Be Naughty Tonight", slef-released in Oct. 2011. The song centres around a couple cosying up on Christmas Eve while Santa is on his way with their gifts for being good all year. Since this was to be "The Quintissential Christmas Pop Song" we went to great lengths to create, re-create, arrange, and re-arrange multiple versions. culminating in the final you can hear by clicking here. I did the musical arrangmement and production, playing most of the instruments and we brought in Rebekah Higgs (Click here) who did lovely co-lead vocals with Chad, and Chad contributed a wonderful "Stylophone" track (a rare electronic instrument from the 1970's). Rebekah is an innovative, sexy, compeling artist worth checking out if you haven't already, and we expect to continue to see clever, funny and heartfelt work from Chad in the near future.
Jivasu (Dr. Pradeep Kumar) is a meditation teacher with a background in Pediatrics. In India he engaged in rich spiritual training and humanitarian work, then continued Mind/Body studies at Harvard University. Based on his own transformational experiences he has originated some powerful perspectives on being human, among them his concept and practice of "Naturality". It was an honour towork with Jivasu on his "Naturality Mantra", which will be used to help open the hearts of children and adults in Canada and India. We worked with JIvasu's personalJapa version and also created a sing along Kirtan version. Click here to listen. Click here for more info on Jivasu or go to Samagrapath.com to learn about his meditaton teacher training programs.
Mike Cohen Ambisonic Dattatreya Kirtan! While MIke Cohen was in Town from the U.S. we assembled some musical friends and supported him in leading the feature Kirtan at the 2011 Toronto Yoga Conference. That same week we followed up with a recorded meditative session accompanied by Ron Allen on Bansuri, Anwar Khurshid on Sitar, and Gurpreet Channa "The Table Guy", with both MIke and I leading Bhajans. MIke is a wonderful, rich devotional singer leading kirtans with surrendered, grounded consciousness, whether, live or in the studio. It was a great inspiration to share these moments with him. We utilized a new recording format referred to as ambisonic recording, intended to re-create the actual spacial coherence of the live recorded moment. This aspect was, facilitated by sound art creator and innovative recordist Hector Centeno, in the REVsound recording room.go here: here to read a detailed blog about the experience & hear audio files
OM Namah Shivaya! May Shiva and Maya dance joyfully! This was a one hour chanting session of the well-known six-syllable mantra, performed by Wade Imre Morissette and myself, which we then enhanced with multiple instruments and voices. The results are released as a downloadable album on Wade's site www.wadeimremorrissette.com. Who would have known Alanis Morissette's twin brother is a yoga teacher of yoga teachers, doing workshops internationally so that we can have more chanting in our yoga classes! Visit Wade's site to get a pay as you can copy and learn more about Wade's work, or for more info on the record, click here.
Aline Morales, Alex Bordocas and Mike Filipov recorded and mixed most of the tracks for the Maracatu Nunca Antes album "Beat Migration" here at REVsound. They are a wonderful and peaceful group of people with a genuine original take on a traditional form and were a pleasure to host.
Devotional Sessions - html
In 2009 BIg Rude Jake and I were hanging out creating the music for his record Quicksand. This man is deeply insightful and articulately compassionate in his current work which as usual, sparkles with literary finesse and American songbook stylings, taken a step outside of the norm. You can hear some of the alt mixes on our cd & vinyl projects page. To see some of his many videos and fan activity check him out on You Tube, visit www.bigrudejake.ca or Jake's MySpace site: The Real BIg Rude Jake.
Sound Painting: Tina Newlove is a gifted painter with a wide open spirit. Together we have been creating works consisting of sound & paint, created simultaneously before audiences, followed by a Q & A period. Our goal is to let the "moment" create..Immediate Intimate Spontaneous Obvious More details here.
A little while back we completed an audio book for Irshad Manji's international best seller "The Trouble With Islam Today". Irshad read the book herself, a total of over eight hours of audio. Her message is controversial and compelling, and presents a courageous and equanimous humanitarian view. This work asks for common decency and good sense in applying religion and spirituality to culture and the government of society. REVsound's role included supervising the production, creation of original music and casting & directing additional voices. Also featured was music by Deeyah who can be found at www.deeyah.com. More info on Irshad's projects can be found at www.muslim-refusenik.com .
With Jake Chisholm we have been exploring "The New Blues". Well, some may say it's not blues. It has the heart and soul of the blues, of Jimi Hendrix, of North American roots music, and it is songs, representing a new period of self discovery in Jake Chisholm's path. Jake has developed some beautiful material, based on his rich heritage of guitar and vocal depth, and his vision of life, love & truth in these times. You can listen to a bit here, and keep with his going's on at www.jakechisholm.ca.
Stephen Damico Working with a series of recorded workshops and carefully learning about Stephen's perspective, REVsound compiled, edited and created audio files of teachings of Stephen Damico for use on his web site: StephenDamico.com. page In preparation for use at Blue Jays games, we recently recorded Barry St. Denis, a powerful tenor vocalist, performing both the American and the Canadian national anthems. On the Slo Fuse project,we had Terneille "Ta Da" Burrows www.sanctigroove.com do a track for us recently. She was in from Bahamas for a few days and we were lucky enough to catch her to perform "Winds of Change" a track I had written specifically with her in mind. She did a wonderful job, full of bouncing, swinging, dipping style and sensuality. Once this is mixed it will be added to the samples on this site and will likely be included in the upcoming Slo Fuse release We are currently seeking a partner in releasing Slo Fuse in certain territories. Darkstar Productions finished another round of recording for the Tish Amour project. We cast directed 22 characters and composed/produced additional music to complete a lica-reel taste of further episode concepts. Excerpts were shown at the "Hard Liquor and Porn" alternative film festival, a smashingly gala event held at Reverb Nightclub. In 2005 I conducted a workshop at Zen Buddhist Temple on the following topic - Symbolism In Music Harmony. This included a brief talk about physics, resonance, music harmony and spiritual relationships as well as lots of singing chanting. Proceeds went to Zen Buddhist Temple, an organization who offers resources to help individuals become stronger and kinder through instruction and practice of meditation and other techniques. For more info contact Zen Buddhist Temple in Toronto (416.658.0137 ) How to disappear. At the Centre for Training In Psychotherapy in Toronto, Stephen Damico and I co-facilitated a workshop using drumming as a catalyst for getting in touch with consciousness - letting go of one's "self" and finding a shared, other "self". The participants were mostly not musicians, we were individuals interested in spiritual growth through means other than talking & thinking. We played rhythms, structured and unstructured, then had a talk afterward about what it was like. Here are some highlights in a 15 minute mp3 file Follow Your Bliss. Dee Dussault is a great yoga asana teacher who offers affordable informal workshops, conscious get-togethers and healing modalities through her vast network of friends and practitioners. I have been to many and had wonderful experiences with wonderful people. Learn more here. top of For over ten years I worked many hours per week. It was happy work, and it was all the time - most waking hours of every single day. Work-play-socializing was one big flow. I had set up three recording studios, spent every day and most nights writing and producing music, either for projects I created or helping clients to get their vision realized. In between these activities were writing, tech-ing, practicing, etc. Once a week I would do a 48-hour day, every Wednesday - Thursday. The ten years before that I played with over forty bands / music artists, 100% focused on practicing instruments and playing live all over the country, doing almost nothing else - total immersion / one big process of sound and spirit and moving forward. Suddenly, with the music industry growing hugely but rights and income of content creators shrinking rapidly - and our being set up in a commercial facility with backers, etc.- a big change came down. Time to reduce, re-set, change it all up. This involved a move, a re-design of production systems and administration, and a change of what to pursue musically. There I was with the Slo Fuse project half finished, including a video 90% done, and the China Extreme project waiting with its imported objects for an installation, scripts for mini-movies outlined and draughts for the music tracks dying to be started.... when we had to pull apart the studio, find new (smaller) real estate to purchase , and redesign / set up a new production facility.... This process was to take a couple of months but the fine points took almost a year altering acoustical details and stabilizing systems, etc. In this short time even our computer systems had somewhat dated, necessitating a major research into new upgrade paths. So, for the first time in perhaps twenty years, I spent over a year where the days have not been about music production but business, real estate, configuring and other matters. This has opened doors for many things - exploring spiritual interests, taking an extended course in singing/body awareness, and most significantly, re-assessing the motivations for making music and recordings, and for working in general. It had gotten to be quite a fever trying to keep up with ever increasing demands to deliver in the face of shrinking or non existent production budgets. The beauty one finds in creating music is always a privilege and a joy but it must be a sustainable situation or it simply doesn't sustain. It seems many of us writer/producers, driven by the joy of the process, stay whit it against crazy odds hoping one of these situations will somehow pan out to make it all worthwhile. The truth is, in today's environment, hardly anybody even "breaks even" doing that! Only a very few with a twist of luck and a clever angle who sell their wares not as music products per se, but as music which happens to be contained within something else which is perceived to be of value. Now, somehow much of that seems like noise compared to the original idea I started out with so many years ago, of making music, from my own spontaneous perspective, to inspire and uplift people. In a world lacking in leadership, the idea was to be a leader, speaking from the world of art , communicating without hidden agenda, different from corporate communication and government messages.
So, what's the answer for a sincere music creating person?
Ignore chasing after anything, do your art as purely as you feel
it, try to find a venue for it way outside of the traditional methods,
or if you can afford it, just give it away. Make something beautiful - that's what next we'll do -that's all we'll do. Create a venue for the rare and talented monks of jazz and other amazing artists this city is housing - bring them into beautiful circumstances of musical context and shine! Ignore trend completely, both in the music and in how to offer it. So it's been
kind of productive, not doin' much.
Tuning Of Mix Room Our new location install is settled and grounded. Now we've discovered "transformer coupling" thanks to Tom McCartney who has considerably improved our analog playback /mix system with clever modifications. Acoustical treatment of the space has
been a journey of art, science and consulting from far away places. Much of the design / install was done by Oliver Barkovic of Forward Audio Engineering (forwardaudio.com), with consulting and site visits from Martin Pilchner, Terry Medwedyk, Steven Traub, Corby Luke and John Beetle Bailey. We are now seeking an additional audio engineer or engineering oriented producer, as well as business development, representation and web site communications help. Click here for more details. We are moving along with the video versions of "World of Pain" for the Slo Fuse project. Recently this took us into buddhist temples, catholic churches and street communities around Parkdale and the Portuguese sections of College Street. The video features a beautiful performance by New York based Toronto singer Tia Thomas.
Speaking from under my "engineer's hat" my production interests have changed somewhat in the last year. I have kindled a renewed interest in room acoustics. In room acoustics the goal is for a music mix room to have a very "average" "down the middle" response in terms of frequency spectrum (especially bass representation), stereo (or surround) image and reverb decay times. This is to ensure that work done here will transfer well to the outside world. If one's mix room shows too much bass response at 120 Hz and a hotter left speaker than shows on the meters, then (if the mixer is paying close attention) one's mix will have too little bass response at 120 Hz and a hotter response at right speaker, since the mixer will naturally compensate. As a mixer and studio operator (and even as a composer) this has become more important to me than copying styles or methods from current hit songs or acquiring the latest synth plug-ins - (yes we have Logic Pro 6.xx and all the currently available synths/ samplers!). Renovating to change the room response is a slow and patient process -we have designed and installed, and re-designed and re-installed various devices in attempts to reach the "nominal" state . Here's a snapshot of the current room response:
Our next step will be fine tuning the above curve with wall mounted treatments and working with burst measurements/decay times to tighten up and more evenly represent the spectrum. The recent uncovering of a brick wall and creating a complimentary diffusion / absorption wall has also set a very nice response in the live room area. We
have had advice from many acoustical designers
in this process but the most help has been from Oliver Barkovic of Forward
Audio engineering (forwardaudio.com)
who has really stayed with us and contributed earnest effort and skill
in helping us make important decisions and physically implementing clever
solutions in our room tuning process.
Sara MacHin is a powerful and nurturing yoga instructor, healer and meditation facilitator. Sara also operates Organizing And Beyond, practical, spiritually aligned solutions for the home and workplace. This is real Yoga! Sara MacHin 416-966-0938, saramira@look.ca.
Lately I have been exploring open classes at recreation centres, universities, buddhist centres and yoga schools. There is a lot being offered in Toronto by generous and sometimes deeply qualified instructors. By visiting multiple teachers one can discover wider aspects of yoga, mediation, chanting, singing, drumming and dance. These sessions offer a chance to be with others in a special way, unattainable by the usual "talking eating drinking" that seems to dominate our habits in North America. I used to think of "self improvement / new age" pursuits as a "me" activity. Perhaps it can be that way, or it might start like that, but when one finds informed instruction and genuinely tries to make a connection with almost any form of traditional fundamental artistic or spiritual practice, i,e, when you start to actually do the work, it can become a "Me" activity. This "Me" includes the whole community of living beings. Doing a practice is very powerful- you'll see fundamental qualities evolve. Courage, skill, humility, compassion and a sense of service are likely to present themselves. This is said to be the true nature of our higher nature, which is ever present, obscured by layers we can remove. Just think while many are busy worrying about comparatively insignificant moment to moment ambitions related to getting ahead in a career or further unbalancing the earth's resources - millions of others regularly dedicate time to simply sitting in lotus positions meditating, or chanting, bowing, tai-chi, yoga - some kind of specific practice designed to heal and help all the rest of us, in fact all beings. They are working to increase the presence of consciousness itself, and to get themselves kinder and stronger to help us out of this crazed dance we are mired in. When I was first instructed in meditation and began to see what these practices were about, it was touching to realize what so many had been doing all this time. Wonderful people - including Jesus, Buddha and the many teachers and practitioners who have gone before and are with us now.
Personal Views ON WINNING: ON NON-VIOLENCE: ON INSPIRATION:
U.S. leading business consulting firm
Deloitte, Touche Tohmatsu
have chosen to recruit liberal and fine arts majors over
MBA grads, to be trained as project team leaders because
they found artists to have a better level of problem solving
ability, resilience, and other important attributes to function
at decision making levels. Does this inform us about some of the
fruits Most who choose the "art" lifestyle, of course, do not go and work for Deloitte and in fact try to not compromise their immersion in sincerely expressed activity. Instead they pursue a life of service engaging full-time in an activity for which they will not likely receive financial compensation. Why won't they receive financial compensation? For one cause, an attitude of "no monetary value" trickles down from the "customer", the average consumer who uses art in everyday life. How do we use music (art) in everyday
life? Some examples: enjoying the sun rays of music coming
from a little radio that sits on the shelf during a day of drudgery in
an unrewarding job; relaxing at home in introspection while
reading a book or enjoying the paintings on the wall or in a magazine;
floating on seas of emotion or spiritual insight while listening to a favorite
musical performer; watching a film (which
will include much music) and engaging with the characters,
learning about predicaments that may have never occurred to you....
Why does North American value a pair of Nikes or designer jeans at $80 to $160, yet a CD of music at $18? Even at that price, many of us are less likely to buy the music, instead finding a way to have it for free. We "avoid" paying for it, and when we do, we want a deal, quite unlike our attitude towards purchasing alcohol, sports, food or clothes. It is easier for the average North American to come to pay substantial prices for restaurants, alcohol, sports and clothing than the moderate price asked for a downloaded song, a music disc or a nightclub music event. To put this in perspective, the financial effect this has on most musicians is so crippling it's a wonder any of them last more than a few years. For these who think musicians are rich, yes it means that Beyonce earns only five million per record instead of ten million. But she is one out of millions of artists putting out records. It also means that the average full time artist who dedicates sixty hours per week on their career earns only $10,000 per year, or loses $60,000 fighting an uphill battle. So, where else can music artists turn to try to stay in music? Let's say they forget about directly convincing the public of their worth as indie recording artists and look into other avenues. In the case of composers' employers such as film producers or other content creators, for some reason there is a perception that they should spend less on musical and audio people than on most other elements of production, such as featured actors, trades persons, photographers, catering, advertising, etc. Currently film / TV composers are being offered about half what they were offered ten years ago for a similar amount of work. In addition, composers are now routinely forced into giving up the ownership of the music they write and record, meaning they will no linger be allowed to use it themselves, nor decide where and how it is used. This will translate into being paid a fraction of royalties on further use of that same music, or possibly no further payment at all. On top of this, the amount paid is not enough to earn a living doing so. This is quite unlike how the same film/TV producer might deal with a photographer who will be tough about selling a "one time use" only. Meanwhile movie makers are well known for huge budgets in food, property rentals, and for paying carpenters, book keepers, lawyers and electricians well above their normal trade rate.
) Because content carriers and commercially controlled production enterprises think art has little value and should be "faked" for as cheap as possible, television has been reduced to a small amount of rich programming, padded with infomercials, veiled infomercials, propaganda, reruns and "reality / lifestyle" shows (some of which have merit, but many - not.) Is it harmless to conduct things in this way, or should we the consumers and we the producers insist on paying more for our music and our content, and allow it and its creators respect and dignity so as to provide the means to nurture and culture a thriving, rich set of artists from whom we can derive deep inspiration, high celebration and honest insight? How to think, how to love - fundamental
life skills of emotional maturity, creativity and
expression are built from such things as genuine arts
experiences (viewing or doing) in early
childhood and throughout life - solo experiences practicing
or observing art - group experiences
creating or discussing art, playing together in non-competitive
games of expression, etc..
Links: RE: CHINA/TIBET RE: SUSTAINABLE ENVIRONMENT RE: MUSIC PIRACY/how will creators continue
to be able? : RE: NON-CRUEL FOOD MAKING: | |
