Thoughts on Groove

Off 2022’s Dr1ve, Thoughts on Groove is both intense and hypnotic as you float along this highway of sound. To me it’s the core sound of this first album for Studio Arlen, that driving push of great tracks you blare down the road late at night.

What I Know

What I Know was created to be the main theme of a romantic short film called Present Day. The film was shot in old Detroit with more intimate, warm angles so I focused on producing a fusion of Motown’s rich melodies and the raw guitar sounds of greats like Saturday Night Special.

              It is designed to be lyrically simple and pay homage to the aggressive panning of early stereo mixing. Most of the production elements are in the box; with some songs like this I believe that adds to the charm, blurring the line between big professional musical structures and the quiet intimacy of single creator content.

              I think the interplay between the two stripped guitars is my favorite feature of the song. I performed dozens of improvisational takes and cut them together piece by piece, yet it maintains that idea of a spontaneous, beautiful harmony while flanking the vocal.

Also from the same soundtrack

BioTechnics

Biotechnics was a piece I created for the Science as Art Competition at U-M for one of the two years I won the prize for Best Time-based Art. I wrote up a prospectus on the piece as part of the submission that can be found on U-M’s website here.

              I wanted to work with more liquid texture synths here, which I felt better captured the idea of a rush of chemicals to the brain. The 70’s inspired guitar riffs are meant to be extremely satisfying, introducing this tension between the inconsistency of liquid and moments of melodic relief. The synths and guitars are heavily modified with individual reverbs, phasers and other automation.

              Mixing wise, this track is a real panning adventure. I used a combination of in-box and custom sculpted synths to bounce across the stereo field. There are also many doubled up elements, a challenge to seat comfortably in the mix, but I feel the end result has a lot of texture and momentum.

We Have A Liftoff!

This is a pre-mastered track off my upcoming 2022 release, Luna I. The beginning section plays with tonality to signify the shuttle launch; we start from a more atonal place and move towards melody with the quickening pace.

 I brought in a wonderful session guitarist for this piece and told him to give me his best take on Marc Ribot, then I chopped that performance into contrasting sections and weaved it throughout. Working in combo with some reverb wet/dry automation and panning, it creates an interesting metaphor for the launch engine.

I’m experimenting more with sampling for this album, making use of Logic’s flex pitch editing to re-sculpt the sample into my main vocal at 2:25.

Orson Welles Retrospective

I created this track as one of a series for an animated re-telling of Orson Welles’s unfinished Heart of Darkness, produced by a U-M led production team. To me it captures a reflective sound that echoes from a different era, with a kind of unexpected punctuation from the bass at 1:50 that brings it to a different sonic place. That’s achieved with a steady wet/dry automation that sneaks into center stage by the breakdown, a great effect with the original VO.

Without the VO of the scene, it is a more patient track, re-sculpted multiple times to fit a changing post-vocal; feel free to skip around. The transitions at 3:12 and 3:42 are a fun sequence, and I feel like I handled the genre change to this early American sound with the right touch, which matched the flow of the scene.

Learn more about the Heart of Darkness project at www.heartofdarknessarchive.org

Pro Wrestling Theme

Here was a fun one I put together for the entrance of a Michigan-based pro wrestler. Using his gimmick for inspiration, the beginning is a tribute to Entry of the Gladiators done with a fretless bass.