After some serious hours in the studio I’m happy to report that the film score for Battlefield Death Tales is complete! I had a lot of fun working on this score and I’ll write some posts on the creative process in the next few weeks.
Meanwhile, check out the film’s Facebook page for updates and news from Pat Higgins, Jim Eaves and Alan Ronald; the three awesome Directors collaborating on this film.
Wow time flies, or so it seems, I checked the site a few days ago and was shocked to see the last upload was from this time last year. Well… I’ve been busy; not always doing the things I planned to, but one way or the other 2012 is shaping up to be a great year.
I’m currently working on a film score for the latest Jinx Media production, more on that shortly. I”m also in the process of overhauling my studio, so things might end up sounding different by the end of the year! I’m planning to experiment with moving to Linux for music production.. watch this space.
It looks like the website is getting lots of hits for the guitar resources I put up a while back, searching in google for terms like ‘melodic minor shapes’ and ‘minor pentatonic caged’ is bringing the site up on the first page of results; so that’s groovy. I hope the material is of use to all you guitar players out there who are getting your chops together!
I’ve been listening to a lot of new music recently as well; I’ll post some album reviews up in the next few weeks and what not. Apart from that, there will be some new music and video clips going up, and some posts on the creative process for the latest film score. If you’re interested in what I’m up to, or want to get in touch for any help, advice or just want to be nosey; drop me a line on twitter…
Phil
Rough and ready jam along to a backing for the Robert Johnson / Cream track Crossroads!
Back in the summer of 2008 I had the privilege of working with writer and director Pat Higgins of Jinx Media on a film called ‘The Devil’s Music’ (trailer below): Pat planned the film as a rockumentary style exploration of the rise and fall of singer Erika Spawn. So I was tasked with the job of [...]
Following on from my previous post on ‘The Devil’s Music’, here’s another song from the film, with some comments and observations on the production process. I already had the basic band parts recorded for two songs, ‘Needles’ and ‘Dying Bride’, when I started working on ‘Spawn of the World’. I laid down the bass, drums and guitar parts [...]
The next track I worked on was ‘Body of a Whore’, complete with great lyrics from Pat and another fantastic vocal performance from Erika. At this point things had fallen in to place, I knew what I needed to do with the instrumentation, based on the break through I had with ‘Spawn of the World’. Now [...]
Here are the 5 major scale CAGED style shapes that I work with. As for the melodic minor scale, I think of the shapes based on the scale degree that they start on, which helps me. Another common way to name them is 1 through 5, but that doesn’t really tell you anything useful musically, [...]
Here’s another improvised performance using the GR-20 guitar synth and the Line 6 JM4 looper. The piece builds on each repeat as I add another layer, starting with a bass line and ending in some lead soloing at the end over my improvised creation! I’m really enjoying working on purely improvised music at the moment [...]
Here are the 5 CAGED shapes / positions that I use for playing the Melodic Minor Scale. The filled in notes are the roots, the numbers above the boxes tell you which degree of the scale the shape starts on. The notes are marked black and red as a visual aid for sequencing patternts such as thirds, [...]
Here are the 5 harmonic minor scale CAGED shapes that I work with. As for the major scale, I think of the shapes based on the scale degree that they start on, which helps me.
Knowing where the natural notes are (C – D – E – F – G – A – B) across the fretboard is an important step in getting to grips with the guitar. I previously posted the notes of C major (the natural notes, no sharps of flats) across the fretboard. If you’re intersted in learning to read standard music notation [...]
The first film score I wrote was for the 2007 Jinx Media release KillerKiller. I had known the writer and director, Pat Higgins, for many years but had never collaborated on any of the Jinx Media projects before, so this score was certainly a first in many ways! Check out the trailer below (note I didn’t [...]
On to more clips from KillerKiller! My favourite theme from the film is a simple guitar and synth double act that crops up around the middle of the film and reappears a few times. This stark and simple theme underscores some great dialogue between two of the main characters; Lawrence (Dutch Dore-Boize) and Rosebrook (Cy [...]
Here are the final audio clips from the film score for the 2007 release KillerKiller. Some scary violins in this scene to unnerve the audience. [Audio clip: view full post to listen] I really enjoyed using slide guitar in a few scenes. I’ve always loved the Ry Cooder score to Paris Texas and wanted to work [...]
I’m going to post some arpeggio diagrams that help you practise the main 7th arpeggios, starting from each string. Because the notes on the guitar reoccur in different positions, it can be difficult deciding how to practise arpeggios sometimes. For example you could play G major 7 arpeggio by playing, 3rd fret low E, 2nd [...]
In a previous post I described the modes and related intervals on each degree of the major scale. As it turns out, these intervals give us 3 pentatonic scales hiding within every major scale. If we think of these as minor pentatonic scales, then they start on the 2nd, 3rd and 6th degrees of the major [...]
There are two main shape groups I use for playing the major, melodic minor and harmonic minor scales. The first group is based on the CAGED system and covers the fretboard in 5 shapes / positions. The second group use 3 notes per string in the shapes and cover the fretboard in 7 shapes / positions, [...]
At the end of the last millennium I was busy recording a guitar demo called ‘Out to Lunch’. That seemed like a good title at the time, no one else had used it right? Well, if I had thought to use a search engine to check it back then, I would have found out pretty [...]
Here’s another track from my year 2000 demo ‘Out to Lunch’, have a listen! Storm Front [Audio clip: view full post to listen] The opening sequence from this track was great fun to record. Essentially, what I did was record the keyboard parts by randomly improvising the changes. I had no idea what chord I was [...]
Here are some more tracks from my year 2000 demo ‘Out to Lunch’, have a listen! Freakwave [Audio clip: view full post to listen] This track is more electric guitar based, although there are some acoustic parts that worked their way in and I doubled the main lead guitar melody with an acoustic as well. [...]
