time: 2:25 AM, Monday 22nd May
song - Falling anywhere by Armin Van Buuren
…it’s difficult to find time to do many things, especially when you set out to achieve the impossible. This is one of those things ;-). What’ s the impossible situation now? Well, it’s work related…and I’m expected to complete a month’s work in a couple of weeks. How do you describe that situation? If impossible is not the word, then what is?
Times like these, I turn to good trance music. Not the cheap trash you see floating around the net and on stores of Music world (no offence meant..they stock good stuff sometimes). You see, trance is usually seen just as beats running out of control, and nothing too much. Well…there’s a lot more…!! Good trance music has two components - the beat that gives rythm to the composition as a whole and a more slower layered component that lets you just drift away. You could see singing, vocals, more electronica and what not; but the important thing is that it keeps moving, changing ever so slowly. That is the life of trance, a good composition. My most fav trance / electronica tracks rank like this -
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Falling Anywhere by Armin Van Buuren from the album ‘A State of Trance 2005’ - This is probably the best there is. The song starts well before it’s supposed to start, almost 30 seconds in the previous track, the transition is effortless and the beat is hyper. There is a very beautiful vocal humming to boot it all. Amazing song
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Chicago by Groove Armada from the album Vertigo - higlight of sequencing. Sequencing and layering is a techinque used very widely when songs are remixed. Take a sample from an old song, add a few beats on top of that and hey presto, you’ve got a remix. This song takes the concept to a whole new level. What happens here is that the whole song is constructed out of a few samples; these are very incoherent at first, but past the two minute mark, it’s on a roll; by the time it’s done (a good 6 min later), you’re out of breath…! a hallmark of electronica
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I know it’s you by The Crystal Method from the album Legion of Boom - I found this album very recently…and this had a very beautiful humming overlaid with a very distorted electronic voice. Very hypnotic!! Found out later on that the vocals were done by Milla Jovovich. Never knew she could sing as well as she looked ;-)
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Lullaby for Gaia by BT from the album ESCM - When two stars meet, how can things go wrong. Vocals by Jan Johnston with the score by BT. Just about perfect. You can leave it to him to throw in a piano into the whole mix.
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Champagne by Joe Satriani from the album Engines of Creation - Technically, not pure trance, but you could put this one into a mix at any time and no one would smell something odd. Amazing guitars, nice rythm programming and a very catchy tune.
…and I could go on and on and on…!! I wonder sometimes, is it really difficult to appreciate such wonderful stuff? Common film music sounds so pathetic when you compare these to each other…it’s like they have a fixed template for each song. Sad songs have so and so kind of music, so and so lyrics, happy songs have some other templates…the words, lyrical styling are almost the same across all songs; and the tunes are copied over from hollywood to boot it all…!! absolutely pathetic I should say!!
Is it really necessary to really have lyrics expressing all the emotions in a song? you are actually guiding a listener into a sound scape; the listener hears what you want them to hear. But take away the lyrics, and it becomes a lot more difficult. Classic case is the song I’m listening to now - ‘Shivers ‘. It’s fast, has a good beat (unlike the usual slow ‘sad song’ template), has no lyrics (okay….maybe a line or two…), but still feels so heavy. I’ve come to realize that it’s pretty difficult to convince people who haven’t experienced this kind of a high to part with their ‘filmi’ music. Maybe you get looked upon, but who cares?
Among the other news - The hikes came and they were as disappointing as ever. I’m happy for the team at least; we managed to get to almost what we had asked for. Considering the corporate attitude these days it was a pretty big achivement. It looks like we might have to give up the double digit hikes, to compensate for the double digit growth LOL:).
Employer of choice, my a$$…its an employer ‘off’ choice…!! Something needs to be done…a future needs to be secured first.
no other happenings as of now…;-)!! so it’s going back headlong into work…!! you see, an idle mind is the devil’s workshop. You never know what your mind conjures up…!! plenty of late nights coming up, so there will be frequent updates now on…!!
Signing off for today…have to be at office in around 6 hours…!!