Brent Daniels Music Blog

Love As A Crime Scene featured in CBS' Criminal Minds

2011-10-17T00:47:00.000-07:00

Our industrial glam track "Love As A Crime Scene" released under the name Anxious Annie (myself and the wildly talented Bret Levick) is being featured on this season of Criminal Minds on CBS. Interestingly, we made the track with the hope of getting it placed on NCIS, but they didn't bite. Fortunately, Criminal Minds did.

Listen for it in the show, and check it out here:

YouTube (link):

Soundcloud: (link):

Love As A Crime Scene by Anxious Annie by mitygen

A Loney Place For Dying featured on WPT's "Director's Cut." Watch the episode now.

2011-07-10T16:23:00.000-07:00

The PBS show "Director's Cut" featured A Lonely Place For Dying and interviewed director, screenwriter and cinematographer Justin Eugene Evans during the 2011 Beloit International Film Festival (where it also won the award for best feature). The 30 minute episode aired on July 7th and is now available for streaming via Wisconsin Public Television's website.

Learn about the genesis of the story, see clips from the film, and find out how the ALPFD team made an epic movie on a micro budget.

Watch it here. (Note: Sorry, iOS users. This is a Flash video.)

And don't forget, you can start watching A Lonely Place For Dying right now! Download the first episode of the serialized version at Vodo's website!

A Lonely Place For Dying strikes deal with Vodo & BitTorrent

2011-07-05T12:25:00.000-07:00

Big news for A Lonely Place For Dying, the award-winning film I scored, sound designed and mixed. We've partnered with BitTorrent and the forward-thinking company Vodo to distribute our award-winning feature film in a serialized form prior to its release in theaters. This gives us the ability to reach a much, much larger audience than we have thus far, and to help finance a theatrical run. The first episode of ALPFD is available to everyone right now. Vodo's free-to-share model turns the traditional Hollywood distribution model on its ear somewhat, to say the least.

From Justin's blog post on the A Lonely Place For Dying website:

"The film will be broken into five installments which can be downloaded through VODO and it's network of online distributors. The fifth and final installment will be available after the film's theatrical release beginning in January, 2012.

"I'm thrilled to have the film made available through VODO. VODO can get an independent film seen by millions of people. It has helped filmmakers from around the world find an audience. And, while some of our movie theaters are nervous about this decision we believe that the torrenting audience isn't necessarily the same as the theatrical audience.

VODO proves we live in a very big world with seemingly contradictory answers; one can have a movie seen by millions and still only have reached 1% of the potential US theatrical market. While fearful distributors in Hollywood are terribly scared of this technology we are thrilled by the opportunity. We control the distribution of our content, we reap the financial rewards of our efforts and we find an online audience...and then a theatrical one as well."

You can learn more about Vodo's goal of helping independent content creators reach a global audience and monetize their work on their FAQ.

As of today, July 5th 2011, we're at well of 100,000 downloads of the first episode and it's only been out for a few days, and user comments have been positive. There's been a lot of buzz in the blogosphere, too:

BitTorrent press release
Official BitTorrent blog post
CNBC
GigaOm
BoingBoing
TorrentFreak
Zeropaid
Slashdot

Obviously there are many users who use the Torrent distribution method for pirated software, music and movies. But the model itself can (and is) used for distributing legal content as well (I've used it for years to download video versions of some of my favorite video podcasts which I then stream across my LAN using Plex to different machines or screens in my place). As a formerly signed recording artist watching the record industry implode and morph into an even more artist-unfriendly form over the last ten years, I fully embrace this distribution model. I believe that if you don't treat legitimate users like pirates, and give them a sizable file that delivers a high quality viewing and/or listening experience, and even throw in a few extra perks, some of them might return the favor and support the artist by donating.

There's a nice chunk of my score for you to hear, and all my sound design and mix to check out in the first episode of A Lonely Place For Dying -- go get it, and if you feel like supporting the project, of course feel free to donate. :-)

A Lonely Place For Dying at Vodo

Brent Daniels' score for A Lonely Place For Dying wins at Park City Film Music Festival

2011-06-06T09:57:00.000-07:00

My score for A Lonely Place For Dying has been honored with the Jury Choice Silver Medal for Excellence in Original Music for a Feature Film, at the Park City Film Music Festival, a film festival specifically devoted to music composed for film. I am most grateful to the Park City Film Music Festival for the honor.

Among other music projects booked for this summer, I'll be expanding and mastering the ALPFD score for a fall release, including a 5.1 surround sound Dolby & DTS special edition. It's going to sound killer!

I'll keep you updated as the process continues.

Brent Daniels' score for A Lonely Place For Dying accepted into Utah's Park City Film Music Festival

2011-05-24T20:00:00.000-07:00

I'm happy (and humbled) to report that my score for A Lonely Place for Dying has been accepted into Utah's Park City Film Music Festival, a festival which rewards composers for their work in film (both independent and big budget studio films). Here's an interview with the festival's director, Leslie Harlow, talking about the festival's focus on film composers and describing their selection process for the festival.

The film will be playing on day six of the ten day festival, Wednesday May 25th, at the Prospector Theater at 7:00 PM in Park City, UT. Here's a link to the full festival schedule.

Regen Magazine Interview with Brent Daniels

2011-05-20T10:52:00.000-07:00

Note: thanks to Ilker Yücel, editor of RegenMag, for allowing me to repost this while their website is being restructured.

INTERVIEW

Brent Daniels - Reemergence from the Lonely Place

An Interview with Brent Daniels
Posted: Sunday, February 01, 2009
By: Ilker Yücel Editor

Brent Daniels is not the biggest name in the world of electronica, although he has garnered no small amount of respect for his work in the arena of film soundtracks. Known primarily as "Free," as the vocalist for Hednoize, he and former Psykosonik member Daniel Lenz produced an album of hard-hitting industrial textures, lush ambient passages, and grooving rhythms – a combination that yielded the critically acclaimed but popularly overlooked album Searching for the End. From the album, Hednoize found their music featured in several popular film and TV soundtracks, including La Femme Nikita, 3000 Miles to Graceland, and Charlie's Angels. While that band has been in a state of hibernation since 2000, Daniels has spent the past several years teaching seminars on music technology, sound design, and composition at schools around the country, broadening the younger generation's minds toward the benefits of music and emphasizing the importance of education. Now, after several years out of the limelight, Brent Daniels returns to making music for film as the score composer for the upcoming espionage thrilled A Lonely Place for Dying, directed by Justin Evans, and starring James Cromwell (I, Robot, The Green Mile) and Michael Wincott (The Crow, Strange Days). Having released a four-track single for the theme song, a blistering rock track of raging guitars, thunderous rhythms, and Daniels' passionate and emotive voice, and containing remixes by Daniels, Lenz, and guitarist Bern Locker, A Lonely Place for Dying marks the return of Brent Daniels to the front lines of the music world. Currently working on the full score for the film, Daniels brings us into his process of composition and collaboration, the development of his music and his methods, and just what the future has in store for his newfound solo career and the return of Hednoize!

Let's start with your current project, the score for the feature film A Lonely Place for Dying. First of all, given your history as an electronica artist, how did you first come to be involved in this project?

Daniels: I've known A Lonely Place for Dying's director and writer, Justin Evans, since about 2000. Justin had actually approached my old record label trying to get in touch with Hednoize to hire us as sound designers and composers for an animated CGI TV show he was developing. As I recall, he never heard anything back from TVT after repeated requests and somehow got in touch with Daniel Lenz and I directly, and we started working together on this show he had come up with called Noz and Grakk: Alien Abductors. It was going to be dark comedy, and it looked like it had a lot of potential: great premise, awesome conceptual art, great voice talent. Daniel and I wrote a theme and tracked all the dialogue for the pilot, which was pretty fun from our sci-fi geek perspective; James Earl Jones and Mark Hamill were two of the actors on the show. Ultimately, the show didn't end up happening, but Justin and I kept in contact over the years and have since become close friends. Then, last year, he approached me to score a short film he wrote and directed called Saturday Night Special, a crime drama, and we had a blast doing that, so when he raised the investment money for A Lonely Place for Dying based off the festival success he had with the short, he approached me again to score the feature and so I said I was in. It interested me because it's an espionage action thriller with a lot more dialogue than your average action film – great dialogue – and I also thought it was a great story with some compelling things to say. I'm also a bit of a political and historical junkie on top of being a film buff, so it was something I wanted to be involved in. Plus I had scored short films before, and though I consider myself a recording artist and songwriter first, I wanted to score a feature- length film.

You've released a four-track single for the soundtrack, a sort of theme song to the film, and while the remixes by yourself and your former Hednoize partner Daniel Lenz are much more in the electronica vein that you've been known for, the song proper has a much more rock-oriented vibe to it. Is this song intended to mark a stylistic change in style and musical approach for you, or was it written as such for the purposes of the soundtrack?

Daniels: It's the latter. Justin really wanted a theme song for the film, similar to how all the Bond films have a theme song, and this being an espionage-related film, he thought it would be cool to do an homage to that style of cinema, the difference being that A Lonely Place for Dying has no tongue-in-cheek aspects to it; the action scenes are realistic and brutal, not slick, and what's happening to the spies in this film from both an action and a historical perspective is not glamorous at all – very rooted in reality. I thought it was a great spin. So that was the initial concept.
Then when they dialed the story in, Justin informed me they were setting the it in 1972, and I asked him how we were going to handle this musically, since the original idea was to have this theme song as the opening credits music, and if my track was fairly modern – me-sounding – it might be a little anachronistic to suddenly drop down into a Vietnam-era story. So we tried to find a way for me to write and produce a track that was true to myself musically and appropriate for the film, while at the same time having a viable piece of music, not like writing a 'Beatles-style period song' like they did in That Thing You Do. Justin gave me a lot of suggestions for stylistic influence that would fit the film: freedom rock, Hendrix, The Who, Aerosmith. But he also wanted the track to be fairly dramatic and dark. Dramatic and dark are pretty easy for me, but I was struggling a little trying to figure out who I could be myself in a deliberate classic rock context and pull it off. I hadn't done anything like that before, and I just couldn't hear it in my head, so Justin and I were talking one night about the emotion of the song, and he said something that really clicked and really made it easy for me. I think we were talking about the verses before I had written them, and he said, 'Yeah, you know, the verses can be really dark, like if Nine Inch Nails existed in 1972.' From that point, it was a snap. I could just send myself back in time musically. I'm not sure if that makes sense. As long as I was free to express myself lyrically and could tie it in thematically with the characters in the film, and if I just restricted myself to the instruments and effects that would have been available in the early '70s, I'd be OK. I could just write the song like I normally would. I'd just be myself; I wouldn't change how I sing or play. I would just work within a few given parameters. So the track came pretty fast after that.
I actually had a lot of fun doing that song, because it was really challenging for me to trust the lyrics and melody to speak and put away my whole bag of modern production tricks and all of my sound design and programming, which I consider to be half of who I am musically in any given song I record, and just as important for the identity and emotion of the song as the lyrics and melody. I had never mixed and produced a straight-up rock track before, and it was a little nerve-wracking, feeling like I was putting myself out there all alone without my sounds and production, but in the end, it worked out great; a song is a song is a song, I guess, hopefully in this case a good one. So I'm most definitely not going 'All rock guitars, no synths, guitar solos only' from now on. And though I did enjoy recording 'A Lonely Place for Dying' with the self-imposed production restrictions, I have to say that my remix version is not only closer to the sound that I would like to be known for, but it was a hell of a lot more fun to put together. I needs me synths!

How will the rest of the score follow in this style, if at all?

Daniels: I have a little more freedom with the actual score. I'm not going to be doing stutter edits on audio or anything hyper-modern like that, but I will be doing as much creative sound design as possible and using everything in my arsenal, software-wise. I built a really cool analog processing rig this last summer with a Sherman Filterbank, a few Moogerfooger pedals, some Metasonix stuff, and a Future Retro XS SemiModular synth that I'm looking forward to running some stuff through. I'll definitely use some rhythm guitar and keep some of that rock vibe going where it works and try and get some big John Bonham drum sounds going and go off the rhythmic motif I established in the theme song, possibly. I have a really big, open living room with high ceilings that is absolute crap for listening to music or watching a movie in but would make a great drum room, so I think I'll track some drums in there. And then there's just a whole 'we'll see what happens' element. I've seen a little of the footage, which looks incredible, and I've read the script, but I really need to sit and watch a rough cut of the film and hear what happens in my head as I'm watching. I don't want to pre- conceptualize too much. I already have some themes from the theme song that I can draw on, and that, along with some sample preparation I've done, is probably enough until I hit 'Record.'

As every composer and musician has a different approach to different projects, what would you say have been the major challenges for you in scoring a film? What is your process like when creating music for the scenes, and how does it compare to when you're writing more, shall we say, pop-oriented formats like 'A Lonely Place for Dying' or even your work in Hednoize?

Daniels: For me, it's actually very liberating working to picture. I respond well to serving the images and the emotion on screen. It's like having a collaborator who can pick up the slack so I don't have to do all the work. I'm just there to support what's happening; I don't have to, and shouldn't be, the sole focus, and that really lets me relax and enjoy the process of making music. In my own music, at least lately, I'm the sole creator, the guy producing, the singer, engineer...I'm wearing all the hats. And as much as I do like having that control, it's really nice to take part in someone else's creative vision, to collaborate rather than having to be the guy who comes up with the idea and then sustains that through completion.

Speaking of your partnership with Daniel Lenz, while Hednoize has only released one album, 2000's Searching for the End, he did a remix on the single, and you contributed to two tracks on his solo album, Stuck in a Dream. How would you describe your association with Daniel now versus when you first started working with him more than 10 years ago, and what are the chances that we might see some new material under the Hednoize moniker?

Daniels: Daniel and I are still very close and still have that creative connection that's very rare and special. Things didn't end up working out between TVT Records and Hednoize, and the stress of that and being drained and frustrated professionally and creatively caused us to split up for a couple years a few years back, and we went our separate ways to work by ourselves and with different artists for awhile. It's probably the best thing we could have done. The time we spent apart creatively helped us independently learn new stuff musically and production-wise that we may not have learned because we working together. And now that we're label- free and with the classic model for music distribution now swinging into the realm of artist control, we're definitely feeling that releasing our independent projects and working together as Hednoize can happen now on our own terms, so Daniel and I will definitely be releasing some new Hednoize material. In fact, we have at least one very strong track that we started last year just hanging out in my studio that we're going to finish first. Both of us have been so busy working on our day to day projects that we haven't had the time lately, but I would say there should definitely be something in 2009.

Over the years, you've had the opportunity to work with a variety of artists outside of the electronica realm, remixing for Marcy Levy, Bern Locker (who also played guitar on 'A Lonely Place for Dying'), and working with songwriters like Mick Jones (Foreigner), Rick Knowles and Billy Steinberg (Madonna, Dido). First of all, how do you find that working with these various individuals has been of benefit to your skills as a musician and producer?

Daniels: I'm always learning. I'm always trying to keep my ears open when I'm in a studio environment with people who posses a skill set that I don't or who are more experienced, be it in songwriting, singing, programming, performing, engineering, mixing, or producing, whatever. Those moments are part of what it's all about for me. I'm a sponge, and my obsession for perfection in what I do compels me to voraciously devour any information I can get. Growing up, everything I knew about the recording process I had to glean from Keyboard Magazine and my own trial and error. Later on, I studied theory and composition in school, but I didn't have any formal training in audio engineering or synthesis, so I had to teach myself a lot. So I'm very, very appreciative that in my career so far I've had the chance to meet successful creative people and get a glimpse into how they do what they do and to benefit from that.

How difficult is it for you to adapt your style of working to these various artists and genres?

Daniels: Most of the situations I've been in I don't have to do too much adapting, fortunately. I mean, if it's jazz or bluegrass piano, I am not your man, but typically the stuff I've done is composition, songwriting, singing, keys, programming, or editing in an electronic/rock/pop context, where I'm pretty comfortable.

You're also known as 'Free.' How did you come by this nickname, and as your credits always seem to use your full name of Brent Daniels, what is the purpose of the pseudonym? Which do you prefer to be referred to as?

Daniels: I think around college in the early '90s, during the first Gulf War, I remember there being a resurgence of social/political activism, at least in my community, and I think part of my involvement in that was calling myself Free. It also was a way of expressing a bit of who I was, who I wanted to be known as, as an individual and as an artist. People call me both, and I'm afraid I've made it confusing for everyone, including myself and for my career, by not just going with one or the other. I respond to both. I think most of my friends call me Free.

In the interim between Hednoize and A Lonely Place for Dying, you'd also done some music seminars or something of the sort for elementary schools, demonstrating to children the capabilities of music technology and emphasizing the importance of education. Is this something you're still involved in? How did you find that helping to shape young people's minds through music had an effect on the way that you perform and think about music?

Daniels: Yes, I'm still involved with that. I had a lot of opportunities to be around talented, creative people when I was younger, and most of these people were either educators or I met them in educational environments, so I think that aspect really rubbed off on me. My uncle in particular is a sculptor and educator, and I can remember at a very young age working in his studio, sorting screws into jars for a penny apiece, just waiting for the chance when I would get to use the wax injector with one of his molds. He's a brilliant guy, and I was one of his students just by being around him growing up. There was always an explanation for a creative process he employed or some modification he made to a piece of equipment that made it function better or last longer. Because of that influence, I find the processes of creating and learning inextricably linked. One of the biggest early draws for me as a musician was listening to one of my favorite artists and going, 'How the hell did they make that sound?' And that process of discovery, through research or practice or trial and error, is obviously all learning, so if I can inspire some kid in school to ask those same kinds of questions, and that puts them on a similar creative path, that makes me feel good. That's what was done for me.

Recalling an interview you'd done for Hednoize in which you described the process as having created a large assortment of samples and sound design with a minimal amount of equipment, sampling seemed to be a key element to your demonstrations for the school seminars. As music technology has expanded further into the realm of software and digital programming and distribution, what are your thoughts on the current and future state of music technology? What would you say are the pros and cons of the new tools versus the old tools?

Daniels: Currently, there is a metric crap-ton of amazing music software available across all platforms that will run on a very inexpensive CPU. Honestly, it's never been a better time for creative people; the tools we have at our disposal are mind- blowing. I am a huge technology advocate and am in no way some kind of musical purist. I feel very fortunate to be alive at this moment from a music technology standpoint. I feel very lucky I wasn't born in the Tin Pan Alley era. However, computers are still just tools, and the old maxim 'garbage in, garbage out' still applies. We have affordable, amazing-sounding software synths with hundreds of presets, and loop libraries and sample construction kits readily available, and on and on. But if people are regurgitating music using the same components, well, it's not going to be something I'm going to want to listen to. I still need to have those 'How the hell did they do that?' moments, and I seem to be having less and less of them. Of course, I spend an inordinate amount of time in my cave.

The other downside for me personally is that because of this computing power and some of the deeper software I use, like Kyma or Reaktor, with enough time and acumen, I can literally do anything I imagine sonically, which is of course also an extreme upside. Like any powerful thing, it's totally a dual-edged sword. Option overload becomes a huge issue. You can blow eight hours drawing in automation for a synth plug-in and be no closer to finishing your track, because frankly, your synth part sucked in the first place, so it's important to try and stay focused and maybe just keep it simple. Just because you can do everything sonically doesn't mean you should. Of course, this is just my own personal experience, and the older I get, the more I want the near- immediacy of the finished song, and I find that I don't really spend eight hours tweaking one sound anymore. Or maybe I'm just a lot faster now.

As far as old versus new tools, I'll use anything at my disposal if it gets the job done. I still have legacy Apple computers, like a 1994- era PowerPC 7100 running OS 7.6 just for transferring files to an ancient Ensoniq ASR-10 sampler, the one I used to develop the 'Hook Generator' effect that's used in 'Woven' and 'Drain' and a few others on the Hednoize record. Daniel came up to my place a couple months ago, and we busted out an old Mac strictly to do offline processing of audio files with apps like Sonicwerk Artist, software they don't make anymore, and which, while frankly a pain in the ass to use, still made us create some sounds a certain way, and that may be lacking in this 'always -real-time' mode of sound design and programming I've been employing the last couple years. So some old, some new, as long as it makes brutal or beautiful noises I'm going to use it.

You mentioned being a political and historical junkie as well as being a film buff. As such themes are common in the electronic genre – especially the harder forms like industrial, which Hednoize toyed with on several tracks – how much would you say those subjects factor into your lyrics? What message do you hope to convey to your listeners, or is there even a message? Is there any over-arcing theme that pervades throughout?

Daniels: I feel like I've gone through a real transformation regarding my creative process the last five years, and by necessity I now find myself compelled to resist restricting myself when writing. Lyrically, there are definite thematic and word-specific rule sets Daniel and I employed for the Hednoize record that I find aren't conducive to truly expressing myself for my solo material (or indeed, with both of us evolving, may not work for Hednoize anymore either; we'll cross that bridge when we come to it). For example, for me, 'A Lonely Place for Dying' is a song about a loss of religious faith, and I think it can be taken as a pretty direct statement about existence. Secondarily, and true to the voice of the protagonist in the film, it's about a loss of faith in country; I was also writing the track at a time when I, like a lot of other Americans, was very tired, very frustrated with the path our country has been on, so it was also a direct political comment about America. Both are things that in the past I may not have commented on in this medium but now feel compelled to voice. At the same time I like writing stuff in a way that can be interpreted in a completely different way. With the right perspective, that song can be a complete statement of faith, too.

But I would say overall, nowadays I feel an urge to add something to the discussion, so to speak. I love ear candy, and for me a lot of music I love is just about the visceral reaction to the sound design or melody, irrespective of the lyric or even in spite of it, but I think I want to go deeper. I'd like to make more than a sonic impact on people. I'd to affect change. I don't know how the young idealist has resurfaced in me recently and is somehow co-existing with the crusty old cynic, but he is, and I think that's going to find its way into my lyrics on future solo stuff. I'm not sure how that's going to sound or work. I'll just have to do it and see. But my heart wants to go there. I may even start singing about love – the horror!

With regards to film music, it's interesting because my introduction to you was Hednoize's 'Loaded Gun' on the soundtrack to La Femme Nikita (the TV series), and we have since heard Hednoize in 3000 Miles to Gracelandand Charlie's Angels. For Saturday Night Special, will that film be released in any sort of format, or will the soundtrack? And on that note, will the soundtrack to A Lonely Place for Dying be released as a Brent Daniels solo album, and when can we expect such a release?

Daniels: Justin did release Saturday Night Special on DVD. It's a 14-minute short, though, so there's not a whole lot of music, probably about five minutes total, so it's not something I'll release as a soundtrack. He did a heck of a lot with the DVD though, lots of extras from which burgeoning filmmakers can glean information about getting their independent film into festivals, pretty interesting stuff. I did a commentary track about the music in which I talk about about my process, which was fun. There's also a one-minute-long unreleased Hednoize track in the credits called 'Who Am I,' which Daniel and I did after Searching for the End came out. That's actually one we're probably going to expand into a full track at some point. So if you're interested in hearing me ramble on about time compression or are a Brent Daniels/Hednoize completist, you might want to check it out. And right now the plan definitely is to put out the A Lonely Place for Dying soundtrack as another solo release. I'm recording everything in February 2009, so I imagine I should have it out sometime in the spring.

You worked with Bern Locker on 'A Lonely Place for Dying,' and he was also involved in Hednoize, contributing guitar to 'Army of One.' Tell us about your association with him, how you two came to work together, and what your working dynamic is like with him. How does his style complement yours, and how is working with him different from Daniel Lenz?

Daniels: Bern's just awesome: totally cool vibe and a killer guitar player as well as a killer producer. I met Bern when we were about halfway through recording Searching for the End. I went to dinner with Hednoize's A and R person, and Bern and his manager were also there. Bern had just licensed one of his Urban Voodoo tracks, 'Brutality,' to TVT for the Mortal Kombat: Annihilation soundtrack, and he was looking at possibly signing with them. I just remember me and Bern sitting at the other end of the table and just blowing each other's mind talking about music, gabbing away. We just really connected. Shortly after that, Bern came over to the Hednoize place in the valley and brought all these boutique guitar pedals over. We pulled up a drum loop in Studio Vision Pro and just let that run for a long time, and I sat on the floor working the pedals, and he was playing all kinds of crazy shit, and we ran that pedal chain off to DAT. I dumped that audio into the computer and took a couple days and went through the whole session, making loops and doing sound design, and gave him a copy for his library, and Daniel and I picked out a couple things that we used in 'Army of One.' We broke our 'no real guitars' rule on that one. Basically, it's the chorus guitar riff, and then actually the harmonics/wah chord progression in the first part of the bridge was samples I made of Bern, as well.

After that, we didn't really work together much on anything until I was producing a band in Louisiana, and he flew out just to hang for a couple weeks and maybe add a little guitar. I had a blast listening to him just smoke along with the playback. We tracked a ton of stuff, all of it like total gold. I mean, literally, every single thing he does with his pedals and performance-wise is killer, every time. It's really a thrill to be around a talent like that, someone who is communicating so much, so directly, with their instrument, really inspiring. Bern is super-creative, and on that Urban Voodoo record he did, he did a lot of real clever programming, and he's excellent at it, but I think nowadays he'd rather just be playing and not dealing with the technical crap that comes along with programming, and I can't blame him. So when he and I are working on something, like the last time we got together for him to play the solo on 'A Lonely Place for Dying,' I run the rig and he just does his thing. He knocked that solo out on the first take, no warm-up, totally nailed it to the wall.

We decided to do a little side project; he thought it might be cool to go for a Depeche Mode meets Black Sabbath meets The Cure kind of thing, so we already started one track when he came up for the A Lonely Place for Dying session, which is really, really cool. As soon as we both find some time, we're going to finish that track up, maybe do a little EP. It's definitely a different way than Daniel and I would work, where traditionally the track starts from a keyboard/programming angle, whereas with Bern and I thus far it's started from guitar riffs, which is fun.

Although, for a piano player, I'm having way too much fun playing guitars myself now – I started playing a lot a couple years ago – so the way Daniel and I approach Hednoize songs may change slightly now as far as where a song starts and what's ultimately playing in it. Evolution is good. And frankly, creatively for me, picking up the guitar has been one of the biggest shots in the arm for me musically, and I'm so happy I started doing it. I never would have played the chord progression for 'A Lonely Place for Dying' on piano. That was something that came out picking up the guitar. It just really makes me come up with different stuff musically than I ever would on piano. It's really cool to feel like I have this instant inspiration for a new song every time I pick up a guitar, because it's so new to me as a compositional tool. I'm sure that'll change eventually, but for now, it's an incredible place for me to start musically, even if I end up pulling the guitars out and just using the chord structure.

We had asked Paul Sebastien in an interview with him for Basic Pleasure Model about the possibility of you two working together, since you have similar vocal styles and both have a relationship with Daniel Lenz, and we understand that you came to work with Daniel because you were a fan of Psykosonik. Have either of you approached the other about such a project, especially now that you both contributed to Daniel Lenz's solo album?

Daniels: I haven't talked to Paul in a long, long time. I think Paul's really talented, a really great guy, too. I was a huge big Psykosonik fan in the early '90s when their first record came out. He came up with some awesome vocal hooks on the record. I'd love to connect with him again, yeah.

Brent Daniels' Score Preview in new ALPFD Trailer

2010-09-20T13:00:00.000-07:00

If you'd like a little preview of some of my score for A Lonely Place For Dying, check out the new trailer for the film, which is now live. All the music in the trailer was pulled from various parts of the film's soundtrack. (And Zak Forsman did a killer job editing the trailer BTW) Details of a full release of the ALPFD score will be released in the near future.

A Lonely Place For Dying feature film website going live

2010-09-13T11:00:00.000-07:00

As some of you know, I've designed and built websites for various artists over the last 10 years (including my own). This summer I designed and coded the official website for A Lonely Place For Dying, the independent feature film I which I scored, sound designed, and helped produce last year. I think it ended up looking killer. It'll be going live 10/15/10, along with some surprise stuff from me, which I'll be sure and tell you about it. Feel free to go there now and catch a glimpse of the design you'll see in October.

UPDATE: The site is now live.

A Lonely Place For Dying Sneak Preview in Los Angeles

2010-03-21T23:05:00.000-07:00

Wow, the last time I posted something was I was just starting scoring the feature film A Lonely Place For Dying, 13 months ago. Well, I'm finished and you can see a sneak preview of it next week if you're in Southern California. I'll be there too, stop by and say hi. (More info further down the post.)

It took longer than I thought it would (doesn't it always?) but in the fall of 2009 I finished. I'm writing this 4-5 months later because I had to recover first. Seriously, it was like giving birth.

To an elephant. Through my ear.

While driving.

I'll post a more detailed account later but in short this is what happened. I was initially contracted to score the film, but after they reached picture lock and I was just about to start recording music I apparently lost my sanity and decided to take the job of post production audio supervisor as well. I say audio supervisor in the absence of a succinct title describing what I actually did, which was every post-production audio-related task, including the dialog edit, sound design, sound editing, Foley walking and editing, re-rerecording mix and delivery of the final mix of the film in stereo and 5.1 Dolby & DTS streams. Additionally. I took on some other tasks (*cough* … control freak) such as menu design and creation of the DVD screeners for festivals, and creating a 1080P Dolby 5.1 Blu-Ray version for projection at festivals.

In the end, I also wrote and recorded 50 minutes of original music in surround for the underscore (which will be released later this year) as well as releasing the maxi-single to accompany the film, with the title song and 3 remixes. A few weeks ago I finished color-grading the music video for the title song as well (Justin Eugene Evans directed, Ginger Ravencroft, Bern Locker and I perform in it, and Daniel Lenz and I edited it).

This was a huge project - it was a metric crap-ton of work and it was a time-constrained challenge, and even though I think I had some kind of a nervous breakdown somewhere towards the end there, it was, I can say now that I've recovered, FUN, and I'm proud and honored to have been a part of it.

Additionally, this was also a very cool project with which to be involved because it was so ambitious: make a micro-budget independent feature film that looks and sounds like it has a much, much bigger budget. Justin Eugene Evans, the writer and director, will be talking about that in a lecture before the sneak preview, and at the Q&A after the movie, along with myself and some of the other cast and crew including two amazing actors, James Cromwell and Michael Wincott, both of whom appear in the film. Come down, has some fun, see what I've been up to for the last year and support independent film.

Here's the place:

The Downtown Independent

The venue looks awesome. We'll be projecting a 1080P version of the film in 5.1. The theater has killer specs including stadium seating (including 16 reclining sofa seats. Dibs on one of the sofa seats).

They serve beer. Even better. (Okay, I made that part up. I don't think they serve beer).

Address, map and ticket purchase links for the April 7th event are available here.

(I'm a little late in getting this out, if you want to come, I'd buy tickets now). Ten bucks gets ya in.

Here's the schedule:

• 6:30 Doors Open

• 7:00 Justin Evans' lecture: EPIC MOVIES ON MICRO BUDGETS - The Indie Filmmaker’s Guide To Tax Law, State Rebates and Raising Capital.

• 8:00 Sneak Preview of A Lonely Place For Dying (Sneak Preview of the ALPFD music video will be looping the lobby as well)

• 9:30 Q&A with James Cromwell, Michael Wincott and cast & crew

• 10:00 Party on the roof with music by Sorry, Nelson. That's right, I said the roof.

Alright you guys, that's it for now. I hope I can see some of you there. For those that can't make it, there will be screenings in other parts of the country in the future, I'll let you know as I find out.

Studio Upgrades - 3D previz

2009-02-02T10:00:00.000-08:00

This week I began scoring the feature A Lonely Place For Dying. I'm excited. I'm going to score and mix it in surround, so I needed to upgrade my studio from stereo monitoring to a 5.1 system.

Currently I'm using two JBL LSR4328P speakers as my main monitors. They're networkable via ethernet cables and in a surround setup they can automatically calculate the appropriate delay time for all the speakers relative to the mix position, which is really cool. So I picked up 3 more and the matching subwoofer and a ton of custom cable. (BTW if any of you are looking for one killer guitar cable or a bunch of mic cables or whatever, I've been using Lava Cable, a custom cable shop, for all my cabling needs for the last couple years. Mark Stoddard's got every kind of cable and connector on the planet over there, and runs a business with incredible customer service. My order was a little behind because he was swamped due to the NAMM show and he hooked me up with some free upgrades including overnight shipping to meet my time frame. Highly recommended!)

The room I'm isn't terribly huge, and that sub is going to cause some low end havoc so I sprung for some real treatment, which was long overdue anyway. I ordered a bunch of bass traps from RealTraps, which I should get tomorrow. I have a feeling I'm going to need more, but I'm going to see how it works out with what I ordered first, which is the Starter Kit. I have a hunch I need a second one of those though, as it was designed with only 2 speakers in mind.

I snagged a second audio interface so I wouldn't lose any of my current outputs which are wired into a patchbay for my semimodular synth rig, two more Mackie Control extenders, a bunch of soft synths including Native Instruments Komplete 5/Kore 2 bundle, and a couple cases of Asahi. Okay, that last one's not really studio related, but I have a hard time coming out of Trader Joe's without a bunch of beer. ;)

When Daniel Lenz was here working on my music video with me for the single for ALPFD, we found it hard to get two chairs in front of my rig because I have a one inch thick bamboo chairmat (harvested from sustainable forests, fear not), and it's not wide enough. The place I'm in is a rental and it's carpeted, and I need to be able to roll around my workspace unencumbered, so for a long time I've been unsuccessfully trying to find large laminate chair mats, or parquet would flooring solutions that I didn't have to make myself. Justin Evans came up with a great idea -- portable dance floors! Seriously. Way cheaper ($3 - $5 per square foot), portable, and available in different finishes. And no I will not be using it for its intended purpose, ever.

A couple years ago when I was first designing my room I wanted to pre-visualize my space so I could make sure I could reach everything in my racks with ease. And, frankly, I wanted to make sure it looked cool. I had already one major piece of studio furniture (the desk, an Omnirax Force 40) and was planning on expanding that with a custom-built chassis to support an expanded mixer control surface, keyboard controller, and standard keyboard and mouse (which ended up working out really well), as well as a side rack for out-of-the-box effects processing. I discovered Sketchup, another app acquired by and made free by our future overlords (Google), and was blown away. I was able to reconstruct every element in my studio down to the millimeter. Then I was able to build any piece of gear or furniture in 3D using published dimensions and images from the manufacturer's websites. It worked out exceedingly well. I updated my Sketchup model last week to drop in the center and rear speakers, some of the RealTrap MiniTraps, and the floor mat to check the sizes and placement before I purchased them. If you're building a house, designing a room, or anything at all really, I highly recommend Sketchup. It's really easy to use if you watch the short, included tutorials, and best of all it's free. And except for a couple gear changes in the racks and the absence of detritus in the Sketchup model, it looks almost EXACTLY like my finshed room.

Check out some of the pics output from Sketchup, or better yet, download Sketchup here and download my model and have a look around the room.

UPDATE 02/03/09 It turns out James over at RealTraps is a Sketchup user as well, and has made components of their traps; he downloaded my Darkmatter model and dropped in the traps I'm getting as part of the Starter Kit in the appropriate places, which will work better than what I've got pictured here. How cool is that? Thanks James! The model has been updated, so if you want some RealTrap components for your own studio model, re-download it.

UPDATE 02/12/09 The portable dance floor turned out to be no go on carpet - not enough support. So I cut two pieces of 3/4" MDF into a 6' x 7' subfloor, and put the dance floor on that, and it worked perfectly. My chair rolls around on it smoothly.

This week I began scoring the feature A Lonely Place For Dying. I'm excited. I'm going to score and mix it in surround, so I needed to upgrade my studio from stereo monitoring to a 5.1 system.

Currently I'm using two JBL LSR4328P speakers as my main monitors. They're networkable via ethernet cables and in a surround setup they can automatically calculate the appropriate delay time for all the speakers relative to the mix position, which is really cool. So I picked up 3 more and the matching subwoofer and a ton of custom cable. (BTW if any of you are looking for one killer guitar cable or a bunch of mic cables or whatever, I've been using Lava Cable, a custom cable shop, for all my cabling needs for the last couple years. Mark Stoddard's got every kind of cable and connector on the planet over there, and runs a business with incredible customer service. My order was a little behind because he was swamped due to the NAMM show and he hooked me up with some free upgrades including overnight shipping to meet my time frame. Highly recommended!)

The room I'm isn't terribly huge, and that sub is going to cause some low end havoc so I sprung for some real treatment, which was long overdue anyway. I ordered a bunch of bass traps from RealTraps, which I should get tomorrow. I have a feeling I'm going to need more, but I'm going to see how it works out with what I ordered first, which is the Starter Kit. I have a hunch I need a second one of those though, as it was designed with only 2 speakers in mind.

I snagged a second audio interface so I wouldn't lose any of my current outputs which are wired into a patchbay for my semimodular synth rig, two more Mackie Control extenders, a bunch of soft synths including Native Instruments Komplete 5/Kore 2 bundle, and a couple cases of Asahi. Okay, that last one's not really studio related, but I have a hard time coming out of Trader Joe's without a bunch of beer. ;)

When Daniel Lenz was here working on my music video with me for the single for ALPFD, we found it hard to get two chairs in front of my rig because I have a one inch thick bamboo chairmat (harvested from sustainable forests, fear not), and it's not wide enough. The place I'm in is a rental and it's carpeted, and I need to be able to roll around my workspace unencumbered, so for a long time I've been unsuccessfully trying to find large laminate chair mats, or parquet would flooring solutions that I didn't have to make myself. Justin Evans came up with a great idea -- portable dance floors! Seriously. Way cheaper ($3 - $5 per square foot), portable, and available in different finishes. And no I will not be using it for its intended purpose, ever.

A couple years ago when I was first designing my room I wanted to pre-visualize my space so I could make sure I could reach everything in my racks with ease. And, frankly, I wanted to make sure it looked cool. I had already one major piece of studio furniture (the desk, an Omnirax Force 40) and was planning on expanding that with a custom-built chassis to support an expanded mixer control surface, keyboard controller, and standard keyboard and mouse (which ended up working out really well), as well as a side rack for out-of-the-box effects processing. I discovered Sketchup, another app acquired by and made free by our future overlords (Google), and was blown away. I was able to reconstruct every element in my studio down to the millimeter. Then I was able to build any piece of gear or furniture in 3D using published dimensions and images from the manufacturer's websites. It worked out exceedingly well. I updated my Sketchup model last week to drop in the center and rear speakers, some of the RealTrap MiniTraps, and the floor mat to check the sizes and placement before I purchased them. If you're building a house, designing a room, or anything at all really, I highly recommend Sketchup. It's really easy to use if you watch the short, included tutorials, and best of all it's free. And except for a couple gear changes in the racks and the absence of detritus in the Sketchup model, it looks almost EXACTLY like my finshed room.

Check out some of the pics output from Sketchup, or better yet, download Sketchup here and download my model and have a look around the room.

UPDATE 02/03/09 It turns out James over at RealTraps is a Sketchup user as well, and has made components of their traps; he downloaded my Darkmatter model and dropped in the traps I'm getting as part of the Starter Kit in the appropriate places, which will work better than what I've got pictured here. How cool is that? Thanks James! The model has been updated, so if you want some RealTrap components for your own studio model, re-download it.

UPDATE 02/12/09 The portable dance floor turned out to be no go on carpet - not enough support. So I cut two pieces of 3/4" MDF into a 6' x 7' subfloor, and put the dance floor on that, and it worked perfectly. My chair rolls around on it smoothly.

3 Days with a Drobo

2008-12-31T23:19:00.000-08:00

Well, after voicing my frustration in a previous blog post about data loss, I got a great deal on firewire 800 Drobo from Newegg: 50 dollars off for using a 1 day PayPal promotion, 50 dollar rebate from Data Robotics, makers of Drobo, and what looks like a standard 50 dollars off from Newegg for a total of $360 bucks. Killer.

I installed it on Monday, and finally finshed shuttling around several Terabytes of data today. So far, so good. I was a little worried about the fans in it, and how loud it would be, since my studio is basically a converted bedroom that functions as the control room and the tracking room, so all the gear is in one spot, and any fans in this room are noise issues. The Drobo is definitely not any louder than my Mac Pro. It's for sure quieter, but I can't tell by how much It's right next to my Mac Pro and when I put my ear down there all I hear is the Mac Pro, but I know the Drobo is making noise, so, it's a win in that category.

It looks beautiful, and the Drobo dashboard app, which comes with it, is a very informative app that also shows you the status of your drives, so remote access monitoring of the lights on the front from the road (echoed in the app) should be a snap.

3 1.5TB drives and 1 TB drive gives me 3.6TB of redundant backup. 1TB of that is reserved for aTime Machine backup on the studio Mac Pro, and the Drobo is formatted for 16TB so I'll be able to grow the volume up from 3.6TB as bigger drives come out without reformatting or hopefully ever shuttling data around again. Or for at least a very long while.

Eventually, it will hang off my Airport Extreme router via USB as a NAS (network attached storage) with RAID 5-like capabilities, and everyone on my house network (A Mac Pro, Powermac G5 and a Macbook presently) will be backing up to it, with 3 1 TB Time Machine sparse bundles for each Mac (Currently the Airport Extreme limits you to 1 TB for a Time Machine backup if the drive is not directly connected to your computer).

Note that even though the Drobo gives you three chances to replace three dead drives, nothing's perfect, and the Drobo should definitely not be the sole backup solution. I still have a clone of my studio Mac's boot, dedicated project audio and soft synth library drives in my Mac Pro that are being synced nightly with Chronosync or incrementally updated with Carbon Copy Cloner in the case of the my boot drive. I'm also using a JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Disks) solution, various raw SATA drives triple backing up the most important stuff using the Thermaltake BlackX, and storing them in Weibetech static-free cases. A couple of these will be stored off-site, in case of fire/flood/theft.

Anyone with massive amounts of precious data, especially any of you audio or film people, should definitely consider a Drobo.

Music Video Anecdotes

2008-12-30T10:30:00.000-08:00

Justin Evans, my friend and director of A Lonely Place For Dying and our music video for the theme song for said film, just made a post on the ALPFD blog about the process of making the video (which we are near completing):

"Music Video Countdown Begins
We're nearly finished with the music video for Brent Daniels' theme song, A Lonely Place For Dying.

To be honest, I didn't think we could pull it off. I originally hired Free to write the theme for this film simply because I wanted to do what big movies do. Free did it as a favor. Then, when we both realized he'd written an amazing song we expanded it into a maxi-single. Then, we realized it didn't have any form of advertising to support it. So, on a whim we decided to shoot a video while we were shooting the feature film.

That was the insane part. Here I am, stuck in a grueling feature film shoot trying to make a movie that is far bigger than my actual budget...and Free and I decide to shoot a complicated music video.

But, wait. There's more!

I, all by myself, decide to make a music video that takes place entirely at sunset. Smart move, Justin! So, instead of knocking out the video in a day we need to shoot it over four evenings...and we have to coordinate that with the feature film shoot.

The advantages were obvious. We already had a Red One on set, we already were on the location, we already had gear in position and we already had a crew assembled. That saved us a tremendous amount of money. If a music label were involved, they would have spent about $30,000.00 on this video. We spent about $3,800.00 (including plane flights). That's the upside.

The downside is that the crew was already worn out. They were already tired of my high standards. They were too inexperienced to understand the value of shooting a video on top of shooting a movie. They didn't fully comprehend how unique this was...that we were doing what studios and labels do.

We weren't behaving like an independent film crew. Most of the crew simply didn't care. They didn't value it. They wanted to go home, even though we'd only worked ten hours on those days. So, I was stuck with a skeleton crew.

But, the skeleton crew pulled through. Arthur Love took over camera operation and earned his first cinematography credit. Jason Trausch demonstrated tremendous loyalty and humility. He was there to help, no matter what the task.

One of his tasks involved using another crew member's car to kick up dust. Jason did some amazing performance driving...and we ended up damaging the car, resulting in an $1,800.00 repair fee for the vehicle. Of course, the company's insurance didn't cover it! Lonely Place, LLC was forced to pay it out of pocket. Morally, we were obligated to and so I'm glad we did...but, it hurt the budget tremendously.

Free and Ginger did far more than artists normally do. They flew in from Oregon. They rented the drums, speakers and mic stand. They rented an SUV. They transported everything to set. They did each other's make up and costumes. In short, they were their own make-up, hair, wardrobe, props, and transpo departments.

After four nights of shooting, we wrapped. And, then it was time to edit.

Editing a music video isn't as time-consuming as editing a feature. But, it requires skill and an eye for detail. I didn't have time. None of us did, really. We weren't quite sure how to solve it.

Then, Free mentioned that his Hednoize partner, Daniel Lenz, had worked as an editor before becoming a musician. I've worked with Daniel before and I have a ton of respect for the guy. He's "one of us". He is methodical. He can learn anything. And, he always sets the bar as high as can be. So, Daniel flew to Free's place in Oregon, we had a couple iChats and the two knocked out an amazing edit in two days.

I gave some notes. Christmas came. Free and Daniel did another pass on the video. Now, I've given what will probably be my final notes on the video. After that there will be a handful of visual effects shots, color grading and a final inspection to make sure the video is "legal" (meaning, it conforms to broadcast technical standards). Then, it is done.

If you're making your first feature film I'm not sure I recommend doing a video on top of everything else. You have to be a stubborn masochist (which I am). I can't claim something like "Well, I didn't know what I didn't know...so we bit off more than we could chew!" That would be a lie. I knew going in this was a massive undertaking. My eyes were wide open.

But, here we are...in the final stretch. The video is almost done. Then it is time to submit it HD broadcasters, MTV2, online music review sites...and eventually we'll broadcast it on Vimeo and Youtube.

I also want to figure out a way to bundle a 1080P version on the CD maxi-single or on iTunes.

And, the next time I ask Free to fly to Albuquerque I really hope we just hang out and play Wii for a few days. Our workaholic tendencies wears us both out!"

Justin Evans/A Lonely Place For Dying win Heineken Red Star Award

2008-12-26T10:36:00.000-08:00

A Lonely Place For Dying (the film) was screened at the Santa Fe film festival without the score (well, it did have my theme song in it, but that was it musically), final visual effects, or sound design, and it still won the Heineken Red Star Award. Killer. Read more about it in this post on the ALPFD blog.

Additionally, IFC is running an interstitial throughout the month of January featuring ALPFD and Justin. A clip from the a trailer for the film (cut specifically for the American Film Market) is playing in it, and you can hear some of the music I wrote for the trailer.

Check it out here.

I begin preproduction for the score January 5th 2009 for two weeks, then head to Phoenix, LA and San Francisco for two weeks for a short tour, and am back in the studio February 3rd to begin scoring throughout the month of February.

I'm excited!

Drive Death

2008-12-07T10:41:00.000-08:00

So I got back from my tour and found two internal 500GB SATA drives in my Mac Pro rig went down --Each within days of each other (I had been remote accessing my system all the while on the road and noticed the first one died a few days ago, then I got home and heard the horrifying chattering of a stuck spindle coming from the second one). One was a volume dedicated for my soft synth library (personal sample library and factory content), and the second was a clone of that. So I lost the primary and the backup basically at once. Most of the data is replaceable, and Daniel has a copy of our custom Hednoize sample library, but I'm sure I lost some stuff I won't know is missing for awhile, and I did lose some recent stuff, like some kits I programmed in MachV 2 that I used in my remix of ALPFD, which I'll have to reprogram, which of course takes time, of which I seem to have less and less.

At least I got some satisfaction out of throwing the drives across the room a couple times before stomping on them a few times and boxing it up to send back to western digital. I could've take a dump in the box for them too, but that would've probably been overkill. And not very nice to the hard-working US Postal Service, especially at this time of year.

The point is that while I know this is going to happen with all hard drives at some point, I'm sick of it, and as much as I backup (I'm up to three clones of my boot drive for example), I always end up losing some data, somehow. I currently have about 16 raw SATA drives in and out of several computers at my place, and I have to get at least 4 of them warranty replaced annually.

I seriously need a couple Drobo's. If you haven't heard of them, check it out. Amazing, simple redundant backup that'll let me use all these extra SATA drives lying around and take the sting out of a drive dying. I can't believe I've gone this long without getting one.

I guess I was holding out for a long time for RAID5 on the Mac, which is a redundant solution, but stricter in it's requirements to work (all four drives need to be the same size, for example). I bought a software solution called Softraid based on an email exchange with the developer, who said they would have Raid5 implement
ation "probably in six months." That was May 2006. As of December 7 2008, still no Raid5. Thanks for nothing. I'd like my $129 back.

Note to self: "Don't buy an application based on it's future potential to maybe have a feature you need." Duh.

Anyway, Drobo FTW. Apparently you can r
ip out 3 of the 4 drives while you're reading and writing data and that sucker will still chug along, rebuilding all your data on the final drive. Crazy.

And as excited as I am to have 4TB SATA drives, the mechanical problems inherent with them are not going to go away. Maybe the sound of bad bearings will just be 4 times as loud. ;)

Bring on the large capacity Solid State Drives. Read this in depth AnandTech article about the SSDs Intel is making, particularly the sections on how long they last, and what happens when they fail. Cool.