Tag: my music

The Music of Jo Hyeja — “Music” Finished, Sort Of

gordsellar2 Comments
This entry is part 9 of 15 in the series Making "The Music of Jo Hyeja"

The last mention I made of this project was to note that we’d done some recording with the haegeum player from the band 잠비나이 for the soundtrack. Since then, I’ve been off and on constructing music tracks from samples — both of the haegeum, and of other sounds I collected over a 48 hour period: water going down a drainpipe, the hum of car engines, growling, and so on. As of right now, my work on the audio is done except for one step: the audio post-production work, which we’re scheduled to do on Friday at a studio. (I’ll have …

Continue Reading

The Score for The Music of Jo Hyeja OST: Composed, But Rough

gordsellar0 Comments
This entry is part 8 of 15 in the series Making "The Music of Jo Hyeja"

I didn’t think music composition was a skill quite as loseable as, say, a foreign language, but today I got my comeuppance. While back in the old days I could have cranked out a whole minor piece in a day, I spent that much time just working out a few fragments for the score. (Okay, one reason is that I’m not all that great with the notation software and had a steep learning curve to climb; it’s really not intuitive in many ways, though I’m sure once you’re used to it it’s great.) One of the most frustrating parts of …

Continue Reading

Saxophonic Memories

gordsellar9 Comments

The other day, I posted about memories of being teased because my name had been used for the alien in the TV Alf, whom I remembered as a sax player, like myself. My hunt for the saxophone version of the theme song led me to this website, where many examples of the “sax solo” that became a trend in 80s popular music are available for your listening pleasure (or pain, as the case may be). I now must say, it was not only because of that scene where a weirdly bejewelled Tim Capello plays saxophone in the vampire film Lost …

Continue Reading

Because the World Needs More Cheese…

gordsellar0 Comments

… I’ve uploaded the uncut, massive single MP3 version (please right click and save the file, as it’s huge!) of the second-to-last musical performance I ever made in Saskatoon, back in 1998. My friend Mike invited me, my ex (the vocalist on the track), and two DJs I knew from high school (Phil Greer and Keenan Gauthier) to perform at what he was then calling “parties” (because, I think, “rave” was passé by then. We played a few gigs, and on the last one — just before I took off for Montreal in fall 1998 — Keenan got a buddy …

Continue Reading

Wanna CD?

gordsellar2 Comments

See that new block in the sidebar? Yep, I’m flogging CDs for a now long-disbanded rock group. I figure, what the hell, someone might actually want a copy. Better than all that plastic and paper and time and music gone to waste. Not that anyone in the band has seen a red cent for it — though to be fair I don’t know if it ever earned back the studio costs, but then again we’ve never seen numbers either to the best of my knowledge — but there are still CDs of Dabang Band’s Product album available through YesAsia.com. (For …

Continue Reading

Torke

gordsellar10 Comments

Michael Torke, that is. I usually review music in my horrible, pages-long bimonthly (or less often) catalogues of everything I’ve been reading, watching (films, TV) and listening to. But I just got my Michael Torke boxed set, Ecstatic Collection, and I have to say, it’s pretty damned wonderful. Michael Torke is a composer who was first mentioned to me by David R. Scott, a Canadian composer who was my instructor during my first year of studying composition. I followed up, and really liked what I heard — a strange blend of occasional snatches of pop music, Stravinsky, and good old-fashioned …

Continue Reading

Listen to My Compositions (If You Dare)

gordsellar0 Comments

I’ve added some more recordings to the archive of all music I’ve participated in. The recordings that just became available to me are all from the period of 1995-96, which was my most prolific year of composing music during undergraduate music studies. There are five pieces: a bass clarinet duet, a piece for solo piano, a piece for electric guitar and harpsichord (with a title referring to the work of H.P. Lovecraft), and a couple of pieces for large ensemble. I’ll be working on getting more recordings of my work in the next year, but it’s come to my attention …

Continue Reading

Gordon Sellar: This is Your Life! & A Rock Song About Max Planck

gordsellar3 Comments

Long ago in a noosphere far, far away, I actually played the double bass in a kids’ orchestra, which was slightly humiliating since the lead violinists were 7 and 8 years old and I was in middle school. Anyway, I played double bass pretty good for someone who never quite learned to read the bass clef properly until later. (I knew that this dot on the staff meant that position on the fingerboard, or that alternate position, or even this third one, but I didn’t know what the name of the note was.) Maybe it was rebellion that led me …

Continue Reading

eclexys » Tunes (with me in ‘em)

gordsellar0 Comments

Seeing that Dabang Band CDs seem to be all sold out, and seeing that as far as I know, we have no outstanding legal responsibilities to Cavare (the label for the Product CD, who’s never disclosed how many CDs sold or how much money was made, or any other contractual stuff since the contracts were signed and disappeared) I’ve gone ahead and updated this site’s “Tunes (with me in ‘em)” subpage to include all tracks from the first two Dabang Band CDs. I’m going to confirm with the other band members and then if they’re okay with it, release it …

Continue Reading

Taxi Blues and Other Dabang News

gordsellar0 Comments

Here’s some surprising news! Myoung Jae, with whom I used to play in the Dabang Band, informed me that a film that played at the Busan film festival, titled Taxi Blues, is being prepared for general release in Korea. The film features a snippet of the band’s performance of the original song “Taxi Blues” (one of Myoung’s babies) as well as having the whole song play over the closing credits. So anyone in Korea, if you want to see my OST debut — meaning the first and probably last time anything I’m involved in gets onto an OST — make …

Continue Reading