Wednesday, March 2, 2011

His Master's Voice

Well, for my first real post, I'll give a little bit of a background about my music.

It all started back in 2008, I guess, when my high school got a grant and we received like 200 MacBooks for whatever reason. My math teacher at the time decided, because he absolutely loved music, that he was going to have all of his students go onto Garageband and make like a little one or two minute song using the sound clips already on there.  So, I did, and I was quite intrigued.

When I got home, I got on my sister's MacBook, went on Garageband, and started messing around.  Soon enough, I figured out how to make my own beats and melodies.  I think it was May of 2008 that I finished my first song without using any of the premade stuff: Calcutta (Bombay was finished beforehand, but it used some of the drum tracks that came with Garageband). It wasn't even until after I had made a few songs that I realized how much I liked it, and that I should have a "band" name.  I decided on His Master's Voice, which, I guess is a pretty...trademarked name already.  By the end of 2008, I had finished 15 songs.  Together, I call this my "Endeavor" demo; the order that the tracks are in are simply the order in which they were made. I never made an album cover for it.  Maybe I will at some point.

I didn't really wait long before I started on my first real project/album.  I had wanted to make a coherent album as opposed to just the collection of songs that was Endeavor.  I finished both the intro and outro tracks first, which I found a bit odd.  Over the course of the year I worked on tracks, my progress hindered quite a bit by going off to college.  I wanted to have recurring elements, cause I'm such a sucker for that in music, like in The Receiving End of Sirens' "Between the Heart and the Synapse" (which I highly recommend anyone to listen to).  Over the semester at school, I got some more inspirations to work on my music, namely not having many friends at the beginning of the semester (that changed though as the semester progressed), and my girlfriend of three years breaking up with me (that didn't change).  I'm not sure when exactly I finished the album (I think it was in January 2010), but sometime during the semester I decided I was going to title it "The Prince".  Lots of the song titles are taken from works of political theory: Leviathan, The Crisis, The Prince, among others. I really don't know why. I just liked the titles.

I took nearly a year off of making any music after I finished the album.  The next song I finished was "I Don't Know What to Do", which I finished Christmas Day 2010.  Currently, I'm working on two projects.  The main one is going to be an EP, the one I had mentioned in my previous post: Oaks.  The other one will be a full-length, with 12 tracks being the month names.  I hope to finish Oaks during the summer.  Here's a rough copy of the album art. I enjoy the simplistic layout.



The tentative tracklist for Oaks is:
  1. Chemists and Alchemists
  2. A Man for All Seasons
  3. Hollow
  4. Oaks
  5. I Don't Know What to Do
  6. Challenger

tl;dr:

I make electronica music.  I still do.  I'm making a new EP. Download my old stuff (hopefully the links still work):

Endeavor (2008?) http://www.mediafire.com/?yoa20hyaq7x03g0
The Prince (2010) http://www.mediafire.com/?cuupo4q18chawfl

Edit: I realize that these links are broken.  I'll re-upload them at my nearest convenience.
Second Edit: There's a couple songs on my myspace: http://www.myspace.com/xhismastersvoice .

Friday, February 25, 2011

In my mind.

Hello there, everyone.

My name's Jason, and I'll be using this blog as a means to write about just about anything.  I'm sure I'll be touching on a wide variety of topics.  Sometimes I'll be reviewing items I come into contact with, and why I like/don't like them.  Sometimes I might just post some cool stuff I find on the depths of the internet.

I'll also probably be posting some of my electronica music that I make in my spare time under the moniker "His Master's Voice".  Perhaps you'll like it, perhaps you won't, but give it a try once I post some! I'm currently working on my Oaks EP.  So, I'll be posting progress on that when it comes.

If anyone would like to hear any of the music I've already made, some's at www.myspace.com/xhismastersvoice.

Well, that's about all for now then.  I'll be making my first real post within the week, most likely.  Oh yeah, and I'll probably talk about chemistry stuff too, cause I'm really interested in that kinda stuff.  Hope y'all enjoy my blog.