Category: Music

Video / Music – Destined Soundtrack

June 1, 2012
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Destined Soundtrack Cover

Destined Soundtrack Cover

I am happy to announce that the soundtrack to Destined has officially been released.  You can find it pretty much anywhere that offers digital downloads (Amazon, iTunes, Spotify, etc.)

Listen to some quality composing from Mr. Kevin Stahl with some production over-sight from me while I put the entire films’ audio together.

The 15 orchestrated tracks were mixed at Abbey Road by Jake Jackson, and the soundtrack includes one of my tunes “Unclean” (which was used as background music in the bar scene).

 

Music – What I Wanted

May 18, 2011
Music
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Credits:

Written: Jon Delise
Lyrics: Jon Delise, Brian Schwarz
Vocals: Jon Delise, Brian Schwarz
Guitars: Jon Delise
Drums: Chris Potako
Cello: Sachino the Cellonator
Bass: Mike Steel
Recording/Mixing/Mastering: Chris Potako

Finished: 2008 – Refinished: 2011

This song was meant to be a compact and efficient foot-tapper.

Jon wrote this with his band Tragedy Fails.  He came to me because he wanted to record a “band version” of this tune.

It had been a long time since I had to “collaborate” with a bass player as a drummer.  In all of our other recordings, I always played both.  It’s very easy to do both actually.  You tend to place bass notes in the same spots you place drum hits.

Recording the cello parts with Sachino was quite a bit of fun as well.  He’s one of those guys that you can simply sing a part to, and without missing a beat, he’ll play it exactly how you wanted it on the first try.

This tune was revisited this year because Jon felt like our original version wasn’t quite complete.  He wanted to fill it out with some electric guitar parts and he had a few lyric updates.  It took a bit of convincing, but I finally relented.  We also added the context of the beginning of the song being recorded with a room-mic.

Overall, I’m glad we made the changes.  The song is quite a bit more “full” now.

 

Music – You Make Life Beautiful

January 28, 2011
Music
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Credits:

Written: Brian Schwarz, Jon Delise
Lyrics: Brian Schwarz, Jon Delise
Vocals: Jon Delise
Guitars: Jon Delise
Piano: Chris Potako
Recording/Mixing/Mastering: Chris Potako

Finished: 2007

Brian wrote this as a very slow country song.  We had an opportunity to send this tune off for a potential co-write… tomorrow.  So we had to move fast.

We worked on the song for a few hours and it wasn’t really coming together.  We were about to quit for the night when I jokingly hit my double-speed button.  That was it.  We were then re-energized because we finally had the direction for the song.

We laid down all of the vocal tracks and guitar parts and called it for the night (it was about 4 AM).  The next day I woke up early with the challenge of having to write a piano part and finish the mix in about 4 hours.  I fumbled around for quite a bit before finally landing on a bit of a Hornsby ripoff.

All in all, the simplicity of this tune was a nice change from the previous song we recorded.

 

Music – Unclean

January 27, 2011
Music
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Credits:

Written: Brian Schwarz
Lyrics: Brian Schwarz
Vocals: Brian Schwarz
Guitars: Brian Schwarz, Chris Potako
Drums: Chris Potako
Bass: Chris Potako
Recording/Mixing/Mastering: Chris Potako

Finished: 2006

This concept came out of nowhere one night while we were just jamming after a night of practicing other stuff.  It was originally quite a bit slower and only an acoustic guitar and a bass. We decided to work it up to a “full” rock recording.

We decided to record it and focus on layering guitars and getting the drums right (which took me a few weeks to figure out).  Drums suck to learn to mix.  You have a lot of EQing and compressing to do.

I’m quite happy with how it came out!  The bass drum has a decent punch, and the snare has a good thwack. The overall mix is large and distorted, but clean.

 

Music – The Inside

January 26, 2011
Music
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Credits:

Written: Jon Delise, Chris Potako
Lyrics: Jon Delise
Vocals: Jon Delise, Brian Schwarz
Guitars: Jon Delise
Bass: Chris Potako
Recording/Mixing/Mastering: Chris Potako

Finished: 2005

This tune sort of came about by accident.  I put a drum loop behind Hold On as a joke.  When Jon heard it, he started playing the opening riff for this tune.  I instantly knew it had to be our next recording.

Jon didn’t have a bridge, so he turned to me for that.  I’m proud of the saddest sounding E-major ever as the final chord.

After we had all the pieces together, this tune was pretty simple to record. 2 acoustic guitars, a bass, and a sloppy mono drum-loop.

The concept behind this recording was to be loose, and that it was good to not play rigidly…  To keep it a little dirty on purpose.  Really, it was the opposite of Hold On.

And if I may pat myself on the back a little… I love the bass in this tune, primarily because I got to rip-off some of Rob DeLeo’s (of STP) motown fills. Sadly, my Epiphone wasn’t going to cut it for this tune. I needed a bass with actual character, so I borrowed a friend’s Schecter Model T (thanks Bryan!).