Programmer by Day...
Musician By Night...Welcome to the website of Brett McCoy
Enter freely of your own will and leave behind some of the happiness you bring
Latest News
Ronnie James Dio
Published: 16 May 2010, 6:47 pmRonnie James Dio died today. He was 67 years old. He has been my favorite metal singer for decades, since I first started listening to Black Sabbath in the early 80s as a teenager. My first first rock concert was Black Sabbath, in 1981, during the Mob Rules Tour, with Dio on vocals, Tony Iommi on guitar (of course), Geezer on bass and Vinny Appice on drums. This is the exact same lineup that regrouped a couple of years ago as 'Heaven and Hell' and toured the world playing Dio-fronted Black Sabbath as well as some new tunes.
Celebrity deaths never bothered me much. Sometimes I was a little bummed, like when Farrah Fawcett died last summer (2009) or when Peter Steele of Type O Negative passed away earlier this year, but it never affected me much. But Dio's death has really devastated me emotionally. He was such an influence on me and my own music (with, of course, Black Sabbath but his solo material as well). While I will always love the Ozzy-era Sabbath, there's no question in my mind that Dio is by far the better singer and songwriter. I am happy I saw Dio perform live something like 4 or 5 times in the past decade, including with Heaven and Hell, and every show was nothing short of amazing. I saw him perform at the 9:30 Club in 2003 or so, with King's X, and I was a mere 10 feet away from Dio the entire show. Will never forget that one!
RIP Stargazer[ Read Comments ]
Alhazred
Published: 18 April 2010, 9:44 pmAlhazred is an on-again/off again progressive metal project I have been attempting to get off the ground for several years. I think one thing that has held it back was lack of focus, it meandered around as a semi-symphonic thing, then a progressive rock thing, then more as a doom metal thing. I had always wanted to blend ethnic sounds (like Middle Eastern) with metal and thought Alhazred would be the vehicle for this.
But after more reflection, I want to get the project focused and follow along with what we had done for the debut CD (the EP titled "Death Waits Dreaming"), which had more of the progressive doom metal sound. I think I will continue in the direction, heavy heavy stuff, with the Lovecraftian influence (among others).
Originally the next Alhazred CD was going to be heavily Middle Eastern in nature, but I think I am goig to spin off my Middle Eastern stuff into a separate project, titled "Born of Fire" (after the piece I did for the arranging class). Here I will indulge in instrumental pieces based on Middle Eastern and possibly Medieval music, and it will be completely separate from Alhazred.[ Read Comments ]
Film Scoring 101
Published: 18 April 2010, 9:36 pmMy arranging class ended at the end of March. I got an A! Here is my final project:
http://www.alhazred.com/_music/born_of_fire.mp3
I am now deep in the world of Film Scoring 101. No music yet produced for this class, we are mainly covering the pre-production aspects of writing a film score, analyzing specific scenes, determining what function the music will have and spotting scenes (breaking them down for specific music cues).
I have started work on Emily Baxter's new film... developed a neat new music box theme for it. The animation in this film is gorgeous. Our good buddy Don Carlson is doing the sound design for this one.
Then I have something for Nick Hilligoss to finish (he is the creator of the famous stop-motion short 'The Animator') -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bl-MynjnCU
And then my animator friend Ron Cole has a little something...
And another guy asked me this morning to help him on a musical score for another stop-motion short...[ Read Comments ]
Music projects galore
Published: 16 March 2010, 5:20 pmThe music projects have started piling up on me. Going to be a busy Spring:
1. A "tribal fusion" bellydance piece, which is my second project for the arranging class plus is for a friend of mine who specifically requested this music. Instrumentally, I am using electric guitar, bass, dumbek, synth, plus oud and kemenche (the latter is an Iranian bowed instrument). Everything will be recorded as live instruments except the oud and kemenche, for which I am using sampled instruments from the EastWest/Quantum "Ra" and "Silk Road" collections.
2. 3 (THREE) separate scores for stop-motion shorts, two of which are Ray Harryhausen birthday tribute pieces (but can't say what they are specifically because they are secret). The third is a new film from animator Emily Baxter, for whom I had previously done score work (Judder).
3. And there is also the ongoing Alhazred music![ Read Comments ]
Take down warning
Published: 6 March 2010, 9:39 amWell, I got a nice little email from blogger.com yesterday about my arrangement of Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance" (which has been subsequently removed).
"Blogger has been notified, according to the terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), that certain content in your blog is alleged to infringe upon the copyrights of others. As a result, we have reset the post(s) to "draft" status. (If we did not do so, we would be subject to a claim of copyright infringement, regardless of its merits. The URL(s) of the allegedly infringing post(s) may be found at the end of this message.) This means your post - and any images, links or other content - is not gone. You may edit the post to remove the offending content and republish, at which point the post in question will be visible to your readers again.
A bit of background: the DMCA is a United States copyright law that provides guidelines for online service provider liability in case of copyright infringement. If you believe you have the rights to post the content at issue here, you can file a counter-claim. For more information on our DMCA policy, including how to file a counter-claim, please see http://www.google.com/dmca.html.
The notice that we received from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) and the record companies it represents, with any personally identifying information removed, will be posted online by a service called Chilling Effects at http://www.chillingeffects.org. We do this in accordance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Please note that it may take Chilling Effects up to several weeks to post the notice online at the link provided.
The IFPI is a trade association that represents over 1,400 major and independent record companies in the US and internationally who create, manufacture and distribute sound recordings (the "IFPI Represented Companies").
Sincerely,
The Blogger Team"
I leave you instead with Nina Paley singing a nice little song. Wonder if I'll get reported for this also. The joke will be on them!
http://vimeo.com/3698663[ Read Comments ]
