Category Archives: The Future of Music

The Future of Music, was a unique album that I wrote, it was the first album that I did completely in Logic. It was also the first album that I produced. It was my first real mastery of composition, in that many of the songs prior, would have been scraps, but in this album, I worked them until they turned into completed songs.

Onitod – Simple Inspiration [ Album: The Future of Music ]

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Simple Inspiration, is the notion that hard things do not have to be complicated, that not all journeys are difficult, and that perspective is everything.

If you are dealing with cancer or a terminal illness, you know what a bleak future might look like. But the time you have now can be seen as utterly more precious.

I do not like to look at life, with the idea, that the future is one-hundred percent set in stone. Some may like that, when life is going swell, and everything is looking up. However, when a downturn in life, changes the outlook, I do not like to be trapped in a no-happy-ending-story. Therefore I choose to adopt a set of beliefs, that look for and pursue that which is opportunity, possibility, and infinite hope.

No matter how much your future may look like a dead-end, there is no better day than today, to decide that you can become something more.

I saw a family a few months ago, and they had two kids. The youngest was as healthy as could be, but the oldest was in a wheelchair completely disabled, in a sort of M.S. form. I could not take my eyes off of the family, as I looked at them, and realized that they all had a love for each other that was purely genuine. I enjoyed just sitting in the restaurant and watching them give and receive love freely.

I felt their story, as I ate my dinner, and thought about their journey as a family. I could see their love for each other in the tenderness that they treated each other with. I could see how they equally and individually loved each of their children.

I know the question, that some would ask, if your one child was born disabled, why would you have another child. But that would be ignorant to the love that this family shared. To them they were grateful for everything that the Lord had blessed them with, and because they were thankful with a grateful heart, they were able to enjoy all that they had to the most joyous peak of capacity.

To see one’s days as numbered, as I was talking with someone recently, I explained how I was more grateful to have someone pass away, with a long-term or known date of death. At least in that way, I would have had my time to say good-bye and move on, asking last minute questions, and allowing a live grieving process to take place.

I can honestly say, that some of the worst circumstances to come to mind, is the sudden death, or when you go to look up a long past friend, to find out that they died, and are no longer reachable. In these types of ways, I see them as worse as cancer, because there was no letting go. One minute someone is here, and the next they are gone forever.

Perhaps, when you are faced with a dreadful situation, you will reflect on some encouraging ways to look at your life now, and find some simple inspiration.

Simple Inspiration is a song about short and sweet. Sometimes melodies last a while in your life, sometimes they are short and sweet. So no matter how long the melody lasts in your life, enjoy the one you are currently listening to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gS-mYGrl7JU

Onitod – Passing You By [ Album: The Future of Music ]

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Passing you by, is a song that is in kind order. It is about a friendly passing as you see someone on the way to the market, or as you see them on the street. This song is a friendly pondering, and delight of enjoyment in seeing a friend of familiar face or remembering a sweet soul, as you walk to work, class, lunch, or where ever you may be off to go.

The Future of Music was an album that I put together, in which I first learned how to save compositions, by bending the rules, and making slight modifications to the arrangements, I was able to make the songs better, and more enjoyable to listen to.

In life, sometimes we get thinking, its all or nothing, it either works or it doesn’t, sometimes the difference between working and not working, is very small, most of these songs took 1-2 extra days of work, to get them from failed compositions, to enjoyable compositions.

Sometimes a little extra work, can go a long way, and that’s half the discovery and adventure to find out, which ones need just a little bit more work, and which ones need to go back to square one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6DV9sfVEmc

Onitod – Submersible Dance Machine [ Album: The Future of Music ]

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Submersible Dance Machine, is a pop/rock/electro track, that combines elements of EDM, pop, Jazz, Rock, and Alternative.

This was the first album I published under the name Onitod. Even though I had written a lot of the music over a 10 year period of time, I really did not publish any of it till starting in 2007/2008. I had been writing music well enough to publish since 1997/1998, but the timing never fell into place, it never came together, till 2007 when things started moving, and then I started publishing in 2008. So most of the music was just sitting on a hard drive, or on a tape, or in a corner, on a cd, and not being used or listened to, it was just collecting, and nothing was happening. Then in 2007, I got Logic Pro, and it made sense to me. I had protools, but nothing came out better than it went in, and the tools did not work well. I switched to Motu digital performer, but that was worse, it was over complicated. When I got to Logic Pro, all of a sudden things made sense, and I started getting high quality output. It was the first time, I ever recorded something, and the playback was better than what I recorded. I was amazed, and on the mac, my productivity exploded. The first couple of songs I wrote, were not meant to be turned into songs, I just wrote them to learn how to use the software, to see what the software could do. Those practice songs became the entire album: The Future of Music. It was written and recorded in a little over one week. It was the first time, I sequenced on something different than my trusty roland mc50mk2.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqFJAn5qkM8

Onitod – Beg To Differ [ Album: The Future of Music ]

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Beg to Differ, was the first song that I recorded, produced, and mastered purely in Logic Pro. Featuring the driving vintage forces of sound from the Roland TR-909, JD-800, JD-990, MKS-80, Juno-106, Juno-1, Juno-2, and some other favorites.

Beg to Differ, was part of my spiritual journey. It was the part of the journey, when I had not realized it was in fact a journey, and a spiritual one. In this time, I had found a discontentment, which had built up over the last 10 years, about running into blockades with writing. What some commonly call, writers block. I was determined, that I needed to overcome this problem that I had to deal with, and started to very much desire a new way of dealing with song writing.

This track was first recorded in MOTU Digital Performer. Using a SoundCraft LX7, and an Art TubeFile8, I found that I was not getting the sound in the computer, to match the sound from the LX7 directly, and after many failed attempts to get things working, I switched from MOTU Digital Performer, to Logic Pro.

That was the last time I used MOTU Digital Performer. Once I started with Logic Pro, I had found my victory. Immediately I was able to reproduce the sounds from my LX7, into Logic, with great transparency. Then I was also able to fix the track, and arrange it, for the first time in my career, to my exact liking. This became my first hit, using Logic, with performance and flexibility to boot, I started writing many many songs, and this one was the beginning of it all.

When you face a trial in life, it is best to know, that all trials can be overcome. Many ways to overcome, do not come, by traditional methods, but they do come by diligence and perseverance. Hang on, hold on, and expect a better outcome, and surely, you will seek it and find it.

The future of music, for me, was that I stopped throwing away and walking away from sequences, that I had made. It was the first album I did in Logic Pro, and it was the frist set of songs, where I started thinking of how to solve the musical problems, rather than walk away from them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5clpZitz8I

Onitod – Mellow Frequency [ Album: The Future of Music ]

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Mellow Frequency, is one of the top tracks off the album The Future of Music, It is an electronic album, with edm themes and components. It features guitar, drums, bass, and synths. It features analog synths, as well as soft-synths and samplers.

This was made with Logic Pro 8, and recorded in 2007. It was designed for commercial, and pop use.

Featuring an easy to listen and hypnotic tone, that draws you into the composition, and encourages you to chill, and stay a while.

This album was the first album I recorded and arranged/composed on Logic. Before that, I had been working on protools, and a hardware sequencer, a Roland MC50-MK2. This album combined drums, bass, guitar, and synths together, using guitar amp models from within Logic 8.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EC3xr1Z386I

Onitod – Life is Fragile [ Album: The Future of Music ]

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Life is Fragile, is not only a term that is true, in one second, life can change quickly. However, in this album, it had to do with music being fragile. There is a thin line, between making a song, and writing a bunch of notes, and hoping they work out.

This album, was a groundbreaking album for me. I had started on a Roland MC-50MK2, and tried to go through route of protools only to be frustrated. As a primarily midi composer, I found protools to not help, and I had to resume on my mc-50mk2, using a sync channel to keep multiple parts recorded together.

Being limited by the MC-50MK2, was the fact, that it was brutally hard and difficult to edit on the unit. The machine was very reliable, but very cumbersome to work with.

I had a small endeavor with MOTU’s performer, writing a single song in the software, before I donated it to someone else. The recording using that software was so horrible, that I decided MOTU was not the way to go.

Finally in 2007, I found Logic, or rather I got a Mac, and then I bought Logic. Logic was the culmination of every tool that I had needed, and it was accessible to me all at once. All the quantization problems that I had were gone. The ability to change and rearrange, and transpose midi notes, all of a sudden easy to do. What took days and hours to accomplish in the Roland MC-50MK2 was minutes in Logic.

It was at this time that I really found my software, and what was even more, is that in the preceding 10 years, I had written 800 sequences in that MC-50mk2, but most of those ended in sorrow, because I did not posses the tools to go and fix the tracks, and make them correctly. Since I could not fix the midi, I was not able to use many of them, so when I hit a snag, I started a new sequence and hoped for better results.

In December of 2007, I started out with Logic, and I determined, that I was going to start writing songs, that I would find a way to finish them, and complete them, and no longer leave them as half done, or thrown to sorrow. That is what The Future of Music was for me. The first songs that I wrote in Logic, where for the first time in my composing history, was able to fix, and get past the blocks that I normally got stuck on.

It was the first time, in my career, that I moved past, all the stumbling blocks, and started moving around them, and past them. I started defeating my problems, and finding innovative ways to arrange the music, and really make some great music.

The album is really about my break through, in recording and composing, in that now I had the leverage to make choices, and solve problems, and move ahead.

Life is fragile, but life can also be adventurous, and exciting, and fun.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppod1ghM-t8