This latest composition project of mine was an exercise in time restraint. I said you get a minute make it epic sounding. So this is what I came up with. The idea of the sample is a gradual build in energy until the big finish. I imagine some sort of triumpal return from a quest or something, in a movie or game. Maybe you see something different, I don’t know…either way I hope you enjoy it.
Ryan
Hola people. I have finally released a instrumental track I’ve been working on for the last couple of months. It is a piano based ambient kind of sounding thing with the theme of relaxing and grooving. Let me know what you think.\
Made with Reason 5 and all of it’s wonderful sounds along with some tweaking on my part.
If you’re interested in downloading the track you can do so here:
http://www.ryanfaas.bandcamp.com
Enjoy,
Ryan
Hello world and Happy New Year! I’ve been experimenting with my music writing programs lately and seeing what they and I can do. This latest track of mine is meant to be a chase scene in a film/tv show or wherever else you might see it fitting.
Please let me know what you think about it, here, or you can put comments right on the track in soundcloud.
If you’re looking to use the track for any kind of media please contact me and we’ll set it up.
Please check out my other work around the site, there is always more coming.
Ryan
Well I’ve been up to a few things over November and into December here. Biggest and best thing I was working on was the score for a short film. It is a film short called “Scattered” by Carmela Serrano and his about a girl going crazy and killing herself. Not the happiest of films but it was fun to write the music for. There is no audio in the film so it is pretty much just my score carrying it along with the picture.
You can’t actually watch the film yet as it is making the rounds of film competitions and festivals. Once that is done it will be up on youtube and I’ll put a link to it.
In the mean time if you would like to hear the score I wrote in its entirety (about 8 minutes) go here.
I also sold a new composition for use in a meditation CD. It’s a slow hypnotic piece with the ability to calm you down. So exactly what was ordered. I’ll post that up to listen to shortly.
In other news my time with the band has come to an end. The rest of the band decided that I wasn’t a good fit anymore and gave me the boot. I’d say I was upset but I’m not. Since the lack of a tour and firing a useless manager way back in April, the band never took a turn for…well.. anything. I was planning on quitting 6 months or more ago but that was right around the time when we recorded the song I wrote. At that point I needed to stick around and make sure the copyright issues were taken care of as the business side of music is not the rest of the bands strong point. The copyright issues are still not fully taken care of and I’ve come to expect nothing less in that area.
October and the lack of anything with the band, (aside from shooting a pointless music video) really solidified the fact that what little time I was still putting into the band was a waste, lots of pipe dreaming going on with no action. It will be interesting to see what becomes of them in the future.
In the few weeks since the band ended for me I’ve been worlds more productive and written a lot of new stuff that will be up for sale shortly. I’ve already got a bunch of inroads into selling my compositions and enjoying my new found freedom.
Stay tuned for the next post on where to buy some new music, including film score tracks.
Peace,
Ryan
>Hello World. I’m going to take part in a music video shoot tomorrow for our single “Get’s Me Moving”. Gonna spend the day in a club shooting a club dance scene, because well, that’s what the song is about. We’re lucky enough to get to use a club in Whistler for the day, have some dancers out to fill up said club, and then we’re going to “play” our song over and over and over… should be an interesting experience none the less as I’ve never been in a video with this much work going into it. The results should be cool.
Also have a show coming up. As of right now we’re playing as a band again at the Libra Room on Commercial drive on October 28th, 9 till Midnight. Come and grab a seat and a few beers and enjoy some music, covers and originals. This will be the 4th time we’ve all played at the Libra Room. 2 of those shows having just happened this last month, September, on the 10th and the 24th, both were packed houses and a ton o fun.
I’ll let you know how the video shoot goes and when to expect to be able to see it.
In the mean time the single is still available on Itunes just search for Gets Me Moving under Rachel Thom and download it, you’ll enjoy it.
Ryan
>Well I have been busy and have thus slacked on this blog. The band hasn’t been slacking, well not too much, and many things have happened in the last few months.
Back in May/June we had a couple of gigs. One was at the Media Club in downtown Vancouver. We were part of a 4 band/group show for the evening. It was loud and it was fun. We had dancers out, played the new single and all in all it went quite well.
Following that up we played a battle of the bands at the TNB nightclub in POCO. This was not the best gig in the world. To start we were all supposed to play 30-45 minuteish sets and then the next band went. The first band, which was mainly a crazy weird/bad singer played for 1.5 hours. She just wouldn’t stop, all the other bands were not impressed. We went on last so didn’t finish playing until somewhere midnightish or later. Fun note the TNB night club is an old country bar. They have not changed any of the decor yet so it is still an old country bar. Played some pool that helped save the evening a bit.
In June we played outside at the Car free festival on Denman street in downtown Van. That was fun. Good weather had a nice big crowd coming and going and even some dancers. One cute little girl with a giant balloon hat had a good time dancing around. There was also the strange gay guy dancing around that was a whole different kind of entertainment that got creepier as the songs went on. There came a point that I wonder if the crowd was watching us or him dancing…
I’ve got some videos of playing at the festival on youtube and will eventually have a few more to go up. Just look for my channel: Ryan Faas
Finally our latest gig was at the Libra room in Vancouver this past Thursday. It’s not a very big place and has volume restraints which is tough for a band such as us but the show was good. We all fit on the little stage and did a whole lot of covers and most of our originals along the way. Management liked us and hopefully we’ll be coming back once or twice a month on a Friday or Saturday. Having a regular gig will be pretty nice and hopefully open up some new doors or at least polish us up as an act.
The single is still out there and available for purchase. Check my last post for the link or go onto Itunes and look for ‘Gets Me Moving’ under the artist ‘Rachel Thom’. We want to see everybody with the single on their Ipods/Phones etc so get downloading.
I also had a few solo gigs playing a wedding on Grouse Mountain and a party in Richmond. Note to self for the future,if playing on Grouse Mountain I will be charging a lot more. It takes way too long to get your stuff up and down via gondola. I may have only had to play for an hour but it took that long and then some to get down. It is utter chaos up there on a weekend. Now I know.
Taking a break for a month then back to the action
Peace,
Ryan
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>Hello one and all. I greet you this finally sunny summer’s day with news from the band. We have released our first single together! It is called……”Gets Me Moving” and hopefully it will do just that for you.
If you’d like to hear a teaser you can check out the video below.
Better yet, you can purchase it on itunes and help support the band. Best part of buying it on itunes is that it’s cheap and you can gift it to all your friends and on and on until the whole world has heard it.
check out the itunes link here:
http://itunes.apple.com/ca/album/gets-me-moving-single/id444612305
If you’d like to see how recording the single went then check out the previous blog “Gets Me Moving Recording Day”
More news to come soon, we’ve had a few gigs in the past month, but no time to post stuff from my end.
Enjoy!
Faas
http://itunes.apple.com/ca/album/gets-me-moving-single/id444612305
>
Well a few Fridays ago was recording in the studio day for the band’s new hit single to be, “Get’s Me Moving”. It’s a pop dance tune, about well, dancing. I wrote the music back in late October, brought it to the band in November, and a few months go by, add some other instrument parts and some vocals and boom we’ve got a sweet single. It’s exactly what it should be, catchy and well it gets you moving 
Recording was a very long day at Bully’s studios in New Westminister. I got up at 6:30, yes in the morning, to get to the studio for an 8 oclock start. Turns out there was no rush hour traffic that morning so I should have slept for another half an hour. Jon and I both came to this realization as we waited outside the studio. We got into the studio a little after 8 and met our recording engineers for the day, Mike, who runs the place, and Phi (whom I thought got introduced as Feet, turns out his name is not Feet, which is good, who wants to be named Feet?).
The plan was for me to lay down a scratch track that Phil could put some live drums too, but we scratched that plan as the digital drums sounded pretty good. Phil did add some live cymbals though. So since I have the lead part of the song and it’s kinda based around the keyboard part I recorded first. It was fun. Mike is very good at fixing the few timing mistakes I stuck in. I’m proud to say though, that out of my 3 separate keyboard parts most were played in time and one of them I did in one take.
So after about an hour or so I was done recording. Jon went next and grooved out on his bass as he usually does and it sounded great. While this is all taking place the rest of us are watching, giving feedback, and going back and forth to the insanely hard arcade game from way back when in the lounge. After Jon finished guitar man Alexis got his set up working and layed down multiple guitar tracks that created a neat layering sound in his part. The whole time of course Mike and Phi are tweaking things and putting it all in time and in general doing a great job.
By this time we’re all hungry as it’s like 12:30 so we broke for lunch. Yay food.
Following some lunch back into the studio and Rachel finally got to sing. Now the song sounded whole. It definitely took the longest to do the vocal tracks though. These singers, I tell ya, always picking at this or that We helped in the critiquing part too which made it take longer. She put in some background vocals as well so that took some more time, but spiced up the recorded version of the song pretty good.
Finally all the tracks were recorded and sounding good, then the real work, mixing, started and by then we’re all very tired. (musicians don’t do well getting up early). Mixing of course was the most important part and involved a lot of very intent listening to make sure all the parts were balanced right and had some good effects on them and man were we all drained after two hours of doing that. I was pretty picky about getting the sound good as this is where it all comes together for that nearly final product and you gotta do it right.
Mike was great during mixing and at the end we got 3 separate tracks, the actual song, the radio edit, and a vocal free edition. The radio edit will work for the radio but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed in how much got cut to make the song shorter. So when you hear it on the radio some day go promptly and find it on itunes or similar places and download the full song and tell everyone how great it is and then we’ll get the radio to play the full version instead Here’s hoping.
Yay, we’re done hanging out in this little recording room and get to go home and sleep. Just had to make it home before the sleeping part. Song is off to mastering and I’ll let you all know when it’s somewhere to purchase and of course to listen to.
If you’ve made it to the end of this blog well you’re in luck, here’s a video with bits and pieces of the day of recording. It has the evolution of a song while recording and even gives you a little bit of a teaser of the song, enjoy.
Please tell the world through all those little sharing widgets and toolbars you should all have installed in your browsers.
Peace out for now,
Faas
>Hello Music listeners and by default readers. I’ve just recently finished the post production on a piece/song I’ve composed. It’s called “What Would We Do” and is a club dance song. I used to love making these on my keyboard back in the day but the computer now is a much better tool.
Please take a listen below and give me some feed back as it would be much appreciated.
Don’t forget to like the post, share, follow, email and let someone else hear the song in some form or another.
Currently trying to record another composition in a totally different genre. May take a while, but it’ll get here eventually.
Peace,
Ryan
“What Would We Do” by Ryan Faas
>First of all this post has absolutely nothing to do with Dr. Seuss, but we all like Dr. Seuss. There has been quite a lot of details in my musical life that I thought I would update. First off, check out my fancy new Facebook like button at the top of the post, please click it, I’d like to increase my reader base in Russia.
Let’s see. The band has undergone some changes lately. We have let our manager go and are now striking out on our own to get some things done. First on the list is to use up some free recording time Rachel won a while back, so we’re going into the recording studio on April 8th to lay down “Get’s Me Movin”. It’s a fun dance tune that I wrote the music for and Rachel stuck some lyrics to and the rest of the band threw some killer parts down for. It’s a fun catchy song that will hopefully get us some radio play when it’s all ready to go.
In the rest of April we’ve got some gigs, April 14th we’re playing a battle of the bands so to speak in Port Coquitlam and on the 21 at the Crystal in Whistler. Possibly another Whistler gig in there at the end of April, TBD.
In my solo music career I’ve been working on some compositions to fill up my portfolio as of late. I will post those up here in the near future when they’re listening ready. Expect to hear a Club Dance tune and a classical piano piece to start. In the meantime if you’d like to hear some other recordings of mine from the past head on over to my website,
www.ryanfaas.ca
or my facebook page
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Ryan-Faas-Jazz-PianistKeyboardsComposerTeacher/144417212285282
Please share the info and the dream, like,tweet,copy & paste, and repeat,
Peace,
Ryan
No shows booked at the moment.