the juanjo tapes - some remarks on producing a video track

For a video presenting fashion designer Juanjo Oliva from Madrid I had the pleasure to contribute the music. The video was produced by Carolina Melis (www.carolina@miokaro.com).

Carolina uses the pictures of photographer Regina Recht from Munich, who did a shooting with Junjo in Madrid for Silhouette Journal #75.

I´ve sent Carolina 4 tracks (TrafalgarStudio, MontseG., Nieves Alvares, ElCorteIngles) She choosed Trafalgar and Nieves. In the end we decided to  work with ElCorteIngles. I enriched ElCorteIngles for the video with  acousic guitar - for some spanish flavour- and some flutes coming form a Korg Kaossilator. But for the "Juanjo Tapes" I mixed a leaner version - stripped out the guitar and made the flutes appear only in the end.  Nieves Alvares is also enriched with sound from the Kaossilator.

This is the link to the video

https://www.facebook.com/100008316258793/videos/1584137821873411/

Some production notes of the music

My setup for the Juanjo video track:
- Yamaha Mu90r
- Yamaha FS1R
- Genoqs Nemo Sequencer

Diggin´deep into the Nemo was a essentialy for the composing process.

Alle the music for the video is based on the same basic structure.
4 pages of Nemo.
2 pages (8 tracks) in parallel for drum/percussion sounds
2 pages  connected in series for melody/synths.

The melodypart is 4 bars long: 2 bars A, 2 bars B
The drumpart is only 1 bar

I made extensive use of  so called step phrases. These are preprogrammed phrases of the Nemo which are triggered when a step is activated. Phrases can be rhythmical or tiny arpeggios. They can be randomized in some ways.

Step phrases can evolve over time and give the music a kind of a live played experience.

The more I worked with the Nemo the more randomisation can be heard in the music.
"Preparacion" for example sounds like a improvised piece for piano and drums. "Preparacion" suddenly happened when I turned the speed down to around 50 bpm.
"Licht" is a free floating tapestry of interwoven step sequences.

After the first 4 tracks for Carolina I´have worked with the Juanjo setup further on. The result was Licht, Preparacion, Aereoporto and Aeoroporto (depart).
And as said, all the music is build up on the same basic structure. Only voices and speed are changed, and tracks are muted.

Here is a kind of an album which resulted from the Junanjo project.


The Juanjo Tapes