Hi, I am wondering what you’re doing here. Probably got lost via some improbable link…
What counts here is music. I have always been a music addict, from hiphop to new metal, classical to jazz, drum’n’bass to techno, etc, etc…
So the only things I’ll put a few words on here are related to some of my music projects.
Synthesizers and Music Synthesis
Synths are the most flexible, diverse, complete and powerful music instruments. They can be as expressive, emotional than any classic instrument.
Of course, they can produce horrible, unpleasant sounds. But a badly played violin gives that feeling, too…
Anyways, I made on YT several videos, more or less technical, on synths. In particular, I made a video entitles “History of Synthesizers and Music Synthesis Techniques”, both in English and in French. They are visible in my YT channel under this playlist:
My latest compositions
Mad-X Songs are joint ventures between Merlin X and me. Merlin plays didjeridoo in these compositions, and sings in “Merlin’s Story”.
Bodudu-Dread-Squad mashup is the result of using SpectraLayers and Pigments to create a dub-like version of song by Dread Squad. I did it for my dreaded son-in-law Merlin, who seemed to like it…
Worlds Colliding pictures the collision of the youth imaginary world with the hard reality world of the adults. Alby is an English-Irish artist who does poetry, paintings, and music… He is very talented and we recorded this song in my studio. Originally the song was recorded just with acoustic guitar and a mic for the voice. I again used SpectraLayers and Pigments 3 (the most powerful synth I ever saw, by Arturia) to achieve this result, transforming the initial folk song into a more ethereal synthesized version.
Forever Love Again is a song about the impact of love in life. The first half is rather soft. I removed the second half of the original Forever Love song because it was too cheesy…
MK2020 is a tribute to the Maazaoui family, French family of hardworkers originating from Tunisia. With love… Note the synthesized voice which sounds pretty natural to me.
Brahms on Synth is an excerpt of the 1rst movement of Brahms’s 4th symphony, entirely done instrument by instrument, note by note using computer plugins (wavetable-synthesizer).
Concerto for flute and synths (intro), on the other hand is my own composition of a mix of natural flute with fully virtual analog synthesizer sounds.
Funktronic is a funky tune which I composed using modern synth technology (Arturia’s Pigments 2 synth in particular).
Lucky Jeff is a jazzy fantasy with odd time signatures (21/16 and 29/16 !). It uses the Retrologue synthesizer versatility (like a lot of my recent tracks), as well as the good-ol’ Korg MS-20.
Rising Sun is just a joke for my friends at Artistco who organized a contest based on the well-known “House of the New Rising Sun” hit. I did not participate in the cover contest but thought it would be fun to give my personal view…
You can also check these video soundtracks which I composed.
Electro - Dub - Pop - Classical - Chill out - Dance - Jazz2018-2024Latest compositions
Music variations on a jingle
I’ll just put one example of what I’ve done with my friend TJam for a web site.
The idea was to define a simple jingle, and then to derive from it a dozen of variations all using different styles of music, based on target topics/markets including Sports, Discotheques, Fashion, Events, Indoor Architecture, etc.
We had a lot of fun doing this.
Plus TJam is a great musician so he was able to put some interesting synth riffs that sound like real guitars or muted trumpets in some of those pieces (try Lounge for instance).
Check those numbers below and try to find the common theme in each piece…
Find the common theme...2008Variations on a Jingle
Variations on a theme by Tchaikovski
This was another interesting project, based on an existing theme from the NutCracker Suite by Tchaikovsky. This classical movement is definitely not the most well-known in the NutCracker suite, but that was the specific request (“Customer’s always right”) I had to deal with.
Another requirement was to make this sound like if we were in the 80’s, and I had to use old synths (notably the fantastic WaveStation) and mixing techniques from the late 80’s.
On top of that I had another musician friend, Bara, add metal and rock guitars to increase the crescendo effect à la “Boléro de Ravel” required to mimic the original (classical) version. And frankly speaking, I love thoze 80’s guitar riffs by Bara and his fantastic guitar solo à la Guitar Hero (not the game, the REAL guitar heroes!) … Mamma mia… what a sound !!!
Tchaikovski and Dr.Mad synths...2008Variations on a Theme by Tchaikovski
Music from the MadTrio
You will find below some examples of what we’ve done with TJam and Dr.No, 2 crazy musician brothers from the Marseille area.
Good ol’ funky stuff, not necessarily very modern but definitely cool, well…. according to our fans…..
Twas fun to play those preformances mainly recorded from live jam sessions, with exception of T2DS (Tribute to Dave Smith) which I named after the Synth Designer Genius of All Times as I used an Evolver and a Wavestation SR which Dave invented and are some of the most awesome synths ever designed.
I also used a MadPlayer (see below) in some of the tunes (Brazilou, Possible Mission) here with the MadTrio.
featuring TJam and Dr.No !2008Mad Trio tracks
Music from the MadPlayer
Finally and for curiosity sake I added to my playlist some of the songs that were created using the MadPlayer, which I invented with a few other engineers and musicians almost 20 years ago now, and which composes music automatically and merges it with audio samples.
In the examples below I used a MadPlayer to create remixes of the In Da Club hit by 50cent. 50 is one of the best rappers in the hood (I mean on the planet) and his rhymes flow so ez that you can use all kinds of styles on top of them…
....automatically created by the MadPlayer2003MadPlayer songs
All music and sounds in these examples (except 50’s rap samples!) are by the MadPlayer.
Videos !
Here are a couple of video clips that I did to illustrate some of my compositions…
“Melancholia Intermede”
“Humanity”
A biblical vision of what Humanity looks like from a distance. If you don’t subscribe to the divine God concept, call it “Nature” or “the Universe” or whatever. The point here is to describe our History, and give some hope that there is Goodness that will eventually win and put things back in order even when some of our human events make us feel confused and pessimistic…