Nearing the end…

I’ll make this very quick as it’s already pretty late here…

This Friday marks the end of this semester and the beginning of working full time as a web developer at Dom & Tom Inc. It’s a fantastic job, hopefully a fantastic career, and involves tons of awesome and forward thinking people. It’ll be a great environment to be in instead of school… and will also allow me more time to work on music and hopefully land some freelance gigs while I’m at it. Perhaps a remix, an original track here or there, and working on my latest album (however slowly).

I’ll whip up something more substantial on my next train ride out to the suburbs this weekend. In the mean time, study hard, wish me luck – and check out my SoundCloud account. It’s got everything I’ve ever done up there!

Another Full Chip

I’ve realized over the last few months that I’m, in one sense or another, living a dream. In a lot of ways it didn’t turn out the way I expected, but they’re all good ways. As for right now, the biggest challenge and the toughest thing to cope with is time management. Holy shit do I have a lot on my plate – and I don’t play the victim in this: I know it’s all of my own asking. It’s all exciting work, though… that’s for sure. Here’s a list of the upcoming stuff that I’m working on:

1. 2 minute commercial “jingle” or theme for a men’s facial lubricant… which… ya know. That pays. (due in two weeks)
2. Remix / arrangement of a track from the “Splatterhouse” remake soundtrack (due in two weeks)
3. Finishing up the collaboration between myself, Akashic Grenade and Royb0t (due the in two days)
4. Arrangement of the William Karlins “Graphic Mobile” piece for the Electro-Acoustic ensemble at school (due in two weeks)
5. Finishing up the arrangement for the “Athene’s Theory of Everything” soundtrack (luckily I pick my own due date for that)
6. Finishing tracks for either an upcoming EP or just starting an entirely new album.
7. Practicing, arranging and composing for the new band I’ve joined with some friends from back home – it’s a lot of fun and very rewarding, but unfortunately is one of many things I’ve got going on.

I can’t decide if I should learn to just cope with this kind of hectic lifestyle or if I should eliminate some of this from my plate. In the next few weeks two big projects will be gone, but who knows what’ll happen between now and then.

I’m not complaining, at least I don’t think I am. I still feel like a stupid kid in a lot of ways. As long as I get to keep making music… but not just any music – my music.

Stay tuned for the stuff I’ve mentioned above as just about all of it will be published on line by yours truly.

Thanks for reading and study hard.

Internet Music

I just thought I’d make a quick post with some of the CC music I’ve found lately that I really like.

iD.EOLOGY put out a new compilation (which I was lucky enough to be featured on) which features some electro & techno tracks from around the globe. It’s got some pretty wild stuff on there… congruent with the usual iD.EOLOGY style.

If you’re looking for some relatively heavy but still very insightful, interesting downtempo stuff, I’d give Strad a shot. Straight from Budapest, he brings me back to my DJ Krush / DJ Cam obsession days, mixed with some of the intensity and creativity of Amon Tobin.

And last but not least, this group of guys from Italy started a netlabel called Starquake Records… and it’s absolutely fantastic. They’ve just released their first compilation, but I’m sure we’ll see plenty more creative, funky and heavy disco from them in the future. Keep your eyes on these guys!

Hope this is enough interesting music to tie some of you kids over. I’m in the middle of a ton of projects right now, none of which I’m going to divulge too much information on… but I’m also planning on doing a site redesign pretty soon. Stay tuned for all that stuff… thanks for reading and study hard!

Project ASC: Athene’s Theory of Everything

Here it is: the project that Athene and Reese have been busting their asses on for several months now – and were kind enough to ask me to create the score. To be completely honest – I sat down a handful of nights and cranked out some really ambient stuff, whether it was instrumental or just a lot of washy sound-design, I gave Reese everything I had whenever he asked. However, the real credit to it being so coherent with the documentary, narration and context goes to Reese. All I did was make the tracks – I couldn’t have scored it myself if I wanted to as they were generally trying their best to keep the real information hush-hush. There will be a link for Torrent download very soon, so stay tuned!

Please enjoy the painstaking work these guys have put into it and – above all – keep an open mind.

Study hard.

Out With The New, In With The Old

I’ve been making music… roughly since about age ten. The peak of my introduction to composing music, which happened to be electronic in nature, was at the age of 12 when my Mother bought our first family computer, shared only by my Mother and myself. This left a lot of time for me to tinker around and not only learn how to use a computer, but how it worked and – most importantly – how I could use it to be creative. The most fun I had was making music.

A few years went by and I started using ACID, then ReBirth, then FL Studio, then Reason… though learning how to use all of this software, how to model sounds and compose not just melodies, but harmonic structures as well, came much more naturally than formal music training ever did. I never liked reading sheet music and I still don’t, but looking at a piano roll or a sequencer window always made more sense to me. And it wasn’t just the notes or pitches that made it interesting to me, it was the fact that the notes and pitches were such a small part of the bigger picture, that carving a sense of attitude and emotion into it all, creating furious rhythms and learning the values of production and how vital it was to make sure things stayed polished…

…all through a bright, glowing computer screen, the sound of a mouse clicking constantly, the erratic clacks of a keyboard, and the screeching whispers leaking from my headphones. This was where I belonged.

I still think that’s where I belong.

Today, I’m finally bearing down and learning what I’ve too often tried to run from – formal music. Sheet music is now my sequence window and a pencil is my mouse pointer. But that is all, essentially. The rest is just math. Math and analysis. Maybe some practice here or there, just mandated techniques to develop my motoric memory and skill on the piano… my third semester into the music composition program and I frankly don’t have much to say, except this:

In all my years of schooling, never before has my creative and inspired imagination felt so squandered and muted by the mundane, busy-worked, old-fashioned and narrow-minded dust caves of the old ways… ways that were set in stone – almost literally – by those who were not yet even allowed to BE creative, let alone what creativity is. These were the people in history who didn’t look at writing music as an art form, but as a craft… and they were servants, just like carpenters or blacksmiths. I have felt anxious and generally unhappy and unrested by the time-consuming yet absolutely fruitless lifestyle of music school and I find less and less time to work on or even think about my own ideas and creations.

It all makes me wonder if I made the right decision. Sometimes I feel I did… other times I feel I did not.

I suppose only time will tell…

I just hope that maybe I’ll get the opportunity to do a little reformation to the music education system in this country and perhaps others if they needed it. If I was to follow this system’s rules to the tee, get phenomenal grades and go on to graduate school… I’d just end up becoming a college professor. And that’s not what I want. So why I did I go in the first place?

Thanks for reading this thought… It’s been lingering with me for a while now. I’ll be sure to post things I’ve been working on… namely a live set that I’m performing on October 22nd. I’ll be sure to record it and post it here on my blog.

Study Hard.

End Of Summer 2010

This summer has been particularly fantastic, actually. Luckily, music has been lucrative enough to not have to work a day job and just focus on work. I’m not planning on this lasting forever as things always change in this industry… and not always for the better. As I may have stated  before, I didn’t want to waste  a bunch of time working at a fast food joint for minimum wage when I’m already sinking myself into a terrifying amount of debt on a degree which, for all intents and purposes, is useless in this country and this era.

Don’t worry, though. I have generally high hopes for my future, even if I’m often tested on it.

This month I’d like to share with you a couple of tracks I’ve done which I’m sure you’ve already heard by now through Facebook and Twitter. The first is my entry for the Kavinsky remix contest of “Nightcall” (which didn’t make the cut), but here it is anyway. In all honesty, it was a tough track to remix as I wasn’t really feeling it right off the bat. Not everything I hear from France tickles my electro fancy… but definitely most of it. This remix is a synthesis of a bunch of smaller, isolated ideas, tuned and re-contextualized to fit the given mood of the track. It also features a sample that my girlfriend’s cousin Di did for me by leaving a voicemail posing as the girl that Kavinsky is apparently stalking in this song.

Kavinsky – Nightcall (Professor Kliq Remix) by Professor Kliq

Another track, which was submitted for the free music contest, is this… “Crystals”, something that had been collecting dust in the deep recesses of my hard disk. It started in Reason and stayed there… So I kept it that way, as Reason has a tendency to be unavoidably “live”. I wanted this one to have a curious, determined and performed sound. I’ve attached the project file for you good people to sink your teeth into if you wish. I was originally going to make a walkthrough video of it, but I can’t seem to grasp the different programs well enough yet. I did try Camtasia, but the editing portion seemed to be anything but practical. For the record, know that it’s on my agenda to do stuff like that more often. I probably just lack the overall film-editing savvy in order to truly grasp it just yet.

Crystals by Professor Kliq

Professor Kliq – Crystals (Reason 4.0 Project)

Last but certainly not least, over at rec72, Marco Medkour was nice enough to put together a remix EP for “All Control”, featuring remixes from BitBasic, Pisu, and some friends from Chicago – Royb0t and Akashic Grenade. This EP is available exclusively at Rec72, so be sure to check it out as well as all the other absolutely amazing work. I’d especially like to mention BitBasic’s “Pixel Mixel” and Nisei23’s “Soft Shapes”.

This summer has been relatively productive for my career as a musician. When I say career, I mean the bread and butter that allows me to get paid to make music, not necessarily art. You gotta do what you gotta do to get by and it’s a profound concern of mine especially for after I graduate… So I try to continue to harness and expand my portfolio, which is one of the reasons I’ll sometimes ask for copies of videos that use my work.

Last month I finished up a score for a TV series based in New Zealand called “Ever Wondered?” which is currently airing, as far as I know. Here’s a video of the opening titles that they sent me… I would upload everything else, but I’m not sure if that’s a breach of contract! It was a wonderful yet surreal experience, seeing as how it was all via email with people that were watching the sun set as I was about to watch the sun rise. It was great exercise in working with a short time frame, especially within the unlimited confines of pre-production scoring. I made a theme song before I saw the opening sequence and I made all the music before I ever got a chance to see a single shot of video. This surprised me at first and I thought it would become very uncomfortable… but I was wrong and I would gladly do it all again (and hopefully I do).

For those of you who are wondering – the music video prospect with CDS Studios has fallen through.

I’ll be putting together a sort of portfolio page here on my site which will showcase a lot of the Vimeo and YouTube videos my work has been featured in… so that’ll be a great place to see visuals alongside my tracks!

I’d like to mention that every couple of days I get an email from someone… whether it’s asking for permission to use a track for a video or just an honest compliment – from all over the world – and I can’t tell you how much it means to me. I also can’t tell you how scared I get sometimes, out here in the city, naked and blind, chasing a dream that no circumstance could ever truly make into a reality. But they’re fans. Just like me. They’re people who have their own stories, troubles and dreams… and sometimes I’ll feel alright about it. About all of it. To know that there’s someone out there who’s never met or seen me before, but only knows me by what I wish was the only defining factor of who I am in the eyes of other people. In that sense, I imagine I’d like my fans sometimes more than the people I already know, who knew me before they knew what I do.

If I don’t respond right away to your emails, I do apologize. I’ll often receive these emails in the morning, on my phone, where I’ll read them, smile, and roll back to sleep. I try to get them done in chunks every other day or so.

But anyway… Thank you. Thank you all so much for your support. If you’re asking to pay for my music, please don’t. Just tell your friends, spread the word as loud and as far as you can. If there’s one thing I can tell you I’ve learned since I’ve had my music up here on the ol’ information superhighway… it’s that you never know whose hands your work will end up in next.

Thanks for reading… and study hard.

End Of Semester Report: Spring 2010

Hey guys, it’s time now for my apparently bi-yearly blog post. Since so much has passed, I hope you’ve got a snack and a drink because this is going to be a long one but with plenty of content and news about literally everything. I hope it matters! HA!

School was pretty intense this semester as the difficulty of the classes went up significantly, some reasons were legitimate and others were not. I can be honest in that I didn’t spend as much time doing homework as I should have, but my grades were still acceptable and I learned an awful lot. The deeper I get into learning about music proper, the science, the study and the appreciation of it, more things become clear than one might think:

Everyone thinks they know everything about music.

I can’t tell you how many attempted arguments get thrown at me about any kind of music that I like. It somehow always ends up that The Beatles (or someone just as popular) are the end-all be-all of music since the dawn of human existence and the passage of time. Electronic music gets easily written off (at least my kind of electronic music) in the face of “true performance”, which usually involves instruments and groups of people. This is usually spoken out of ignorance and confusion, both of which I’ll answer to as I’m getting to a larger point.

The more you know, the less you know.

It is truly daunting how much there is to learn about the science of music. Just in this semester of Music Theory II, the last thing we began discussing was the secondary dominant. It’s a relatively simple concept but it became literally an entirely separate dimension of almost everything I’ve learned about music thus far. I had a pretty difficult time keeping up, though – as I said before – I could have spent more time on the homework, but the textbook explains it all like stereo instructions and my professor, though very personable and fair, had a teaching style that literally put me to sleep… every day; 3:30 PM, whether anyone liked it or not, was nap time for Professor Kliq. The craziest part, though, is that the more I learn about music, the scarier it becomes. I find myself asking “well if it goes this deep and I’m only halfway through Music Theory, does it ever truly end?” I suppose only time will tell, but from what I’ve seen so far I can say that, no, it never truly ends.

The less you know, the more you know.

I’ve definitely comes across a fairly decent cross section of musicians (and I’ll call them that to be fair) who quickly write off any sort of formal music study, saying things like “if you don’t hear it, you don’t get it” or “I don’t need a textbook to teach me what I already know”. I stand firmly and go on record to say – if you refuse to learn, you already suck at what you do. I will go toe-to-toe with anyone on this because I have seen it with my own eyes and can say that the blind will obviously never see as well as those who can. Learning modal structures and intervals and cadences and orchestration structure and technique and balance and forms and sonatas and canons and fugues and rondos… I couldn’t honestly give you a straight-forward answer as to how any one of those concepts would individually benefit me as an artist, a composer, a musician or a person… but together, all as one critical mass, I have found that my ideas have become more refined and more organized. I’ve become more critical of my own work, finding things – not in the production value, per se – but in the true grain of the music itself. After all, I’m more focused on the story than the font. In the end, what I’ve learned has shown me an entirely new world and it frustrates me to no end when I hear someone ignorantly denounce what I have truly devoted my life to. I’m not saying I’m better than them, I’m just saying they’ll never be as good as they could be.

“I’m already good enough.”

Sigh.

Live Shows have become bothersome and frustrating. I really don’t have the local following to keep doing it out here (in Chicago). I ultimately have to rely on friends from my hometown to truck their happy asses all the way out to the city through miles of construction and traffic just to pay five dollars to see what they’ve already seen a dozen other times. This is not what I would call “getting myself out there”. The time has come for an agonizing reappraisal as to how to expose myself (ha!) in a live setting…

Hmm…

Well, the internet has been pretty good to me so far (thanks guys) as far as just getting my productions out there, so why not graduate to video? I picked up a Sony Bloggie HD to match with my relatively new Sony Vaio to record videos of what (and how) I do in a live setting. I already did a test recording of my live mash-up of “Oh Yeah” by Yello, featuring some of my other favorite newer dance tracks from present day. It’s only had about 400 views to date, but hey – that’s reaching way more eyes than an empty bar would.

Now that school is out and summer has started, you can expect to see more of these videos, whether they’re just performance videos or tutorials. Also I’ll be looking into how to use screen capture software.

…and to wrap this up (with plenty more to say after two months of no posting), here’s the video, recording and score of my most recent project for Composition II. It took me about two months to complete in the midst of getting ready for shows, school and other projects. I wanted to go for something a little more “out there” compared to my last piece (which I still have to get a copy of).

Uninvention #2 (Never A Real Composer) by Professor Kliq

The Full Score in PDF

This work by Professor Kliq is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License

I’ve got some projects in the works at the moment – trying my best to get myself into the music industry. I might be doing some documentary work for a show in New Zealand… a solid start to a dream coming true.

Thanks for reading and, above all:

Thanks for listening.

Maybe next year, Cologne Commons. :(

Well, after all of the complications and things getting figured out, time came and went and now airplane tickets to Frankfurt have gone far beyond my reach. It pains me to say this after how long a “Send Professor Kliq to Cologne Commons” button sat on my front page, particularly to those few who were so generous to donate. With this being said, now that I’m not going, I don’t want to accept money for something I’m no longer doing. Looking through my records on PayPal, I’m only able to account for so many. If anyone reads this who donated and wants their money back, DO NOT HESITATE TO EMAIL ME. I will gladly refund your money.

I was talking to another artist who is on Rec72, Kurobear, about our love for Europe. Like me, he’s from the United States and thusly we feel a little left out – being so far across the pond. There is a world over there that doesn’t see things so narrowly as our culture does here. We’re expected to go to college, get married, have children, pay taxes and die. There isn’t much societal encouragement to create or to follow your passion regardless of the cost, considering how we’ve been bred in a sea of passionless people. I suppose the only reason I’m saying this is to convey to you how deeply saddened I am that I can’t go to Cologne this year. I don’t think it was anyone’s fault, really. It was a perfect storm on a number of levels, but the money became the biggest issue. When you’re a CC artist, money doesn’t come as quickly as some situations would like it to – but I’m not complaining. My goal is to let everyone hear what I do and let them share it at no cost. My goal continues to be achieved and all in thanks to you.

What scares me the most about this post is who, however few, it truly disappoints. To you, I will never be able to convey how sorry I am.

On the bright side, however, it is still a goal to play at the Cologne Commons festival. 2011, perhaps? I’ll have had more time to perfect my live performance (as I’ve only been going solo for 3 months now) and also to make more tracks.

I have a show on April 2nd which I intend on recording which I can post up here on my blog.

I hope you all understand and, again, if you donated money and want it back, please email me. I still have all of it.

Forever yours,

Mike Else

Professor Kliq

Repenting For Neglect

Let me just start of by apologizing:

I’m sorry. I’m sorry for not having posted anything substantial in I don’t know how many months. I know there are a few folks that subscribe to this… at least I do now. It’s an intention of mine as I’ve been speaking with Dan Lynch of Linux Outlaws about what makes a good music blog. He gave me a few pointers, a few things he’d like to see discussed and I intend to do that here, now… At 2:57 am on this nervous Friday night.

I suppose I’ll break it up by subject… this might be a lengthy post.

School

My second semester at Columbia as a music major was incredibly rewarding and productive. My grades were the best they’ve ever been. I got straight A’s EXCEPT for Composition in which I got a B. Hilarious… I got a B in music composition. I had to compose a piece for Cello and Flute that was at least 5 minutes long. Below is a link to the PDF of the sheet music for the piece. I’ll upload the audio file of it from the day it was performed… whenever I get it. I have to order a CD from school still, but I’ll post it when I get it ASAP. We were lucky enough to have our pieces performed by two professional musicians and have it recorded. It was delightful.

Michael Else – Can Anybody Hear Me? (Full Score)

Live Shows

As I’m sure you’ve seen on YouTube, I played a couple live shows with a full band: Braydon, Mr. Thick on the tables, guitar and APC, Whitney on drums and my buddy Devin on bass. It was interesting to look at and sounded pretty decent, just as long as you couldn’t hear me… or the rest of the band. It got to a point where it was me vs. them as far as the sound was concerned and at no fault of anyone’s. It was getting to a point where practicing was radically inconvenient and nearly impossible to fit into a school schedule, not to mention the fact that I was programming the set in arrangement view in Ableton… I was quickly losing any sense of musicianship, independence or spontaneity on stage. So I had to switch to doing it solo… it wasn’t easy, as they’re all my friends… but I needed to simplify, not only as far as having other musicians with me, but the amount of equipment I was using. I had a decent setup – 3-tier keyboard stand with laptop at the top, APC40 in the middle and Axiom 61 at the bottom.

I just played a show last night using only the APC40… there are times that I want to play keys and loop riffs and work it into builds or just compose stuff on the fly. I’ll incorporate that again, I just want to develop my skills the best I can on the APC40 so I’m comfortable enough as to not concentrate so much on it so I can devote more attention to the keyboard.

Attached to the post is a 30-minute live set of me on the APC40 using Ableton… it’s my set without the band, so it’s only a month old or so but it grows almost every day as I add more to it and reconfigure it. Ever since I’ve been doing it on my own I’ve developed a much more intuitive system… and by that I mean I just… learned how to use Ableton the way it was meant to be used… but even still.

I did the whole thing live and then did a little mastering after the fact just to bring the levels up, but it’s pretty raw… so I hope you can forgive me for the little mistakes. I’m pretty pleased with it for now… and there’s more to come, that’s only about a third of my set at the moment.

Professor Kliq – Live Set Pt. 1

Here’s the tracklist if you’re curious:

1. Intro – My Advice
2. Bust This Bust That
3. Sema
4. Street Wisdom
   1. (Sonic 2 – Chemical Plant)
5. Moth Returns
6. All Control
7. Yello – Oh Yeah (Kliq Mash-up)
   1. Featuring:
      1. SebastiAn – Ross Ross Ross
      2. Justice – DVNO
      3. Justice – Waters of Nazareth
      4. Mark Rae – Medicine (Kraak en Smaak Remix)

Movements EP

I’ve been working here and there on some new stuff that I plan to release on February 12^th (I’m quickly running out of time). I’ve been listening to a lot of French house/electro as well as some… minimal techno. That’s right – I’ve succumb to the temptations of Ed Banger. It’s fine though – I feel like that DJ culture and those standards of dance music are much more acceptable than the trance garbage that’s been crammed down my throat.

Sorry. I’m jaded.

My friend Sam is in the process of drawing the cover art.

It’ll be available here on the site, Jamendo (forever) as well as Rec72.net.

As far as describing what I’ve been up to lately, I’ve been using Ableton to make tracks which is entirely new to me. It’s an amazing DAW… the plugins that are included and the ease of using ReWire and VST’s (which I’m JUST now getting into) is amazing. If anyone’s looking for a new DAW to use for making electronic music, Ableton Live is a fantastic centerpiece and has answered a lot of prayers I thought would never come true. The stuff I’ve been working on is pretty heavy, pretty hard – even harder than Guns Blazin’.

I hope this has been informative enough. I’ll come with another segment of the live set in a week or two for you folks to digest. I also would like to work on a mixtape once the EP is finished. I’m looking at 70 minutes of heavy stuff I’ve been digesting lately, not to mention some older obscure stuff that my webmaster Adam (www.no-refuge.com) got me into over the years.

Whoof… it’s getting late.

There’s talk of me attending the Cologne Commons Festival in the summer. I’ve got a little donate button up for anyone who’s willing to throw a few shillings or quid my way if only for food while in Cologne. Anything is appreciated. I’ve received a few small donations from some folks in Germany and to them I say THANK YOU!!!

Thank you so much for reading and I’ll keep you folks updated as time goes on, as well as another edition of the live set…

Cheers from Chicago,

Mike

Professor Kliq

Ronny’s Bar, Chicago

If… anyone in Chicago reads this… I have a gig at 8PM @ Ronny’s Bar – 2101 N California Ave. Come on down to see the solo performance that’ll make you think I really am… just a DJ.

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