Mark Mosher: Experimental Electronic Musician from Boulder, CO. Synthesis | Synthesist, Composer, Keyboardist, Performer

"Reboot" and "I Hear Your Signals" by Mark Mosher are Now Available on Spotify

I’m excited to announce that my last two albums I Hear Your Signals and Reboot are now on Spotify for your listening pleasure.

Click here to see my artist page on Spotify. Note I’m hoping to get a profile photo and more information up there soon.

Mark Mosher
Electronic Music Artist, Boulder, CO
Official Web Site: www.MarkMosherMusic.com
Listen/Download Albums: www.MarkMosherMusic.com/music.html

Mark Mosher's "I Hear Your Signals" and "REBOOT" Albums Now Available as Physical CDs

 

Up until now, both my new album I Hear Your Signals and my previous album REBOOT were previously only available as digital downloads. I’ve decided to release both as Physical CD’s:

1. For those who prefer having a tangible disc and liner notes
2. To provide a convenient ption for those who want to buy a gift for that hard to buy for electronic music fan
3. To accommodate selling the CDs at shows and through retail outlets

Both discs are available for immediate purhase via my online ReverbNation store here.

For each release, I’ve created a 4-panel booklet with original artwork and photography including liner notes and credits. CD’s are the same quality as those available in retail outlets with printing in full color directly on disc surfaces, booklets, and tray cards, with professional-grade jewel cases all shrink-wrapped with cellophane.

These discs have barcodes so they are also ready to go for retail outlets. So, if you are interested in ordering CDs wholesale for your store contact me.

Mark Mosher
Electronic Musician, Boulder, CO
www.MarkMosherMusic.com

Composition, Performance, and Production Notes on song "Infected"

Back-Story
After I finished “They Walk Among Us” on REBOOT which was song 3, I started writing a back-story that helped me create an emotional and dynamic flow to tie all the songs together as an album.  Song 4 “Infected” marks a transition and an emotional shift as the situation starts getting rather grim for our hero.

Tracks and Tech
“Infected” is made up of 27 tracks using virtual synthesizers, vocal samples, and sliced up elements that were re-sampled from tracks within the song. As with every track on REBOOT, I composed, performed, arranged, mixed, and mastered the track using Ableton Live 7/8 and various virtual synthesizers. For you synth geeks out there I used Live, Vanguard, Synplant, Cypher, Circle, and lots of re-sampling back into Live. I also used Gross Beat for some slicing and re-sampling.

Vox
It’s the only song on the album with my voice.  Here are the lyrics:

What's it like to know it all
You seem so different we've got to know
Got to know
Different

Twisted Acoustic Instrumentation and Play-by-Play

“Infected”: Play embedded song

 

For this song and the next song to work on the album, I needed a way to allude to the original palette, yet move away from heavy drum tracks to get a dynamic shift in the album. I’ve always found certain acoustic instruments to be instantly creepy - you know, like toy piano – so I decided to try and work some in. I also was trying to communicate a departure from reality and loss of control and felt that creating a performance that would start off as an acoustic instrument but then degrade into something quite harsh and out of this world would really do the trick.

I start right away with this concept at 0:10 - with reversed Cello and organic rhythmic elements. If you listen starting at 1:27, you can hear I use a harp, normally perceived to be warm and beautiful, and evolve it into something out of this world and harsh. By 1:37 I start using a hammer dulcimer – which I personally find quite menacing – to add a bigger metallic attack element, and I totally torque it out at the end of each phrase.

I recorded these performances in two passes. One to lay down the original acoustic instrument (using a keyboard and a sampled version of the instrument), then a second pass where I recorded my real-time performance with effects processors to mangle the sound. This performance was captured as an automated envelope allowing me to to go back and tweak performance. I also doubled the acoustic harp with a rather alien sound harp from a fabulous synthesizer called Synplant (pictured blow).

At 1:47 there is a break with only a few elements. Vocals, and a harp that was re-sampled and sliced up from early parts of the song. This leaves plenty of room for the piano part coming up. Note that to draw contrast from other treated acoustic instruments, I just added reverb to the piano.

At 2:12, I wanted to repeat a previous section yet change it up a bit. Rather than doing a more classic filter sweep, I instead vocode the drums – which really means the sound you hear has the rhythmic nature of the original drums, but the voicing is from a synth. This leaves room in the mix for some polyrhythmic high hat like sounds. As I get close to the end of this section of the song, I slowly fade the original drums back which offers a big dynamic build-up.

2:32 I repeat the piano melody from early but now play it as a frequency shifted bell sound with a pad under it with some huge reverb. On the last note I change the delay time on the fly which causes the pitch to radically change.

At 2:46, the original vocal sample is mangled almost beyond recognition and run through a ring modulator and Grain Delay.

Transformation is complete - “Different”.

Mark Mosher
Electronic Music Artist, Composer, Sound Designer
Louisville/Denver/Boulder

http://www.modulatethis.com
http://www.markmoshermusic.com
http://www.twitter.com/markmosher

Download/Buy my album REBOOT on Bandcamp
Buy on iTunes

Electronica Tracks from REBOOT Album Now Available for Commercial Licensing

My Music Licensing Store at YouLicense.com is now open. YouLicnese makes it very easy to model, price, and purchase non-exclusive licenses online to match the scope of your commercial project. So for smaller projects the prices are low and reasonable. For larger projects, the pricing scales accordingly.

 
Songs on REBOOT by Mark Mosherare are also licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. If you do end up using one of the tracks, be sure to drop me a line so I can see what fantastic art you've created.

Mark Mosher
Electronic Music Artist, Composer, Sound Designer
Louisville/Denver/Boulder

http://www.modulatethis.com
http://www.markmoshermusic.com
http://www.twitter.com/markmosher

Download/Buy my album REBOOT on Bandcamp
Buy on iTunes

REBOOT Album is now on iTunes – Woot!

REBOOT is now on the iTunes store world-wide. This of course makes it extremely easy to find the album and buy. Just type “Mark Mosher” into the store search. Click HERE to visit REBOOT page on iTunes.

Pass it on.

Mark Mosher
Electronic Music Artist
Louisville/Boulder/Denver
http://www.markmoshermusic.com
http://www.twitter.com/markmosher
http://www.modulatethis.com

Songs from Mark Mosher's REBOOT Now on Last.fm and XBOX Live

Songs from my  REBOOT album are now available on Last.fm. Click HERE to visit the album page. Help spread the word by adding to your playlist and sharing.

As of November 17th, 2009, XBOX Live Gold members can access Last.fm from their XBOX 360 consoles – which of course means REBOOT is now on the XBOX 360 ;^). You should be able to just search for “Mark Mosher” to find songs.

Mark Mosher
Electronic Music Artist
Louisville/Boulder/Denver
http://www.markmoshermusic.com
http://www.twitter.com/markmosher
http://www.modulatethis.com

Mark Mosher Releases Electronica Album REBOOT

I’m happy to announce the release of my album electronica album REBOOT. The album is being distributed digitally and is available as an immediate digital download via my online store at http://markmosher.bandcamp.com.

The album is currently being offered using the “pay what you will” model. Although the suggested pricing is $6 for the 7 song album + digital booklet and $1 for singles, you  can name their own price including specifying $0 for free downloads. There are future plans to make the album available on iTunes and Amzon’s MP3 store.

For those who are new to this site I’ve included a small summary of the project below:

Two years in the making, REBOOT is an album containing 7 richly layered electronica songs that blend contemporary synthesizer sounds with classical music motifs. The end result is dark electronica for those who love synth "ear candy" with a “dirty” industrial edge.

While the songs on REBOOT stand alone as singles, the collection is an album in the true sense of the word. They share a common palette and when played in sequence conjure an epic and dynamic story for the listener.

Prior to the release of the album, the first three tracks were released as singles. "Midnight" and "Stealth" went to #1 and "They Walk Among Us" went to #2 on the Soundclick.com electronica charts.

------------ License ------------------------
REBOOT and all tracks are (C) (P) Copyright 2007-2009 Mark J. Mosher.
REBOOT by Mark J. Mosher is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at www.markmoshermusic.com . Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at www.newecho.com/contact/ .

REBOOT 7 Song Album will be Released on Halloween 2009

Just a quick post to let you know that I've finished mixing and mastering Reboot and will release the album for digital download on Halloween! I will post an announcement here when the EP is online.

Mark Mosher
Electronic Music Artist
Louisville/Boulder/Denver
http://www.markmoshermusic.com
http://www.twitter.com/markmosher
http://www.modulatethis.com

Reboot Album In Mixdown, Thinking About Live Performance

I composed a new song last night. That makes 4 songs that are in mixdown and will be added to the Reboot EP. Composing and album serially over a few year period has been very interesting for me as each song influences the next in unexpected ways. As a result the EP has a definite sequence and story and palette that is sustained over all the tracks. I will be uploading all tracks for free download for personal use as usual but I may wait and upload them all at once. We’ll see.

I’ve also started work on putting together a live show to perform these songs in 2010. After doing the vocoding demo for the Ableton User’s group using nothing but my laptop and a few controllers (one trip from the car), it’s clear that I have more than enough horsepower to play virtual synths live along with sequenced elements coming from Live using nothing but  laptop. I’m having a lot of fun thinking about ways to connect with an audience so I’m not simply hunched over a laptop. More on this later.

Speaking of vocoding, on one of the new tracks, I’m using vocoding on drum tracks rather than voice. It sounds very cool.

Mark Mosher
Electronic Music Artist
Louisville/Boulder/Denver
http://www.markmoshermusic.com
http://www.twitter.com/markmosher
http://www.modulatethis.com

Working on 3 New Songs for Reboot

This week, I’m working to complete three more singles for the upcoming release of Reboot. I’ve been working on Reboot for quite some time and will be releasing an EP version of all songs soon.

In a related note, If you are interested in the gory details of modern music production technique, check out my recent post on Modulate This - The Making of The Electronica Single "They Walk Among Us" Using Ableton Live + VSTs

Mark Mosher