Update: Added vocal pieces, as suggested and recommended by Reddit user spike

If you’ve known me for any length of time, you know I love various kinds of music, and am frequently inspired by many off-the-wall productions/compositions, as well as contemporary mainstream music. But, Classical music has always been close to my heart. While I have no Classical training, and my piano “playing” is akin to an angry elephant stomping on the keys, as a child I attended many concerts in the Moscow Conservatory. I slept through many of them, but the music stuck. When in deep need for inspiration, I turn to Classical. Lately, I’ve found myself listening to a lot of Baroque, as this period is highly influential to me with usage of melody, melodic structure and progression and raw, passionate, emotional energy.

As I listened to some pieces (on Iceberg Radio’s Baroque Masterpieces channel) which really struck me, I decided to take notes so I can come back and hear pieces I like again and again. The following compilation took me a couple of months to put together from Baroque (mostly) pieces which I felt most resonated with my aural preference. I tracked almost all of the pieces I liked on YouTube, and tried to pick those with the best sound quality. Enjoy:

Vivaldi Violin Concerto In A Minor, Rv 356 Largo

Telemann: Die Kleine Kammermusik – Partita No. 1 in B flat major, 1968 Recording

Bach – Harpsichord Concerto No.1 in D Minor BWV 1052

Suite No. 5 in E Major HWV 430 – Courante

Corelli – Concerti Grossi, Op.6 (1714) / Concerto Grosso No. 1 in D major

A. Vivaldi: Concerto for bassoon, strings & b.c. in B flat major (RV 503) – Part II

Bach Sonata for Solo Violin No.1 in G minor BWV 1001

Vivaldi – Cello Sonata in E Minor RV40 – Mov. 1-2/4

J.S. Bach – BWV 525 (3) – Sonata I – Allegro Es-dur / E-flat major

Bach – Partita No. 6 in E minor, BWV 830 II. Allemande

G.F. Händel – “Ho tanti affanni in petto” – aria for alto, flute and continuo (“Mi palpita il cor”)

J. S. Bach – Sonata for Flute and Obbligato Harpsichord in B minor BWV 1030: III. Presto – Gigue

J.S. Bach – Quia respexit humilitatem & Omnes generationes / Magnificat, Es-dur BWV 243a

Two Part Invention No. 8 in F Major, BWV 779

J. S. Bach: Allemande from Suite in e-minor BWV 996

Maxim Bernard – J. S. Bach: Partita No. 2 in C minor, BWV 826

Georg Solti/Beethoven Symphony No. 5 in C minor (“Fate”), Op. 67 4th Allegro Pt2-2

Jean-Henry d’Anglebert de pièces d’Opéra de Jean-Baptiste Lully

Telemann / Han De Vries, 1982: Oboe Concerto In E minor, TWV 51:e1

Handel – Sarabande

Handel – Suite No. 5 in E Major HWV 430 – Allemande

Albinoni’s Adagio

Bach – Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 in D major BWV 1050 – 1. Allegro

J. S. Bach – Trio Sonata in E flat Major BWV 525 (1/3)

Antonio Vivaldi – Concerto for two oboes in d minor RV 535 (1/-)

Courante, Mr. De Lully (Harpsichord)

Telemann – Concerto grosso in D major, TWV 54:D3 (Trevor Pinnock / The English Concert)

Bach: Mattäus-Passion – Kommt, Ihr Töchter, helft mir klagen – Otto Klemperer

J. S. Bach – Partita n. 2 in C Minor BWV 826 – 6. Capriccio (6/6)

J. S. Bach – Partita No. 6 in E minor, BWV 830 (Perahia)

Corelli : La Follia

Vivaldi: Sovvente il sole (Andromeda liberata, RV117)

Desterò dall’empia Dite – Sharon Rostorf-Zamir – Amadigi – Handel

Sento la Gioia – M.R. Wesseling – Amadigi – Handel

Handel, Io t’abbraccio Love duets

Handel – Serse “Ombra mai fu” – Lorraine Hunt-Lieberson

Johann Sebastian Bach 6 Partitas BWV 825-830,Gustav Leonhardt

I hope you enjoy these pieces as much as I did when I had first heard them. I am always open to suggestions and recommendations, so please feel free to comment on my Facebook page if you’d like to share them, or just your thoughts.

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While I’m working away at my new EP, Pepel (to be released this summer), I’ve been trying to find some new ways to get people to listen to my music; that is a big part of why I write it, after all. I frequently get asked “How do I get more plays?” or “How do I get noticed by labels/people?” or “How do I get fans?”. The simple answer is, get your music out there, everywhere. But, time is money as they say, so it’s important to find places where you’ll actually get heard. YouTube is an awesome place to upload music, and I’ve been slacking on this lately, because people like to embed YT videos on their Facebook page, and with YouTube Repeat you can listen to your favorite song over and over, which I like to do sometimes (SoundCloud is great for sharing and embedding, but it doesn’t have the repeat function). But, even with SEO (search engine optimization – keywords, good description, etc…) it’s hard to get noticed in a sea of millions of other music videos. So, to get quality listeners (potential fans) you may have to dig a bit deeper. This is where a place like Reddit really comes in handy.

Reddit is an aggregate of information, broken up into niche subreddits which people “follow”. So, let’s say you produce progressive house and have a sweet track you want people to hear. You can post it on SoundCloud or YouTube first (you should be doing this anyway), and then submit it to the Progressive House subreddit. This is where you’ll likely find people who are interested in hearing what you’ve got. If they like what they hear, they will “upvote” it, making it easier for other subscribers of this subreddit to find your music. If you are consistently putting out stuff people like, you will gain more followers (just like IRL!). This is a great tool to use to find people who may have not heard your music yet, and a cool way to connect directly to people who listen to the type of music you write.

To save you some time, because navigating Reddit can be tricky at first, I’ve found a resource which posts all of the music subreddits in one place, allowing you to go there directly. I’ve taken the liberty of checking out which ones are the most active (over 1,000 subscribers at this time):

/r/DnB (13k subs)
/r/DubStep (50k subs)
/r/electrohouse (12k subs)
/r/ElectronicMusic (35k subs – haven’t had much luck posting here)
/r/Trance (14k subs)
/r/electronicdancemusic (~1k subs – seems pretty active)
/r/proghouse (~2k subs – active and friendly)

These are just a few highlights. To be honest, I think you may have better luck getting heard and interacting on the smaller subreddits, unless you’re posting a big name remix to one of the bigger subreddits. Of course, it all depends on your style and how you connect with your listeners. Reddit can be a fun place to share your stuff, and meet some interesting people. So, with this new tool in hand, go forth and get play.

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That’s right, with my album Afterlove out early 2012, I’m already knee deep in new projects. So far, I have four brand new tracks finished for a new, yet to be named EP, and I am working on a couple more.

I am looking for remixers with skill to remix one or a couple of the tracks on the album. If interested, drop me an email with a link to your SoundCloud.

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Our latest, greatest and smoothest compilation of sounds, from some musically endowed artists, is now available on CD (if you even know what that is)!

Go old-school with new-school sounds from the lieks of Gerald the Genius, Sang Dinh, Marshal Arnold, Ray Guarano, Dan Veytia, Cough Drop, Nikola A. Putnik, Alex ‘Xander’ Biagi & Hot Sh1t!

Purchasing a physical copy of the album will assist our little label with getting on Pandora, which would be great exposure for our artists!

Thanks for your support!

Live It Up. Play It Loud. Vol 1 [Addictive Vibe Records] CD

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In my 10+ years of producing music, I’ve come across a lot of interesting people. Even though I credit myself as being self-taught in everything from the basics to more advanced techniques, I did get some (a lot) of help along the way, from my peers. Some of them went on to do amazing things, and some remain hidden secrets of the deep underground music world. (TL;DR)

One person, in particular, who taught me quite a bit about mixing sound, compression and how to derive quality out of my productions was a guy named Phoakis. He doesn’t go by this alias anymore, clearly he has closed that chapter (as I once did too, when I felt I had matured enough, musically). One day, hanging out on Internet DJ, like we used to “back in the day”, he posted an amazing track which I still have a hard time getting out of my head. Then, he disappeared… musically anyway, he was still around on MySpace and Facebook but decided to delete all of his projects, much to my dismay.

For several years I prodded him to keep writing music, come up with something new, release on our new label (AVR) which we were just starting to grow. He kept saying he is busy with this and that and I had all but thought he was done with music for good. Then, out of nowhere, two weeks ago I get a message in my inbox, it’s from Soulwig and it’s asking me to check out a new project he just finished, and “check on the mix”. I could barely believe it, so I rushed to check it out and–to say I was not disappointed would be quite an understatement.

What I found was a near perfect deep house track, much in the same vein as his previous projects but a more refined, mature version. From compression to atmosphere to vocal effect usage, this track is embodies the underground deep house vibe. Since I’d first listened to it, I have been totally addicted, playing it on repeat (if fact I listen to it now as I write this up), analyzing it trying to capture the secret of what it means to make a good dance track, what it takes to create something which inspires.

This track is not released anywhere, and you’d be hard-pressed to stumble upon it yourself, so I present it to you, as a gift. You  now have the chance to listen to this track for the first time. Savor the experience: turn off the lights, turn it up on your system or in your headphones, let your imagination take you where it will and… just enjoy.

TL;DR My friend and mentor writes amazing music and you should listen to it.

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