Morph Productions

2015 was definitely an interesting year with a lot of different challenges and success.  In the year previous I was asked by Tep No to come up with a classical guitar line for a tropical house tune he wanted to do.  I did it late one night and he developed a great song around it that wasn't released till January 2015.  We had the fortune to have it premier on the BBC on Pete Tong's radio show and that really helped launch it.  By the end of 2015 it had 2 licenses (Michael Korrs video and a US tv show) and it got  4 million listens on Spotify.  We'll see how much farther it can go in the new year.  Here's the song on spotify and the Michael Kors video: From this collaboration I ended up meeting other deep house producers who liked what I was doing and wanted to collaborate as well.  I've been doing a lot of work with Chicago producer Kiso Armic and a French producer Daitshi.  A remix I contributed guitars to for Kiso ended up going...

Well 2014 is finally over and I figured I'd write a year in review to close it off right.  This was my 15th year running my music production company Morph Productions and it was definitely a unique one.  Aside from my regular duties helping lots of indie artists with their music projects I was also put in the position of promoting my own band and seeing a song I co-wrote get released by Sony.  Always great trying new things and developing new opportunities! The beginning of the year had my band, As the City Rumbles Underneath  release their first EP. As I've said in the past one of the reasons I wanted to do this project was to put myself in the position of my clients and learn how to promote an indie project.  Starting from nothing was really daunting but I ended up having a lot of success with my promotion efforts.  The band's music was featured on about 50 blogs, podcasts and internet radio (internet and FM).  I was also able to build our twi...

Recording music is a lot different than it was over the last few decades. No question things have improved in many respects but a lot of the technology out there has encouraged people to do it on their own at the expense of collaborating. In my opinion this lack of collaboration has really hurt the creative process and the quality of the work. Technology now allows people to do an album completely by themselves in their bedroom. Recording gear is relatively cheap now and there are instruments plugins that can sound really close to the real thing. While this can be useful, especially for low budget projects, it should not be used to replace other musicians playing on your project. When you have someone who's been playing their instrument for years and years lay down some parts on your song it can really help take it in a new positive direction. I've been recording people professionally for 10 years now and I've seen it done and I've done it myself. One different dr...

The Great River MP-500NV preamps arrived a week ago and I have to say they sound awesome! These preamps were designed to be a "modern" take on the Neve 1073 sound which is one of the most sought after sounds in recorded music. I've had a week to play around with the Great Rivers a bit and I'm really digging them. I have been recording with an API preamp for about 7 years now so I'm really use to that sound. I was almost wondering if I was taking that sound for granted because I'm so use to it. I haven't had a lot of time to compare between the API and the Great River but I did have some listen tests with vocals. Without music I found they sounded relatively similar. When I added the backing music and listened again though there was a big difference. I can definitely hear what people mean now when they talk about the API "push". The API vocal stood out whereas the Great River settled in with the mix. I also found I could add more top end...

February has been a busy month at Morph. Finished a few ongoing projects, started some new ones and kept working on others! Here's some highlights of the month: I finished the music for the tv show "Ghost" which airs in Malaysia and the Philippines. The director wanted music that sounded like the stuff in the show "House". Lots of ambient layers and cool sounds. It was a great project and something I hope to get more involved with in the future. The show will inevitably pop up on youtube and when it does I'll put a link here for people to view it. I did a live off the floor gig with my session drummer Craig Lapsley and a Toronto pop/rocker Andrew Bray. Andrew contacted me looking for a bass player and drummer to play live off the floor with for an EP he was doing. We got together and it turned out great. Toronto pop/rock artist Gemma Wood came into the studio in January looking to record some songs here. We're currently working on a second son...