hi again, it's me...still sick, still bored, and having more to rant about. Today's - *ahem* - this afternoon's topic is that of musicians that have been influential to my music-making (coming soon to a blog near you). I haven't met any of these in person but I listen to them all the time and they've rubbed off on my music making in various ways.
Oh and I should warn you in advance - if you just read these for comic relief, skip this one. I promise I'll be back with more witty banter on nothing in particular tomorrow.
Anyway, first up is probably my fav artist of all time, Rich Mullins.
Rich was born in 1955 to a farming family in Indiana; he spent his adult life on the road writing music, performing, and serving on a Navajo reservation. His most well-known song by far is Awesome God, but his other stuff is great too. His lyrics are clever and faith-filled, and he is an excellent musician as well. Here are two of my fav songs by him:
Next up is Vangelis. He was a pioneer of synthesizer music back in the 70's and 80's and still comes out with a new soundtrack occasionally. He is probably best known for his song Chariots of Fire, from the movie of the same title, which has since been (seemingly) universally associated with slow motion running. Actually, there is no slow motion running accompanying that song in the movie, so I'm not sure where the connection came from.
Vangelis was the one who inspired me to start moving towards electronic music as a means of making the songs I'd been trying (and only sometimes succeeding) to make using acoustic instruments. The results of this will be on here soon.
Anyway here's another song of his from the movie 1492 titled Conquest of Paradise.
Thirdly I'd have to say I'm addicted to a certain little something called Owl City. Owl City, a pseudonym of musician Adam Young, is an electronic music project with whimsical vocals and a variety of electronic styles. Though Young has produced acoustic singer/songwriter music under the name Sky Sailing and a pretty great collection of ambient instrumental music under the name Port Blue, Owl City is by far his most well-known project, especially songs such as Fireflies and Good Time. Here are three more of his songs from the album All Things Bright and Beautiful which came between the two above-mentioned singles and is, in my opinion, his finest work.
Fourthly (do you say Fourthly? or Fourth? or something else?), Mike Oldfield has been influential in the music I make. Oldfield was a young adult living in Britain when his hit record, Tubular Bells, came out in 1973. This album made history; it was incredibly popular in its time for an instrumental rock record, and sparked a more widespread interest in the fledgeling genre of New Age music. The album's overture was later used in the movie The Exorcist.
Though he has ventured into pop, rock, and even EDM some, his best work in my opinion has been on his instrumental albums. Most of his music consists of guitar-driven new age/soundtrack songs, which I've endeavored to imitate (though without the guitar, as I still haven't learned to play that).
Below are two of his songs; the former conveys the feeling of slowly drifting through space, the latter breaks Oldfield's usual ethereal/mysterious style and instead features a happy "curtain call" for the instruments used in Tubular Bells II.
Finally, there's Avicii...though the (relatively) young Swedish DJ is well-known for his songs Wake Me Up, Hey Brother, Levels, and The Days, I think his finest work was his collaboration with Coldplay in A Sky Full of Stars. Though this song has, like Wake Me Up, been played a lot since its release, it is nevertheless a great example of what Electronic Dance Music could be if producers really put the time, energy, thought, and skill into it.
So...those are kind of my top five influential musicians that I listen to; however, there are some artists I haven't mentioned here whom I listen to a ton too, but I've been blogging for awhile and I still need to mess with the spotify embed stuff so...more ranting about random stuff tomorrow!
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