Ethnic Electronic Music by Lionel Valdellon
In 1999, as editor of Channels, an entertainment magazine for a cable TV company, I had the privilege of interviewing Philippine national artist Lucio San Pedro. This was a year before he passed away. Little did I know how much impact that afternoon’s conversation would have on how I create music. To put it simply: he opened my mind to using traditional Philippine folk songs as building blocks for my own compositions.
These three New Wave/New Romantic tracks from the 1980s influenced me and inspired me to create electronic music. While there are many more obvious choices I could have included (Depeche Mode, New Order, and Tears for Fears), these songs embody everything about electronica that appeals to me, even if the tracks themselves aren't electronic. This… Continue reading Songwriting Tips from 3 Influential New Wave Tracks
There are two maxims I live by in creating music and ensuring there is a constant flow of ideas in my creative process: Capture All and Delete Nothing.
Here's a remix for Emorej's track "Stars," which I wrote the lyrics for. Read about the full story behind that collaboration. In a nutshell, Emorej (aka Jerome Llama) took my lyrics and set it to a beautiful melody using a vocal software named Miriam to generate synthesized vocals with a French accent.
Stuck on a musical idea? Here are 2 possible solutions: share it and sit on it. This is the story of how I got stuck on a song idea and how doing two things allowed the song to evolve into something much better than its original.
I've been working through my folk song-inspired ideas for new tracks and this latest one, "Sitsiritsit Alibangbang," is one I always wanted to play with but had no idea how to manipulate it into something electronic and modern.
Dissatisfied with the way artists pick titles for their electronic tracks, I set out to create a foolproof way of generating random electronica sounding titles. And here it is.
Here's a glitchy, noisy, drum & bass remix I made for a track by artist and former University of the Philippines art professor, Fatima Lasay. The remix takes the original track and slices it into many more more chaotic pieces, adding drums and an overt rhythm section where once there was none.
Here's a new upbeat and jazzy electronic track entitled "Lamay," which means funeral wake in Filipino. I took the melody from a traditional folk song and put together a joyful, jazzy, energetic arrangement that focuses less on the grief of losing a loved one, and more on the hope of being reunited with the loved… Continue reading New Track + Video: Lamay
My latest track, "Sobig F Warning" is a downtempo, doom and gloom tune with bells, ethnic percussions, huge monotone bass, and ghostly pads. I named the track after a computer virus, a worm actually, which reared its ugly head in 2003 as an email trojan horse -- hence the menacing ambience and the hostile bass.
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