New Single Orchestrated for a 4-Piece Band “You Are More Powerful Than a Grey Sky” with Title Inspired by Edgar Froese and a Trip to Berlin + Ideas on Stretching Beyond Your Usual Genre and Musical Brand

Just in time for February’s Bandcamp Friday, I have a new single I released called “You Are More Powerful Than a Grey Sky“.

In past musical lives, I did a stint as a custom composer for picture for music for an advertising agency, also gigged 100s of shows in a four piece band playing key, and was a sound designer for a big regional theater.

This new song is informed by all this so it’s a bit different than some of my past techno, glitch, and electro releases as it features synths, but it’s orchestrated for a four piece band made up of a live drummer, two keyboard players, and a bass player.

In this post, I’ll offer links to the song so you can listen and buy it if you dig it. I’ll also offer a behind-the-scenes look at the song and how a recent trip to a wintery Berlin plus a Synthtopia post on a lost interview with Tangerine Dream Founder Edgar Froese inspired the title of this song.

I’ll also offer some ideas on how to stretch beyond the confines of your current artistic “brand” and musical genre(s).

So read on to learn about all of the above.

What is Bandcamp Friday?

First up, what is Bandcamp Friday? 

On the first Friday of the month since March of 2020, we’ve waived our revenue share to help support artists on Bandcamp.

In other words, it’s a great day to support music from independent artists as they get a bigger cut. 

“You Are More Power Than a Grey Sky”

This song is available on Bandcamp here. Swing by and listen and if you dig it consider a buy.

It’s also on Soundcloud.

https://soundcloud.com/markmosher/you-are-more-powerful-than-a-grey-sky-master-c

Behind the Music and About “The Band”

On-and-off over the past few years, I’ve been writing a series of songs in Ableton Live with Push orchestrated for a four piece jam band made up of a live drummer, two keyboard players, and a bass player.

These songs didn’t fit into my Spotify, Apple Music, et al. streaming “brand” so I held them back.

Even so, I started to explore them further, and I started doing more orchestrations that featured electric bass and acoustic drums.

Moving forward I was informed and inspired by some past musical lives. In one of these past lives, I played 100’s of shows over 13 years in a live four piece alt-rock band as the keyboard player.  I did a stint as a full-time custom composer and theatrical sound designer and composed and produced musical cues and compositions for picture for ad agencies. In another, I was the sound designer for a season for Theatreworks, the big regional theater down in Colorado Springs.

In these adventures, I was forced to write outside of my  normal comfort zone. For example, I did an orchestration in the style of al Salon Orchestra for the “Varsoviana Waltz” for the play “A Streetcar Named Desire”. 

In this rendition of the play, the waltz represented Blanche’s madness. So as the play progressed, I had to compose variations that got more twisted, but didn’t sound modern so as to not pull the audience out of the play. It really stretched and challenged me. 

So I continued on with the thought experiment of orchestrating for four live players seemed really fun to me.

I started incorporating electric bass samples, and trying to emulate some of the picking techniques of a bassist. That started forming a bit of a palette. Then I started interweaving some acoustic drum samples and techniques.

In almost all my music, I program every note, including all the drum parts. I either play each note or draw each note into the piano role in other words, “look ma’ no loops“. In my mind, I started to write for a band that had a live drummer who in their musical practice, combined acoustic drums, pad, triggers to play samples, and they would also be in charge of drum machines on stage. Something like this clip from my hero Josh Freese.

The other two players in the lineup were keyboard players who could cover the other parts. 

The Inspiration For the Title From Edgar Froese and a Trip to Berlin

I had already written this song, but was searching for a title. Then I bumped into this post on Synthtopia, “‘Lost’ 1982 Interview With Tangerine Dream Founder Edgar Froese” which 

John Diliberto, host of Echoes – a daily two-hour music program distributed by PRX, shared this ‘lost’ 90-minute interview with Tangerine Dream founder Edgar Froese.

Froese discusses his thoughts on how music should reflect your state of consciousness; how this can also be a barrier for musicians reaching a broad audience; and how you shouldn’t let hardware get in the way of expressing yourself.

It’s a fantastic, deep interview that will inform the way that you hear Tangerine Dream’s music.

You can listen to the interview below or via the Echoes podcast site.

I listened to this in November just prior to taking a vacation to Berlin to take in the Christmas Markets. He had many trippy and optimistic things to say about music and the world. 

At around the 51m mark, he discusses life in 1982 Berlin and how he doesn’t let the grey wintery skies of Berlin impact his music. At 53m23s he suggests

 “…you’re sitting in the town of Berlin, and the clouds are hanging deep and everything is grey and it’s rainy…” and people say “I want to escape… we do understand how to get around these things… we do [know] how to get in touch with these energies which are much more powerful than a grey sky”. 

While I’m not into the supernatural, that phrase really struck me and made a note of it.

Then in December I spent a week on vacation in Berlin and got to experience the Christmas markets at night and experience the amazing ambience of the clouds hanging deep and the gray skies. 

Then I was thinking about this song I’m releasing today, which has the working title of “Rainy Day” and I thought parts of Edgar’s musing somehow fit. I loved Edgar’s sentiment that we have the ability to transcend our mentally dark days, especially when the world is so stressful with social media sites, war, and so divided.

So I changed the title to “You Are More Powerful Than a Grey Sky”. 

Music Production Notes

I performed and produced with Ableton Live 11 with Push. I was going with an 8-track recorder vibe. So 8 tracks with mostly Ableton instruments and FX, along with two tracks of U-HE Hive.

I mixed and mastered using Ableton Live 12 with Ozone 11.

About the Cover

As I mentioned I was in Berlin in December. The cover is a photo I shot in night mode with my iPhone 13 at the Berliner Weihnachtszeit at Roten Rathaus Christmas Market. The Berlin TV Tower (Berliner Fernsehturm) veiled in low clouds juxtaposed with the historical architecture and the Christmas market was just surreal.

When Your Artist Brand Becomes a Barrier

I’ve been hosting the Rocky Mountain Synthesizer Meet for over 11 years. As a result, I’ve gotten to interact with 100’s of Electronic Music artists. People often start this journey focusing on a particular genre, often inspired by a favorite musical hero or band. This limitation helps focus orchestration and production techniques. Then they start to bravely release their art into the world on SoundCloud, Bandcamp, or into wider streaming distribution.

At this point, that genre becomes a bit of a set of train tracks. Follow-up releases stay within the rails. It also becomes part of your musical identity or “brand’. And yes, with the pressure of social media and PR, we all feel the brand identity “thing”, whether we are a hobbyist, semi-pro, or pro. 

Naturally, as one grows on the production and composition side, music emerges that is not within the bounds of the genre you started with. 

At this point, the rails and sunk cost of the “brand” can become a bit paralyzing. This happens to me all the time, and when it does, I sometimes hold songs back from release because I don’t think they fit my identity. 

Many of us feel this so strongly, that even though we are hobbyist or semi-pro, we take the time to spin off side project artist names. 

I’m not judging this approach as I do it myself. I spun up an artist name “Puppets Go Last” so I could release two glitch sample-flip singles called “Escape from Volcano Island” and “Transcending Gravity” which you can also pick up for Bandcamp Friday.

The upside of this approach is it can be incredibly freeing to take on a new persona, which might be important for booking shows. And for me, it allowed me to work on a new brand identity which brings me joy.

The downside of this approach is that music outside of your “brand” doesn’t see the light of day and your listeners are missing out.

A Low-Stakes Way to Release Music Outside of Your Brand

A low-stakes way to handle this is simply to release a single with a narrow distribution with the same artist name you’ve used for past work. 

For example, you could simply release a single on Bandcamp and/or soundcloud and just explain in the liner notes that you are experimenting outside your genre. 

In other words, you don’t have to put everything on distrokid into a wider release where it’s difficult and slow to pull it back if you change your mind.

If you are releasing widely on Distrokid, then there are ways to cross-promote releases under different names. This topic merits an entire post which I’m working on. Subscribe if you want to get notified when that post hits. 

Intentional Musical Practice to Stretch Into Other Genres

I’ve come to this musical practice organically by working in many genres through the years. By playing covers, doing music that is commissioned by a director, as well as doing sound design cues for live theater.

You can add this practice by simply intentionally adding regular studio sessions to your musical practice to write songs beyond your normal “genre”.

Even if you don’t release these songs, working in different genres expands your mind, improves your ear, and stretches your chops and production techniques.

More To Come

I have more songs for my “virtual band” that just need a final mix and master. If you’d like to get an email with a heads up on when the other singles in this project are released along with other artist news and Modulate This! Synth tech and technique posts, opt-in below. 

These deep-dive blog posts are fueled by coffee. If you are enjoying the music, have enjoyed a free event I’ve produced for the Rocky Mountain Synthesizer Meet or the Synth Patrol, or have found my blog posts inspiring or helpful, you can buy me a coffee below to fuel future work. 

Until next time,

Mark Mosher

• https://MarkMosherMusic.com
• https://RockyMountainSynth.com
• https://SynthPatrol.com
• https://CarbonDioxideEnsemble.com