Joshua Van Tassel

(on facebook? go to www.joshuavt.com for the audio)

About 2 weeks ago I said I was going to try to keep a better eye on the blog here, and obviously that plan failed, fairly spectacularly. This is a really busy time, with lots of people around me making really amazing and inspiring music. Must be that fall/back to school thing that gets people moving. After Christmas though we’ll all shut it down and hibernate til touring season, like big musical dumb bears. Here’s a few clips of some really varied stuff I’ve been making for people over the past little while.

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(on facebook? go to www.joshuavt.com for the full post)

Fall has been a super busy time for me so far and there’s lot’s of exciting stuff happening right now, so let me share a bit with you my friends.

- My good friend and notoriously gifted/prolific song writer David Myles released his latest record this month, and I’m proud to have played on it. It’s a disc that shows the love he has an influence he’s taken from all sorts of Brazilian and African music, but without sounding derivative and cheesy with the “world music” label attached to it. It’s a record of beautiful songs that sound distinctly like him which is such a good refreshing thing to hear. The drums and percussion were recorded for the most part in my living room which was a super fun challenge, and ended up working out great.

- I’m working feverishly away on a bunch of really interesting things for the upcoming new Royal Wood record. He and producer Dean Drouillard have a very cool perspective on how they want to make this one, and I’m thrilled to be a part of it. I get to go to work every day at the studio  and see how weird I can get before it’s too weird. I’m a lucky man.

- I’m playing at the Glen Gould theatre next week with Doug Paisley. His latest record Constant Companion has been on permanent rotation in our house for the past year, and I’m really excited to get to play at a beautiful venue like the GG with him. October 29th if you’re around toronto.

- I’m producing a record for a really great artist named Kirsten Scholte. Look her and keep an eye on her. Amazing songs with a such a natural endearing voice. She’s awesome, and I’m really looking forward to starting work with her in a couple weeks.

KIRSTEN SCHOLTE & THE FANCYS – Blue-eyed Baby from Mitch Fillion (southernsouls.ca) on Vimeo.

- Joshua Cockerill and the band are headed back in to the studio to make a record with Chris Stringer. A whole bunch of my favorite humans all hanging out and playing great songs all day sounds good to me. We made Josh’s last record about 3 years ago now which is crazy, and after 5 cross Canada tours for it, it’s time. He written so many amazing songs, it’ll be really interesting to se which ones make the cut.

- I’m still making weird music. And a lot of it. trying to sneak in an hour a day for pure experiments and fun having in my little lab. Here’s the start of a beat from the other day.

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- last  but not least, here’s a very in depth review of my record, over at the sound vat blog. Have a look see.

(on facebook? go to www.joshuavt.com for the full post)

I’m not afraid to admit it, I love quiet mellow music. I love trying to create a warm space within a piece that a listener can sink into and relax, day dream, night dream, or cook dinner without being intruded upon by anything brash or completely un expected ( even if there are few sonic treats mixed in.) Due to me having a penchant for this kind of musical vibe and considering I’ve spent the past year really working on playing acoustic guitar, that was the kind of record I made. I’m really proud of it, but feel like I need to make more of 1am Thursday night kind of record.
Not Friday or Saturday night though, then I’d feel like I’d need to make it pretty straight ahead and normal and a dancey perhaps. Thursday is the night the music lovers come out, and around 1 is when the bands really start to push and stretch out for the people still left at the club.
I want to make a record that sounds like that.
Doing some experiments and some thinking, here’s a clip of something that has the kind of vibe I may be going for. Maybe a little less extreme sonically but I still want it to have some teeth used for biting.

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(on facebook? go to www.joshuavt.com for the video)
Although his music hasn’t quite hit me hard yet, this is a great interview with Colin Stetson. Really interesting topics ranging from meeting Tom Wait’s jeans to using 24 mics on a sax. Have a look and check him out.

(on facebook? go to www.joshuavt.com for the full post)

Here’s an idea for something that isn’t going to get used for what I thought it was for, but probably for something else. Came in today  and everything I set up was still there and ready to go and I didn’t have to move a damn thing. So happy, so much easier to be so much more productive.

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(on facebook? go to www.joshuavt.com for the full post)

I’m here and I’m really happy. Super excited to have a room where all my things can live and breathe and be set up ready all the time. Here’s the first sounds from it today, early on but a start.

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(for the full post go to www.joshuavt.com)

Here’s a question for you, and for myself as well. Why do I buy cd’s? Or vinyl for that matter? Sure, lets talk about the easy answers – I like holding a physical and tangible object in my hands. I like reading the liner notes. I like the little buzz I get from opening the plastic packaging and seeing all the art work for the first time. I enjoy the fact that I can see a complete piece of art the way the artist intended it to be presented.

Typing this now I’m a little struck by the fact that my initial defences of disc purchasing are all visually related reasons.  What about the music??

If I want to be completely realistic about how much time I spend at home listening to music on our stereo, it probably accounts for 3 and half percent of my total listening time in general, which on the average week is not a whole lot sadly. Lately when I buy a cd, it comes home with me, gets unwrapped and looked over, liner notes read, disc popped into the computer and ripped, then cd shelved. And there it sits for the most part, unless we have people over or are spending an extended period of time in the living room. Looking at it this way, my cd buying habit is extremely wasteful in an environmental  sense. The amount of packaging, ink, and plastics that go into the manufacturing of the object is large, and then coupled with the fact that this object will realistically get taken out and used a limited number of times makes it all seem really unnecessary. Most download sites like bandcamp offer your choice of audio formats, so loss of fidelity due to bad mp3 compression is becoming a thing of the past. Apple does their own encoding which isn’t as great as getting a full WAV file but it’s getting better.

I essentially thinking out loud here, I think artists have a variety of amazing ways to present their products at this point with enhanced material for usage on an iphone/ipad for example, without having to print a physical product. I’m also really curious how many people out there either buy 1 – cds 2 – vinyl 3 – just digital. Any thoughts?

(on facebook? go towww.joshuavt.com for the full post)

I really, really love working on remixes for people, and especially when the songs are as good as the one I’m doing now. It’s for Fredericton’s handsomest band Olympic Symphonium for a tune from their latest record “The City Won’t Have Time To Fight”. Beautiful tunes and amazing melodies throughout the whole thing, highly recommended for fall listening and leaf kicking. Here’s the original, and below that a rough mix of part of what I’m working on.

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(on Facebook? Go to www.joshuavt.com)

photos courtesy of Steve Dagg, more to come!