Hello!

Musician and Audio Engineer. Cogswell Excellence Award nominee for "Best Execution of Concept", "Best Original Music" and "Best Overall Production" for the song "Smellophonic". Listen to the rest of my work on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/jose-beck Bandcamp: https://josebeck.bandcamp.com/ and Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjoed6yYDubCCOMiD3r-10Q

[jofishh]

New RWBY cover songs on youtube! You know I'm crazy excited for RWBY Volume 6! Check out both covers! This Will Be the Day: https://youtu.be/H54UTsAw1Kc Home: https://youtu.be/8EHcu1kt2SQ As always, thank you to the wonderful Maya Briones for lending her voice for the This Will Be the Day cover! https://www.instagram.com/p/Bpc_75dgAo6/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=mrps9csbvdb7

[jofishh]

I'm also pretty excited for the newest season of FLCL! Figured I'd celebrate in my own way. https://youtu.be/EGm22vCU1Sw #flcl #flclalternative #flclprogressive #coversong #thepillows https://www.instagram.com/p/BnutVHIl3B1/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=qrnlzwpvy4zo

[jofishh]

New spanish cover of True-Blue from the game BlazBlue: Central Fiction featuring the wonderful Maya Briones. https://youtu.be/6i5XctzGAg0 Maya and I also finished recording a new cover the other day that I hope to release in October for you all, it's gonna kick ass! #blazblue #blazbluecentralfiction #coversong https://www.instagram.com/p/BnutF6IlPSI/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=3p1t21v4cffe

[jofishh]

[jofishh]

View this post on Instagram

Featuring for the first time ever, here's a Spanish cover of the first opening for Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works with vocals done by the wonderful @mayita_may95 https://youtu.be/WdfWlBvquN0 Presentando por primera vez, aqui esta un Esapñol cover de el primer apertura de Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works con el voz de la maravilloso @mayita_may95 https://youtu.be/WdfWlBvquN0 #fateseries #fatestaynight #unlimitedbladeworks

[jofishh]

No new cover this week, but check out some of my other covers like Sora Ni Utaeba. New covers coming out soon

[jofishh]

My Spanish cover of Sora Ni Utaeba from My Hero Academia is now live. Give it a listen!

[jofishh]

What? Of course I've watched Jojo's Bizarre Adventure! Take a listen to my cover of the second opening "Bloody Stream" while I take some time to eventually finish the Diamond is Unbreakable arc

[jofishh]

Take a listen to my Spanish cover of Resonance by TM Revolution from the anime Soul Eater

[jofishh]

I love watching anime and Attack on Titan is no exception. I also know how to speak Spanish and since I know many people make English covers of opening themes I thought it would be fun to do a Spanish cover. I'm really happy I had the time to do this. Enjoy and let me know what other opening (or closing) themes I should do Spanish covers of.

[jofishh]

This was submitted to my Tumblr by Hassie. Cool song, check it out!

[jofishh]

It’s been a while since I’ve posted something, so I want to share some work I’ve done in the past. This cover of the famous song from Mulan I recorded about 2 years ago. It was done actually on request after I had mentioned to a co-worker that I did a metalcore cover of Cups by Anna Kendrick. They wanted me to do a Disney song, so I said “Sure, which one?” and they chose I’ll Make a Man Out of You. There are a couple of things I would like to change in this hearing it now, but overall I was still happy I was able to do this cover and I have tons of fun making these. Anyways, please enjoy!

[jofishh]

Gorillaz - Humanz singles review

I’m hoping to keep this relatively short, but every time I say that it just doesn’t happen. Anyways, Gorillaz have finally announced a release date for their upcoming album Humanz. Personally I am actually really excited for this album since I’ve been a Gorillaz fan and I find their music really fascinating to listen to. I ended up pre-ordering the new album and was given access to listen to the four new singles Gorillaz released, which are also available on Youtube. I figured, what a better way to listen to these new songs and write a nice little review. We’ll just dive right on in to see what works and what doesn’t with Gorillaz new singles.

I kind of ended up just listening to these songs in some sort of alphabetical order by accident so the first song I heard was Andromeda. Andromeda is a weird song, since I didn’t know what to take away from it. It was very much a Gorillaz style song with its use of unique sounds incorporated into its hip hop style beat. Andromeda also features some vocal stylings from D.R.A.M. (apparently an acronym for Does. Real. Ass. Muic.) which, unless you knew what to listen for you wouldn’t be able to tell it was D.R.A.M. doing any vocals. I actually found myself wondering “where are the guest vocals at?”. Andromeda isn’t a bad song, but there’s nothing that really sticks out about it to make it a really good song either.

The next song, Ascension, features the artist Vince Staples. Vince Staples plays a much more prominent role in this song having a rap that lasts for most of it and Damon Albarn doesn’t start singing until halfway through the song. (Keep in mind this song is only 2 and a half minutes long) The good thing about this song that I have to give kudos for is the fact that the beat really goes hand in hand with the vocals. Its a Gorillaz style beat with typical hip hop elements as well as all the weird timbres and textures that would make up what audiences would know as a Gorillaz beat. The main problem I had with this song was in the title. It’s called Ascension and yet, there is never a moment in the song where I feel like I’m ascending in any way. There is a group vocal used where they say the word “higher” but thats about it. Also, what the hell does “wet like Barbara Streisand” mean. That’s just silly Vince Staples, you couldn’t have said or written anything better than that. This is Gorillaz dude not Future’s new album. I digress.

Saturnz Barz was an interesting song to me the moment I listened to it. Saturnz Barz features a very subby and heavy sounding beat to it, with a reggae feel due to the vocal stylings of Popcaan. The overall beat is also a very Gorillaz style beat which sounded good and the song overall was definitely something that could grow on me. My biggest beef with Saturnz Barz was the overuse of auto tune by Popcaan. I understand that may be a stylistic feature of Popcaan, but again this is Gorillaz not the next album by Future. Personally I hold Gorillaz to higher standard than auto tune and would never expect to use such a thing in large amounts.

The final song released, We Got the Power, doesn’t feature a rapper, but instead features the singer Jehnny Beth from the band Savages. We Got the Power was fairly different from the other three songs. This was in both the overall tempo and rhythmic aspects of the song as well as the use of a vocalist that specializes in a different genre than the other three. The claps and synth pad give a very bright and inspirational feel to We Got the Power which all helps support the very concept of the song. Subjectively I can say this was my favorite song of the four I listened to. We Got the Power also felt like a hark back to the older days of Gorillaz when they released their self titled album.

Overall, the Gorillaz new singles have been interesting to listen to. They were all fairly different to each other with the exception of Ascension and Saturnz Barz sounding almost similar instrumentally. It’s hard to cast true judgement on these songs since I want to hear them in context with the rest of the album, but I will say that these four songs definitely have the Gorillaz feel and style that many fans listen for and enjoy. If you have a chance, definitely take some time to sit down and listen to Andromeda, Ascension, Saturnz Barz, and We Got the Power and form you’re own thoughts and opinions on them. Otherwise, that’s my two cents, take it or leave it.

[jofishh]

Traveler’s Delight now available

Go listen to the third and final single, Traveler’s Delight, before the release of the album The Journey exclusively on Band Camp here

The theme and inspiration for this song came from two different mind sets. The first and foremost was my desire to work on another EDM style song. I took a class on Electronic Music Production and when we did a project involving writing a song in a classic EDM style (house, techno, trance, etc.) I had a blast mixing and producing a House style song. I decided I wanted to take this similar approach and write another song similar to this style.

The other major theme that Traveler’s Delight takes is the idea of losing your way and path in life. When the song starts you will classic electronic elements and organic sounds mixed into it, but as it goes on the organic elements start to slowly disintegrate to distorted and unintelligible sounds. This is how I signify the Traveler losing their way from the path they originally took. Will the Traveler be able to find its way back to its original path? Find out by buying the album The Journey when it is released. Until then please enjoy Traveler’s Delight.

Also listen to the first two singles of The Journey:

Voices

True Calling

[jofishh]

Gorillaz - Hallelujah Money Review

This song is a fairly hot topic right now, seeing as its just been released and everyone has different feelings about it, so I figured I’d put in my two cents as well. I will acknowledge that I am a small Gorillaz fan (I thought Feel God Inc. was a pretty good album, and Plastic Beach still holds a few songs that I to this day really enjoy) so I will try to avoid any biased thoughts on this song.

With Gorillaz planning to release an album later this year, the fictional animated band have released a single that will not be featured on their new album as a way to talk about the current political climate, seeing as this song was released the day before the president-elect Donal Trump would be sworn into the White House. I do not want to talk about the lyrical content of this song, seeing as that is something I normally don’t do, especially if you’ve read some of my other reviews. Instead I want to focus and talk about the musical content because that to me is what I find the most interesting in any song I listen to. So, let’s dive in and see what works and does not work for Hallelujah Money.

Hallelujah Money starts off with a smooth drum beat and synth line, that any Gorillaz fan could be familiar with. Not to say its a recycled beat, but it is very Gorillaz-esque in style. Then we hear Benjamin Clementine which, at first listen, is very off putting. This is where I do have the most to say about this song, at first the vocal rhythms sound very off, but so does the general timbre of Clementine’s voice. Now, this was on my first listen of this song, when I decided to listen to it again, I noticed that the vocals were actually rhythmically fine and it was just a general shock factor as to what I was hearing. I will still admit that having Clementine’s voice will cause most Gorillaz fans to feel a little disjointed with the song since they expect the voice talents of Damon Albarn to be heard, but have no fear he will appear shortly.

Hallelujah Money continues on with the same feel and vocal stylings of Clementine. After about a minute and a half of this, you can hear a choir come in and start singing the chorus of the song, where Clementine does a call and response with the choir singing the words “Hallelujah Money”. Then the voice everyone has been waiting for arrives. 2D.....I mean Damon Albarn comes in with usual voice stylings that he does for all and any Gorillaz song. This followed by the same instrumental used for the chorus played behind Clementine’s poetry slam style monologue. Suddenly in what seems to be the middle of Clementines speech the mood and instrumental of the song drastically changes back to its original beat that was heard at the beginning of the song. The same chorus stanza sung by Albarn is heard at this point and near the end of the stanzas it again transitions back to the chorus feel it originally had with the choir doing a call and response with Celementine. The song ends with Clementine singing the words “hallelujah money” in falsetto and with some vibrato. There is one final Hallelujah Money that is essentially screamed by Clementine and is followed with a scene from Spongebob Squarepants of Spongebob crying while running away as if he’s been scared by Clementine’s sudden shouting. While I did hear this song via the music video Gorillaz posted, since I don’t know of any official audio version of this song I don’t know if this part of the video is only for the music video or also part of the song.

The few things I did have a little problems with was the sudden transition near the end of the song and simply how jarring it was to hear Celementine’s voice, especially since it wasn’t what I was expecting and felt out of place for a while. I do have to applaud this song for several things that I consider to be good about it. First and foremost was the accentuation of the theme of power and greed through instruments. This may not be realized at first, but in the instrumental there is a sound that is part of the beat that reminds me of the sounds of Casinos and slot machines. Seriously, go listen for it you will hear it. I also have to applaud Clementine’s vocal talent in this song. I know I stated earlier that I found his voice to sometimes feel out of place, but his timbre, style, and skill set was the perfect choice for the concept and theme of this song. Sure, maybe there’s one or two other voice actors or singers that could have been used, but seeing as the creators of Gorillaz are English and Benjamin Clementine is also English, I think you can put two and two together to figure out why this collaboration happened. And for all the percussionists, or people that enjoy listening to interesting rhythms, this drum pattern is definitely not a simple 4/4 beat and does not use typical 6/8 clave rhythms.

The final thing I do want to make note of was the incredibly smooth transitions between each section of the song. If you start the song from the beginning and keep listening there is no clear cut moment that makes it obvious the song is now in the chorus. No big build up, no drop, just a choir that fades in and bam! You are in the chorus.

There you have it, Hallelujah Money by the Gorillaz. This song is fairly experimental with its structure, but is still a well done song with small things that help promote its concept and central themes. And if for whatever reason you don’t like this song, do not worry it won’t be on the upcoming album. Overall, whether or not you are a Gorillaz fan, I recommend checking out Hallelujah Money and giving it a good listen or two. That’s my review take it or leave it.

[jofishh]

Avenged Sevenfold - The Stage Review

Avenged Sevenfold (abbreviated A7X for those who don’t know) decided to make a surprise release for their new album The Stage a couple weeks ago on October 28th. This release came about shortly after A7X decided to do a 3D live concert that could be viewed with a VR headset or with the new feature on Youtube that allows for 3D video. With that aside A7X and others have been considering this to be one of the band’s most ambitious projects to date. While I would agree that The Stage is ambitious in concept I have found that the concept was not properly executed and found this album to be decent, but not as great as everyone else has claimed it to be. I don’t want to make this too long of a post, but I will share my overall thoughts of the entire album and what does and doesn’t work.

The first I want to address is the new drummer on the album, Brooks Wackerman. I will not dare compare Wackerman to any previous A7X drummer since every drummer has their own flavor and style that they bring to the table. What I will say is Wackerman’s drumming felt extremely sporadic at times. I will agree that the drumming work is impressive and takes tons of skill and practice to do, but when your drumming does not fit what is happening with the song or will clash with what the guitars or singer is doing then the drummer is simply not doing their job at that point and is trying to show off. There were times in the song Paradigm and Sunny Disposition where I wanted to tell Wackerman to just relax and play something that complimented the band rather than try to overpower them.

One last thing in reference to the drums was just the overall engineering work on the album. I don’t know what happened in the mixing stage (or potentially the mastering stage) but the entire album sounds almost like someone stuck a high pass filter on it and rolled up to 100 Hz or something. It’s very thin and while the initial attacks of all the instruments are prominent there is almost no low end to give the overall sound some bass and depth which makes it come out somewhat thin and weak.

The other thing I wanted to address about The Stage overall is the concept itself. When I first read that A7X decided to do a concept album about AI and space travel I was extremely excited and I couldn’t wait to listen to the album. The sad part was that there were several things that didn’t give me that feeling of whatever concept they were trying to attain. First and foremost the entire band ended recording everything organically and not relying on any samples or auto tune of any sort. That right there alone comprises the entire concept of the album. If you want to write an album about human existence and what it means to be human, then yes go for that organic sound and leave all the electronics out. But when the concept is about Artificial Intelligence, aka Robots, then it seems necessary to use samples that are quantized to the exact beat and a little bit of auto tune to make the pitch of the singer sound exactly right since that is what machines would want and would try to do.

Another point about the concept of the album was just overall feel of each song. Some songs like Sunny Disposition and Higher didn’t give me the feel that I felt was supposed to be intended. I wished Sunny Disposition was way more brighter and gave off a more “sunny” vibe throughout and I wished Higher had done something with the guitar melody or solo that made it feel as if I was going higher into the sky (a simple answer would be to continuously go up the scale). 

And for me, the worst part of it all is the fact that The Stage had so much potential in two different places that weren’t utilized properly. First off is the album coherence. A7X had a perfect opportunity to create an album that told a story, they could have stuck with the AI theme and done something along the lines of “man creates machine, machine becomes powerful and takes over world, man leaves earth and goes to space to find a new home”. But instead A7X falls into the same trap of creating another album that is simply a collection of songs that I’ll listen to on shuffle one day rather than in their proper order. The other one is the extreme potential for an epic master piece of fantastic proportions that would have been the song Exist. Exist centers around the Big Bang Theory and the band trying to translate that theory into music. While I love this idea, I felt the concept became under utilized and lost so much potential. While I do see and feel the concept of a Big Bang, there was never a moment that just felt big and huge to represent the universe and everything that has been created from the Big Bang. Instead they constricted themselves to only their five piece band setting, which is fine seeing as they want to stick with their genre, but with a concept like the Big Bang you have to go all out and make it big and fantastic, plus all it would have taken was an orchestra which A7X is known for utilizing in previous songs. Heck, even a song earlier in The Stage (Roman Sky) utilizes an orchestra.

While there are bad things, there are still good things that came out of The Stage. Personally, while its still a collection of songs that doesn’t mean the songs themselves aren’t good. Every song I heard I enjoyed listening to and thought it all featured fantastic guitar work and really good musicianship (yes even from the drummer). In fact, I think Wackerman does end up doing a good job with his drumming in most of the songs on the album, it was just the first couple songs felt like too much drumming was being done. And I will happily admit that I thought Roman Sky was a beautiful song that truly shined out of every song in the entire album. Not to mention, Neil Degrasse Tyson’s monologue at the end of Exist is one of the most inspiring things I have ever heard and considered that to be another highlight of the album as a whole.

With that said, while I felt the concept of The Stage was not properly executed and many things in some songs could have been utilized better in other songs on the album, I still enjoyed the individual songs themselves. That’s my review of The Stage by Avenged Sevenfold, go check it out if you’re fan and figure out whether or not you enjoy this album. That’s my two cents, take it or leave it

[jofishh]

Lady Gaga - Joanne Review

Lady Gaga has just released her new album Joanne. I’m not a huge Lady Gaga fan, but I do consider her to be someone who is musically adept and I respect her as a person since I can support the message she was always trying to convey early in her career. I never listened to anything by Lady Gaga excluding her hit songs like Poker Face, Bad Romance, and the other hits she had, so I decided to give this album a go and see what makes it good, what makes it bad, and if anything makes it ugly.

Joanne starts with the song Diamond Heart and right off the bat there is a clear Rock N’ Roll influence driving this song, and potentially this album. The melody in Diamond Heart was catchy, it opened up in the chorus, and it was cool to hear a fusion of Pop and Rock music. I only wished that the chorus had something added to it to make it much more impactful. The whole time I was just wishing the song would be bigger in the chorus, so it could really set up the album in a good way. Nonetheless, Joanne continues with A-Yo which continued the Rock influence and felt like a good continuation for Diamond Heart, almost as if Lady Gaga decided to open a concert set with Diamond Heart, it felt like A-Yo would be the second song in the set. A-Yo has a cool Twangy guitar and gave me a sort of Blue’s Brothers kind of vibe or something along the lines of that.

We then hit the song Joanne which brings the album to a halt. Joanne is a much slower paced song and much more organic in instrumentation compared to the first two songs that are heard. Granted the only synthesized sound is some strings in Joanne, but my one problem was that I wished this song wasn’t put so early, I wanted the energy to keep going. Gaga continues her album with John Wayne. John Wayne was cool to listen to since I constantly felt like there was this sexual tension that Gaga was clearly able to perform musically, but never relieved and brought it to a climax during the choruses. Similar to something I said in my review of Glory by Britney Spears (which you can find http://jofishh.tumblr.com/post/149674309006/britney-spears-glory-review) it’s like being ready to climax, but never quite getting there and always being let down. Also, is John Wayne slang for something is Lady Gaga just really into the actor? Whatever, I digress.

The next, Dancin’ In Circles, brings a latin feel to the album. This song had a really good latin feel, but I had two main issues with it. One, the chorus was just not fun enough for me to feel like I wanted to dance to it and two, while I enjoy contrast between songs in albums like this, when the first three out of four songs are very clearly influenced by early Rock and you decide to almost randomly plop a latin style song it becomes very inconsistent to listen to. But Lady Gaga rounds off the first half of Joanne with her single Perfect Illusion. I wrote an entire Review on Perfect Illusion (which is right http://jofishh.tumblr.com/post/150561169036/lady-gaga-perfect-illusion-review) so I won’t say much else about it, but I will say that I do take back my thoughts on the fact that the vocals sounded very over compressed. Most likely what I heard was a bad thing on Youtube where they compress the audio since Youtube streams everything.

The second half of Joanne starts off with a ballad type of song called Million Reasons. I have to say both subjectively and objectively I felt like this was one of the best songs off the entire album. Gaga’s vocal work really shines in this song and I felt the song built itself nicely while allowing Gaga to shine. The only thing I wished that changed was if there was some sort of break to make the final chorus much more impactful to listen to.

We then hear Sinner’s Prayer which just feels like a type of western song. There was a strange thing in Sinner’s Prayer where Gaga decides to just hop right into the chorus from the verse without some sort of break or lead in which was a little jarring to listen to. I did also hear some fairly over compressed vocals in this song which ruins the quality of the vocal work, but the theme of the song and the music fit each other perfectly.

The next song was Come To Mama, which I have to say sounded way too much like Rihanna’s Stay at the beginning, but then quickly turned into this song that came out of the 50s. Gaga then does a fantastic duet with Florence Welch in, what I feel is the second best song on the album, Hey Girl. Hey Girl definitely takes a jump from Come To Mama by being a little more 80s inspired instead. But Lady Gaga did this song and Florence Welch justice by allowing Welch to really shine in this song and sing in most of it rather than only giving her one verse and a background vocal part for the chorus.

Joanne is then rounded off with the song Angel Down. Angel Down is a slow song that is similar in nature to Million Reasons except with a little bit more of a serious tone that is almost lamenting in nature. While it was nice to hear I did have problems with it. First off, there was a strange abrupt ending that I heard, but I can potentially shrug it off since I listened to this album on Spotify and most likely Spotify cuts off a few seconds from the original recording. Also, the ending decided to have some vinyl sound effects as if I was hearing this album on a vinyl record, but one I’m not and two if you’re going to end the album like that, why didn’t you start it with the vinyl sound effects it would’ve made a cool roundabout way of finishing the album. Finally, Angel Down for some reason is very organic and then has very clearly synthesized string sounds. While I think synth strings can be cool to listen to, especially when utilized properly, this was a time where I sat here wondering why Gaga’s record company didn’t hire some string players to play the parts instead of using what sounds like a temp track.

Overall, I consider Lady Gaga to be a very adept musician who knows what she’s doing with songwriting and would put thought into what she writes, so I tend to expect more from her than other pop stars. Right off the bat i will say, there is no album coherence what so ever, there could’ve been something done lyrically that told me some sort of story, or the music could have been put it an order that felt like an experience to listen to, but instead I felt like I listened to a new collection of Lady Gaga songs that you can put on shuffle and enjoy with the rest of Gaga’s collections of songs. Even though I took back what I said about over compressed vocals in Perfect Illusion, I still heard that mistake in other songs like Sinner’s Prayer and John Wayne. And while I enjoyed the Rock elements of the first half (excluding Dancin’ in Circles) and the variety of the second half, I wanted one of these two things to be consistent. Gaga should have been straight Rock influence in all her songs, or created extreme variety in every song, or at least change the order so the songs that are all Rock influenced could be spread out a little.

After all this I will say on a subjective level I did enjoy and had fun listening to some of the songs on this album. I loved the latin feel of Dancin’ in Circles, I thought Diamond Heart had a really catchy and fun chorus even though it could have been bigger, and I still think Million Reasons is Gaga’s chance to shine as a vocalist. So, if you’re a Lady Gaga fan and have been waiting for this album go pick it up and enjoy some of the fun songs, but if you’re looking for a pop star that decided to put some substance and thought into song order or style consistency/variation then I wouldn’t go for it. Overall I felt Joanne wasn’t awful, but it had enough minor issues to not make it great. It’s like when get just enough points deducted on a test to get like a B- even though most of the questions were mostly correct. But I digress, check out Lady Gaga’s new album Joanne if you would like, that’s my review take it or leave it.