Another collaborative effort made possible with Creative Commons and Public Domain materials. And most of all, some very talented and generous people.

I’m dedicating this song to a perfect stranger, who’s a close kin of this friend.

It’s also a dedication to all those who’ve experienced the very human feeling of loss and grief. And of closure and remembrance.

It’s never Goodbye.

GOOD-NIGHT NOT GOOD-BYE v2.1

• Dan O-Connor’s instrumental track, “Love Letters” (by Dan O’Connor – Free Music By DanoSongs.com – licensed under a Creative Commons ATTRIBUTION 3.0 US license).
• Words from two poems: “CAELl” by F. W. Bourdillon & “GOOD-NIGHT” by C. C. Fraser Tytler. See: http://www.archive.org/details/lovesoldsweetso00unkngoog – Public Domain; Not In Copyright.
• Vocals by MyVanillaWorld – myvanillaworld.wordpress.com

Peace. Originally posted by .m for matthijs under a CC-BY-NC-ND license.

Huge thanks to MyVanillaWorld for providing her excellent vocals to this earlier track. Details, here.

~ Ivan

My attempt at a Japanese Anime soundtrack. BTW, I’m not saying Japan or any Japanese cities are strange. The title came from the Japanese spoken words I used in the remix. Details here.

STRANGE TOWN

“Tokyo Lights” originally uploaded by OiMax under a CC-BY 2.0 license.

I’ll be releasing this at the Starfish Stories page at TheSixtyOne.com. Check us out some time.

~ Ivan

Got to know Elizabeth Koh recently, at a gathering of friends.

Learned from her Twitter account profile that she plays bass. So I DMed her asking if it was the orchestra bass or electric. She replied it was the latter, which she picked up while playing in her church band. Cool!

I tweeted her the link to the OWOM album.

She was nice enough to email me this review (posted with her permission):

oh my. wow. u put in so much effort in your music! Just listened to one world. Really like the melodies and the blend of electric guitar and synth. But must say that the sound is a bit too electronic, and there is no “end sound” to the electric guitar, (when it stops playing the particular note), so it becomes a bit too spacey and drifty for my taste. The bass sounds good too, but not accompanied by drums all the time, which is unusual.

Her opening words of “oh my. wow” was enough to make my day, LOL.

End sound? Hmm… gotta think about that. Adrian and I don’t have formal musical backgrounds. We just kinda create and mix the music intuitively. Musically, we’re still trying to find our unique sound. Every piece of review, comments, critique, criticism helps a lot.

Thanks Elizabeth!

~ Ivan

I dedicate this to my wife. Happy 10th wedding anniversary soon.

2009 – Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (3.0). Please credit this to “Ivan Chew – MyRightBrain.wordpress.com“. You are free to copy/ share/ remix this under the terms specified here.

This is a new-agey bitter-sweet semi-rock version of this earlier version, that was inspired by the 3/4 piano of colab, with a touch of string from illusionsofsounds, and graced with the vocals from presse and Linda.

I wanted this version to sound opera-like. The mix ended up a bit noisy though. Ah well, that sounds just like love.

“Marriage” – Originally uploaded by jcoterhals at http://www.flickr.com/photos/oter/ under a CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 license.

Critique/ comments are welcome.

“How I did it” posted here.

Enjoy!

~ Ivan

Many famous guitars brands carry the name of their creators, and in the process becoming generic brand names. Like “Les Pauls” and “Paul Reed Smith”.

It shouldn’t surprise me to hear Mr. Paul Reed Smith talk about his PRS guitars.

But for some reason it does.

In a good way

“… These are tools to play music on, that’s all they are really.”

Yes.

But what beautiful tools.

What beautiful art.

To make more art with.

~ Ivan

Completed the sound level adjustments from this earlier version. Here’s version 2.0:
STROKE OF MIDNIGHT v2.0

What I did differently from version 1:

• Raised the lead guitar track levels.
• Created another layer from Adrian’s original riff, and adjusted the EQ settings to make his rhythm guitar part stronger.
• Around the 1min 10sec mark: Added a short lead and clean guitar pan effect, and a different beat.
• Miscellaneous adjustments along the track to avoid clipping.
• Imported the uncompressed file to Audacity, adding a compression effect (I was trying to see if it would help in normalising the track) and exporting it as a 24-bit WAV file. I think it does. Listen to the difference – here’s Version 1:

OK.

One down, eight more to go.

~ Ivan

A remix using a ccMixter sample.

This one is for all the heroes and heroines out there: Firemen, Teachers, Police, Doctors, Nurses, Army buddies, WWII Veterans, ccMixters, Social Workers, Librarians, Wives, Husbands, Mums, Dads.

OUR HEROES by Ivan Chew [MyRightBrain.wordpress.com], featuring a backing track by Scomber [scomber.band-website.com]. 2009 – Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (3.0).

Recorded and mixed in GarageBand ‘08.
Guitar: Epiphone Les Paul Standard.
Guitar effects: Line 6 Pod Farm.

This is my Pod Farm amp and effects settings:

Details are posted at MyRightBrain.

~ Ivan

Maybe Starfish Stories :: The Band should rebrand ourselves and perform ‘live’ exclusively in cute animal costumes.

Although I’ve no idea how the huge paws would be able to articulate the notes on the guitars.

Heh.

The song just grows on you, don’t you think?

More about Nana Kitade, here.

~ Ivan
p.s. I really won’t mind the pink bunny.

As you can tell from the absence of posts, Adrian and I have been busy.

With our day jobs and stuff.

Musically, I’m still keeping myself productive by hanging out at ccMixter.org.

Here’s the latest track that I remixed with my own guitars and arrangement, titled “Feel It Burning”. Technically not a
Starfish Stories track, but have a blast hopefully:

“Feel It Burning (ft. Snowflake)” by Ivan Chew, featuring vocal and piano tracks originally posted by Snowflake. 2009 – Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (3.0). Click here for how to give credit and other conditions.

Details here and here.

I think around end Sept, Adrian and I would have more time. I might get over my procrastination and work on tweaking the sounds for the rest of the Crystal Tears album.

~ Ivan

Thanks to NoMis who posted these links at soft.com.sg:

• Rosli Mansor: http://www.myspace.com/roslimansor (I’ve reviewed one of his album).
• Brandon Gan: http://www.myspace.com/brandongan
• Shern Wong: http://www.myspace.com/shernwong
• Addy Rasidi “Cradle”: http://www.myspace.com/addycradle
• Sridhar: http://www.myspace.com/sridharsmusic
• Wendy Phua: http://www.myspace.com/wendyphua
• James L.: http://www.myspace.com/freqfreqfreq

Will certainly check them out.

~ Ivan