Adrian Sakashita's Music

Happy to report that the newest tune, Seduction, is finally wrapped up. I’ve received the mastered copies back from the engineer and it now plays at “commercial levels”. I’ve added it to the player above, but there’s a link below just in case it doesn’t appear in your browser. Turns out that you [...]

We’re now at the final stage of the process! Thanks to the guidance provided by Brian Lucey, my Mastering Engineer, the mix is now sufficiently dialed in… Hopefully this sounds a bit “less congested” than what you’ve previously reviewed.

Seduction Premaster Mix

I should caveat all of these mixes have all been “processed” so that [...]

I sincerely appreciate the inputs you’ve all provided on Seduction. In particular, I received some very helpful and critical feedback from professional mastering engineer Brian Lucey. Brian is a well known industry professional I got to know through the GearSlutz.com forum. Great name, no? GearSlutz has over 40,000 members [...]

Here is the first pass of a “mixed” version of Seduction.

Seduction First Mixdown

Each of the MIDI instruments (piano, wurly, sax, horns) has now been recorded onto its own track (into the computer). Having a dedicated track for each instrument allows for “mixing” – that’s basically where the term comes from. [...]

If you reviewed my prior posts, you’ll recall that I received back the live recordings (for drums, bass and guitar tracks). These recordings were made against a Sketch of the tune … very basic stuff to namely define the song structure for the session musicians. It’s best not to have too much going [...]

After some careful listening, I felt it was necessary to replace the MIDI guitar patch that was backing the piano (chords) with a real guitar. Thought I could get away with it, but when real instruments are added, the ones being “synthesized” really stick out. So this is the way it [...]

As previously posted, the guitar tracks were completed just as I was leaving on a trip, so now we have the complete preview with the all the live tracks:

Complete Preview of Live Drums, Bass, and Guitars

There are two guitar tracks: a rhythm/chucking track, and a lead guitar. I really like the “tone” that [...]

Well, the bass track is now ready for a preview! The session musicians provide an opportunity for me to review and comment before we finalize each track, but I rarely find myself having much to add. I figure they know their particular instrument better than me and already took the time to try [...]

Like I was saying, this is the FUN part of a project because I get to hear what professional musicians can do to “liven up” my tune. Elad, the founder of drumsforyou.com, never ceases to amaze me. Apart from being a great drummer, he has fantastic musical judgment and orchestration skills… Oh, and [...]

My musical collaborators gave thumbs up to the latest revisions I applied to Seduction. So now, we are moving from Composition into Orchestration, and I really enjoy this stage because I get to sit back and see what professional musicians come up with! I usually order live recorded drums, bass guitar, [...]