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Category: Art

“Spring Twilight” by Adrian Patience (2007/2013)

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This is a track that I made in 2007. The cover artwork I made just this year(2013). In 2007 I had been making a lot of beat driven electronic/hip hop music, and this track was a departure from the previously mentioned “beat driven electronic/hip hop music”. It was about me making a change from the pulse pounding beats to something that was more about music(chords) and percussion. I was motivated to make this track because I was listening to a lot of jazz/electronic music that had a lot of ambient soundscapes(Jan Jelinek, Pat Metheny, John Klemmer, to name a few). I wanted to test myself and skill set to see if I could make something that was not so much about the hi-hat/kick/snare combo pack. Not to say that there is anything wrong with the aforementioned “hi-hat/kick/snare combo pack”, but I felt I need a change to broaden my proverbial “horizons”.

I made the track completely with Logic Pro 7 on my old school Powerbook G4(still in use today). The Powerbook and Logic being the main composition/sequencing work horses. A midi keyboard, the Presonus Firebox 400 interface, a mixer, and a variety of software plugins were also used to breath some analog/digital life into this track.

I made the cover artwork a few days ago. It’s fully compliant with iTunes album cover sizing and is available to download here, and also by clicking on the image above.

Copyright © Adrian Patience 2007/2013, all rights reserved. With that being said, please feel free to download and share this track. Please keep the ID3 tags intact(unmodified), and distribute the track with the artwork. Also, Please link back to my SoundCloud page or this post. Using this track in a derivative work without permission is not acceptable; however, if you want to use this track in a project or derivative work please email, tweet, or contact me in some way so that we can discuss it(I’m reasonable). Bottom line…do the right thing!

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Posted May 4th, 2013

Categories Art, Music  Tags , , ,

Graham Blvd “Trapped” Single Cover Art (Reimagined)

A few months back I found this track: “Trapped” by Graham Blvd on the iTunes store. I have been searching for this track for years to no avail. I’m pretty sure that I had heard the track in the 80s when I was growing up, but my love for the track first developed after Boards of Canada did a remix of it(“Trapped” by Hell’s Interface on the MASK 200 EP).

I was quite surprised to have found this track on iTunes, as their selection of rare/obscure titles from the 70s and 80s is a bit lacking. I usually turn to Google when researching older tracks, but for the first time Google came up short…really short! In fact, I can find no information about Graham Blvd on Google at all, which is quite surprising.

This brings us to the main issue/subject of this post. While I love the track “Trapped” by Graham Blvd that I bought from the iTunes store, I absolutely despise the cover artwork that comes with it. Unfortunately, “Trapped” comes as part of one of those “hits of the 80s” compilations, specifically…the album is called “R&B Hits 1980s Vol. 13″. I suppose the artwork isn’t altogether dreadful, but it certainly leaves something to be desired. This is especially true when flipping through my album artwork on my iPod touch. You flip through various well designed covers and all of a sudden…there is this garish Pink, red, and white “R&B Hits 1980s Vol. 13″ cover that ruins the experience of flipping through all of the previous well designed albums covers.

I decided to remedy the situation by drawing, painting, and designing my own album cover for the track “Trapped” by Graham Blvd. Also, I’ve decided to share the cover art with the denizens of the net. So, if you decide to by the “Trapped” track by Graham Blvd on the iTunes store, you’ll have the option to get a nicer looking cover(nicer looking in my opinion). *Click the image above to get the full sized version.

Since there wasn’t that much information about “Graham Blvd” the group/artist(s), like from where they hail, how the group formed…etc, I decided to go with a California coastline Blvd, palm trees, beach, and sea. Essentially it’s a coastline/scene that I admire as aesthetically beautiful, and even if Graham Blvd hails from somewhere completely unrelated–the UK, Cleveland, or wherever–I think that the artwork still holds up as a nice looking cover. We don’t have to be that literal do we?

Tips: In case you want to keep the “R&B Hits 1980s Vol. 13″ cover, iTunes allows you to add multiple pictures to audio files. Just “get info, cmd + i” on the the file in iTunes, move over to the artwork section, and then drag in the new cover(the old cover will be preserved).

I generally make MP3s out of my purchased iTunes tracks so that I can have MP3 CDs for the car. In which case, I leave the original purchased iTunes AAC files alone. That way if I don’t like the cover, I can just erase it on the MP3 and add in a different one, and the original purchased ACC file is untouched.

It’s up to you how you want to do this; the process is really straight forward. Do all of this at your own risk. If you lose the the original artwork for whatever reason–that beautiful “R&B Hits 1980s Vol. 13″ cover–I won’t be held responsible.

Copyright: Okay, so I’m not going to do a long drawn out copyright like I did for the previous post…it’s not necessary. In the previous post I wrote a EULA style copyright. I did this to see if I could write a professional(ish) EULA style license. In any case, it was way to long and drawn out–as most legalese is–and it’s completely unnecessary given the content that I’m putting out. Bottom line: Use the artwork, do what you like with it, but if you modify it throw me an email, tweet, or whatever with a link so I can see what you’ve done with it. At the very least, link back to the post on this site. I guess you could consider this a BSD style license.

* I’ve been really busy with other things(programming, web development/design), and my posting has suffered. Not to worry though…I’ll be posting more regularly. Well, I’m going to try to post more regularly.

– To download the iTunes sized Cover Art click on the image above.
– To preview/download(buy) “Trapped” from iTunes click: here.

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Posted April 29th, 2012

Categories Art, Cover Art  Tags , , , , ,