Hello from Christopher Tin

Hah! Yes, I know all about Arirang, but I don't really see myself bringing the right vibe to it.

try it when you're full of weltschmerz ... then you're in the right mood for 99% of all korean classics. :D
 
Oh, did you follow this years...er...I mean the 2011 grammies? (are previous award winners normally invited?)
Any opinions about this years winner, especially regarding "Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist(s)", did you know any of them before?

Yeah, I was there last night. Sat in the audience through Nicki Minaj's absolutely bizarre performance. Wow.

I'm glad for Adele... she's quite gifted, and she staged a hell of a comeback. Foo Fighters... not my cup of tea. Bon Iver I was okay with, but I think he takes himself way too seriously. Skrillex... good for him. I like him.

Glad The Civil Wars got to perform on the mainstage, but they didn't get much of an opportunity to show what they were about, and frankly that's not the best venue for them to be performing in.

Tony Bennett's acceptance speech in the pre-telecast show was really special. He won for a duet that he did with Amy Winehouse, and invited her parents to come up on stage and talk about her. It was a very moving moment.
 
Oh, and Chris Brown. Why are we not talking more about the fact that he's a woman beater? That makes him forever loathsome, in my mind.
 
Yeah, I was there last night.

Oh, did anyone there recognize you?

Sat in the audience through Nicki Minaj's absolutely bizarre performance. Wow.

Bizarre is relative. I'm not that much "shocked" by it, because the usage/abuse of christian symbols is quite common in heavy metal. Just new to me that it's also done in Rap/Hip-Hop. Doesn't fit in my opinion.

I'm glad for Adele... she's quite gifted, and she staged a hell of a comeback.

Was it enough to silence the people who said that she's only a nine day wonder?

Tony Bennett's acceptance speech in the pre-telecast show was really special. He won for a duet that he did with Amy Winehouse, and invited her parents to come up on stage and talk about her. It was a very moving moment.

do you think it was warranted? I mean the whole buzz (pre- as well post death, including the speech), and so on.

Oh, and Chris Brown. Why are we not talking more about the fact that he's a woman beater? That makes him forever loathsome, in my mind.

The problem is that his human failures don't outnumber his muscial achievements (yet?), so it will probably be forgotten in a short timeframe.
Or does anyone talk about Mel Gibson?
 
I just finished listening to God of War (full versions; I'd already listened to the samples on your website) and I'm very happy I had ordered it. It's a GREAT album! I'm looking forward to the autographed disk. I think you made good choices for your "singles" from it being God of Love and She Walks in Beauty.

(I do say I'm not a fan of the way the Stereo Alchemy website is all set up and the checkout process is failure prone. Those things should load their own pages without that AJAX crap! The lyrics links can't be opened in a new tab, etc.)
 
After listening to God of Love (the album) a couple of times and looking at the lyrics (as well as Wikipedia and other sources; after all, I'm not that familiar with Romantic era poetry), it seems to me that you took some creative liberties with the poems (i.e. the text is different from the original at some points). I'd be interested to know what were the main reasons for this? Also, how did you and Kametron decide on what poems to use for the album?

Post scriptum: A wonderful album indeed is this God of Love, as was Calling All Dawns.

Post post scriptum: Realized it had been some 16 months since I last posted here; I also have not played Civ lately. Very regrettable.
 
Oh, did anyone there recognize you?

Was it enough to silence the people who said that she's only a nine day wonder?

do you think it was warranted? I mean the whole buzz (pre- as well post death, including the speech), and so on.

Yeah, a few people came up to me to say hi. Ran into a bunch of Academy members that I met last year. I tried to keep a low profile, though. Not really into trying to jump into the spotlight (unlike some of my colleagues, who were nominated this year).

And Adele was great. She just owned the night, as she owned the entire year. She's a juggernaut. I just have to make sure that I never release an album the same year as she does, if I ever want another Grammy. :)

And yeah, Whitney Houston definitely deserved all the accolades and tributes. What a loss, man.
 
How long does it go for? Must be a bit of a marathon with a pre-telecast show. Do you just have to sit their placidly through the whole thing, or are there plenty of breaks and mingling?

The pre-telecast is about 2.5 hours. It's not bad, though... you can get up and walk around, and there's food out in the lobby. It moves pretty fast, too, and it's broken up by some great performances.

This year my friend soprano Joyce DiDonato came out and performed an aria, and got a standing ovation. Then 20 minutes later, she went up and won a Grammy. Good for her!
 
I just finished listening to God of War (full versions; I'd already listened to the samples on your website) and I'm very happy I had ordered it. It's a GREAT album! I'm looking forward to the autographed disk. I think you made good choices for your "singles" from it being God of Love and She Walks in Beauty.

(I do say I'm not a fan of the way the Stereo Alchemy website is all set up and the checkout process is failure prone. Those things should load their own pages without that AJAX crap! The lyrics links can't be opened in a new tab, etc.)

Thanks! Although I think you mean God of Love, not God of War. God of War will probably be the name of my future death-metal album. :)

Thanks for ordering!
 
After listening to God of Love (the album) a couple of times and looking at the lyrics (as well as Wikipedia and other sources; after all, I'm not that familiar with Romantic era poetry), it seems to me that you took some creative liberties with the poems (i.e. the text is different from the original at some points). I'd be interested to know what were the main reasons for this? Also, how did you and Kametron decide on what poems to use for the album?

Post scriptum: A wonderful album indeed is this God of Love, as was Calling All Dawns.

Post post scriptum: Realized it had been some 16 months since I last posted here; I also have not played Civ lately. Very regrettable.

Thanks! And yes, we took drastic liberties with some of the texts. It was mostly because a lot of poems are just not fit for being lyrics. If you slavishly follow the texts, you lose the ability to have recognizable song structures. And for me, musical structure is always paramount. I'd rather take heat for not staying true to source texts, than write a bad song.

And also, a lot of Renaissance poems have a lot of archaic language in them. So we dispensed with the 'doths' and 'thees'. :)

Glad you like it!
 
Thanks for answering our questions, Chris Tin!

Here are some more questions:
-What inspired you to create "God of Love"?

-Also, which of the songs in it draws most closely upon its original source? So far I've found "Love is Love" has the most lines verbatim from its original source, whereas "Monster from the Sky" seems to take the most liberties. But I could be wrong, so I wanted to check. :)

-Did you create the music for each song first, or the lyrics first? Or some much more complex process?

-You've probably already been asked this, but is there any chance you'll be doing the score for another Civ game in the future?
 
Thanks for answering our questions, Chris Tin!

Here are some more questions:
-What inspired you to create "God of Love"?

-Also, which of the songs in it draws most closely upon its original source? So far I've found "Love is Love" has the most lines verbatim from its original source, whereas "Monster from the Sky" seems to take the most liberties. But I could be wrong, so I wanted to check. :)

-Did you create the music for each song first, or the lyrics first? Or some much more complex process?

-You've probably already been asked this, but is there any chance you'll be doing the score for another Civ game in the future?

Stereo Alchemy was formed around a Lindsay Lohan fashion video. Kametron and I had been talking about working on something like this together for awhile, when I got contacted by a fashion photographer who was looking for some trip hop for a Lindsay Lohan video he was shooting. Kametron and I decided to form Stereo Alchemy around that project, and since then we've been slowly pecking away at the rest of the album.

Typically, each song proceeds differently. Sometimes a melody just comes into your head (like Love Is Love, or Baba Yetu), and you look for some words to fill it. Other times you start with a text, and build a melody around that (God of Love). It just varies.

As far as which songs stay the most true to the original lyrics, off the top of my head, I think My Heart's Fit To Break stays very faithful. I wrote an additional verse, because the original poem was quite short. As far as songs that are different, yes, I think Monster Of The Sky is the most different, although it could also be Is It Possible. That's great that you went and did the research, though!

And as far as working on future Civs, yes, I hope to do so. It's not my decision to make, of course, but if Firaxis wants me to contribute in the future, I'd be thrilled.
 
Do you plan on making a death metal album in the future? :mischief:

Hey, if enough people ask for it... why deny the public what they're looking for? :)

Although really, I would probably want to team up with my buddy Gerard Marino (composer of God of War) for that one. He's the perfect fit for that.
 
Apart from saying I am looking forward to your future rap album :mischief: I thought I would chip in with some questions.

I saw you worked on the Lion King, were you anything to do with Lebo M awesome first chant in the film?

Has the fact you got your break from a video game and have done lots of production for companies ever caused you any trouble? I assume some people would find that "Cheating".

Are you going to tour with Stereo Alchemy?

And finally, If you could pick any rapper to work with, who would it be?
 
Apart from saying I am looking forward to your future rap album :mischief: I thought I would chip in with some questions.

I saw you worked on the Lion King, were you anything to do with Lebo M awesome first chant in the film?

Has the fact you got your break from a video game and have done lots of production for companies ever caused you any trouble? I assume some people would find that "Cheating".

Are you going to tour with Stereo Alchemy?

And finally, If you could pick any rapper to work with, who would it be?

Okay, funny you should mention rap...

Apparently, lately my song Mado Kara Mieru has been very popular with rappers. It's been sampled not once, but twice.

Cash Money Records artist Tyga's second CD 'Careless World' comes out on Tuesday, and unless there's some unforeseen disaster, you'll hear a sample from Mado Kara Mieru on the track 'Mystic AKA Mado Kara Mieru'. Check out this track listing:

http://www.amazon.com/Careless-Worl...tmm_msc_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1329644553&sr=8-2

It's track 15. Basically, Tyga's using my track as an interlude, and talking over it.

And then, there's this:


Link to video.

I know nothing about these guys, and my sources tell me that they're rapping in German with a Turkish accent, but that's it. But it's an unlicensed use of the song, so if they make it big, someone's going to owe me *something*!

As for your other questions, it's a misnomer that I worked on Lion King. Someone just set my music to some Lion King footage.

As for my work on video games, on the contrary, it's quite cool. I think people outside the game industry think that me working on games hurts me in some way. It doesn't. A lot of people in music would love to get into games.

Stereo Alchemy touring... we're hoping so! It depends how it takes off... so if you'd like to hear us perform, please help spread the word. We need it!

And finally, if I could pick a rapper to work with, I dunno... Eminem maybe? Kanye? No wait... SNOOP. :)
 
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