Lyrics, music, arrangements, recording, mixing:
Xavier Vibert (2008-2009)
Lyrics and translation
This is my second album, Her Majesty Poverty.
Once again, I have written, composed, recorded and mixed everything myself, trying to improve the mixing quality. I hope you will enjoy it.
Please, leave your impressions!
I wrote this album in 2007 and 2008. This album has not been published or sold, it's just a bunch of files on my hard disk, there are no physical copies of a nice box with a CD inside. I only own a few copies at home. Nevertheless, I regard these songs as part of my first personal album. It contains 11 songs that you can listen right here. I hope you will enjoy them.
Lyrics, music, arrangements, recording, mixing:
Xavier Vibert (2007-2008)
Lyrics and translation
I have composed a lot of songs in the last few years. Some are finished, some are rough draft. Here are some of them...
And of course, I'm in a band. The name is Boomerang, I write songs for the band, as does Oggy, the other Boomerang guitarist.
As my wife is part of a theater company (she used to be a member of Art Scénique et Compagnie, and is now a member and co-founder of Les Arts Maniak), I have the opportunity to write theater scores on a regular basis.
To make these musics, I mostly use virtual orchestra instruments, rather than my usual guitars and bass.
In 2010, Les Arts Maniak played this piece based on the 1945 novel "The ghost and Mrs Muir" by R.A. Dick, aka Josephine Leslie, and on the 1947 film from Joseph L. Mankiewicz.
The story: one year after her husband prematurely died, a young widow, Lucy Muir, moves with her maidservant to a charming cottage by the sea. She finds out that the house is haunted by the ghost of its former owner, Captain Daniel Gregg. Unimpressed, the young lady starts an odd relationship with the ghost...
For this rather soulful play, full of humorous dialogues, I composed several themes that punctuate various key moments of the story. I had fun writing sad tunes (Lucy dies), melancholic, light-hearted or quirky tunes (like the western-like one). On top of the musics, I recorded several tracks for sound effects (typewriting machine, car, train, bell...) and voice-overs (dialogues or ghostly laughters).
In june 2008, Art Scénique et Compagnie introduced its own version of Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw. The company adapted the play by mixing dialogues from the film My Fair Lady by George Cukor and the original book by Shaw, which is not as funny as the motion picture. The play was pretty successful. Many people were baffled by the actors who played their characters with enthusiasm and talent, and were even compared to professionals, although they're merely amateurs, which is a very nice compliment indeed. More than 400 persons came to see the play, making this play their most successful to date!
For this play, I made several musics, including a few ones with lyrics (presented here in their instrumental version). I enjoyed myself a lot composing these tunes. I made all the musics and sound effects for the play, except for one piece of classical music from Mrs Butterfly by Giacomo Puccini.
In May 2007, Art Scénique et Compagnie rehearsed an adaptation of the French 17th century play L'avare (The Miser) from Molière and entitled it Le cauchemar d'Harpagon (Harpagon's nightmare). The play was presented at the Saint-Maur theater amateur contest (in France, near Paris), then was played again in October 2007 in front of classes (students aged 11 to 15), and played once more at another theater amateur festival in a nearby town in November 2007.
The soundtrack included a few famous musics (like the Austin Powers theme for instance), but also 4 short pieces of music I especially composed for the play.
The first series of musics I composed for a play was for the adaptation of Agatha Christie's And then there were none by Art Scénique et Compagnie.
Somebody said it would be a good idea to have a simple tune, like a childish melody, that would play at various moments of the show. With this idea in mind, I have tried to write an easily rememberable melody, which I then declined in different versions to illustrate the action on stage.
This play has been presented six times at the Saint-Maur theater (in France, near Paris) in May 2006 during a theater amateur contest.
I composed these tunes between 1989 and 1992.
The reason I started composing on the Amiga at the time (a computer I had bought mainly to play) is that after playing numerous great games, I received a new piece of software that changed my priorities. This piece of software was Aegis Sonix.
Sonix means "Sound". The Commodore 64 made me open my ears and start listening to music thanks to its incredible capabilities and the Amiga made want to start composing music. Sonix was a music composition program, simple to use and very efficient. It was not a sampler. By the way, I regret not to have taken interest in the numerous samplers that existed on the Amiga, but I must confess I did not really understand what they were for at the time. Pity, but well, I caught up with that later...
Sonix's main window displayed a music score. The Amiga could produce 4 sounds simultaneously, and you had to deal with it. That was one voice more than what the Commodore 64 could offer. The sound quality was even higher. The Atari ST on the other hand, although it was part of a new computer generation offered a sound quality inferior to that of the Commodore 64. The Atari's sound chip was identical to that of the Amstrad CPC, which was not really good...
So Sonix would allow to select a different instrument for each of the Amiga voices, and even better, it was possible to change the instrument anywhere in the score. One voice could then be given a different instrument for each note, very easily. I had many instrument sounds, but they were all pretty synthetic. I was not lucky enough to own digitized instruments. There were such instruments, but I never could get them, and they were way too expensive for me to buy them, so I just dealt with what I had.
And then I composed a lot of musics. I still have some of them, with a few good ideas and moments, but my musical knowledge was rather rudimentary. I still listen to these musics with a sense of nostalgia, but I can understand that other people do not really enjoy them. Nevertheless, I add them in a player on this page, you may find that amusing!!! And, who knows, you may even like some of them...
UNLIKES,
2011/09/20
Great song Queen of nowhere! get it out there!!! And La di daa on utube!
hello47,
2011/09/08
Je viens de passer un super moment sur vos deux sites .
J'aime bien les compos et merci pour tous les conseils que vous avez pu nous donner avec tant de simplicité ! Bravo encore !
René
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Merci René, content que vous ayez passé un bon moment ici !
Grebz
Curmery,
2011/08/07
Bonjour,
Je suis actuellement sur votre site internet et j'écoute avec plaisir vos pistes qui sont bien écrites ! Le seul petit bémol est la qualité de diffusion audio, elle est bien mieux sur le second album de 2009 mais reste encore un peu moyenne (ce n'est pas du tout méchant je dis uniquement ce que je pense mais je ne remet pas en cause votre travail) mais peut-être est-ce la compression pour envoyer votre fichier sur le net qui baisse la qualité.
Je suis moi-même compositeur, arrangeur... et je partagerais avec plaisir mes travaux avec vous, ce qui pourrait être une bonne expérience musicale axée sur le rock (progressif, alternatif, pop...) pour nous deux. Vous avez mon mail, libre à vous de me contacter. Continuez votre travail, c'est déjà du très bon boulot ! Cordialement.
Curmery
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Bonjour, et merci de votre opinion.
Les fichiers sont des mp3, la qualité n'est donc pas optimale, mais le problème de compression ne vient pas de là. Les albums que je présente ici à ce jour sont déjà assez anciens : 2008 et 2009. Depuis, j'ai beaucoup appris et - j'espère - progressé en mixage ! J'ai aussi à disposition de meilleurs outils pour mieux travailler.
Donc oui, il y a trop de compression, le son est parfois un peu trop sourd, manque de clarté et de définition, mais j'espère bien que le prochain album que je mettrai en ligne sera meilleur, du moins en ce qui concerne ses qualités techniques. Pour l'aspect artistique, on verra :-)
Grebz
LA,
2011/07/27
Primo : ce message n'est pas écrit par méchanceté.
J'aurais juste un seul conseil : bosse absolument ton accent anglais, enfin américain serait mieux. Il y a de l'idée dans tes compos, mais l'accent est atroce (perso je suis bilingue), de même, il te faudrait prendre des cours de voix, tu ne maitrises pas tes résonateurs, et tu te respectes pas ton registre vocal. Ensuite, musicalement, c'est encore trop pauvre. Tout le monde peut caser 5 ou 7 accords, une batterie binaire et un semblant de solo rock, et c'est pas top.
J'aurais pu me taire. J'aurais dû me taire.
Mais je me dis que tu dois être du genre à vouloir évoluer, alors essaie de prendre mes réflexions de façon positive.
Je précise que je suis venu sur ce site pour lire des informations relatives aux techniques MAO et que j'ai trouvé de très bons comptes rendus.
Ensuite, par curiosité, j'ai voulu écouter les compos. Mais finalement mon avis est subjectif.
Montand était fâché avec la rythmique...
La voix de Shane MacGowan des Pogues était plus qu'approximative...
Et 8 accords permettent de jouer le Canon de Pachelbel alors finalement...
...mais l'accent stp, juste l'accent.
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Aïe... Ça pique un peu aux alentours de ma fierté :-(
Bon... pour la voix, OK, je ne suis pas un grand chanteur, je n'ai jamais pris de cours et je sais que j'ai pas mal de limites.
Pour le manque de richesse musicale. Sans doute. Je suis loin d'être une bête à la guitare, j'apprends seul, je fais ça en loisir et je n'y consacre pas un temps fou. La technique m'emmerde, disons-le clairement, donc j'essaie de faire au mieux, mais je suis un guitariste moyen qui ne deviendra jamais Jimi Hendrix (pas le temps, pas la motivation...).
L'accent... Hum... Permets-moi de douter de ton "bilinguisme". Moi aussi je suis considéré comme "bilingue" et pourtant je m'en défends. Pour moi, un vrai bilingue, c'est quelqu'un qui passe d'une langue à une autre sans qu'un natif puisse remarquer le moindre accent. Disons que je parle anglais couramment.
Du coup, j'ai demandé à un de mes collègues américains ce que lui pensait de mon accent en lui faisant écouter 6 de mes chansons.
Voici mes questions et ses réponses :
Q- Est-ce que l’accent est OK ou pas ?
R- It won’t come as a surprise, but yep you have a little accent ! It’s not at all an issue, it’s more of a quality.
Q- Et si l’accent n’est pas bon, est-ce que c’est gênant, fatigant à écouter ?
R- Not a problem – See above.
Q- À part l’accent, il y a peut-être des fautes (mauvaises tournures de phrases, mauvaise grammaire…). Est-ce que c’est gênant ?
R- Didn’t hear any glaring mistakes, so seriously not an issue for me.
Q- Est-ce qu’on comprend ce que je dis ?
R- YES
Voilà qui règle mon soi-disant problème d'accent "atroce".
Les chansons disponibles pour le moment sont assez anciennes. D'autres sont en préparation, j'ose croire qu'il y aura des progrès, au moins sur la voix et la composition.
Bon, je suis un peu vexé bien sûr, mais merci d'avoir pris le temps d'écouter. Je tâcherai de m'améliorer, mais dans les limites de mes capacités, du travail et du temps que je suis prêt à y consacrer !
Grebz
Unknown,
2011/04/14
I like that song Queen of Nowhere, it's nice.
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Thank you! Glad you like it!
Grebz
