The Online Collaboration Project (A Social Experiment): In September of this year I posted a message on my Facebook page, Monserrat Musikworx, seeking musicians interested in joining me for a social experiment in creating an online song collaboration project. I received a lot of messages from interested musicians, which took me a while to choose the right ones for the project. On October 3rd, I had my lineup and we began working on the project. Since that date there were a few more changes due to sudden workload and/or schedules from the musicians and so we had to make a few more changes. However, we pushed on and have now finally finished the song. 1. The Musicians Involved: Christopher Belison – Vocals Emmanuel Rodulfo – Piano, Bass Christian Semilla – Drums Jun Latonio – Synths Butch Monserrat – Guitars, Tambourine 2. The Songwriting Process: How I came about writing my song “Life”. These past two years have been a difficult journey for me in that I lost a lot of old friends and also have good friends who are currently ill and/or going thru some very trying times. Aside from that I was also motivated to write the song because of all the chaos going on in our world today. The constant conflict in the Middle East, Russia and the Ukraine situation, worldwide political unrest, famine and the Ebola Virus breakout, just to name a few. “Life” is a song about these conflicts and issues we face on a daily basis, about our going thru so many different stages, changes and challenges through our lifetime. Situations that clearly show that we are not in control of what goes on in our lives, nor do we have a say in what happens to us or what direction or path our journey may take. It’s all about leaving it up to fate, the heavens and/or powers that be, depending on your beliefs. 3. The Production Process: The incredible thing about the production process was that it was all done over the internet with fellow musicians I met on Facebook. The musicians are all Pinoys who live in different parts of the Philippines. None ever met nor knew each other when the project was started with the exception of two people, Jun Latonio and myself who go back a very long way and have worked on many projects together in the 70’s and 80’s. The first step of course was writing the song. From there I created a very rough demo which was sent to Christopher Belison, who laid down a rough vocal track. That track was then sent to Emmanuel Rodulfo who added the piano and then sent to Christian Semiila who added the Drums. I then laid down my guitar tracks and a Tambourine. A rough mix was then sent back to Emmanuel who then laid down the bass track. From there the mix was sent to Jun Latonio who added the synth tracks. I then mixed and mastered the final tracks to create the end result. The song will be aired this coming Tuesday on SWR FM 99.9 FM, Sydney Australia and will soon be published here on Facebook. We hope you like it.
Posted on: Sat, 13 Dec 2014 20:17:17 +0000