The FAWM EP : Post #2

Today was so awesome, thank you again to the super creative Joe Scala to bring out some very interesting side of my music, I'm telling you, he's a freaking genius.
We worked on two songs today "In This Ritual" & "Awake Your Observer", and he decided that we approach them differently, which was a great decision. Here is what happened.

"In This Ritual".
This has a more meditative vibe to it, so we approached it in a similar manner. I woke up at 6:48am, with first light, simply brushed my teeth, had some water at room temperature, no vocal warm up or talking or singing of any kind. I drove over to Joe's place with my electric guitar and my tar drum.
He had things set up for recording, we laid down the first guitar track, then I SANG the whole song, with my raspy morning voice at one take.
It was very interesting, then we added more layers to the song, including acoustic guitar, hand drums, claps, and then I re did the vocals again for the whole song after I had warmed up, and had some tea :). I then translated a part of it in Arabic, and actually did a reading on top of the music for one section.
All these layers are so unique, and we had a blast putting them together.
After we made sure we had all that we needed, we took a break and went out to lunch.

"Awake Your Observer"
Was the complete opposite approach of the song before, it had a simpler chord progression, so Joe hears me practicing the song real quick and says to me "Hey Mos, how about I play the guitar, you focus on singing and playing your hand drum, and we'll do it in one take".
So that's exactly what we did, since I was using my Tablet for the lyrics, I used my phone to video us recording the song, which I will place at the end of this post.

So we now have only one more song to record and this FAWM EP would be done, we already know what the song is, and we are throwing ideas of how to approach it, also we still haven't thought of a cool name for the EP yet :)

I hope your Sunday has been as fun as mine.
I'll blog you later.
Much Love
Mosno Al-Moseeki


"Awake Your Observer" Mosno ft Joe Scala. 1 Take.

The vLog Blog

This vlog is a bit different from my past vlogs, not in format, but in how it was made.
I wanted to document behind the scenes of the first day of shooting for my upcoming music video "Shukran My Totem", which is directed by award-winning Bentley Brown of "Faisal Goes West" fame.

My one thousand year old Flip camera is starting to act up, and I honestly didnt want to lung around with me a larger camera which has recently came into my possession,  plus I haven't gotten a chance to use it yet so I'm not comfortable with it yet.
Enter Tablet, I use the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 tablet.

My tablet is with me most of the time when I'm out, I use it to write down ideas for project, for doodling, checking email, the works. Since it has both a front and back facing camera, it would be perfect for vlogging. So I used it to take all the video for the vlog.

When I got home, I wanted to simply download the videos into my PC and edit them like I normally would. But then I changed my mind, the GN8 is creative box of tools, and I have not been using it to its maximum potential,  so I decided to edit and upload the video FROM the tablet it slef, and it worked like a charm.

My only complaint is the "text" feature, in the "Video Edit" software that comes builtin,  doesn't allow me to manipulate the "when" or "how long" the text would appear. Basically what ever  segment your working on, if you decide to add text, it will appear for the duration of that whole segment. Also I cant change the size or the font.

But keepnin mind, this is a tablet, we have been spoiled rotten by faster and smaller technologies that the simplest thing like not being able to adjust text, makes you go irritated.  So I try to remind my self that the bigger picture here is that I just shot, edited, labeled,  and uploaded a full vlog, all from this one tablet. When I the past I would have to use a camera (with limited storage and separate battery) to shoot, then wait to get home to upload it to a PC to be able to edit it and post it on the web.

I'm still learning, so maybe there is something in the App that I'm not familiar with, or there could be another Editing App out there that I need to find.
All in all, this was a great experience,  and this will probably end ip being my vlogging method of choice.

Here is the vlog, enjoy
Shukran, Thank You, & Much Love
Mosno Al-Moseeki

Making of : Shukran My Totem music video (Day #1)