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Newsletters & Articles
Latest News
Spotlight - Spotlight - Songwriting the title track
Instruments/Sounds and Genre talk

Newsletters & Articles

HAPPY NEW YEAR Music Lovers! What better way to kick off the New Year than with some New Music?

Hello Friends, business aquaintences and/or Valor Fans! I'm Alan Currens (Valor & The Dark). I've recently produced a solo work as artist Speck5. And I'm excited to share it with all of you.

This newsletter will keep you informed about the Speck 5 projects, digital distribution benchmarks, new projects in the works and so on. If you do not receive the Speck 5 newsletter, you can join here.

Latest News - New Bands Rock

There is a new project currently in the works that I will either be calling "Earth, Wind & Science" or "Ever We Dream" and I look forward to filling you in on the details as this project grows.

Like "21st Century Freak", the CD will contain as many ethnic instruments as I can get access to, but what's different about this CD is that I intend to incorporate more of a trance element. As in the song "On Me On You", I will attempt to visit an ethereal sound with injections of hard metal elements. What would that sound like??? Well, imagine if Pink Floyd were practicing and Linkin Park stopped in to jam... LP starts going off on some heavy, fat beat... but Pink Floyd refuses to be interupted, so they keep playing.

Meanwhile, next door, I have my ear to the wall and a tape recorder in my hand. The sound I'm getting is the sound I will put in my songs on the next CD. Then, imagine if the lyrics were written by me and my co-writer Dr. Rose, and the vocal performance was coached by the Cocteau Twins and Sade, but performed by Alice In Chains... and that's what I hear in my head:)

How can you get involved?

One thing I enjoy about this work is learning from my friends about percussions and instruments of the world I use this information when I research the sound beds and instrument choices for songs. So speak up and educate me if you know about some instrument or musical element I'm not using that would possibly enhance Speck 5's music. I'm an independent, but I'm humble and I know that I have a lot to learn about music and the world and my ears and heart are always open and ready to learn and grow.

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Spotlight - Songwriting for the title track or 21st Century Freak

As a songwriter, I'm constantly amazed at the lack of consistency in where these 4th dimensional pets come from that I call songs. Take the title track of this new CD for instance, 21st Century Freak. This song is about Mr. Hyde. I have no idea where this came from, but I had a daydream, first person, where I was Mr. Hyde... the moon was out and I was in full prowl. I was running through downtown and passing all of these lost teens, homeless and hopeless, looking for a thrill of any kind and I was more than happy to oblige. A little wrestling, some biting and a generous spilling of blood and I had a song.

I don't know where these moments come from, but I relish them. Sometimes they bring thrill and gore, and other times they bring sensual wanderings. But they always bring an emotion that is very real and the challenge becomes capturing these moments and trying to convey them to a listener.

It's not just the lyrics that challenge, it's the music. You have to have the right chords or nothing makes sense. Chords all have their own unique quality and they are not interchangable. Then, I suppose you have to set a melody that makes sense, something that sounds as if the lyric is being spoken naturally, but in song and with more intense emotion.

Then, and this is where I might be a little different, there are sounds. The sounds, to me, are what define my "pets". I have to be careful not to overdue it, which is my tendency, but sounds behave like movie soundtracks for me. I think they can spark in the listener actual visual interpretations. I know that's what happens to me when I listen to music...

If I do my job right, you should be able to actually "see" moments in this music. The cool part of that is that you can put in your own characters and faces, based on your own personal experiences in life. I like to think you'll use your own villains and heroes to play the roles cast in the lyric, hopefully making each song something personal and unique to you.

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Instruments/Sounds and Genre

This debut release of Speck 5 is monumental to me for so many reasons, but among them is that it triggered my recent immersion in the world percussions. Listen to "I See Monsters" for the didgeridoo, or the etherial "On My On You" for the lovely Dumbek drum and a host other percussions from Ghana and Nigeria.

If you really want to get crazy with research (like me) listen to the title track... in the bridge section you'll hear a host of sound effects that include the sounds of a machine gun from WWII. The German 7.92mm MG-34. Go one step further and hear the anguished screams dying men and women... terror driven streets, and general panic. All sounds lifted (legally) from the t.v. and the internet, sound by sound.

I really like things that are new and different, and the world is big and bountiful with instruments and sounds. I'm always searching and in a constant state of discovery in this musical adventure that I've named Speck 5.

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