Frank Klepacki: Behind the Making of the Album Virtual Control

[Sonic 293]

Veteran C&C music composer, Frank Klepacki, has posted a new article on his Facebook page where he discusses the creative process for his 2005 solo album, Virtual Control. Its one of Frank's albums that I've yet to add to my collection. Anyway, here's part of the article.

 

Virtual Control is my third solo album release that came out in 2005. The selection of songs on this album came about from a few different directions. At the time I was still totally freelancing audio work and I frequented Vegas nightclubs more often as a result of drumming in cover bands on weekends. I had noticed that hip hop really became popular as club dance music and so listening to that every weekend embedded itself into my brain. While most of it runs together after awhile, occasionally I would pick out a groove or synth phrase that I liked and thought to myself if I composed my own style tunes with these kinds of grooves I could do something cool with it.

 

"The Vegas In-Crowd" was the first written in this time period, poking a bit of fun at the club scene which became so predictable. I think its pretty ridiculous that the clubs use a formula to get the most money possible for what is considered a normal experience anywhere else. For example, you wait in a long line where bouncers are being selective about who they let in, creating the illusion that this is where the cool people hang out so it must be important. When in all reality they just give people with money, and pretty girls the priority. Why? Because somewhere along the line someone came up with the brilliant idea of charging people to "sit down." So for an insane price of say $500 you could sit down in a booth and have a bottle a vodka and mixers. That was 2005, these days they'll even charge thousands for this if they can get away with it depending on the club. Every casino on the strip has one. Lets say you don't care about that and you'll just got to the bar - they'll charge you $15 per drink. So not only did you wait in line for an hour, only to pay the door man $20-$40 to get in, you then get to pay $15 a drink or get reamed in a VIP seat, all for what? So you can say you were there? This farce really struck a nerve and so that's where the song came from. I could buy a new guitar that will last me a lifetime versus one night of drinking with "The Vegas In-Crowd."

To read more, click here.

[General Kane Nash 0]

We miss you Frank, you should have made the C&C4 OST, that game needed so much your techno/metal/electronic/rock/experimental music

 

And Eric Gooch, heck, if we couldnt have a nice campaign at least we could have had nice music a visual design!

[G0NE2W4R 0]

Frank Klepacki forever man!

[Chronojam 3]

I can't stop seeing the Hulu loading indicator when I see the album cover

[Guest Stevie_K]

I can't stop seeing the Hulu loading indicator when I see the album cover

 

That was probably the driest joke I've ever heard