Brandon Sanderson and more!

Back in August, I posted a song (Sci-Fi Song #5 ) that was based on Brandon Sanderson's Elantris. On a suggestion from Kristen at The Fantasy Cafe blog, I e-mailed Brandon to let him know about it. Just this week and to my surprise, Brandon replied to me, told me that he enjoyed the song, and linked to it from his blog. I suddenly realized how beloved Brandon is to his many readers as my song "Sarene" was downloaded over 700 times in the past two days! Thanks Brandon.

If you are new to the blog, welcome, and thanks for stopping by. If you are a fan of Mr. Sanderson and you enjoyed "Sarene", I hope that you will find a few other songs here that you might like. I release everything under a Creative Commons License, so please download any song that you like for free and share it with your friends.

My name is John Anealio. I am a singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist who writes and records songs based on science fiction and fantasy novels, TV shows, and movies. My goal is to post a new original song every other week. I have kept this pace since this past July and I currently have 10 original Sci-Fi Songs which you can download for free right now. On the alternating weeks, I usually post a remix of one of my songs by one of the excellent remix artists over at ccMixter or I do a links or roundup post (like this one). I've been meaning to do a roundup post for a while, so this seems like a good time to do one.

Here are a few highlights from the first four months of Sci-Fi Songs:

• "Sarene":the aforementioned song that was inspired by Brandon Sanderson's Elantris.
• "Rachel Rosen": based on the classic Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick.
  • "Android Girlfriend": a super creative mash-up of "Rachel Rosen" and a few other musical sources done by Teru.
  • "Rachel Rosen (radiotimes remix)": a great remix by radiotimes.
• Solo Acoustic Guitar Instrumentals
• "The Return of Titus Quinn": inspired by Kay Kenyon's Bright of the Sky. Scroll down and check out the comments to read some of the nice things that Kay Kenyon herself had to say about the piece.
  
• "Merithyn's Promise": based on Requiem for the Sun by Elizabeth Haydon
• "Summer Glau": inspired by Joss Whedon's Firefly/Serenity
• Vampire Duology:
• "Beautiful Vampire"
• "Angels and Vampires"

Thanks for stopping by. If you like what you are hearing please subscribe to the RSS feed. I'll be delivering new songs and remixes just about every week.

Hope you enjoy the music,

John Anealio

Sci-Fi Song #5: Sarene: inspired by Elantris

Sarene.mp3

My new song Sarene (Sci-Fi song #5) was inspired by Elantris, a great novel by Brandon Sanderson. This song is sung from the point of view of the main character, Prince Raoden. To learn more about Elantris check, out these great reviews and interviews at the following blogs:

1. Fantasy Cafe
2. Fantasy Book Critic
3. Fantasy Book News & Reviews
4. The Book Swede & His Blog
5. Fantasy & Sci-Fi Lovin' Book Reviews

Here are some of the tools that I used to record the track:

1. Martin Acoustic Guitar for the strummed acoustic parts
2. Les Paul Studio Electric Guitar
1. Standard Tuning for the rhythm parts and riffs in the chorus, the Edge-like delay guitar part in the second verse, and the harmony solo in the outro.
2. Open A (EAEAC#E) for the slide guitar parts in the chorus.
3. Washburn Bass Guitar
4. Rode NT-3 microphone (to record the acoustic guitar and my vocals)
5. Apple Logic Pro 7 recording software
1. The ESP and ES1 software synths for the synthesizer sounds in the beginning
2. Logic's included compressor, delay, phaser, and reverb plug-ins
3. The electric guitar parts were recorded through Logic's Guitar Amp Pro plug-in

Hope you enjoy it,
John

Here are the lyrics:

The city walls are covered with slime and sludge

It's difficult to find someone to trust

The Shaod took a hold of us and left us dead inside

Every scratch is agony where the pain will never subside

Oh Sarene, I wished I could have known you
Oh Sarene, I'm sorry that I'm gone
Oh Sarene, Your the one I wanted all along

I found a friend in Galladon the Duladen

We organized a union of the denizens from Elantris

We washed the walls and planted seed
and scripted Aons of pure light
A princess came to offer us
a solution to our plight

Oh Sarene, I wish that I could tell you
That I'm the Prince of Arelon
Oh Sarene, you think you're doing the right thing but it's wrong

Hrathen has three months to convert the populace of Kae
If he fails than the people of Arelon will be slayed
by the holy soldiers of the Fjordell Empire as they descend upon the innocent
it's up to use to save them

Oh Sarene, I think it's time to tell you
That I'm the Prince of Arelon
Oh Sarene, I think the time has come to claim the throne

Oh Sarene, we must protect the city
from Derethi monks and warriors
Oh Sarene, it's up to us to stop this massacre