Most of his life, Atlas of Silverbraid Music had been working artistically as a designer but never musically in any way, shape or form. His friends played instruments and wrote songs but Atlas liked technical drawing, three dimensional modelling and a lot of gardening too.
The 2019 pandemic was an interesting time; tragic for many people over the world however it also provided enough peaceful, silent solitude to allow music to flow out. This is how Atlas would describe it:-
There had never been any past musical training, nor was there any expertise with an instrument either; however there was an understanding of the mathematics of music and the feeling that he could write music.
A Venezuelan friend showed Atlas how to use a digital audio workstation and that was the opening of the tap. Learning music theory, production techniques, and writing songs in his favourites genres happened concurrently.
Atlas likes orchestra because of all the people playing together in harmony to create music that moves us. Uplifting Trance is great too because of its energy and euphoria. His first few songs were written without knowing how to play an instrument though he is learning to play piano and guitar.
In May 2024, Atlas released his first cover song, an orchestral arrangement of Coldplay's 'A Sky Full of Stars.'
Atlas grew up in Leicester, England and did quite a lot of interesting things. He was an architectural technologist, avid volunteer, neigbourhood champion, a football coach and horticulturist. In 2017, he went to Holland for the Women's Euros Final and a week in another country changed him. A deep question was asked:
"Would I be better off living in another country?"
One night whilst sleeping Atlas had a dream - he was elswhere near a large boat. It was sunny and you could see the sea. His hair was braided. All of sudden he was calling me over with his hand. It was me calling me. The simple answer was yes.
Many of his favourite trance songs were always played in Ibiza so the plan was to go there though at this time Atlas was not musical. 2020 came and Atlas arrives in Valencia, from where he could take a ferry to Eivissa.
Day one, Atlas falls in love with the City of Oranges and has not really left. One week in Valencia became two more and then an extra four. Covid and quarantine interrupted the holiday and meant Ibiza was for another day.
So there was a German, Peruvian, Colombian, Venezuelan and an Indian in a Valencian flat-share. The German was an engineer of some kind, the Columbian and Peruvian were students, and the Venezualan - a spare-time music producer known as Alx Tayler.
Friend and fellow music producer "Alx Tayler" took a simple motif Atlas had suggested to create a song in a 2 hour tutorial of FL Studio. Alx Tayler had been a bedroom producer for many years in his home country of Venezuela and had plenty of experience with the digital audio workstation.
Alx Tayler started arranging elements demonstrating how you add instruments to a channel rack and create patterns in the piano roll. Listen to Song 001 in the video.
Song 001 provided a basis to understand the software. The next day Atlas opened the piano roll in FL Studio and sketched out some patterns using C Major, D Major, E Minor and G Major. These chords in particular feature prominently in his favorite trance song, the Kaycee Remix of '1999' by Binary Finary.
Even at this early stage, the harmony and the mathematics behind music was intuitively understood. Atlas knew he could write songs but did not how to use the tools to do this yet.
Song 002 expressed some understanding and inner creativity but was not a complete song in and of itself. Atlas turned to an existing song called 'Pure' by The Lightning Seeds to learn more about sound. Could he satisfactorily modify an existing song with different instruments and musical ideas?
Well, yes - he could and he did.
At this time Atlas was using the trial version of FL Studio and the project file was not saved so only an audio render remains. The Lightning Seeds were a popular band in the 1990's headed up by Ian Broudie and the idea was to create a cover version with amended lyrics.
Atlas had a desire to play piano long before he had started to compose any music. As he did not have an actual keyboard yet, Atlas used an online virtual piano for starters and watched plenty of performances by pianists on YouTube.
The music from the best Star Trek: The Next Generation Episode called 'Inner Light' was particularly moving. The music was written for a solo flute like instrument that Captain Picard plays but is also a full orchestral piece. In a much later episode, he plays a duet with a piano accompaniment.
Through the online piano, Atlas also learned how to play the theme from Metal Gear Soild and 'More Than This' by Roxy Music. A piano played by a qwerty keyboard is interesting and fun though a little limited so when the time came Atlas bought a Yamaha P45 full size digital piano and played it everyday just for fun. He now has Knight K10 acoustic piano.
Learning music involved two things:
1. Learning to play piano and music theory.
2. Learning how to use the digital audio workstation for music production.
To learn outline piano and music theory, Karen Ramirez was a delightful teacher on YouTube. For FL Studio, Michael of 'In the Mix' had the most comprehensive set of tutorials. Much later when Sky Full of Stars was ready to be released, Atlas started to use Musescore, took in-person piano lessons at a local music school and studied orchestration through a Udemy course. So far Atlas is mostly self taught.
"You don't need to know a lot of music theory to write a song because that is about the sound you are trying to create. But knowing and investing time in learning music theory, brings other qualities and depth to the sound you want to create. I remember using a synth in a song which phases from left to rgith and back and again. One might think this a trick of modern music and that would be true today in the way you do it digitally and electronically but the same basic effect was right there in a Mozart piano concerto written over 200 years ago."
Whilst Atlas was studying music theory and production techniques, his friend Alx was actively writing songs and invited Atlas to accompany him one afternoon. Atlas did not know what was going to happen or where they were going, Alx said very little but told Atlas to bring his camera.
"We had our bicycles and went up the Turia garden until we were at a recording studio in Valencia near Alameda Metro Station."
Alx asked Atlas to make a documentary style video which was going to be hard because he had no time to prepare. The song that was recorded that day is called 'Imperfecciones.'
Further collaborations with Alx Tayler followed as an artist and business advisor. Atlas being a keen photographer used an image he took of Sandra (the model) to make the cover art for Cuerpito (listen below). A later song called 'Lo Siento' which means 'I am Sorry' provided an opportunity for Atlas to make an animated video to capture some emotional depth.
Music is not just the song you write. Every song needs artwork for it to be released on a streaming platform so artwork should be thoughtfully prepared. Most songs are still acommpanied by a music video and promotion nowadays means making long and short form content. Music has provided an Atlas at opportunity get better at artistic drawing, photography, video production, VFX and storytelling.
Song 005 although a very short and simple song, marked a breakthrough for Atlas as he was able to take ideas and write a complete song. Being in Spain and around latin-amercians had an influence as he looked to use that dinstinct style that characterises reggaeton in different ways.
"Song 005 is a relaxed chill song which used native instruments in FL Studio and the reggaeton beat is played by the steel drum-like instrument cycling though a four chord progression so it has tone. Use of different octaves with the main synth allows the music to evolve until we get to a finale which deserves to be in its own trance song."
Atlas did not grow up with latin music and reggaeton which is a whole other world, so reinterpreting the reggaeton structure based on what he knew allowed for different type of musical creativity and the result was Star Bursts (see Discography).