Marc Soucy, original electronic music composer
Creating fusions of musical opposites has always been a particular passion of Marc’s, using interweaving melodic phrases with pure sound design to create emotional soundscapes that evoke a sense of place and situation.
briefly about Marc’s music videos:
In 2022 Marc began creating videos to accompany his music. His main approach is that of thematic montages, using some original footage, along with mostly source material from many places, used by permission.
An avowed total video amateur, Marc admits:
“The music is the message after all. My videos are only there to provide a potential interpretation of what the music conveys… sometimes an imaginary story line. Plus of course today people are used to having visuals to watch. I’ve been enjoying reverse-engineering the meaning of the videos and the creative process involved. Video editing is pretty fun. It’s certainly not my specialty of course, as anyone who knows what they’re doing will know!”
The videos are not available for sale or use. Only the musical content is available for licensing:
back to the music though….
Marc's composer studio is equipped with a huge array of virtual instruments, effects plugins, and sample libraries. In addition, because of Marc's long background as a keyboardist and synthesizer enthusiast, the studio is of course equipped with classic keyboards and alternative controllers for finger played percussion and polyphonic after touch affected synths in both the hardware and software realms.
In his teens, before Marc had yet learned what a blues scale or even regular chord changes were, he had already studied classical piano for over eight years. This fact predisposes him to approach music as a series of intersecting musical lines—melodies, countermelodies, harmonies, etc—rather than a series of chords, that being the predominant paradigm in the classical approach. The intersecting lines he creates form chords in many places—sometimes predictably, sometimes not—and tend to float over a binding figure, whether drums, a bass line, electronic pattern, or neoclassical motif.
It is common for him to take musical threads from various unrelated styles and find a way to make them play nicely together. One example he frequently uses is to have classical instruments play pop and funk figures instead of what’s expected. “What gives me the greatest pleasure is when this technique actually works. It’s really a satisfying part of my process.” All of this is done as already mentioned with electronic and digital musical instruments.
Marc makes a point of playing most music riffs that appears in his compositions. “Copy and paste my own passages? Maybe if it works, but it rarely does… ….copy someone else’s performance? I try very hard not to do that whenever possible. I might use “pre-played” samples occasionally but only if there is truly no choice to get the segment right… …and the segment is the priority after all. Whenever there is a melody line or a lead part, that’s always me playing, whether it’s a flute, banjo, violin, cello, trumpet, piano, whatever… Only the occasional supporting part and percussion section are ever generated by software. The parts I play by hand far outnumber everything else in every song. It’s key to find the right mix, otherwise it’s just a cut and paste job, which I strongly resist.”
One musical tech device that Marc does in fact use at times are arpeggiators. “They add an insistent energy that is hard to get any other way. The trick is to create or tweak the right one for the piece, and not over rely on it. Sometimes I play and quantize rapid patterns to approximate the same result. Making them harmonically musical and working their magic as they becomes exposed in the right places is key. Maybe only once or twice have I ever built a complete song around one. Since I pride myself in being truly eclectic, even that rule has to be broken once in a while (laughs).”
The creative process is very much a dynamic and fluid one. He often bounces from one part of the production to another, taking inspiration of what might work, given where he is at any moment. “The process is like planned chaos, but I know it when it’s right.”
Marc’s works are registered with these organizations:
American Society of Composers Authors and Publishers (ASCAP)
Mechanical Licensing Collective (The MLC)
Copyright Alliance
ISWC Network (International Standard Musical Work Code)
ISRC (International Standard Recording Code)
European Broadcasting Union (EBU)
Sound Exchange
SongTrust
Luminate (SoundScan)
U.S. Copyright Office (Library of Congress)