Category: pop rock

Mr. V’s First Image of Drive by the Cars

Published on by Scott Von Holzen
First Image of Drive by the Cars, September 10th

Backside of Drive showing all that has to be done to hang the artwork, September 10th
The drive image shows the canvas background, completed on September 18th.
I have the basic music composition done. I will tweak and possibly add other instruments in Studio One DAW where I will produce the final version of this Art’s cover music.
This clip from the cars lives show gave me the idea for the background canvas.
The Cars live September 11, 1984. The performance of Drive starts at 41:33. Actually, if I had heard only this version of Drive, I do not think it merits an artwork
Here is the sound I liked from this music, although this video is old and truly dated.

side & Mr. V: Working Through Bar 10

(art project Drive)

Mr. V:
First challenge of the day with Drive. I wanted to divide this half-note chord into three smaller chords: two eighth-note “helpers” leading into a quarter-note chord that really jumps out — makes its point.

Original cover music for Bar 10.

Brightside:
Good plan. Here’s one smooth option I suggested:

  • 1st 8th: Bm triad (B–D–F#)
  • 2nd 8th: A major triad (A–C#–E)
  • Quarter: Dmaj7/F# (F#–A–C#–D)

That gives a clean bass line C → B → A → F#, and the Dmaj7 lands strong.

Mr. V:
I liked that structure — two quick helpers leading into a statement chord. I followed your eighth-note idea but chose my own voicing for the final quarter chord, keeping its color from the original bar but cutting its length in half. The new version sounds more balanced and keeps the “for now” motion I wanted from Bar 9 into 10.

Brightside:
Right — that still fits the same voice-leading logic. The bass walks down stepwise (C → B → A → F# or your variant), and each chord shares tones so the line arrives instead of jumps.

✅ Blog Takeaway

This bar became a perfect example of AI + artist collaboration.
Brightside narrowed the choices to a few simple, theory-sound options.
Mr. V listened, adjusted, and made the final call by ear.
Efficiency met intuition — and the bar found its voice.

Original cover music for Bar 10.

Mr. V: That works.

The changes made to Bar 9 lead in to Bar 10. The transition is now smoother and jazzed up.


Scott Von Holzen aRT & aRTIST



S_V_H Everything I do first image

Published on by Scott Von Holzen
Everything I do next to the previous project,The Scientist

Everything I do, the music box artwork pictured above, displays a new design direction for this art. This change came about from looking back at how the artist Mark Rothko handled color. I have a large and expensive book of Mark Rothko works on canvas. Picture below, on the right, is the 2nd to last image from that book. I believe it is this image that also inspired the backgrounds of the great artwork’s Hallelujah and Thunder road. Both hang in the studio, pictured below.

Besides taking another look at Rothko’s use of color, I also turned my canvas to match his vertical style. It turned out to be a simple move from a horizontal look to a vertical look. I will arrange the music in three sections across the canvas, from the top left to the bottom right.

The image I like is on the right. One of Mark Rothko‘s last paintings.
Everything I do earlier image side view.

I like the idea of wall mounted artworks extending out from the wall as if reaching out to the viewer. This one canvas turns out to be over 6 inches out from that wall. There is a reason for this.

Typically, I mount the speakers in the canvases, which projects the sound from out the back, bouncing off the wall. I hear the stereo effects in larger works, but with smaller artworks, the speakers are close together, and although the music is fine, the stereo separation suffers. This artwork is 30 inches wide and too narrow to accommodate a decent stereo sound. That is why I mounted the speakers on the sides of that canvas. This pushes the sound out in two different directions, a separation of 180 degrees. I expect to experience a larger stereo soundstage (definition). Of course by accommodating side mounted 5×7 inches speakers, I also gave myself a practical reason for extending the canvas further out from the wall.

Artist’s Studio wall hanging of the brown colored Thunder Road 2011 next to the blue Hallelujah 2011.

I wanted to do an update version of the Rothko painting I found in his book. That is why I choose a 30 by 40 inches canvas. And I really wanted to go with his horizontal rectangles in a new way but comparable to what I did in the early years, for example, Canon In D from 2009. But after some attempts to update Rothko’s idea, I thought what I was trying to accomplish failed. Wisely, for this project, I went with a mix of blues for this work and will attempt a Rothko update another time.

Bryan Adams – (Everything I Do) I Do It For You, Live At The Royal Albert Hall

I never was a Brian Adams fan, but this music is one of his best, with its exceptional arrangement, strong lyrics and a good melody.

Scott Von Holzen

S_V_H What’s Up first image

Published on by Scott Von Holzen
The first image of the main canvas which is 24 inches by 48″ inches.

What’s up is my next project. A lot of times a song pops into by Apple AirPod while walking my wonderful friend for life, Zelda, our Irish setter mixed poodle. And something in it, either the lyrics or the melody, catches the current mood I am in. That is how I keep on, keeping on. This time, my next project song came to my attention after listening to my Spotify Discover playlist. The song I heard on that playlist was a new cover by Dolly Parton of the song What’s Up. I have long ago added the original version of What’s Up by 4 Non Blondes in my Like playlist. Therefore, it has been there, but the Dolly Partons version surprised me. Then I saw that Linda Perry, who wrote and sang the original 4 Non Blondes version, was accompanying Dolly. That gave Dolly’s cover a lot of credibility and the confirmation I needed to spend the next few weeks working with this music.

The official 4 Non Blondes video with 1.6 billion views. so far.
Here is a cover by Dolly Parton that I never expected. Well done, this version features Linda Perry on the guitar who wrote this song. This video has 1 million views in two weeks at this writing.

I want to keep this artwork small. That means I will power my cover music with my standard 2 watt stereo system. To keep this project smaller in overall length, I first thought of installing the speakers on the backside of the main canvas. Instead, to give this work depth (a must for this art) I will lay the left and right speaker canvases on top of the main canvas instead. Also, because of the low number of notes, I am going with 3.5 inch in size. Along with the added speaker boxes, that will push this artwork’s length to around 6 feet. Still, compared to most of my projects, this one is small.

This audio is a late draft for the music box cover of What’s Up.

The pink repeating words “What’s goin on” dominate the image of the main canvas,” This is was my first time use of acrylic marker pens. I choose the color pink for this music which is performed by 4 non-blondes. Considering how many of my artworks include words, finding this easy to use, hopefully archival writing option took a long ago to find. Being the unknown, unknown artist, without a fine arts degree, has its consequences. Upon looking closer, Into the black background I have also scratched into the paint those same words, “What’s going on,” To note I left the question mark off the artwork to allow the viewer the flexibility to query their meaning.

It is only recently I have created a separate worksheet, alongside with my sheet music. In the past, I would print out my entire cover music and then outline the part in the sheet music the visual would be sampling.

The worksheet version of my cover music for What’s Up

Scott Von Holzen