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Preston Frazier
I’m happy to chat about his music with George Ajjan, the mastermind behind Ajjancy. George, how are you?
– George Ajjan
I’m doing great. Thank you so much for all that you do, not just for having this chat with me but for all the independent artists that you feature. It’s appreciated to have somebody who takes the time to listen Thoughtfully and ask questions and discuss, and it’s really building the community, and we it’s really
Appreciate it.
– Preston Frazier
I appreciate that. When I got the album ‘to be arranged,’ I was intrigued.
I didn’t know what to think of it at first. When I put it on, I thought, “Wow, this takes a lot of effort.”
It shows a lot of skill. Of course, your band, the ajjancy is on Bandcamp. I encourage everyone to check it out.
You released a wonderful Christmas song I did not hear until after the holiday.
If you could, let’s start there and talk about, let’s begin there about how the Christmas song came about, and then we’ll get into your background a little bit.
– George Ajjan
That came out with the holidays, and a song inspired it.
It was inspired by something someone said about how the person was struggling with the holiday period.
That song, “Christmas Came Early (war isn’t over),” just poured out, and I thought I should produce this and distribute it quickly.
I called my Fernando Perdomo, a jack of all trades, to put together his magic. He plays everything from bass drums to guitar, etc.
I put a string quartet on it, my first original release.
That’s just the first of many for the next three years.
Over the past couple of years, I’ve spent a lot of time in the studio preparing material that will be rolled out using what they call the waterfall strategy.
I’m excited about a series of albums that can come out over the next three years.
I’m also super excited to talk about the first project, the mashup covers, ’to be arranged.’
Preston Frazier
Great, tell us a little bit about your background. How did you get involved in music? You classify yourself as a singer-songwriter, but you’re so much more than that.
George Ajjain
I’m a guy who was obliged to take piano lessons, and I grew up with music in the house.
When I took piano lessons, I never practiced enough, but I learned enough from music theory to know which chords go with which.
As I grew older, I started developing my taste in music and style.
I went to college, got a guitar, taught myself to play, and started writing.
When this pandemic happened, and suddenly we were locked up at home, it was a musical awakening for me because suddenly I had all this time. I started going back to demos that I made 25 years ago. Some of the stuff was cringy, but others were demos. I thought I would write that song today. I went through and revamped those or developed them a bit more.
Also, around that time, everyone was sitting at home—the best musicians in the world. You realize that if you ever dreamed of making your own album, you thought it would cost in the mid-six figures. Come to find out, to get a good product, it’s a very low five figures to hire outstanding musicians and do it the right way. So I thought, well, let’s go and make that happen.
– Preston Frazier
That’s a pretty ambitious plan, but you executed it well.
Let’s discuss “ …to be arranged’, which is available on your YouTube page.
It is utterly fascinating. How do you come up with the concept of doing these mashups?
– George Ajjan
We live in an age of nostalgia. I mean, that’s the zeitgeist, right, whether it’s Cobra Kai bringing back Karate Kids to TV or The Beatles, Get Back.
You have “Becoming Led Zeppelin” and all these biopics or Elvis and Bob Dylan and all that stuff.
This album was about the vibe, which recalls when we were kids in a family station wagon listening to the radio.
Gen Xers grew up with the pop music of the 1980s, grunge, and the alternative scene of the 1990s.
Everything would come together if our love became classic or even progressive rock.
There’s the nostalgia aspect. The second part is a statement and critique of how music today is hyper-compartmentalized.
We have these neat little boxes like progressive rock. I never agreed with that because how is ‘Led Zeppelin 4’ in a different genre than, Yes, ‘Fragile’.
How is this Deep Purple concerto rock group and orchestra different than what Emerson, Lake, and Palmer were doing?
So I thought, you know what, you nerds, I’m gonna show you. This isn’t about hyper-compartmentalizing this music. I thought, let’s take that a step further and show people that in the end, it’s not about these crazy time signatures, it’s not about these extended arrangements, not about those jams, it’s about great songs.
Let’s put all that stuff together. Before I take my baby, which I’ve nurtured for 25 years, let me make rookie mistakes using somebody else’s songs.
When you have guys like Fernando Perdomo and Dan Feiszli on the base, Terry Branam on the drums, and Matt Lebofsky on keyboards, you have these studio pros behind you. It just makes it so much easier. Working out my studio processes and how to get the best out of those pros was great.
– Preston Frazier
How did you prepare for the recording…’ to be arranged?’
– George Ajjan
Like a mad scientist in the middle of the night, I know things from MIDI, making charts and working everything out.
For example, a mashup of Chicago’s “ 25 or 6 to 4” and Kanye West’s “Stronger” is not just a mashup of songs that have the same chords, even though there is a famous axiom that all the songs in the world have the same four chords.
The point of this album was to combine songs with similar chord structures and iconic parts.
That took a lot of doing.
We had to get the tempo right, too. Thank God the technology allows us to go on YouTube and get isolated parts of guitar, bass, drums, whatever. Then, you can create detailed charts note for note, and that’s a lot of what happened.
Recording with the guys in the studio was pretty heady, but it was fun.
– Preston Frazier
You started with charts, and you also gave them demos.
– George Ajjan
I worked out demos, which were ripped stems that I kind of Frankenstein mashed up together to get the idea of how we wanted it to sound.
One of the challenges pointed out by Dan Feiszli, who engineered the sessions, is a friend from high school and a superb bass player, and gave me an admonition: don’t go down the rabbit hole of trying to nail an iconic sound exactly.
Instead of trying to get Chris Squire’s exact bass sound, that jangly, Rickenbacker bass sound, I don’t have a rick-n-bocker, I can set up the Lakeland bass in a way with the pickups to get that kind of sound, that treble-y sound.
Often, I had to find a different way, but it sounded fresher.
I don’t waste time trying to nail things precisely as you do in a cover. I never believed in note covers.
– Preston Frazier
How long did it take you to come up with these arrangements?
– George Ajjan
Some of those I had in my head for years and years. When “Nothing Else Matters” came out, I thought,
my God, it’s the same key, the same tempo, and this pretty much the same chords as “Nights of White Satin.”
That one I had in my head for years; somebody ought to mash up those two songs so they fit so well together.
There was this version, a live version of Daft Punk’s “Harder, Better, Stronger,” in which the descending chord progression is the same thing the same as “25 or 6 to 4” by Chicago.
I had some of these in my head for a long time, and initially, this wasn’t just a mashup album; it was supposed to be a group of innovative covers.
As time passed, I thought, “All right, let me do the mash.”
Some of them came in later when I would because I heard a song and thought, “Okay, I need to find things I can mash up together.”
The King Crimson/Taylor Swift thing that came later. You noticed an interesting one because you thought it was a Styx song. It was Led Zeppelin and Glenn Frey’s “You Belong to the City.” They’re both in the minor key, so let’s just put that together. It just was a lot of brainstorming and figuring out what worked.
Engineer and mixer Dan Feiszli was extremely helpful and suggested some players in 2020/2021, back in the pandemic years.
He encouraged booking an excellent studio. He played bass and worked for the board. He worked well with Terry Branam and recorded the rhythm section together.
– Preston Frazier
If you book two days, you could, you know, make it worth the time for a drummer to come and set up his drums because that will take a couple of hours.
– George Ajjan
If you’re going to do two days of tracking, you can do an album’s worth of tracks there. Then he has time to break down and set up, and you pay the guy for two days.
And you basically can do a whole album. So we did the rhythm section at a beautiful studio in Berkeley, California, called Opus.
And then I went down to Fernando with the rhythm tracks. And then out of his studio, we put together, you know, all the magic of his guitar parts.
And, of course, he plays the mellotron. As he said in an interview, I offer a one-stop shop for everything.
He leaves on some of the tracks, not on this album, but on some other things, like he’s played the drums, like he mentioned on the Christmas song.
I mean, just when you have these skilled musicians, it’s just for somebody who’s a singer-songwriter who can’t, I can’t play those parts.
I can develop the parts, but I can’t play them satisfactorily. I don’t have the technical skills and don’t want to invest the time to try to write when I can pay someone who can do it right, so that’s the approach I took.
I have the arrangements. I’m hiring good people, and you know, you learn that there was an excellent interview with Bradley Cooper where he talked about playing Leonard Bernstein in the movie. There’s a scene in there where he. Bradley Cooper conducts the London Symphony Orchestra as Leonard Bernstein, and he says, you know, in orchestras a bit like, a great stallion, you know, it’s a mighty beast that it wants to be led. Still, if you don’t know how to lead it the right way, it’ll kill you, and you know, going into the studio and you jump on a mask and has talked about
this as well. You go in there, and you’re not prepped with these session guys; they will smell the feeler all over you, and it won’t go well.
When you come in, have I done all the mad scientist work and said, okay, here’s where we’re going; this is the mashup?
A drummer like Terry Branham, who I know through Dan, Terry is the modern drummer transcription guru. So he’s done transcriptions for every drummer out there.
He was the perfect fit for a covers album like this because he knows and nailed those parts perfectly.
So that was terrific. I need to have it miked up the right way in a big enough room for drums to do upper rock drums.
That was good. And that was a confidence builder. Again, somebody who hadn’t been in the studio before, they, I’ve put in the work.
I know this will be a good product, but I want you guys to deliver it for me.
And they did it. I’m so happy to be a result.
– Preston Frazier
Yeah, I mean, having a live-rhythm section is just incredible. And it feels like it’s all there. And then two days, it’s impressive.
It, in a way, sounds.
– George Ajjan
Thank you, thank you. So, you know, part of the worry was that when you do demos at home, you probably have experience with this; they never quite sound the way you want them to sound.
You have this idea that mixing is going to be the solution to all your problems, that mixing is going to make you.
So I was in there with fear, saying, “Well, what if I do all this the right way, and then it comes back, and I’m still not happy with it?”
And, you know, pleased to say that Dan was like, don’t worry, George, you know, it’s going to sound good.
We record things the right way, and we mix them the right way. And you’ll be happy with them.
And so, and I am. The fact that reviewers like yourself have responded so positively has been terrific. I really like that all the reviewers have gotten what I was going for, which is to say, this guy’s crazy.
I mean, what is this? You know, but this is so much fun. You see, it’s like, as you said, at least you’re scratching your head.
But I want to hear that again. What’s going on there? And so that’s what I was going for.
We had fun making the music. I mean, there were times when Dan just stopped the board. He turned to me and said, “This is crazy, but this is much fun.”
Because when you’re musicians of our generation, these studio guys, mean, they grew up playing these songs. They grew up playing in cover bands in the 90s.
And so maybe they’ve gotten away from that. Dan doesn’t play in many rock bands anymore, but playing the bass line around about, that’s like the ABCs for bass players.
Going back to that was fun, mainly because it’s in a slower tempo, was tempo, and when they were playing it, they’re like, this is weird.
I haven’t played this in a long time, but it’s weird to play it in a right? It’s muscle memory.
You go back to it, and it’s weird because it’s slower, which is cool.
– Preston Frazier
Tell me about the song “25 or 6 to Stronger”.
– George Ajjan
They use the same chord progression. “25 or 6 to 4” is about a guy up in the middle of the night trying to write a song.
It’s about insomnia in general. Somebody who’s trying to go to sleep but can’t, and I thought, Make it about a guy who’s going to be stronger to try to fall asleep.
The problem was that Kanye’s track was about 104 beats per minute, and the Chicago track was not done with a click!
It is between 140 bpm and 150 bpm. We took a middle tempo of 126, and I can’t sing up to a high C like Peter Cetera did.
We lowered A minor to G minor. When it’s in a lower key and slowed down, it gives it an evil sound.
Fernando Perdomo just ripped all over it. It was crazy. You’ve got him whaling on the guitar like Terry Kath!
“Frame by Style” was also an interesting challenge. Even if it was just played on the acoustic guitar, it’s a great song, and so putting those things together worked well.
I loved that Robert Fripp has this thing on Cameo where you can pay him whatever you want, and he’ll give you a greeting or something.
I sent him the track, and he jammed along and played his solo.
The drums are playing the groove from “Epitaph” with those heavy chords, and the mellotron is playing the melody of “Frame by Frame.” The guitar and the Chapman stick are playing the riff from Taylor Swift’s song, and then Robert plays a solo over that.
I think it’s great.
The point is that Taylor Swift wrote a great song, and King Crimson wrote a great song.
– Preston Frazier
The song “ Stairway to Ashes” must have presented a challenge, too.
– George Ajjan
This was the most memorable track on the album, and it’s the one that hasn’t impressed people the most!
I was a mad scientist when I created it.
I mean, three different excerpts of Bach’s music are incorporated into this track.
I thought, what if the iconic solo from “Stairway to Heaven.”
turned into a fugue?
I started googling different Bach fugues and found this little fugue in G minor. I transposed it to a minor and then started working it out.
I thought, well if I’m going in the Bach direction, that song’s an A minor. I thought I’d take the main melody of a song so that I could fit that over.
There are three pieces of Bach in there.
I also matched it up with “Ashes are Burning” by Renaissance, which is also fitting because, again, both Renaissance and Led Zeppelin grew out of the Yardbirds.
Since these are mashups, copyright law doesn’t allow mass production and distribution.
The only place you can hear these properly is on YouTube because YouTube. They automatically allocate royalties to the record companies to be distributed.
From now on, we will do proper music and regular covers to distribute properly.
– Preston Frazier
What’s next? You mentioned having some projects coming out in succession.
– George Ajjan
I have my first proper album coming soon. It will have a few covers that didn’t end up on this mash-up album because they were more straightforward.
They aren’t mash-up covers, but Fernando introduced me to a minor key re-harmonization of “Blackbird. ” Lawrence Juber, formerly of Paul McCartney, plays on it, and he’s the king of Beatles fingerstyle arrangements.
There’s a heavy rock, kind of progressive rock version of Michael Bolton’s “How Am I Supposed to Live Without You” that’s out.
I took The Extreme song “More Than Words,” which I never thought sounded quite right on the guitar because it’s a song that’s so hopeless.
If you listen to the lyrics, there’s no hope in the song. It’s just that I’ve tried to love you, and it just doesn’t work.
That guitar part makes it sound happy. It’s not happy at all.
I thought, all right, let me bring this to the piano and do it in a very dark way.
There’s just a bunch of originals about themes relevant to Gen X people. There are songs about being a parent, coping with love and loss, coping with getting older, and seeing people that we love pass on from us.
I think fans of the music featured on the mashup album will appreciate it because it’s in the sauce; there is something there.
There’s an odd-timed signature. There will be this elaborate arrangement that we recognize from classic rock bands.
However, it’s done in a popular way. That’s why somebody like Fernando is so valuable and dear to me. He’s got all the chops to do all of that crazy stuff.
However, it sounds like a pop song. It’s just a regular rock song, and that’s kind of what I’m going for.
People will remember if the melody is good and it’s put together well.
– Preston Frazier
You set a high bar with your arrangement and production of ‘…to be arranged.’ I’m looking forward to hearing your originals as well. When will the rest of the project be out?
– George Ajjan
I’m doing what they call the waterfall strategy.
I’m going to follow all of these gurus who say not to drop an album.
Drip it and put out a single every six weeks.
We’re so bombarded with content that it will take people time, you know, all the time until it catches on and becomes a fan.
Songs will be released throughout the year, and then, by the end of the year, they will be repackaged. The first album will be this year. In 2026, again, there will be another crazy match-up concept based on Antonio Vavadi’s “The Four Seasons.”
I’m taking on each of the 12 movements.
There are four seasons and three movements in each season. I mashed up each movement with an iconic pop or rock song.
Vivaldi becomes the backing track to an iconic pop of rock song. Those will be rolled out throughout 2026.
– Preston Frazier
It sounds like you are executing your ambitious plan.
– George Ajjan
I’m excited to put out new stuff.
Thank you
–Preston Frazier
Before I let you go, what deer do you use, and what are your five favorite albums?
– George Ajjan
For top 5 albums:
Gear:
I am essentially a singer/songwriter, so my gear is minimal:
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