My outline for FAWM this year:
01. 12:00 (When The Eve Becomes The Event)
02. (If my FAWMs were a movie franchise, this would be the) Reboot
03. The Song of Cliche Rock 'n' Roll Utterances
04. Home(drive)ward Bound
05. The New Song on a Greatest Hits CD
06. Follow My Pb
07. I Don't Have To See You Again After This
08. Song Fight Title #1 - Let's Get Bloody
09. Song Fight Title #2 - TBD
10. Song Fight Title #3 - TBD
11. Week One Challenge - Jobs
12. Week Two Challenge - TBD
13. Week Three Challenge - TBD
14. Week Four Challenge - TBD
15. Common 1st Verse Challenge
16. When The Event is at an End (Reprise)
I have no doubt that things will change between now and the end of FAWM, but with my limited time this year, it's good to have an outline to follow.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Friday, January 29, 2010
The Road To Hana
The Road To Hana - I had high hopes for recording something really great for this title, but in the end I didn't have the time. I wanted to write a song about the character Hana from the PS1 game Fear Effect, but I don't remember much of it and watching some gameplay videos of it on youtube made me realize that it is cooler in my memories than it actually is. So, I finally had another idea for the song. This one is more R-rated but masked in metaphor. Think: Bill and Ted's favorite number. The lyrics will make more sense with that in mind. The song was recorded in live takes, but each verse, chorus, and the short bridge were recorded separately because I was still writing it as I was recording it. The drums were added afterward, and the two different reverbs (one for verses and one for choruses) were added after it was transferred to my computer. This song is just me treading water before FAWM.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Live on the radio
Last night, I was a featured guest on the Local Live radio show on WFHB in Bloomington (IN). That meant that I got to perform 6 songs and get interviewed in a half hour segment that aired from 9:30 to 10:00 pm.
It was a lot of fun, and the host took the time to learn about my music and background beforehand, which made the interview segment go really well.
The set list was:
1. Ga (50/90 2009)
2. The Last Tommy (50/90 2009)
3. Clause 5, Sub-Paragraph D) (Song Fight! 2007)
4. Mr. Sandwich (Song Fight! 2008)
5. Mobile Home House Party (Song Fight! 2008)
6. Thirty Minutes To Litchfield (50/90 2009)
This was the first time I played Ga and Thirty Minutes To Litchfield live. Overall, I made very few performance mistakes, and the mix I heard in my headphones while playing was fantastic. I'm very excited to get a copy of the show from the station and hear how it sounded on the radio.
It was a lot of fun, and the host took the time to learn about my music and background beforehand, which made the interview segment go really well.
The set list was:
1. Ga (50/90 2009)
2. The Last Tommy (50/90 2009)
3. Clause 5, Sub-Paragraph D) (Song Fight! 2007)
4. Mr. Sandwich (Song Fight! 2008)
5. Mobile Home House Party (Song Fight! 2008)
6. Thirty Minutes To Litchfield (50/90 2009)
This was the first time I played Ga and Thirty Minutes To Litchfield live. Overall, I made very few performance mistakes, and the mix I heard in my headphones while playing was fantastic. I'm very excited to get a copy of the show from the station and hear how it sounded on the radio.
Friday, January 22, 2010
Crush & Keep All Your Promises
I'm starting this blog mainly to have somewhere to catalog some of the backstory to the songs I write. Since I'll be attempting 14 again in February for FAWM, I thought this would be as good of a time to start as any.
This year, so far I have written and recorded two songs. Both of them were for Songfight!.
The first one is called "Crush". I really didn't want to write another generic love song, and I was playing Twilight Princess a lot at the time. It occurred to me that in video games where the main character starts in a small town and eventually ends up saving the world, most of the towns have about seven people living in them. Then I found myself wondering if the ever-present roaming monsters that your character always has to fight the second he steps out of the town the reason for the stunted population. Then I wondered why these towns didn't have huge cemeteries, and concluded it was probably because the monsters don't leave corpses. Anyway, I decided to write a song about a humble hero setting out on some epic quest; rooting out the monsters and killing them where they live. I had time to do a "full band" recording with three or four guitars, bass, drums, and a couple vocal tracks. It came out OK, but I recorded it right after I wrote it (all in one evening) and the singing is a bit off in spots.
The second one is called "Keep All Your Promises". Again, I didn't want to write another generic love song. The title, in my head, had a waltzy feel, and I ended up writing a waltz. I was practicing for a live show and had the capo on the guitar, so I moved it up to the fourth fret to get the chords to sound a bit different, and the melodies in this song came out almost immediately. I wrote some hasty lyrics about Naruto, a character who is haunted by a very important promise that he made, that he may never be able to keep. I recorded a live take, which was probably the second time I played and sang the song through from start to finish. While converting it to mp3, I added some really annoying laser effects to the end of the chorus. At Songfight!, everyone complains about guy+guitar entries and I really wanted to give them something else to complain about. The version without the lasers is actually quite nice. I tried to sing the song in a harder voice than I usually use, and I'm not completely disappointed with the results.
This year, so far I have written and recorded two songs. Both of them were for Songfight!.
The first one is called "Crush". I really didn't want to write another generic love song, and I was playing Twilight Princess a lot at the time. It occurred to me that in video games where the main character starts in a small town and eventually ends up saving the world, most of the towns have about seven people living in them. Then I found myself wondering if the ever-present roaming monsters that your character always has to fight the second he steps out of the town the reason for the stunted population. Then I wondered why these towns didn't have huge cemeteries, and concluded it was probably because the monsters don't leave corpses. Anyway, I decided to write a song about a humble hero setting out on some epic quest; rooting out the monsters and killing them where they live. I had time to do a "full band" recording with three or four guitars, bass, drums, and a couple vocal tracks. It came out OK, but I recorded it right after I wrote it (all in one evening) and the singing is a bit off in spots.
The second one is called "Keep All Your Promises". Again, I didn't want to write another generic love song. The title, in my head, had a waltzy feel, and I ended up writing a waltz. I was practicing for a live show and had the capo on the guitar, so I moved it up to the fourth fret to get the chords to sound a bit different, and the melodies in this song came out almost immediately. I wrote some hasty lyrics about Naruto, a character who is haunted by a very important promise that he made, that he may never be able to keep. I recorded a live take, which was probably the second time I played and sang the song through from start to finish. While converting it to mp3, I added some really annoying laser effects to the end of the chorus. At Songfight!, everyone complains about guy+guitar entries and I really wanted to give them something else to complain about. The version without the lasers is actually quite nice. I tried to sing the song in a harder voice than I usually use, and I'm not completely disappointed with the results.
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