The Weakest Suit

2011 FAWM V

2011-02-01T21:29:00.000-08:00

So, I started FAWM today and wrote two songs "With 1-2-3" and "I Am Your Greenhouse". I got done with these songs and realized that they are just like every other one of my songs. I really want to do something different this year, so I am scrapping these two songs and trying something grander.
I will try to write and record a rock album this year, not wimpy, three chord acoustic numbers.
Here is the plan:
amenHUSK
Saturn To Your Roulette
01. Sailing For The Scar
02. The Blackest Green Ever
03. Old, Private Leaf
04. To Lollipop An Enemy
05. No Brothers
06. Position & Wellington
07. Carpet Saint's Track
08. Boron Rod
09. The Satellite, The Adventure, The Coach
10. Saturn To Your Roulette
11. Beyond The Divine Century
12. Steal Your Sandman
13. Returning All The Stairs
14. Goodnight (The Leaf)
Well see how it goes. This is the plan.

Test Week Hiatus

2010-07-08T08:02:00.000-07:00

I've taken a major break from songwriting. I quit SongFight! and will not be participating in 50/90 this year. With FAWM, the first time was finding my legs, the second time was awesome, and the third time was disappointing. 50/90 seemed to be following the same trend, at least with the first two years, so I decided to skip this year so I won't be disappointed. It is also nice to have a summer without worring about constantly writing and recording.

What Kind Of Love Are You Looking For

2010-05-20T07:19:00.000-07:00

Song Fight! title. Again, not really inspiring. I didn't want to write a song about prostitutes or really anthing that someone else would think of. So, I ended up having to wait until the last day to get an idea. I ended up writing a song from the viewpoint of a dog. Originally, the idea was going to be that the dog was a shelter dog who was being put down due to old age and no one wanting him and "the kind of love" that he was looking for was for someone to say "good dog" to him. This seemed kind of sad, so the one I wrote was about a dog who has a good life and is loves hearing those magic two words "good dog", where most people struggle over those three words (I love you) in showing affection. I recorded this song in sections, live with an acoustic, finalizing the phrasing as I went, all with the same click track so it stayed in time with itself.

April Songs

2010-04-30T10:40:00.000-07:00

With April coming to a close, I figure I should post about the songs I have written and recorded over the last month.

First up was "Vegan Music". This was a title I was given in Jon Eric's Circle of Titles Side Fight over at Songfight.org. Basically, you gave a title and got a title in return. There was a nifty due date of Easter, and as of this writing, the guy who suggested the title I was stuck with has not posted his song, and the guy who got my title "We Degender Bawdily. Ha Ha!" has not posted his either. I am not the least bit surprised. Anyway, I ended up writing a song that sums up exactly what I think about most vegans. Strangely, I did not get a "thank you" from the guy who suggested the song, but when I found out who it was, again, I was not the least bit surprised. I entered this contest under the name Apodan.

The next Songfight! title was Double Life/Half Life. Two years ago for the Half Empty/Half Full fight, I wrote two separate songs with the same chord structures and mixed one into each ear. I wanted to do something like that again, but didn't have the time. I ended up writing two unrelated songs.

"Double Life" was written on a Tuedsay night; thus it is about Lost. There are a few direct references to the show (Juliet, Adam and Eve, etc). No one picked up on this in the review thread. I like this song. It's a fun little poppy number that was done up real quick like. The "which one I'm going to ride to the end" was a crass line from the point of Jack/James talking about Kate/Juliet.

"Half Life" was written a day or so later. This song was submitted under the name Kuwait Sheet Set (another anagram of The Weakest Suit). I like this one too, in a laid back low key kind of way. The distorted guitar in the background makes it feel a lot more than just a live acoustic and vocal take. After the first chorus, the rest of the song was improvised at the time of recording. That's why some of the phrasing and word choice is strange. The melodies were influenced by Wilco's Being There which was in my mp3 player at the time.

"Ease Your Storm" What can I say about this one? It's four chords. Falsetto. About someone losing their true love. I intentially had my voice crack in a few places to make it sound more realistic. I also put a "telephone" filter on it to make it sound old timey. Again, lyrics were semi-sketched out before hand, but a lot of the phrasing was improvised at the time of recording. I recorded three takes and used the third one. I originally wanted to write a poppy Frank Black-ish song, but when I sat down to write I had no energy and a slow, sad song came out instead.

"Down For A While" was, up until I started to record it, going to be another anti-Obama song (like "Mediocre Savior", "Sorry To Inform You", and "9-11 Was An Inside Job"). I really didn't want to write another negative song, though. I ended up writing a more positive song inspired by the troubles of a friend on facebook who I last saw when I was in grade school. For percussion, I used a tambourine, a water bottle, a stick for a cowbell, and an egg shaker. I like this one. I wish I had the time to record a better version. Maybe this one will make it into my live shows.

Front And Center

2010-04-01T09:37:00.000-07:00

Another SongFight! title that I didn't have any inspiration for. On the last night before the deadline, I wrote and recorded a quick song about the point in the book Armadale where I was at the time. I really wanted to have drums on it, but none of the presets in the Micro BR fit well enough. I also used up all four tracks (guitar, bass, vocals, vocals) and didn't have the energy to mix some of them down just to add a track of egg shaker. I have a feeling that this song would have been better with a keyboard, but the one we have is not in tune (which I don't understand at all since it is electronic). Anyway, lyrics were made up as it was recorded, but when I was recording the verses, I was, at the same time, playing the vocal melody on the acoustic guitar, to help me sing more in tune. Overall, I don't know what to think about this song. I haven't listened to it since I mixed it. And the book "Armadale" is not all that great either.

Robot Ninja Zombie Bear

2010-03-17T13:01:00.000-07:00

Worst. Song. Title. Ever. And darn close to my FAWM song "That's My Fly-Cathching Logic Bear" that I had just written a week or two earlier. Thanks SongFight!. I had three or four (edit: turns out there were five) separate ideas for this one.
1. Write a love song along the lines of...you can get me the stupidest birthday card in the world and I'd just love you more. I was not planning on actually using the title in the song, it would just be implied that it referred to the birthday card.
2. Submit "That's My Fly-Catching Logic Bear" with a badly dubbed "Robot Ninja Zombie" recorded over the "Fly-Catching Logic" lines. I like my original song too much to condemn a hacked-up version of it to the SongFight! archive.
3. Write a j-rock inspired anime-theme type song, probably in badly translated Japanese. Someone already posted lyrics in Japanese on SongFight!, so I decided not to be a "me too" and tried to find a more unique approach.
4. Write a not-so-flattering song about a girl comparing her to each adjective in turn, i.e. "you look like a robot, you love like a ninja, you look like a zombie, you smell like a bear". The next part would involve other ideas like priate, princess, etc. Again, I didn't get very far with this concept because someone posted something similar to the lyrics page on SongFight!.
5. My final idea (melody and all) came into my head on Saturday night. Basically, the lyrics would be about writing a forgettable song about a forgettable girl and giving it the stupidest name possible so no one would remember what it was actually about. This is the one I went with. I wrote and recorded it Tuesday afternoon, after listening to The Pillows all the way home from work. I was originally intending to end the song with the title, but ended up with kind of a punchline by ending the song with another rediculous, but ultimately cooler, title from the songfight archives. Two other ideas for this song were concidered and discarded. Originally between each line about "writing a forgettable song" I was going to insert a line from a previous SongFight! that I had written. Then, the idea morphed into inserting lines from songs that I had not written for and ending with the first line of my first SongFight! song. This didn't happen either, but that's how "Living At The Corner Of Dude And Catastrophe" got in my head.
- For the final song there are two guitars, panned mostly, a bass, and an effect that I originally wanted to do with multi-tracked vocals, but forgot when I was recording it and then ran out of time. There are also four vocal tracks. A doubled lead, and a doubled background. I was making the lines up as I recorded, so the singing is weak in places. I also cut down on the amount of drum fills on the ol' drum machine, in an effort to not make them sound so fake. The whole song was written, recorded, and done between 5:30 and 8:00 p.m. on 16-Mar-2010. I like "That's My Fly-Catching Logic Bear" infinitely better.

FAWM Wrap Up - 4/4

2010-03-04T06:54:00.000-08:00

Songs written and recorded in the 4th week of February for FAWM 2010:

11. Auriform – This was a title left over from my attempted Album-A-Day. This song was written for the Week 3 Challenge: Neither Major Nor Minor. I tried to stick to that concept with my chord choice and I incorporated the challenge name into the first line of the song. The lyrics are about my affection for Yoko Kanno’s music. I mention her band “Seatbelts”, but really, I am speaking to her whole musical catalog. There is not a more creative person currently living on the planet that I have heard of. This song is a three chord throwaway song, but I find it catchy.

12. Constant One – This song was written for the Week 4 Challenge: Time. For awhile, I tried not to use the word or concept of “time” in my songwriting because when I first started writing songs, I completely overused it. For this I wanted to write a major-chord-love-song, and I think it came out pretty well for what I intended. The verses seem a little lazy to me and the falsetto parts were added at the time of recording, adding a little variety to the soundscape. This one was recorded hastily and the verse lyrics were improvised at the time of recording. For the second vocal track, I had to stop after each line and listen to the next line from the first vocal track to remember the exact wording. Again, the title and lyrics could point to another song written about the television show Lost, but that really wasn’t the case specifically.

13. Double Take – This song was written for a Songfight!. It was also, surprise, another Songfight! title that I didn’t like. I had the idea of a somewhat debasing song about getting too excited around someone of the opposite sex. The first lines I had for this song were: My eyes did a double take/My dick did a spit take. This line was changed to be less graphic, but the spirit of the song remained. Neither of the three mini-stories that make up the verses were based on any real events from my life, but more from what I would consider the cliché stories that center around the event described in the chorus. Personally, I find this song a bit gross, and I don’t plan on keeping it around where I can listen to it for very long (pun intended).

14. Your Westness Is Upsetting – Last song for FAWM 2010. This song was written and recorded on the last day of FAWM 2010. The title is from the group of 15 titles I got together for the third week of FAWM. Personally, I don’t care about all the celebrity trash gossip that comes out of California. I also don’t care about California’s problems. All states have problems. I can’t find any energy to care about the wild fires, energy crisis, water shortages, budget shortages, gay marriage, or illegal immigration. Everyone has a choice in where they live, and if you want to live in a state that’s in that state, don’t bitch about it. I would think all that misery would somehow be channeled into really great movies, but no. All we get are remakes and sequels. Again, like so many other songs, the verses were improvised at the time of recording. There is quite a bit of energy in this recording, and it was done really quickly, so I am a bit surprised.

That’s it. FAWM is done. If I were to rate my FAWMs in order of quality:
1. 2008
2. 2010
3. 2009
4. 2007

Now, what’s next???

FAWM Wrap Up - 3/4

2010-03-03T12:11:00.000-08:00

The third week of FAWM coincided with a day I called in sick from work due to snow. I decided try for an Album-A-Day, but ended up running out of steam after three songs. I also wrote and recorded a song for Songfight! that week. This is the first week where all the songs were recorded right after they were written, so the creative magic is preserved a bit more. These songs also run the gambit lyric-wise from being improvised at the time they were being recorded to being meticulously plotted out. In my opinion, sometimes, the lyrics aren’t that important; the melody and feel of a song can be so pure that over-thought-out lyrics can ruin the purity if it. Other songs, though, can be built solely around clever lyrics.

07. A Night Without Moon And Stars – To prepare for my supposed Album-A-Day, I did what I did when I wrote my first one; since you are not supposed to start with any preconceived ideas, after the time started, I got on three websites and pulled 5 potential song titles from each. The websites were a random quotations site, modplug’s random song title generator, and leon’s random lyric generator. That’s where I got the titles for songs 07, 08, 09, 11 and 14. In this stint of songwriting, though, I just wrote 07, 08, and 09. Moon And Stars revolves around a set of 6 harmonics played over and over. I wanted to get the feel of the beginning of “Pilgrim Snow” by Yoko Kanno mixed with some song from Escaflowne I can’t remember the name of. The lyrics were an afterthought added after the entire song was recorded. The “so dark” part ended up sounding a lot like a song by Low, who I also enjoy quite a bit.

08. Someone In Some Dark Café – This was another one with lyrics improvised at the time of recording. I wanted to write a song about the people who sit in coffee shops with their laptops and try to look really cool. I don’t usually build songs around riffs, but this time I did. I also added a guitar solo, which is not something I do often. At first, I was disappointed that the music wasn’t more brooding, but I don’t mind it that much now. It sounds more musical and complicated than a lot of my other stuff, so I guess that’s good. The main guitar was recorded with an external mic instead of lining in the guitar to the recorded. I guess I forgot that because you can hear me mumbling in the background at the starts of the verses. I was trying to keep track of where I was in the song. To kind of hide this, because another take was not an option, I put the background vocal track in.

09. That’s My Fly-Catching Logic-Bear – If you have this title in front of you, how can you not write something for it. This one is basically what I wanted; a high energy pop song. The music was recorded with only a vocal melody in place for the verses and a one line chorus. When I was recording the verses, I was in a bad mood and made the song about someone who likes to annoy people for no reason, and doesn’t like to follow social norms. The Fly-Catching Logic-Bear then became someone who is completely politically correct and has no real independent thought. Of course this meaning was completely retconned in later after the whole song had been recorded and I was trying to figure out what I was trying to say. I wish the lead guitar at the beginning was a little lower in volume. Oh yeah, this song features some more rare lead guitar work.

That’s pretty much as far as I got. There was another title called “Spinescent” that I recorded a distorted full band song for, but balked at putting lyrics on because at that time I had written three nonsense songs and had no ability left to form random lyrics and pretend they meant something.

10. Please Stop – This song was written for a Songfight!. There were three different version of this song conceived by me during the week that the title was up. My first version was a pop/rock number where the “please” would sound kind of like the “please” in the song “Go” by Pearl Jam (that I have not listened to in maybe a decade). I actually recorded an instrumental version of this and again balked at putting meaningless lyrics on it. I didn’t actually have a story for the song. The next version was going to be an alternate take on the “Romeo and Juliet” story with the first line being “Where for art thou, Juliet?”. The feel would have been like “Jack and Diane” by Johnny Cougar. I think I was still focused on Juliet’s demise on Lost at the time. I also didn’t have the drive to develop this idea beyond the vocal melody of the verses. I tried to combine this idea with the first as well. It didn’t work. On the last day before the fight deadline, I got an idea to use things that kids are taught as the central theme: stop, drop and roll, stop, look, and listen, and don’t swim for an hour after eating. At first I planned to make it a full-on kids song, but I got a flat tire after work that night and after getting home real late that night I knew I only had time for a live acoustic number. I also knew that I had to be witty at least or no one would like it at Songfight!. So, I wrote some graphic verses and made the song more of a cautionary tale, describing in detail the deaths of three kids (one was hit by a car, one was drowned, and one was burned to death). Once I had worked out the lyrics, which took awhile, I thought the song could be more than what it was and wanted to do something akin to my “Rattlesnake” song, but I didn’t have the time. So the live take was what I ended up with.

That ends my third week of FAWM. It was the most productive and the most creative so far. I’m kind of bummed that I didn’t get a full Album-A-Day done, but I really didn’t have it in me.

FAWM Wrap Up - 2/4

2010-03-03T12:09:00.000-08:00

In the second week of FAWM, I wrote three songs. They were all written pretty much on the same day. Each one was a semi-improvisation that I recorded and later went back and smoothed out the lyrics and changes in places where I didn’t know what I was doing. Then I listened to each for a bit and re-recorded them as follows.

04. Lost Again – Written like the song says on a Sunday afternoon. I was focused on television when I was writing this one. Lost and Parks & Rec. are mentioned specifically, but I was really trying to write a commentary about a life that revolves around work and watching television. As I started writing it, I was reminded of that old Lemonheads song that starts out “That pencil smell reminds me of school…” and I tried to write a song with that feel. I would have scrapped the whole thing, but I the chorus is fun to sing.

05. Penny – This song was written for the Week 2 Challenge: Inanimate Objects. Obviously, this song is about a penny on the ground. This song is capo’d on the 10th fret of the guitar and is pretty fun to play the chords. After I improvised a take, I sat down and wrote out some painfully obvious lyrics about the lost penny being found by a boy and has worth again because he can spend it on candy or something and called the song “Currently Currency”. Listening back to the improvised demo, I really liked the rambling nonsense of the original lyrics, so I switched back to them. I was also really getting sick of coming up with “catchy titles” for songs and decided to go minimal on this song and the next one. This song was recorded in 4 sections on 2 different tracks because I couldn’t do the whole thing in one take because I hadn’t learned how to sing the last quarter of it. It is just me and the acoustic, live.

06. Games – A third improvised song and a second song with a minimal title. The improvisation really shows here in the phrasing of the whole song. In the recording, I really like the way the guitar sounds like it’s a egg-shaker instead of a string instrument. Listening back to the improvised acoustic demo, I like that one better, especially, the “it’s all right” ending part. This song is really about nothing except some arrogant lyrics in the verses.

So. That concludes my second week of FAWM. These songs weren’t fully recorded until the last two days of the month. I was in a real hurry to get all songs demo’d by then. The recordings are rushed and full of flaws, but they are done.

FAWM Wrap Up - 1/4

2010-03-03T08:46:00.000-08:00

Well, I got really disgusted with my songwriting mid-way through FAWM and stopped posting here.
Here is a kind of FAWM wrap up though...song by song.

Songs from the first week of FAWM:

01. Unemployed Astronaut - This was written for the Week 1 Challenge: Careers. In the news at this time was the cutting of NASA's budget by Obama. So, I wrote a song about a disgruntled/fired astronaut. There are a few good lines in this song, but the demo is just me and an acoustic in a live take. I didn't even use a click track so I couldn't add drums.

02. Let's Get Bloody - This was written for a Songfight!. Right off, I hated the title. I wrote two songs that made fun of the whole teenager/vampire thing going on now, but that seemed kind of pedestrian. So, I wrote a quick punk song about getting trashed and breaking the law. I like the swing drums at the start. Not the best song, though, overall.

03. Reboot - This was going to be my theme. I was going to change my songwriting and evolve it to a new level. That didn't happen. I recorded a full-on rock version of this song, but didn't have time to get the vocals right, so I ended up doing another live acoustic take. I added a background vocal for the chorus to give that part a bit of depth. I was literally singing parts of this for the first time on the recording, so the vocals are kind of weak in places. The demo for this was also recorded much later in the month.

Overall, with the disappointment of the Reboot song and hating the title for the Songfight! song, my FAWM-love was running pretty low. I was hoping to kind of start over for the second week. Also, at this point, I abandoned my FAWM-plan outlined in previous posts. I wanted to write fresher songs and not ideas that I have been kicking around for months.

FAWM update

2010-02-12T08:47:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I re-wrote "Currently Currency" using a recording of an improvised demo and retitled it "Penny". It's more stream of consciousness now and less pretentious analog. I also wrote semi-final lyrics for "Games" (previously called "N+1"). Again, I took the lyrics from two different improvised takes I did over the last week. Slight changes in the lyrics will come about when it is recorded, but I feel it is pretty much final.
I still have the music and melody for "Please Stop", but haven't written the lyrics yet. Once I do, I'll be halfway through FAWM. I'm not really having any fun with it though. I don't like my FAWM songs and I am in a kind of slump in my songwriting. Contrasting this to the high number of really good songs I was able to write for 50/90 last year makes me kind of depressed.

FAWM update

2010-02-09T21:01:00.000-08:00

Today I...
Finished writing "Lost Again" that I had started on Monday.
Wrote a song for the Week 2 Challenge: Inanimate Objects called "Currently Currency". This song is from the perspective of a penny lying on the ground.
Partially wrote two more songs: "Please Stop" for the latest Song Fight!, and "N+1" (working title).

I am not really having fun at all doing this FAWM. I keep hoping I'll write something that will get me back into it. That hasn't happened yet.

FAWM update

2010-02-08T05:25:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I put vocals on "Let's Get Bloody", mixed it, sent it to Song Fight!, and posted it to FAWM.org. I also converted "Unemployed Astronaut" to mp3 and posted it FAWM.org. While LGB was mixing down, I half wrote a song tentatively titled "Lost Again". I plan on trying to finalize that one tonight.
My big plan for Tuesday is to try to record "Lost Again", finish "Reboot", write for the second week challenge (if it is posted in time), write for the new Song Fight! title (if it is posted in time), try to write something for the Common First Verse Challenge, and try to write something completely new.

FAWM update

2010-02-05T05:53:00.000-08:00

Last night I recorded a new acoustic version of "Unemployed Astronaut". When I listened back to the version I recorded on Tuesday, I found that I unconsciously used a melody from another one of my songs on part of this song. That is one think I can't stand when other songwriters do it, so I re-worked the offending part and re-recorded a live acoustic take of the song last night. I got it to a WAV file but didn't get it onto the computer yet.
I have to finish "Let's Get Bloody" by Monday morning for Song Fight!. It's kind of a rock-a-billy, punk, one-minute-something song that I hope I like better with vocals.
Weekly Challenges and Song Fight Titles aside, I'm not really excited to write any songs from my "list". I plan on exploring other options for song ideas this weekend. Maybe I'll write a new song before my next "session" on Tuesday. I hope to at least finish up "Let's Get Bloody" and "Reboot" and get them posted.

I also got a link to download a copy of the radio show I did on 01/27/10. It sounds really good.
I'm still waiting for the files from the open mic I did a few weeks before that.

3 songs started for FAWM

2010-02-02T22:10:00.000-08:00

Very unexpected circumstances came up Monday night and into Tuesday which limited the time I had to work on music. Also, honestly, I wasn't in much of a mood to write anything.
That said, I ended up writing three songs for FAWM (including the new songfight title).
The first song I wrote is called "Unemployed Astronaut". The Week 1 Challenge at FAWM was to write a song about a job, and since Obama just cut NASA's ability to go back to the moon and even develop a new fleet of spacecraft to replace the shuttles, I'm sure there will be a lot of unemployed astronauts. My theory is that Obama just can't stand any competition: little boys used to want to either be astronauts or the president. Now, the president has pretty much taken astronaut off the table as dream job. In a larger sense, he's destroying the nation's dream of space and exploration (and future occupations such as space pirate).
The second song is called "Let's Get Bloody". This is a Song Fight! title (and one of the worst one's I've come across). My original intent was to write a song mocking the teenage vampire craze, but I just ended up writing a three-chord punk song about getting shit-faced and arrested.
The third song is called "Reboot". This one is about how I'm very tired of my style of songwriting and want to try something else. In the end, I resign to just stick with the same old crap I've been doing because reboots are usually garbage.
That's it. I don't love any of them. They are all in a semi-state of being recorded. I'm not feeling that great about FAWM so far.

FAWM Timetable and Goals

2010-02-01T09:16:00.000-08:00

If I am going to do FAWM this year, it will have to be in four 12 hour segments. That would be kind of like doing half an Album-A-Day four times throughout the month. The goal each time would be four songs written and recorded. That would mean that I would have to average writing and recording a song every three hours. This is definitely going to be interesting. So, for the next four Tuesdays, I'll be doing nothing but writing and recording (and watching LOST).

Songwriting Targets for February 2nd:
01. 12:00 (When The Eve Becomes The Event)
02. (If my FAWMs were a movie franchise, this would be the) Reboot
03. Song Fight Title #1 - Let's Get Bloody
04. Week One Challenge - Jobs

Songwriting Targets for February 9th:
01. The Song of Cliche Rock 'n' Roll Utterances
02. Home(drive)ward Bound
03. Common 1st Verse Challenge
04. Week Two Challenge

Songwriting Targets for February 16th:
01. The New Song on a Greatest Hits CD
02. Follow My Pb
03. Song Fight Title #2
04. Week Three Challenge

Songwriting Targets for February 23rd:
01. I Don't Have To See You Again After This
02. Song Fight Title #3
03. Week Four Challenge
04. When The Event is at an End (Reprise)

My secret goal is to record an entirely unplanned song each week as well.

FAWM song ideas

2010-01-30T20:08:00.000-08:00

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.

The Road To Hana

2010-01-29T11:46:00.000-08:00

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.

Live on the radio

2010-01-28T07:20:00.000-08:00

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.

Crush & Keep All Your Promises

2010-01-22T21:11:00.000-08:00

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.