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Music

A Chop off the Old Block

I finished the RPM challenge again. As mentioned previously, I set out to write and produce five songs for an Ep. I was aiming for five instrumental guitar based songs, and I have ideas for them. I have ideas for 10+ instrumental guitar based songs, in fact. But I’m lacking time to do them justice. I’m teaching two courses at two different universities, and so, I decided to follow a looser approach, and improvise.

I’ve enjoyed this one very much. The cover is a photo I took in Cape Cod at a flea market. I walked up to a vendor’s table, and this little display was set out exactly as I’m presenting it.

Album cover showing a hand chopper, part of a torn $20 bill, and doll parts on a old wooden table.

I also made covers for the individual tracks.

Constellation/XYZ – ABC

Beverly and I were walking along the inner harbor on a very cold February morning, looking for somewhere to get coffee. I recorded this on the walk, paused my recording while we got coffee, and resumed recording to capture XYZ – ABC.

Wooden board from the bottom of the Constellation ship, with the numbers 11, 10, and 9 painted on them.

I will never say I told you so

BGE has hired contractors to dig up all the roads in our neighborhood, and also move our gas meters outside of the house. I had to quickly dismantle the Theoretical Audio Laboratory to accommodate employees of Pipeline Solutions desire to track a great deal of mud through my home. It was a huge relief to have them out of the house, and when I set up some drums again, I recorded these parts.

One night, I played a Bass VI and improvised the string parts on this track. The next day, I set out to lay down drum tracks for a different song, and wondered what these two parts would sound like together.

I will never say I told you so is what these two parts sound like together.

my drum set in on a riser.

A Pie for Grackles

I was “taking my exercise” one day and heard someone playing an out of tune, warbly piano. As I paused to capture this recording, a car drove past me and parked a block away. I was happy that I captured enough piano to make a loop, and then found the passing car to be interesting, too.

I got the photo one night while Beverly and I were out on a date. It struck me that the people across the room might be having grackle pie, and/or might be grackles themselves.

A man in the far distance talking to a waiter in a restaurant.

Where to be

I made about an hour of recordings one night – 7 tracks in all – two of which will end up in films, and then this one, which is the sweetest of them all. More straightforward, it reminds me of a part of Baltimore that I may have once visited.

The cover is a continuation of Found and Chosen. As much as I’d like to stop, I keep finding discarded treasures on sidewalks.

A cheap, broken gold buckle on a side walk.

Salty

A favorite among faves, this drum loops sits squarely under a recording of BGE’s favorite road warriors, busily ruining the streets around here.

The image is from a 1950’s era advertisement, and while I’m a sucker for those sandals, it was the text that inspired this image become the cover for this track.

A pair of feet in black thong sandals above the word Salty

Cards of Marseilles

A gal holding a cello

I had a sleepover with my lovely daughter this month, and we got some recording in. One this track, I got to play her cello, and she manipulated her Line6 DL4 MkII delay pedal.

Me, playing a cello
and black and white illustration of a man pricing meat.

A risible scene of lovemaking

my drum set, seen from below

This was the first track I made for RPM2023. I set my iPhone on the floor under my drums and it just happened. I’ve made some backing tracks from this for the aforementioned instrumental guitar album.

A 1950's era black and white advertisement of two women watching a TV.

Conclusion

As always, I’m grateful to have participated in this cool challenge, and I’m always better for having done so. I recommend it to everyone who writes music.

I gave a lecture on inspiration and where to find ideas last week. I told my students the following:

Ideas are a form of creative currency that must be spent. They do not earn interest if hoarded.

Mr. Jim, Introduction to Animation, ART341

I remember when I was in my 20’s and the drummer for several original bands, I’d come up with ideas for songs that I kept to myself. Maybe I envisioned myself playing guitar on them. For a few, I remember thinking they were like shiny treasure that I needed to keep safe. That these ideas were soooo good, I needed to do something with them myself.

That was wrong thinking, for several reasons.

  1. I was being selfish.
  2. The ideas might have been great, but most certainly would have been made better by the collaboration of my bandmates.
  3. Those ideas never saw the light of day, all because of this thinking!

I wish I had shared those ideas now. I would love to know where Guppy (of Bazooka Joe) or Christoph Green (of Honeypump) would have taken them. They were both fantastic song writers, and much better guitarists than I.

Ideas are not personal property. They cannot be copyrighted or trademarked. They are useless unless executed. Statistically speaking, if you don’t do it, someone else will!

So, I spent a few ideas this month, and you know what? By doing so, I doubled the amount of ideas I had, and have even more recording to do. I think that’s part of where ideas come from.

Categories
Music

S.Ex no.3

I spent the weekend hacking tape players, and fooling around with electronic components. Here’s a cool xravistan that adds tremolo functionality to a cassette player. The LED shows the pulse.

I randomly recorded myself playing drums, and then listened back. There’s a break in the loop (not sure why) and then I played along with it. It’s difficult, in a way, because unless you sync to the length of the tape, you can end up with a glitchy section in the loop. This one kind of works.

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Music

S.Ex no. 2

Here’s a bit of a WIP, where I tried a screen test in the Theoretical Audio Lab. I’ve been fooling around with animating photos in the studio to have as a visual accompaniment. Promising!

And just look at the crazy drums I’ve been using.

Blue Sparkle 12" drum (tom)
Blue Sparkle floor tom
Blue Sparkle Snare drum

I’ve been scouring reverb and ebay for very cheap, MIJ (made in Japan), no name blue sparkle drums. That’s what Dad and I had when I was a kid. Back then, I felt somewhat “less than,” when I compared my drums to my school acquaintances’ Lugwig, Rodgers and Tama drum sets. These days, however, I take great pleasure in using these drums.

The tom features a hook mount, and I’m 99% sure it’s identical to the drums we had in the 70’s. Tuning is a little bit of an issue, but I think it sounds pretty good. That floor tom is missing the bottom hoop and lugs – not a problem for now, but I’ll try and find one. The snare, however, is the real treasure. There is no latch to disengage the snare, which is old, wanky, and stretched out. There’s a nob that doesn’t turn. The drum head indicates many, many hours of use, so I think this baby was well loved.

It’s a little bit of a project, reassembling my shitty childhood kit. I’ll use the shit kit this spring snd summer!

SK, for now.
SK, for sure.

Categories
Music

Theoretical Audio Laboratory

This has been a nice, long walk to get here. Here being the beginning of a project from which I’ve been assembling materials and ideas throughout the pandemic.

I made a joke to myself a while back that goes “if you don’t have someone to play with, play with yourself.” And then I laughed to myself. And so, I’ve created the Theoretical Audio Laboratory in which to conduct my experiments. Sound Experiments (SEx)! And even Song Experiments.

This is turning out to be quite a hoot. Stay tuned. Or, detuned. Please stay!

Categories
Music

Punk Frockers

Punk Frockers

I made some graphics and music for the Punk Frockers community sewing podcast. The first episode will go live later this month. I think I’ll count this toward a track of this year’s RPM challenge.

Categories
Music

RPM Challenge 2021

Following up on the 2021 make-music-every-day post, I’m declaring, once again, that I’m participating in the RPM challenge. What’s more, my daughter and my girlfriend’s son are playing along, too.

The RPM Challenge is a creative challenge to anyone to record music in February. We give you a deadline of March 1 to complete it by and then we host listening parties to celebrate. Any genre, any level of experience, anywhere. Thousands of records and tens of thousands of tracks have been made by people around the world as part of the Challenge since it was founded in 2006.

It’s fun, it’s hard, it’s rewarding, and it’s free to take part. What have you got to lose?

https://www.rpmchallenge.com/

To accompany the fresh new Website, RPM has expanded on the original requirements, which were to conceive and record an album in the month of February, start to finish. It doesn’t have to be good – just complete. Here, an album was defined as one 35 minute piece of music, or 10 songs. The new requirements are one of the following:

  • Single (1 track or 5 minutes)
  • EP (5 tracks or 20 minutes)
  • LP (10 tracks or 35 minutes)
  • Boxed Set (30 tracks or 100 minutes)

I love it!

I finished an album last year for the first time, and I reflected on that experience in the past 12 months. It was so valuable. I found new possibilities and ideas – and the constraint of having to complete the tracks really pushed me to find different processes, and think about how to produce material in a new way. I recommend this to anyone making music.