My Music Blog from 2003/04
Musical Diary 2003:
Well I finally got new equipment a
few months ago so I can start playing music on
a regular basis again.. Just like some painters
never show their
sketch books, some composers would never share their daily musings, but
for me it's a good discipline...
Even though some of these tunes are embarassingly rough to me, they all
have some quality,
or glimmer of possibility, or I wouldn't have saved
them... By the magic of modern recording
equipment several of them are saved in an editable state where I can go
back and change notes
and sounds without having to lay down tracks again...
My hope is that after a time of
building up my craft on the new gear, an accident called 'art'
will happen one day...
Bill's recommendations ...from
2003.
april 17 2004: well the problem with this format is I stopped playing
for a few months because the quality wasn't high enough...but when I
polish something I feel like I should get paid...ah well...
jan 17: Listening...
A page on listening listening
jan 15: brass soli... If I wrote for
a big brass orchestra I'd use little things like this...the tracks seem
to have moved slightly against each other...the time makes
me nervouse 200k loop brass soli
jan 5: craft time...
My daughter is awsome at crafts. She'll do six drawings in an hour and
deliver them to people. I've thrown away a lot of music lately,I'd
rather
be like her and just produce and think later. So I finally just focused
on better sounding drums... craft time
Dec 20 2003: war memorial'...
Went to the vietnam war memorial in Washington D.C. when I went
there a while back...The music is heavily based on a patch I found
while
trying to learn synch war memorial
Dec 12: Synch'... I finally got the
keyboard sounds to synch with the metronome from the computer. This
allows everybody to play along. . This is 180k
synchYes
Dec 4: Go light'... Letting go of all
kinds of intellectual baggage and just playing for the fun
of it. . lettingGo
Dec 1: tues'...
tues. ...
November 25 2003: workin'... I have certain rules about this music.
'dont work at it'. but if it's too good I feel like I should get paid,
and if it's too lousy I stop working on the musical blog, so sometimes
a little work is in order... workin. ...
November 18 2003: Classical guitar... Nylon strings
Harpsiguitar. ...
November 13 2003: Jokes... So I got a cold which made my voice about a
5th lower than usual. I thought 'Wow I sound like Leonard Cohen, or the
guy from 'Crash Test Dummies" I didn't do an arrangement or anything,
it's just me strumming along on the piano and singing at the same time.
Very Low. Jokes. ...
Oct 30 2003: Halloween-I wanted to write something funny ...ghosts and
goblins and funny halloween dancing...
Halloween. ...
Oct 22 2003: Saturday... I have to admit getting some
chops is taking longer than I thought. I'm only now paying attention
to getting the feel right... Saturday. ...
Oct 15: Gord's ambient Groove...I've been lucky over the years to play
with some truly awsome musicians. An old friend Gord Durity left this
groove when he came and visited. I added some brass and
sax. Wow, is this ever nice to play over...
Gord ambient. ...
oct 7 2003: New Mic-got a new microphone. ...
New mic. ...
Oct 1 2003: Chatan-A friend gave me some awsome ethnic drum
loops. This one is the Chatan Im not sure where in the world they play
it but I love the sound... Chatan. ...
Aug 1 2003: Fixed Drums: I went through a 'broken drums' period for a
few tunes... (they sound like they were sampled too slow-all of
June)... Now fixed, but I'm not against a few accidents to stir things
up...
fixed. ...
July 11 2003: Nicki Barbed Wire...-I wrote this a few months ago and
thought it was too bad to post. I guess my standards have
slipped 'cause it sounds ok to me today.
nicki. ...
July 7 2003: Sneaky African Drinking...-I found this tiny loop I wrote
a few months back and it brought an image of sitting in exotica african
capitals with expatriots some of whom were probably CIA and drinking
too much... sad.
...
July 3 2003: Sound thing...-weird sounds I keep listening to...
Weird Sounds.
...
June 29 2003: primitive...-it's hot and primitive out.
Primitive. ...
June 25 2003: melodic sax 2...- recorded the sax first again. Had some
troubles tuning the other instruments to the sax though...
Melodic sax2. ...
June 21 2003: melodic sax...- recorded the sax first and then added the
other parts. Good way of doing it. There is one squeak I should fix...
Melodic
sax. ...
June 17 2003: 6 free saxes...- 6 weird sax players...free jazz?
6 free saxes. ...
June 13 2003: FunKacophany- busy business.
funkacophony...
June 9 2003: Strings-If I'm going to score films I have to write
strings... Here's my orchestral string section piece. I imagine a
silent movie...music describing it. strings...
June 5 2003: Shanty- a sketch for a folk song. I used to work at a
summer camp where we'd sing 'row bullies row' and other rousing old sea
tunes. In their own way they rock. The chorus of this 'shout our the
shanties' would sound good with 200 kids pounding on tables and
singing... owes a debt to stan rogers 'mary ellen carter', and some
traditional english sea songs... (although I don't really think it's a
shanty...) shanty...
June 1 2003: Web gives you room to breath... this tune is about six and
a half minutes long and still has a few mistakes in it (the first few
bars need a few fixes and a few other places) but just having the right
to sit down and play something like this is a special web reality...
The web gives you room to breath...
May 26: Drunk Turtle... drunk turtle...
May 22: Autumn Leaves...Ok I needed to play a standard but
this is a bit embarrassing. I think I'm trying to prove to myself
that that's ok. Autumn Leaves...
May 18: Minimalism...There are 3 tracks in this movie one in 3/4 one in
4/4 and one in 5/4 so ever 60 beats they come into phase...You can turn
the tracks on and off with the buttons on the right...
Co-phasing...
May 14: Synchyo I like this, but the time makes me nervous to listen
to. This is placed here to ask the question, Is there an
easy way to get synch between drum tracks and repetitive digital sounds
in cubase SX?... Synchyo.mov(2meg)
May 10: Fatig More Jamming on my sax, with Dan Oliver, Oliver Evans and
a cast of thousands... ...
fatig.mp3(2meg)
May 6: orchestated improv3 goes from kind of classicalish
to funkish to jazzish.. ... sunday(650k)
May 2: Punk Jam.mp3 At a party playing sax with some random people...
punk play blue...
punk jam (2meg)
April 28: Garage rock suite. One man garage rock band make a
sound... garage rock (700k)
April 24: More guitars. I love how the new synths can pretend to be
guitars... Test the low range on your speakers...INTERACTIVE!!!
click on one of the pictures to make a sound...
more guitars (450k)
April 20: Just back from a month travelling in Europe and a month
working on a cabin in the woods. Here's my tune of the day: April 20:
2003- Crazy but happy. A melody that just came to me.
crazy (240k)
Everything below here is on the CD
Feb 19,2003-smallfile....just concentrating on making a
generic sounding tune like computer people seem to like, keeping
it very small, and the loop good.
tiny
file (240k)
Feb 16-72931....I like the drum groove. This Painting is
by an old friend, Thomas
Anfield
72931
Feb 13-Softest pop.... This is a sweet sounding tune...I have a wicked
cold today and I just wanted to play something gentle... The lupin
movie (click on the water!) is by
Irene Blueth ...
sweetest pop
Feb 10-Space Incan.... Music for Incan Space men......
space incan
Feb 7 2003-Cowboys...A spaghetti western slideshow...Spent the day
teaching my kids that violence was not a valid way to settle a
disagreement between parties...Some older people never seem to
have learned that...
Cowboys...
Feb 4 2003-Country- Well some styles I don't do very well, this one
wasn't meant to sound like such a satire of country music. I was
actually working out some pops and glitches in the recording gear
still, just playing around ...
Country
and werstern...
Feb 1 2003-Sneaking- Descriptive film music? ...
Sneaking...
Jan 29 2003-five four-quick tune in 5/4 time signature.
5/4
time...
Jan 26 2006-For Laurie- I remember seeing Laurie Anderson live just
after I finished University... She was intelligent, funny, creative,
populist and avant garde... Also she was old, by the way I looked at
it, and I wanted to be like her when I got older...
For
Laurie...
Jan 23 2003-Beebop-a style of music I love to play...but I've been on
this 6 month learning curve for almost 5 months and haven't tried it
yet. Now I've gone for it!
beebopery...
Jan 20 2003-brass trio-I got SX going! so as I was testing I wrote a
little classical brass trio... I want to write more classical style
music with this nice notation system...
brass
trio...
Jan 17 2003-SXHell-I stopped using the freeware Cubasis app and bought
Cubase SX for osX I think my CD drive on the music box is corrupting
things, like the OS and SX as it's not working for me very well..
SXHell...
Jan 14 2003-AsianWalk-some music about some hiking I did in India and
Nepal
asianwalk...
Jan 11 2003-FusionLoop-listened to the
albums of some old friends playing fusion... Played a quick loop
myself...
fusionloop...
Jan 8 2003-TranceWorld-hard to play such a big sounding feel on a
little compressed computer speaker. Imagine a massive film score or
something...
tranceworld...
Jan 5 2003-campfire-after studying jazz and classical and practicing 9
hours a day, playing clubs, recording jingles etc. I took off and
wandered the world, where some of the best music I heard was a single
guitar player and a harmonica by a fire at night. Dare to be simple.
campfire...
Jan 2 2003-TV-like...hmmm don't know what this is...Ive been watching
some sports on tv, maybe that's why the bassline of repetitive quarter
notes..
tv...
Dec 30 2002-Raggae... a style I haven't tried here...
raggae...
Dec 27 2002-waltz thought I should try something in a time signature..
waltz...
Dec 24 2002- guitar24 a quick guitar-ish tune...
guitar24...
Dec 21 2002- Orchestrated Improv 2... well I tried another piano improv
orchestrated. I can't tell whether this sounds like zappa, elevator
music, or something new. I enjoy doing it...this is long and a big file
compared to the tiny loops I've been doing... I know melody and cadence
are pretty out of style, but one of the
nice things about coming back to music is that i don't really have
to care about fashions...
orchImprov...
Dec 18 2002- SillyB. Kind of a silly tune about a silly guy, who writes
software for a living but would have more fun just writing silly
tunes...
sillyB...
Dec 15 2002- Soli. Wow I enjoyed putting this one together... I just
played a piano solo and then spent some time orchestrating it... This
new gear is going to be a lot of fun... I love having
the melody played by a south american pan flute, a sitar player, and a
70's portamento syth. I imagine what the orchestra would look like...
soli...
Dec 12 2002- Sus chords. I used to play a lot of sus chords...Just
walking down memory lane I guess...
suschords...
Dec 9 2002- Light song...just a little light tune...
Light...
Dec 6 2002- Moody...one of the best parts of playing music is you can
use any mood you're in to get something down...grey day today...I like
this one. When I got back into playing a while ago I was thinking film
scoring, but I got a little distracted for a while...
Moody...
Dec 3 2002-saxNbrass. sax with brass. I thought this was going to be
good and it turned out kinda lousy... ah well, luck is part of it I
guess when you just do a quick tune once in a while...
sax n
brass...
Nov. 30 2002-blues. this seems to be a cover of an old
Coltrane tune... Bessie's blues... Thought I should play something
in the tradition I guess...
organ blues...
Nov. 27 2002-techno. The gear seems to want to play this kind of music
so bad I just wrote what it wanted me to....
technoQ
Nov. 24 2002-3k midi. well on the web one of the most important things
is tiny file size. This classical tune is 3k which will download in 1
second on even the slowest modem...
3k midi
Nov. 21 2002-chorusSax. This one is a rockin antidote to the 'cadence'
ballad i wrote last... There are two versions... the qdesign one is
smallest and sounds good but won't loop nicely and the mp4 one needs
quicktime 6 to hear it, but is pretty small and still loops nicely...
mp4-28bit qdesign
Nov. 18 2002-cadence. I had a need to play on some real chord changes.
I got a new reed too wich makes a huge difference... too bad everything
is always one take, I only spent about half
an hour from starting to compose to posting...
cadence
Nov. 15 2002-congas: I had a stock conga groove and I made a quick tune
from it...qdesign may be small but the unresolved reference looping
even has a glitch..
congas...
Nov. 12 2002-ethnic groove. I used to sell film scores and such using
some ethnic grooves... I did tons of travelling a while back and I'd
just play my version of what I remembered
dare2Bnaive
Nov. 9 2002-Mercy on Self. I almost posted a few test I
did with stock rifs, but I had mercy on myself and produced my first
sax tune instead. I'm a little out of tune in a couple of places, but
I haven't figured out how to punch in or pitch shift on this gear
yet....It's good to be getting closer to my old sound, I just need to
practice a
lot...
had
mercy and recorded like I used to...
Nov. 6 2002-shuffle tune. This is OK. I wonder how you get qdesign to
loop
Shuffle tune
Nov. 3 2002- woodwind quartet. This is one of my earliest tries but I
like something
about it. The machine crashed after and I lost it all, so I can't fix
the wrong notes or
bad timings...but there's a freedom of line...a loose quality I kind of
like...
Woodwinds
Nov. 1 2002-guitar chops. My main instrument is saxophone, which I
haven't recorded
here yet...so otherwise I play keys. This guitar patch is a lot of fun,
and this improv got used in a
vr movie...
guitarChops
October 28-Rosy.... This patch made me think of the techno music that
you ravers are into these days...
Rosy
October 25-yep1.... I was in a happy mood this day and this is a happy
little improv.
Yep
October 22-Musical.... We had an actress from a musical theatre company
billeting in the suite
and I sat down and played a little tune that sounded like it should go
in a musical to me...
musical
October 19-Polite funk- This was the first tune that I managed
(bothered) to fix my wrong notes and timings... It came out sounding a
little boring to me!
politefunk
October 16-This is some funk that sounds like it was the last set on a
drunken night...Everybody's noodling, and it's very loose and free...
impolitefunk
October 13-harmonic minor.... This is a midi file, not a qdesign
compressed file. It has a note that I wasn't sure of, but it sure
sticks in my head...
HarmonicMinor
October 10-A tune called huh. This is one of several where I just love
being a one man big band on the new gear. Years
ago I ran a big band, and the possibilities of composing charts more
quickly with the new notation softwear for such a band is very exciting
to me..
Huh
October 7-distorted... This is over-recorded and
I'm pretending I know how to play keys well which I really only play
as well as a composer needs to not a player...
distorted
October 4- A tune called ftalk. a rough improv
in f
ftalk
October 1-rought tune loop
I was just learning the gear...
Rough tune loop
Sept 27 2002 simple groove. This is one of several where I just love
being a one man big band on the new gear. Years
ago I ran a big band, and the possibilities of composing charts more
quickly with the new notation softwear for such a band is very exciting
to me..
so learning to play the compositions would be key....
A simple groove
Sept 23 2002 tune called keyTrack. Intresting new
patches to play with
Keytrack
Sept 21 2002 I think I'll come back to this. The idea
of mixing baroque classical music with raggae is interesting to
me....
Raggae Baroque
Sept 18 2002 add sax some dayqdesign.mov
I like copying music like the score to 'local hero' by mark knopler. I
think this will sound like that mournful beauty when I put a sax melody
on it one day... Add sax
Sept 15 2002 I guess this is the first thing I recorded. I was thinking
of this guy I met playing tunes on a little island in africa called
Lamu, and he was singing along with his line...in
unison and it was a very weavy arabic melody, and I liked it and was
amazed how interesting it could be without orchestration...
First sound
Sept 12 2002 . stringsetc.mov strings And stuff
Sept 9 2002 . midiAudio... The first time I managed to
record the midi over to audio...
midi 2 audio
Sept 6 2002 . panoMusicruf... I want to start a library
of sounds for panos this just got called that for lack of any other
name... ruf pano music
Sept 3 2002 .freeform... Shut up and play an instrument...
freeform
august 31 2002 .aqua aqua
august 2002 . I got my new yamaha s80 keyboard!