week four

well, i found a local MC here in portland.. and that's super cool, but i only found one.. and in the meantime, i made a few more beats. i think these are 'technically' a bit better than my first round, but they also might be a little less experimental.. they're all in a pretty narrow range of tempo, and i didn't include a lot of the failed attempts..

in fact, you might notice many of them use the same drumbeat (and tempo, more or less..). 'cause i'm such a geek for hiphop right now, i wanted to play around with a few classic break beats, and i think this list of hip hop songs using melvin bliss' synthetic substitution is pretty crazy.. and i know & love quite a few of those on the list.. so i did a few beats using that as a starting point. kinda dorky exercise, huh? oh well.

anyhow, here we go:

checkers
braeburn
harder target
candy apples
colorwheel
daisy
fuji
magic spells
sticky spree
granny smith
mountain size
gala
rose
sour apples

a critique of pure music day 10

aristotle
aristophanes
vinca
nicomachus
summer

i'm pretty thoroughly wrapped up in my hip hop research project now.. the portland public library is pretty awesome, and has been able to hook me up with album after album - all the kanye, jay-z, wu-tang, dre, etc etc.. i could want, and i've also got spotify, so it's a pretty immersive experience around here.

a critique of pure music day 9

apollonius
pincushion
archimedes
reluctant robot
tacitus

lots of music going on around here - i'm playing bass with Jenn Rawling (& Basho Parks, among others..) for her CD release party, so that includes some rehearsals, but American Friction is busy right now and the New Mexican Revolution is still gaining steam.. whew.

and yet i only have one heart, and it belongs to these little one minute songs. ha!

a critique of pure music day 8

copernicus
plutarch
ptolemy
virgil
kepler

sadface. emily is back at work, the rain clouds have returned, the apartment is cold & quiet.

except for all these beats.

a critique of pure music day 7

copernicus
epictetus
thucydides
knight
rook

i really like some of these more recent ones.. little glitchy drums against the strings are kinda cool. can we combine Radiohead and Dr. Dre somehow? hmm.. i'm also getting better at making smoother loops, which is cool. it doesn't make it any faster or easier, but the final result is nicer.

a critique of pure music day 6

northside
queen
sophocles
lucretius
hippocrates

well, we took the weekend off to relax, 'cause emily has a four day weekend, but i figured i should start posting some more of them now. mostly 'cause i enjoy the five day work week so much. and also 'cause i've got so many of these little jams on the other computer i'm having a hard time keeping them straight. ha!

a critique of pure music day 5

galen
euclid
king
equinox
bishop

making beats, yo. sometimes syncing up really different music is kinda maddening.. like tuning a piano or something. yeah. but i'm getting better at knowing ahead of time what might work.. a little bit better.

also, TGIF- 'cause now emily has got a four day weekend.

a critique of pure music day 4

herodotus

autumn

plato

eastside

morning

day 4, day 4. the weather here in portland is a little bit crazy-awesome.. no rain for a few days, even a fair bit of sunshine. i think i might take advantage of that weather and walk to the library today, in between making beats. i should be writing rhymes, too.

a critique of pure music day 3

euripides
twilight
westside
spring
knight

hip hop kids, where are you? i need some verses.. 16 bars or so. ha!

a critique of pure music day 2

aeschylus

noon

midnight

southside

pawn

making beats, making beats.. need to find some of those rapper guys.

a critique of pure music

well, for the past week i've been pretty distracted, trying to make beats and hip hop instrumentals - which has turned out to be pretty cool.. although i'm not sure what to do with 'em. they're all short (i'm trying to work with about a 1 minute end result..) and pretty simple.. but it's all kinda theoretical/experimental until i can find some other people and get some songs together.

so i figure i'll start posting 'em, and maybe i can find some hip hop types who want to collaborate..

gloaming

dawn
dusk
evening
fall

hmm.. well, i got 20 more of these right now, so maybe i'll just limit myself to these few for now.. i'm not sure how the internets will handle my flood of mp3s in one post, so..

Alexander Sunset

Alexander Sunset

here's a little bit of a theme song for alex.. for some reason, when i think of super hero themes, the first one that pops up is darkwing duck. i think that's a little odd, but maybe not.. there was a short window of time where i really liked watching tale spin, rescue rangers, ducktales, and darkwing duck after school.. although, at the time, i think tale spin was my favorite. always been scared/fascinated with flying, i think.

anyhow, emily is still outta town, so i didn't really give her a chance to call this one finished.. but i think it'll be okay. it's kinda important to the overall super hero concept album thing.. not unlike the few unfinished songs i have left. i wrote some good words for something i'm calling "the ballad of windy & alex".. and i think that'll get it pretty close to finished. yeehaw!

also, on an unrelated note:

craigslist musicians seem to be uncommunicative flakes. i'm kinda still in disbelief.. i've been looking for other musicians, bands, people on tour, maybe somebody needs a multi-instrumentalist who can leave for tour tomorrow - anything.. but nobody even really replies to my emails, and if i get a single email, there's no phone number or anything. i figured it would be easy to play with a few different people, especially here in portland, make some new contacts, whatevs.. i can't even do that. hmph. yeehaw.

Alexander Uses His Powers (why the hellknot?)

hahaha. today is monday, and i'm trying to finish up the a.f.c. stuff, which still includes another 5 or 6 tracks.. but this one is an odd one, a sorta dreamy noise wash.. mostly guitars feeding back in the old practice space, late at night.. it was pretty fun, using the acoustic and the electric to try and build these chords, moving around the room with the amp turned way up, trying to make the pretty noises.. kinda like whales or something. i can't make noises like this in the apartment, of course.. i keep trying to re-create those feedback swells and such, but it's never quite right..

Alexander Uses His Powers (why the hellknot?)

anyhow, i like how this one turned out.

Even Adam

Even Adam

the music for this song started off with a cool cowbell part, and i like that a lot. of course, now it's got a bunch of other stuff going on, and it's hard to hear how neat it is, but still.. cool cowbell part. it's also got attempts to move between three similar but seperate song ideas, and that proved kinda difficult.. the swirly psychedelia of the first third, and the major key guitar rock, and the end.. whatever that is. ha! it was kinda hard to mix 'em all together all the same song.. trying to make the guitars sound big in the 2nd part, etc etc..

in other news, recording for American Friction is still underway, but it's slow going.. after spending some time on a particular take of 'Martians' we decided to scrap it and start over. tough decision sometimes. oh well. on the other hand, another new song that may or may not be called 'Nudist' is sounding pretty awesome. and we got a show coming up, jan 12th, so i imagine it'll be more rehearsal than recording for now.