Indeedes Music

     last night while practicing Disney songs for open mic night, I remembered a song I wrote a little over a year ago. It was a delightful stroll down nostalgia lane as it reminded me of my old band sangfroid. I remember how excited I was when our drummer Charles Hutch was down to play in 7/8 time.      equipped with this blast from the past I went to rehearsal with Dal to work on the Disney songs. After we'd done a big chunk of the work we needed to do, I whipped out the old tune. As I played he, sang along, and it was perfect. something old is becoming new and i'm pumped.      Thinking on it a day later, I've likened the whole situation to an excerpt from Bird to Bird  where Anne Lamott explains that it is good to look back on works from previous times. You might just discover something worth elaborating on, that simply got lost in time. That's how I feel and it feels great. To all artists of any kind, take a look back at what led you to your current state of artis

As most Brevard students know, beam dorms are tiny, mine is no exception. my room mate Gavin and I managed to fit a futon couch comfortably but this leaves little space to set up for music recording. Iv'e set up a lunch tray table up in front of the right side of the couch and placed my amp and pedal board right were your feet would normally lay. Its tight but its the cards I was dealt, I did a test run by lifting a loop off my loop pedal into my daw and it went seamlessly which bodes well for the next album I plan to record. The key, in my mind, is not the amount of space available, its what you do with it and what the energy of the space you create ia; we have tapestries and christmas lights hanging along with a plethora of decorations, the energy will promote good work flow. it is important to set up a pleasing aesthetic in a workspace in order to have a good state of mind when tackling projects.

grab your Arizona green tea or your fiji water and kick back while I tell you about some aesthetic music shit. today I cranked my metronome from 4 to 5 and started cooking some oddness.      In five time you must be deliberate in your choice of structure, for example, putting it at a fast tempo will cause the listener to have a hard time finding a pulse to nod or dance to; this is because at faster tempos the listener tends to divide the tempo by two and nod to the more comfortable pace. If you are into confusing the listener's rhythm and serving your song as food for thought, power to you. My upcoming album Cup Of Collisions has a track doing just that (gotta plug my stuff lol). But if your not into that have no fear, because the Aesthetic 5/4 semi-symmetrical method is hear!       To start, get the vibes going, this is an individual experience so do whatever gets your vibes banging. slow that metronome down to a cool lower-medium tempo and pick up that bass guitar; lay down a s

Today I released the single named in the title of this post. It is a combination of two songs off my first album Ground Water, that were originally one in the same; at the time of GW's production I made the choice to split them into separate tracks since I felt that they could be independent of eachother. I relate this whole process to Anne Lamott's idea of shitty first drafts. Ground Water holds a special place in my heart, as it is a snapshot of where I was when it was released; but i've come a long way since, so looking back naturally brings about thoughts of how it could've been better. I took the two tracks and realized they were a first draft, and that I had to make a final draft, so I did. It is so satisfying to have stuck by the ideas and feelings that birthed the first drafts. I can look between these three songs and hear how I've grown as a musician; A year from now I have no doubt i'll doing the same thing, and that makes me smile.

Alternate and odd time signatures are my bread and butter; working to make something so off beat resonate well with a listener is the most enjoyable challenge in my life. The above picture is a simple chart depicting a song I wrote for my band Beat Juice. The first line is the part I play and the one below is what Dal plays; as you can probably see, my part is divided irregularly making it nearly impossible to feel the pulse. to remedy this I wrote Dal's part in 4/5, this way both of us will play a total of 20 beats per phrase. by choosing common time emphasis to put over my part, the pulse of the song emerges. I like to compare this to Anne Lamott's experience with writing stories that may not have appealed to people and publishers, but she continued anyway, and that is the true nature of art in my opinion; push through the hate to create something you are proud of.

Today I received the Akai MPK mini 2 in the mail. living in small quarters prevents me from having a drum set which is a huge limitation for my music creation process so the solution I devised was to acquire a MIDI controller (the previously mentioned product) which has a two octave set of keys and eight velocity sensitive drum triggers. This is a temporary solution because I prefer to have the organic sound of an acoustic set but that is simply impossible in my current position. I am currently recording my third album and this will come in handy when adding the percussion/rhythm elements to the tracks. the setup process has been moderately difficult due to my DAW Tracktion (music recording software) being needlessly complicated with the setup of MIDI devices. I will persist and prevail.