MusiM

Man December was dead for me and now that we’re in the new year I have a metric TON of tunes I need to write for other people.  Granted I’m not getting paid but that’s not the point.  The point is I have friends who like my music enough to desire their own custom tune.  Its looking like the first one is done but I’m still waiting on the final comments from the party.

The next one is requiring me to use a guitar pick again which I have horribly slacked on.  I’ve written two ideas for this one but I was listening to some old 80′s metal the other day (or 80′s rock by today’s standards) and came up with a fun idea.  We’ll see if it works in execution.

And I actually have two more projects beyond those I just mentioned.  One is a remix and one is a three tracks for a single party.  So color me excited!  Now I just need to get the endorphins flowing so I can write some upbeat music!   Well maybe not for the remix.

I do still have my next album in mind.  It’ll be 4-6 tracks and so far two of those are done.  Another of the tracks I’ve written like a 4 minute guitar track for and I’m pretty sure the song will write itself once I get around to recording the guitar.  The other 1-3 tracks are completely up in the air.  I might turn The Carousel theme in a full fledged song.  That one really depends though if I can make it better.  I don’t want to make a soulless crappy version of my podcast’s theme song so again, might not happen but its on the plate.  My goal is to sell the album for $5 so I need at least 5 tracks to do that but if March hits and I don’t have those done I may just do a cheap 3 tracks for a dollar bit.  I don’t want to sit on finished tracks for years again.

Anyway, that’s where I’m at.  Hope everyone is doing well!

So I’ve written jack during the last month, musically and literally.  Played a pretty sweet gig doing background jazz for a hospital volunteer dinner where they paid me and feed me steak.  Trish and I are available for hire.  Our set list includes classics like Perdido, Girl From Ipanema, Satin Doll, and a really freakin’ sweet original that we recently named Got Into a Groove.

Anyway, so new plan on the whole album thing.  Forget full 10+ track albums, I do not have the time for it.  I mean I’m what, trying to write and talk about videogames and get someone who can hire me to notice in a positive way, work a 40-50 hour week engineering job, nurture a relationship with my fiancee, teach guitar on Saturdays, write music for MusiM, do music commission work, and do soundtracks for my friend’s Youtube videos?  Like that horribly written string of words I just wrote that I’m calling a sentence, its just not feasible.  The last few weeks have been filled with social and family obligations too.  So new plan.  4-6 track EP’s.  Boom, almost done with my first one.  Should have thought of this years ago.  Might even be able to afford cardboard sleeve or box style hard copies too.

Anyway, I have to start doing cardio again so I can channel my inner happy kid, I have another podcast song to do!  Endorphins are how I stimulate happiness.  Hopefully I’ll get some free time this weekend.

Man has it ever been a doozy of a fall.  Let me run down this timeline for you.  I believe August was when I had to put together a new machine since my old was literally fried by a storm.  Soon after one of my LCD monitors died.  About a month later, my old hard drives started giving out so I spent the last of my money on some new ones.  About three weeks ago, one of them died.  Like, the Bios will not recognize it died.  Had to mail it in to Seagate which cost me $15.  Received the new hard drive last week and installed it.

Suffice it to say, I am out of practice in the department of ze writing of ze muzak.  So I’m going back to the jam out for an hour and upload it to Soundcloud routine.  Anyway, I have a new commission of sorts I’m working on for an upcoming podcast so my jams will at least start out with the intention of running closer to chiptune, although the one I started last night certainly dropped that ball pretty quick.

I started out using the TriForce VST but after layering reverb, distortion, and then padding out the riff with a dry sine from Massive it turned into a pretty raw and thick noise.  And it was about this point in the project when I realized I don’t have any of my custom Absynth patches on the computer yet.  But that’s not always a bad thing as it forced me to go through the Absynth library which is pretty top notch.  I did run with C#-ish minor for the key even though I’m stereotyping myself by going that route.  Really C minor, C# minor, and D minor are the keys that are easiest to me.  The trouble is having the patience to learn a new key well enough on piano to improvise with it.  One of these days I’m going to take piano lessons again.

Anyway I have a guitar gig next week so probably a lot of my music time will be practicing for that.  Nothing big, just background music for a dinner.  But ya know, I get paid.

Man should I ever be in bed.  So I’ve been riffin’ around on Soundcloud an awful lot (or what I feel is an awful lot) for better or for worse over the past few months.  I think its time to become a bit more focused.  Therefore I have compiled a list of my favorite riffs from the last several years that I haven’t used and I’m going to start trying to develop them into songs.  There are around 20 of them so I’m hoping I’ll wind up with an album in the end.  I also have a birthday present I owe a certain sister so I’m digging up all those riffs to get it in my head again.  What this means is I probably won’t have as much to post to my Soundcloud.  At the same time, I take a really long time to write a tune when left to my own devices so don’t except this new album to pop up any time soon.

Either way I’m not convinced too many people actually understand that the riffs I post to Soundcloud are incomplete thoughts.  Reflections in muddy water at best.  Notes made on paper that I thought would be fun to upload.  I’m not trying to belittle anyone or anyone’s favorite genre or anything.  I just got a piece of criticism that kind of unnerved me a bit (I am a sensitive guy).  For me, Soundcloud is a dart board of ideas that other people can watch and that lets me interact with other people in hopefully a positive way.  We all see and experience the world in different ways, which means we can all be right about quite a few things, especially where art is concerned.

I swear one of these days I’m going to sing on a track too.  It’ll be crazy.  Of course you can hear one track I did vocals to on my Myspace.  Note that I never check the myspace anymore.  I should probably also warn you its a comedy track.

Also none of those review sites ever reviewed me.  Anyone have any favorite review sites I should submit to?

I’ve written an entire song out of the guitar riff for that Firecraft Starfly in my Bastion riff, I’ve just only written the guitar part.  Also I can barely play the ending on beat currently.  So once I get that down we’ll see about doing the whole she-bang.

You know not to sound trite but I don’t think there’s a day that goes by that music doesn’t impress me in some capacity.  Today I’ve been kind of down, a little nauseous, and tired as hell.  Normally I think of depressing music as making me depressed.  But today I opened up Spotify and was like screw it, lets bathe in the depression and started up my “Just Kill Me” playlist.  This list includes things like REM’s Everybody Hurts, Johnny Cash covering Hurt, Buddy Guy’s take on Killing Floor Blues, Gary Jules on Tears for Fears Madworld, and Bola’s Aguilla.  The odd thing that happened is I felt all that depressive energy being absorbed by the music and am now in a good mood.  See usually the way it works is I listen to a bunch of depressing music and become depressed.

But really in reflection I suppose this realization is a long time coming.  A decade ago I was nowhere near as genre open minded as I am now.  I wouldn’t be caught dead to listening to anything like REM or Dave Matthews.  My tastes were also exclusively to the goth club scene so much so that I knew of local Norwegian noise bands looking to get on Cold Meat Industries.  I mean its really no wonder music affected me in such an inflicting way back then.

Also this whole concept really gives the music I’ve made a new sense of hope and purpose that I intend to use.

[Musim out]

Ze computer is acting funny today, with hard drives occasionally disappearing.  I updated the SATA drivers for the motherboard so lets hope that fixes it before the podcast tonight.

I also finished the Airship Down commission earlier this week which is awesome!  And now I kind of want to change the name to “The Airship Down Commission” because I like the idea of not only there being an Airship, but a committee that wants to do a political play to blow it up.  If you’re curious about my process I posted a mix of the end of all my sessions to soundcloud.  Just go here to play it from beginning to end http://soundcloud.com/musim/sets/airship-down-from-start-to.  Or just skip to the final version.

Now I’m thinking it might be time for a musical break.  I mean really, I’ve done a lot this year.  Released an album of tracks that I mostly wrote in other years, released an EP that all my friends did all of the work on…..  Actually come to think of it I have a certain song for the sis to write.  I have to do whatever else I’m going to do this year before Skyrim comes out.  In all honesty it has been a lot of work.  The end of doing an album is always a ton of EQ work with some possible rearranging.  And EQ work for me is the most grueling part of the process.

I can’t decide on what to do for my next album though.  I basically have three ideas: (1) a pseudo chiptune album, (2) a compilation of theme songs and commissions (which would include full versions whether a full version exists or not) and possibly remixes, or (3) an all guitar album.  Voting might help but eh, not too many people read this thing anyway.  Heck maybe I’ll do it all at once.  I keep thinking about starting a guitar Youtube channel like all the kids do now a days.

Hope everyone is well.

Yeah the whole sleep thing is overrated so I’ll just ramble instead.

Just did a check on redeemed codes for the single and found out some fascinating things.  First off, Suzy is way more popular than me as half the codes she gave out were actually used.  Next up twitter people don’t like free stuff.  Facebook and the people who read this blog do though.  Still stirring the pot in terms of message board experiments.  I figure I should give those a day or two.  Several of the other bands are doing some pretty easy get a code free bit for either clicking like on their page or mine and no one seems to have taken them up on it yet.  What else is fascinating is I expected the other bands to use a code for themselves but only myself and one other band did that.  Another band actually bought the single (thanks!).  Whatevs, its my dollar now.  :P  But seriously thank you, you didn’t have to do that.

I didn’t think ahead when doing codes for In the Worship of Monsters so I can’t really keep track of who redeemed what there.  I do however know that two of the websites I submitted to have already downloaded it.

Its kind of a fascinating road to travel, trying to figure out how to get people to notice your work with minimal to no interaction.  I’m not so much a people person.  See I don’t mind people but I’m pretty judgmental about people being judgmental.  Yeah we’re all human, we all screw up, do we really need to talk about it for hours on end?

Anyway I uploaded a track titled “Airship Down” to SoundCloud.  Its pretty much two riffs right now without any changeovers.  Once I get a better idea of the song is going to contain then I’ll work on the changeover and builds a bit more.  I was going to include some guitar with it but the guitar parts I wrote changed the tone of the song too drastically.  I’ll probably record the guitar sometime in the next week and upload it as a separate tune.

Anyway, hope everyone’s doing well.  Feel free to reply with your thoughts.

Just submitted “In the Worship of Monsters” for review at a couple different sites that all seemed nice.  Probably should have done that when I released the album.  Oh well I’ll be less of a basket case now than then with a bad review.  Couldn’t submit it everywhere I wanted since some sites still consider a CD release as a sign of a professional artist.  That mentality will probably be  gone by the time I get to my next album.  I’m thinking I’ll wait a week or two before submitting the single.  Speaking of which, anyone want a free copy of the new Missing Dead single?  Here’s a code and a link: epqe-5cua     http://musim.bandcamp.com/yum

So Suzy is going to DragonCon and then will come back for a day or so and then she’s off to Glitchcon.  What this means for me is a couple weekends of straight music working and videogames.  And maybe a little chainsawing tree branches.  That last part sounds manly enough, right?

I’m pretty excited even if the NI Audio Kontrol 1 is pretty disppointing  to use after the RME Multiface II.  One track I’m working on is for a Steampunk fashion show.  I have a guitar part in mind for it that I think will work out.  I’ve also decided this will be my last published song in Dm for at least an album or two.  I’ve gotten too habitual with my guitar work in that key.  What I’m doing to try and trip myself up on this particular track is tuning both E strings to D.  I know its kind of a half ass D or Dm tuning but I like what I’m getting.  The other track I’m working on I can’t actually talk about.  Ever.  Kind of a weird  experiment huh?

Anyway I’m running through all my other tracks trying to think up an idea for my  next album.  The single was a lot of fun to do and as much as I’m tempted to grab a bunch of people and do another single I’m actually burnt out “In the Worship of Monsters” at present point.  No I don’t hate it, I just need a break from everything that is it.  Plus I’m excited about all my new tracks because they have the possibility of being more popular.

And as always I’m looking into another podcast intro I was tipped off on.  More news on that if or when I figure it out and get something going.

So I need more public movement without gigs.  Point being, if you’re  reading this, maybe you could recommend one of my tracks to a friend?  Even seeing listens on bandcamp or soundcloud make me happy.

Hope everyone is doing well and I hope to start posting some new riffs very soon.