This song's a collaboration with Matthew K. Manning, who I've been playing music with for fifteen years off an on. We had a high school band together called Royce, and then played in a rock group called Made in China for a few years. After not playing together for a while, Matt came over today and we mostly fiddled with getting his laptop configured for music (and merry) making, but in between bouts of hair pulling over Windows Vista we managed to bang this song out. It sounds a bit more "live" than most of the other things I've done due to the way we recorded it... the vocals, piano and drums (Matt) were all recorded simultaneously, and then we both simultaneously recorded the bass and guitar (Matt). A bit of mixing later and it was done.
I attempted to actually write lyrics for this and re-record the vocal before posting this, but it didn't really work out. Next time, gadget, next time. The title is a random phrase pulled off the top of my head.
I just saw Nausicaa: the Valley of the Wind for the first time, a few weeks ago. It's one of those Miyazaki movies. Big budget animated feature. Awesome movie. The animation is a bit more primitive than some of his later films but still pretty amazing. I don't usually do this kind of thing lately, because it triggers my nerd-shame editor mind, but this time I composed a piece inspired by this film and freely admit to it.
The setting is all-the-way scifi fantasy. In the post apocalyptic future, much of the Earth becomes covered in forests of massive trees. The forests are full of poison spores and gargantuan insect monsters. Human beings are forced to live in the deserts, but there are a few who venture into the forest to try to learn its secrets.
Nausicaa navigates through the Forest with the aid of a small, rocket-powered, winged conveyance, fueled by scifi magic. How great is that?
Years ago, when I first started using fruity loops, I did a bunch pieces where the composition was very step-sequenced from small individual parts. Each part was simple and repetive, but I would plot-out variations in the arrangement, making the piece complex overall. The sound was very techno-ish.
Eventually I learned to use the piano roll where I could plot notes over whatever range of measures I wanted. Fruity loops was no longer just a sequencer, but also a full music-writing tool. I started writing real melodies and backing parts, but the arrangement contained less variations in instrument sounds, and lacked the thickness that my previous compositions had. Additionally, back when I used fruity loops as a step sequencer I threw in non-melodic synth noises that fit rhythmically and these were gone from my later compositons.
For this piece I tried to use a hybrid of both approaches, and I like the result. This is the most complex project that I've done in Fruity Loops for a very long time.
Here's a little song about how sometimes I feel like I'm a bit more grown up and have my feelings a bit more under control now. How do I feel about that? I'm torn! Thus: a song.
Drumming and bassing antics by King Solomon, who also prevailed upon me to change the first chord in the chorus from a minor to a major.
I wasn't sure if I'd get a song done this week. Moving/Finals/Excuses. But, Mr. Jings came over this evening and helped me get my studio space set up in my new place, and now with everything setup I threw something together. I don't really reinvent the wheel with this one (2 verses/chorus + bridge/outro as I've been doing for 75% of my songs) but it is more rockin' than the past few piano ballads have been, so maybe you'll like it.
It's been a while since I posted, but I had the whole day to myself Saturday and nothing to do, so what better opportunity to make a song :) This is my second song I made using logic. I had fun making it. No instruments were used in the making of this song, it's purely computer action, the acoustic guitar parts toward the end are loops from logic. Let me know what you guys think..
