dust

This is my attempt at background music for an exploration game I have been working on randomly. The music has kind of a strange structure and ends wierdly but it can hopefully loop indefinitely without being too annoying.

Howdy.

It being my first submission to this venerated site, yesterday I embarked upon the creative process with some trepidation, a plateful of eggs, a one and a half hour car ride to Athens, and an unfinished idea in hand. Arriving there, I related to Graham and Kelly my dilemma and they offered its suitability for inclusion in their nigh on finished rock opera. Thusly equipped I finished off the idea's lyrics to fit into the proffered opportunity.

I had the whole melody and the first guitar part on the instrumental outro worked out, but nothing else, not even the chords. I also had the cheesy wordplay refrain: "Though I want to go home, in thirty years I won't have home unless I make it/ Unless I make it with you". Graham and Kelly suggested that this general sentiment would fit right in with a missing slot in their opera, a song where Eugene tries to persuade his followers to follow him into the desert to find his dream city, Emerald City. So naturally I took whatever emotions led me to that line and projected them onto Eugene, and there you go.

Vocals by me, Kelly contributed vocals before the instrumental outro, guitar is me, bass is Graham, loops is me. Help from Graham and Rob working out the chords for the entire thing.

we-can-make-it-together1

believe_final_mix

I'm astounded that I finally managed to make a post without pestering M. Williams. Sorry if this is late. I'm not sure which day was mine, but I was informed that it was recent. I'm still trying to figure out how to work the Google calendar so I can stay on top of my game.
I have this beat I'm working on that I'm really excited about so far, but... it's not ready yet. So instead I present this. I recorded this earlier in the fall.
Fast Eddy features on the mandolin.
I ran the main vocals through a tube guitar amp while simultaneously recording a signal directly into my computer (well, into my audio interface) if that makes any sense. It took three microphones. It was a fun experiment, and I'm semi-pleased with the results. It's an idea that I plan to further explore.
What else? I had to record the vocals with my dad, uncle and friend Travis Lacina in the house. So, thanks to all of them. It greatly helped craft this song to be what it is,whatever that may be.
If you have any questions about the nitty gritty dirty details I will be happy to get into it with you.
Thanks for listening,
-Jerko

Kelly (Vines, not G) and I worked on this song in an effort for me to impart what nuggets of hard-fought knowledge I have earned writing songs. The instrumentation was done in Garageband at Kelly's place with a non-velocity sensitive keyboard, which changed the instrumentation slightly to instruments that aren't as dependant on velocity. I could have re-recorded the instruments, but I have some kung-fu to watch. Hope you enjoy.

Lyrics:

when did the air become so thin
that I could barely breathe?
I'm feeling like the air is running out.

I'm in a room with only you
that'll never be enough
the design is going to expire.

end tonight.

so many times we've talked about forever
it would be nice, but we don't really want that.
maybe in another place, we could have made it work.
let's move on. let's move on.

I've wandered through these words time and time again.
but there's no use pretending. I need to get away.

end tonight.

looking at a clear night sky and I can't see a star
the lights in this city have washed them out.
keep walking on the sidewalks, avoiding all the cracks
i know, the feeling's gone.

download

tapeworm

I found this song on my old hard drive and decided to remix it, the original is a song I made probably a couple years or so ago, but I decided to import the tracks into ableton and use some of the live mixing techniques that ableton kind of forces you to do, so I made them into loops and re-mixed them. I also added in some midi chord progression with a lead using the tweakbench intruments again. It just so happened there was an instrument in there called tapeworm, but I think I instead ended up using rebar. The vocals on this say "the tapeworm, takes just enough, to keep his host alive" When I heard it again after so long, I realized it's a really weird and kinda cheesy song, but I thought that maybe with some heavy reverb on the vocals it would muddy up the vocals enough to not make them seem so literal. Anyway, I hope you enjoy. This one took me about 3 hrs to make.