Tumbleweeds
April 19th, 2008
Another product of goofing off at the Yamaha station with a recently purchased RC-20 XL (now with loop fade-out!). This was mostly done using a finger bass setting, and overlaying the same part multiple times through an RV-3 pedal, which generated that weird scratchy sound I find so spooky. Mike swears he’s going to put words to this one and when he does, he can change the name. I don’t think it’s finished by a long shot, but still, people seem to like it. Then again, those people are my friends. Anyways, along with Early Hours this song reminds me of the end of an era, my last days as an NYC fella, sitting around in the back yard of 51st street drinking Modelo Especial, watching birdfeeders.
The Good Green Earth
March 21st, 2008
Clearing out the backlog with a good old instrumental. After moving to Jersey, I went through some withdrawal from being separated from the 500-channel Yamaha. I compensated by learning Garageband’s software instruments, the musical typing feature, and how to edit its digital “notes”, which increases the amount of potential instrumentation by at least, oh, six hundred bazillion. I spent a few weeks getting nowhere with all the beeps and blips and hip-hop beats and synthy violins, but from it comes some self-made morning-commute music, if nothing else. Only time will tell. To some people, synthy violins are cheesy. To others, uplifting. One day those people will meet and go to war. I’ll be on the Light Rail to Remco, headphones on, listening to this song.
Student of Philosophy
April 19th, 2007
Another instrumental. I moved into my friend Damon’s place in Sunset Park for a while this year, and as a result gained access to his Yamaha DGX220. I think I became as much a piece of furniture as the keyboard itself for a while there. There are about 500+ sounds on that thing, and I am pretty sure that when I moved out I had only five or six more to go.
The strings and the beats are samples from Garageband. Everything else is from the trusty DGX220. The main inspiration was to have something easy on the ears for the morning subway ride into the city. Hopefully someday I will recut the strings with the ole DGX. Who knows. Either way, I must be honest here, it’s so choice. If you have the opportunity, I highly recommend picking one up.