Song of the Week Week, Part Six

[Song of the Week is a "weekly" feature which is supposed to update every Thursday Friday, but almost never does. In it, Drew records a song, or attempts to record a song, or gives up and writes another movie review.]

So what I'm thinking is, I'm about 7 or eight weeks behind on SotW. And I need an impetus (if that means what I think it means) to do a post every day again, which various factors have been keeping me from doing. So hey, I thinks, I'll just do a Song a day for a week and kill two birds with one incredibly time-consuming stone. I have no idea if I'll actually follow through, but here's part six (of seven, obviously).

"Hawaii*":


I was tired. Tired because I actually worked today and got home really late, but also tired of using guitars. I like to do different things with each of these songs, and all of them this week have been pretty guitar-heavy**. I was trying to think of what I could do besides guitar, and wouldn't take very long to make, and I came up with: guitar.

But, it's not really a guitar. It's a Hawaiian lap steel (guitar), the first electric instrument ever***. Steel guitar has kind of a bad rap because its mainly associated with country music, which is fair, although obviously that's not the instrument's fault. So I wanted to do something different, to prove it, I guess. To defend my little bought-at-a-thrift-store-because-how-often-do-you-come-across-these-for-fifty-bucks-answer-I-don't-know guitar. My original idea was to do something that actually, sounded, you know, Hawaiian (the song's title is an artifact of that), but I didn't really know where to start. My other idea was to do something bluesy, but instead I came up with these kind of freeform experimental lullaby thing, which I like better. Also, at one point this song had words, but it lost them along the way. That's it, I think. I'd probably say more, but hey, tired, remember?

*You can say Hawai'i if you want, but it makes you sounds like a pretentious douche.
**Also lots of covers. I wanted to do another cover, but then I thought, four covers in seven day (especially four in row?). People are gonna know think you can't write your own songs.
***Mine is not actually the first. I imagine that's in a museum somewhere, or burned up in a fire.

Click here to see Part One
Click here to see Part Two
Click here to see Part Three
Click here to see Part Four
Click here to see Part Five

Song of the Week Week, Part Five

[Song of the Week is a "weekly" feature which is supposed to update every Thursday Friday, but almost never does. In it, Drew records a song, or attempts to record a song, or gives up and writes another movie review.]

So what I'm thinking is, I'm about 7 or eight weeks behind on SotW. And I need an impetus (if that means what I think it means) to do a post every day again, which various factors have been keeping me from doing. So hey, I thinks, I'll just do a Song a day for a week and kill two birds with one incredibly time-consuming stone. I have no idea if I'll actually follow through, but here's part five (of seven, obviously).

"Don't Stop Believing*":


Since I just did a "sensitive" cover of a rapcore song, I thought I'd turn things around and go with its spiritual opposite (its exact opposite is a yodel version of Muzak, oddly enough): the indie-rock cover of a cheesy pop song. As with before, they can be serious, joking, or possibly both, but unlike last time, I'm too tired to find examples. This is like my fifth song attempt today**.

Anyway, Journey turned hardcore punk. Uh, the trick is to just do whatever. I just took four of the chords and played them the whole time (E5, B5, C5, and A, if you like to play along at home). Originally I actually used the solo, but it sounded bad and I took it out. Which is unfortunate, because it's actually my favorite part of a song I'm otherwise ambivalent about.

*Note that I spell it with a "g". Journey does not.
**In case you're wondering, one of them is half-finished and might serve as a future SotW, one was badly recorded (and kind of tuneless) and was deleted, two were different attempts at this song (one was in a different style, and the other was the same idea, but with the guitar and vocals recorded separately. I couldn't get it to sound right so I did them both at the same time). The last one I actually finished, and still might post later, probably as a bonus song for part seven this week. Don't get your hopes up, though, because it's crap.

Also, here's a list of the most-commonly used words in this blog. I think it's a little skewed because it's only showing recent posts, but I'm guessing the biggest ones ("song" and "one-- which a just used twice in on-a single sentence)

Click here to see Part One
Click here to see Part Two
Click here to see Part Three
Click here to see Part Four

DOWNLOADABLE VERSION:
Rerelease Notes: This one's the same.

Song of the Week Week, Part Four

(Presented in SparkleVision (TM))

[Song of the Week is a "weekly" feature which is supposed to update every Thursday Friday, but almost never does. In it, Drew records a song, or attempts to record a song, or gives up and writes another movie review.]

So what I'm thinking is, I'm about 7 or eight weeks behind on SotW. And I need an impetus (if that means what I think it means) to do a post every day again, which various factors have been keeping me from doing. So hey, I thinks, I'll just do a Song a day for a week and kill two birds with one incredibly time-consuming stone. I have no idea if I'll actually follow through, but here's part four (of seven, obviously).

"Gerudo Valley Theme (Electric)":



This one I've wanted to do since week one, and I finally did it.

Originally, this was just a straight version, but I started playing around with effects (drink every time that phrase has come up in Song of the Week) and ended up with this cool, sixties-y guitar tone*. Then I cloned it and made that the bass, and I was done. Not much else I can say. I heard it in the game and liked it and it's the most guitar-heavy Zelda theme, so that's cool.

*I can't help but expect this to show up on a Tarantino movie soundtrack.

Click here to see Part One
Click here to see Part Two
Click here to see Part Three

DOWNLOADABLE VERSION:
Rerelease Notes: This one's the same. I think.

Song of the Week Week, Part Three

[Song of the Week is a "weekly" feature which is supposed to update every Thursday Friday, but almost never does. In it, Drew records a song, or attempts to record a song, or gives up and writes another movie review.]

So what I'm thinking is, I'm about 7 or eight weeks behind on SotW. And I need an impetus (if that means what I think it means) to do a post every day again, which various factors have been keeping me from doing. So hey, I thinks, I'll just do a Song a day for a week and kill two birds with one incredibly time-consuming stone. I have no idea if I'll actually follow through, but here's part three (of seven, obviously).

"Sleep Now In the Fire (Acoustic)":


OK, so we all know that thing where a musician (it's usually singer-songwritery types, not bands), will do a cover of a hard rock or rap song, and they'll slow it down, change the melody, strip it down to just piano or grandpas guitarses? You know, how sometimes it's* a joke, sometimes it's dead serious, and sometimes it's impossible to tell, but no matter what, it's a huge cliche** (is the accent on the "e" or the "i"?)?

I wanted in on that action.

You can definitely file this one in with the "joke" ones (if nothing else, for my impression of Tom Morello's ending solo). The weird thing was originally this was going to be on piano but I quickly re-learned how bad I am at piano (good enough to waste an hour trying, but not good enough to make anything tolerable). This guitar version, by contrast, took all of one take, which if you've listened to i talready, should not at all surprise you (at one point you can actually hear me stop and scroll down so I could read the rest of the lyrics. At others, especially the first verse, you can tell where I was trying to figure out how to fit the lyrics to the melody).

I wanted to do this as a twofer with "Testify," but I would have had to retune my guitar and couldn't find my tuner. If you want to hear my acoustic cover of "Testify," please send me money so I can buy a new one and also buy candy gas.

One thing that turned out surprisingly well is that this song is oddly Dylanesque, mostly because my singing is so bad***. If you actually can sing and want to cover my cover, please, please do. Here are the chords, you probably already know most of them:

----E: D-ish: & A****
C |-0-|----|----2-|
G#|-2-|-0--|----3-|
D |-2-|-0--|----2-|
A |-2-|-0--|----0-|
E |-0-|-0--|------|
B |---|----|------|
and the chorus part is B|-55-3-5-3-5-| and then it's E|-55-3-3-5-5-|, and some variations on that (pretty much the original song's bassline, transposed to guitar. For that matter, the chords are from the original, but pushed down a few keys). For the solo-ey parts, just make up something as you go along, which is what I did.

*Damn you, Coulton!
**Except when I do it, of course.
***How do you make it so the breathing isn't as loud?
****The first two show up throughout the song, but the third is only near the end of the chorus. Also, let's try and make the D-ish chord (or the G-ish, for those of you using standard tuning) sweep the nation.

Click here to see Part One
Click here to see Part Two

Song of the Week Week, Part Two

[Song of the Week is a "weekly" feature which is supposed to update every Thursday Friday, but almost never does. In it, Drew records a song, or attempts to record a song, or gives up and writes another movie review.]

So what I'm thinking is, I'm about 7 or eight weeks behind on SotW. And I need an impetus (if that means what I think it means) to do a post every day again, which various factors have been keeping me from doing. So hey, I thinks, I'll just do a Song a day for a week and kill two birds with one incredibly time-consuming stone. I have no idea if I'll actually follow through, but here's part two (of seven, obviously).

"Duel"


This song arose by accident. I was trying to come up with something and accidentally did the intro riff. Then I was all, that's cool, what would that sound like a little lower, and a modified version of that became the response riff. And then I was all, maybe I should take a break from dissonant noise experiments and make something that's actually shaped like a song? And, lo, "Duel" was born.

This one is intentionally pretty simple. High bass riff, low bass riff, then both kind of pulse for a few bars, then a guitar comes in and then a guitar solo. I think it's in G, or at least the solo is.

In a little more detail, it's some thing like this:

G|-11-12--|
D|--------|
A|--------|
E|--------|
and then E|--3-2-3-0-0-| or something. I can play it from memory but I don't know the exact order they go in, and I'm pretty sure the guitar part doesn't even use real chords (one of them is G5, but the others, I just played whatever sounded good).

The hardest thing here was coming up with a name. I just went with this one because it was simple,m like the song itself, and somewhat descriptive (because it kind of sounds like two basses fighting each other, metaphorically of course).

Oh, and you can choose not to believe this, but I took that cloud picture myself. With a cell phone. For reals.

Click here to see Part One

Slowly Catching Up to TV Reviews, Part II of an Even Larger Number: Fridays

Yes, I'm stilling doing TV blogging. It just sort of fell out from under me and I'm trying to get back on the wagon (or off the wagon. I forget which is the good one). This one's a double, because one of the shows is new and the other I'm only one episode behind on.

Friday Night Lights, "New York, New York":

So what happened was, I was watching these on the premium, snooty, watch-before-everyone else DirecTV* versions, on an tivo**. I got up to here, and they just stopped recording. Not dicking around. That's really how it happened. DirecTV has one show that you can only watch on their boxes, and they can't make it show up in the guide to record right. So I watched this one on Hulu like five minutes ago.

I could go on about how the main theme of this episode is perserverance stubbornness, and how that gets exemplified in Jason and Coach et cetera, but instead how awesome was that part with Street and Riggins in New Yrok? Seriously. Five minutes of the best fish-out-of-water stuff ever to show on television. Somehow both hilarious and enlightenating how little those guys have seen outside of Dillon. Awesome.

*Sadly, that's actually how they spell it.
**TiVO: brand name. Tivo: generic name for any similar device. Tell your freinds, if you have any.

Dollhouse, "Ghost" through "The Gray Hour":

"Ghost":


Well, I liked it. The general--or at least the most vocal-- consensus is that the show is terrible but we should stick around until it gets really good, which is supposed to happen in episode six. The remarkable thing about this opininon is how little basis it has in actual fact. It reminds me how much people seem to hate the "cage" episodes on Lost (the first six from season three) despite the fact that at least five of them are pretty good, and the real worst episode came after they were over. I think it's more about expectations than it is about the actual show.

Let's be honest. "Ghost" is not the best episode of television ever. That's not what I'm talking about. But it was very good on its own merits, and it sets up a lot of cool stuff for later.

I think the problem a lot of people are having with this one, especially, is that people are used to seeing cop shows every week*. So the nerds (the ones who bother to go on the internet and complain about shows) think, new sci-fi show is doing a kidnap story? Lame. Crime stories are for old people. We can see those anywhere.

As a nerd, I can sort of understand this viewpoint. But at the same time I can see what they were trying to do here. It's a wolf in sheep's clothing: in order to make kooky sci-fi show accessible to people who haven't been reading about it on the internet for the last six months**, they present it as something familiar: a crime story. Anyway, next episode.

*It should be noted that there aren't actually any cops in this episode.
**Or was that just me?

"The Target":


The problem I've been having with this show is, like I said, it feels like I already know what was coming. I half blame the internet and half blame Fox's promo people. This show seems to like its twists, and I feel like too many of them have already been spoiled to me. Maybe you'll be luckier.

That said, everything else here was good, better than the last one. I liked that they're setting up Boyd as the sympathetic guy, but it does raise the question of why he still works for all these assholes (my Crazy Theory is that he's also been brainwashed. What's yours?). The other thing I like here is that they're not wasting any time moving the Alpha story forward, which was a nice surprise.

"Stage Fright":


Again, what was interesting here wasn't the Active-ing itself, which so far has been pretty good but not noteworthy (and here was probably the weakest of the first four) so much as the little details piling up around the edges: the Actives have both their own personalities and their missions, and one hand might not always know what the other's doing (it makes more sense if you just watch it). This sort of lends more support to my Crazy Theory (see above). Also cool: the suggestion that Echo might be evolving or something. My Crazy Theory Number 2 is that she turns into a crazy psychic who kills people with her brain, because, hey, why not? And the Victor thing was pretty cool, probably 'cause I managed to not have it spoiled. So yeah.

"The Gray Hour":


This one sort of answers the question about why hire an Active when you can just hire the world's best safecracker. The world's best safecracker will take the money and run; the active won't. Although this raises the similar question of why not just hire four actives, but whatever.

These ran kind of short. Hopefully I can go into more detail with later episodes.

Song of the Week Week, Part One

[Song of the Week is a "weekly" feature which is supposed to update every Thursday Friday, but almost never does. In it, Drew records a song, or attempts to record a song, or gives up and writes another movie review.]

So what I'm thinking is, I'm about 7 or eight weeks behind on SotW. And I need an impetus (if that means what I think it means) to do a post every day again, which various factors have been keeping me from doing. So hey, I thinks, I'll just do a Song a day for a week and kill two birds with one incredibly time-consuming stone. I have no idea if I'll actually follow through, but here's part one (of seven, obviously).


OK, this is a long story. I was gonna try another kind of song but got frustrated and wanted to try an experiment. The idea here was to play with speeding up the tracks, so I recorded a couple tracks (bass and tambourine/guitar) at 40bpm, pretty much just trying to play various riffs to see how they'd sound speeded up (I was going to do it up to 240 bpm, but ultimately went with 120). For good measure I used the auto-key-changer from C minor to G major, mostly to see what it did (as it turns out, nothing), and played a bit with with panning and echoes.

Here's the original (stick with it, it gets better):

I ♠ Noise (Slow):


Here's the studio-processed version, which actually turned out better than I thought it would. It gave the guitar parts this odd, flute-like sound which I kind of liked.

I ♠ Noise (Fast):


I want to make these available for download. It would make a good ringtone for someone you hate. If you know how I can do it, please leave a comment. Otherwise I'll have to figure it out myself.

DOWNLOADABLE VERSION:
Rerelease Notes: Both are the same.

Six Word Reviw time

Almost Famous:

What was real? What was faked?

Word Word Word Blah Blah That's This Post's Title

So I couldn't find out the whole story here, but essentially it goes something like this. A Grad student from CalTech went on Facebook and checked out people's stated music preferences. He then compared them to the average SAT score for the collidge they attended. The result follows:


Now, we must concede the methodology is incredibly flawed, starting with the obvious selection biases of the SAT itself, and its discrimination against the poor and minorities and all that shit that someone else would bring up if I didn't do it here.

What I thought was weird is that I listened to all five Counting Crows albums* yesterday. I'm zero percent kidding 100% not kidding. Well, I only listened to the end of...too much detail, too many details. This isn't Twitter, I don't need to blog every molecule of my being.

*From best to not-best:
Recovering the Satellites: 2 or 3 awesome guitar solos, great use of Beatles-esque Mellotron, lots of angst, which for them, is a good thing.
Hard Candy: exactly as the title says: sugary pop mixed with hard rock. It works on balance, though "Up All Night" probably would have made a better ending.
August and Everything After: refreshing, clean, layered sound compared to the music of the day. The grunge era was truly lacking in accordion. Also this.
Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings: the main weakness here is that a lot of these songs sound like their older songs. For a late-period album, it's at about the same quality as the earlier stuff, which is abnormal to say the least.
This Desert Life: not actually bad, just takes a lot of work to get into. One of those "for fans only" albums. Ironically, "Hanginaround" is probably the band's poppiest song.

Also: free new made up word:
Motron: I don't know what it would mean, but I'm going to start using it as often as possible.

Some things I found out about.

I shall give no explanation:

`1234567890[]

',.pyfgcrl/=\

aoeuidhtns-

;qjkxbmwvz

That last one's not a link. I had an extra keyboard row and left it in for consistency's sake.