(Part three of Soundtracking Your Life). This is the battle theme. Because every great story has a great fight scene, and now you can pretend you're in one! Now every opponent, be it the morning commute* to that crap on your teeth to the giant samurai warrior right in front of you right now as you read this good god why are you still reading this get up and fight man, can seem as important as, I don't know, some kind of Japanese fighting guy. You know, like a ninja or those other guys. The ones with the swords. Jedi, I think they're called.
This one just sort of happened. I was playing drums and came upon this riff I liked (it's the doo-dododo-doo-dododo part), and decided to build a song around it. I was going to give it a more complex arrangement, but everything I tried sounded worse, not better. Maybe if I could afford a gong.
*Provided your morning commute is less than 3 minutes 19 seconds long.
Not sure when the next two will be done. I wrote 2 and a half minutes of one and realized all I had was a great intro to a song, and now I have to write the actual song. The other song I was gonna do (covering this'n before my birthday invalidates it), I decided I couldn't do anything interesting with it. End transmission.
UPDATE, 1/20/2011: The song mentioned in the previous paragraph almost became the last song of year two; issues of guitar tone forced me to scrap it and do "Lower" instead.
DOWNLOADABLE VERSION: Rerelease Notes: None. This is the same track as above.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Could it really be National Spelling Bee time already?
What you are looking at is but one reason why I'm two songs behind. Well, not really, I just thought it was interesting-looking. I mean, I had spares. I'm not a total dumbass.
No, the real reasons were boring and logistical and had everything to do with just being unable to spend one to six hours making as much noise as possible. I wanted to do threefer, but the other two songs I did today turned out--well, they didn't really turn out at all.
"Dread (023-3202)":
For a long time-- probably dating back to when I first started this project-- I've been obsessed with movie (and video game) soundtracks. It's not really intentional, but this song bears a lot of resemblance to some of the stuff by E. S. Posthumus, who do a lot of the soundtracks for movie trailers. Anyway, I've been kind of obsessed with the idea of creating a soundtrack for everyday life-- to make the drive to McDonald's feel as important as blowing up the Death Star. My plan is you can put this on your headphones, go outside, and instantly feel (estimate) 300,000% more awesomer. I call it Soundtracking Your Life. Obviously you can't download this, so consider it (and the next song, which is also a part) a preview for the whole thing.
As for the song itself, it was my attempt to avoid some of the ruts I've been falling into. A lot of my songs are fast or mid-tempo, so I made this one intetionally slow and dirge-ey. I feel like I've been overusing guitars, so I didn't use any here. Originally it was going to be more of a drum 'n bass thing, but I put in the MIDI strings to give it some more definition and variation. Also the bass kind of sounded shitty. I came up with I thought was this great riff and then it came out kind of flat, muddy and not nearly loud enough. (here I'm talking about sound quality. It's not the riff's fault it came out wrong).
Also, the song's title is the riff, not a phone number. I was calling it that till I got a better view of how it came out, which is when I added "Dread". The More You Know [chime and star].
"Rose":
This song is one of few songs in existence named after another song (I can only think of one other*), though upon listening to it, I'm not sure where I drew the connection. The original title was "Gypsy", but I'm pretty sure that's kind of offensive, plus it doesn't fit the finished product very well, though it should give a hint what I was originally shooting for.
Anyway, as I mentioned, this is part 2 of Soundtracking Your Life. I think my plan is to release the whole thing for free on the blog, and then take all the videos down and force you to pay for them. I'm just a little evil that way. I'm calling this the "Dream" section, because for some reason I can't listen to it with my eyes open. This is about half on purpose and half just how the chimps fell.
I've mentioned before how I think we need more improvising in music, and I think it works better here than anywhere else I've done it. This is more about tone and emotion than melody, and the unfocused directionlessness of the whole think just make it more illogical and dreamlike**.
*As I was writing that, I thought of a more obscure example, but I've decided to keep it a secret. **If you liked that BS, contact me and I can make one of your accidents look intentional, today! Only $19.95. Accident not included. (Will not actually be done today. Expect a ten-to-ten-thousand-day waiting period.
DOWNLOADABLE VERSIONS:
Rerelease Notes: For this version, I re-edited the bass and drum loops to remove the gaps and pauses. Doing this made the song shorter, so I also had to re-record the strings (which I probably would have done anyway). I also added a fourth strings track and changed some mixing and volume issues, mainly to make the drums louder and change the bass tone.
Release Notes: I remixed this song to make the drums more prominent, and give the guitar more volume, but changing the EQ settings gave the guitar a weird, robotic sound that was all wrong for what the song is. So I ended up just using the original version that you hear here, though the download should be significantly higher quality.
What? I hear you laugh? You say, "After all that fuss about doing something important, you waste all day on teh interblags?
To which I say, "Oh yeah?" and you say "Oh yeah" and that goes on for a while and then at the end I'm all "I bet you couldn't do it!" And you can't, can you? Think you can click that link?
...
Hooray I made through a whole post without using a period! It's like in comic boox!
A year ago today I graduated from high school. I don't know if it really means anything, or what it would mean if anything, but I don't know, it feels important for some reason.It feels like I should have got more done in the last year. Secretly I always figured I'd be rich and famous by now.
Oh well. I'm taking a moment, is all. And using my Blog-given powers, compelling you to do the same.
If nothing else, I saw a lot of great movies this year, and I managed to keep blogging for eight months, which is probably three times the average blogger. And I do feel like I've learned a lot*.
*Most important thing I've learned: don't try and blog everything you watched on TV. It makes watching TV less fun, and you always feel guilty not doing it.
Anyway, partly as a tribute, partly to figure out how to use Embedr, and partly so I could link to the Turk Dance, I made a playlist of the best Scrubs moments I could find on such short notice. I wanted this up a little earlier, but my computer was running slow. Maybe you can watch it during commercials? Or after... but Lost is after. Oh well, it's up to you.
I tried to keep it to musical stuff, but one Space Invaders-shaped video snuck in. I couldn't not use it.
PS. I thought I lost this and had to start over, only to find out it had not only worked, but it made it onto the front page. This is the closest to good luck I've had in a while. Now I'm gonna go watch TV.
OK, I'm watching that Ralph Nader movie right now, and between that and Who Killed the Electric Car?, I'm actively rooting for General Motors to fail. Fuck 'em. They've earned it.
(Full disclosure: I drive a Jeep. Not sure why that's significant, but whatever.)
First of all, I won! ABC.com is dead! I should demand things on the internet more, if it works this well!
Let's try it: Suggested donation, $1,000.
Also I broke and bought some drums. Song of the Week time!
[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.]
"Baby's First Drum Solo":
I think I'm pretty good for someone who started six days ago. Otherwise not much to say here. If I can I'll get a song up tomorrow.
Postscript: How weird is it that I haven't posted in a whole week? I mean serious, weird. Not sure what happened. Apparently nothing blogworthy.
Post-postscript: That noise that sounds like someone breathing is just feedback. The cough, however, is real, and I did it on purpose. Not sure why.
...when I see something like this. Observe: