July 13, 2005

Dissect you

Here's another song.

›› Stage Fifteen.mp3

I came up with this idea while mounting flowers for electron microscopy--in order to see the flower structure you have to very carefully remove the sepals and other floral organs under a dissecting microscope. I thought it would be cool to make a creepy-yet-triumphant sort of story out of the concept. I had the lyrics in my head for quite a while before I recorded anything, since I was quite fond of them and wanted to make a finished song with which I was just as happy. During the laborious task of painting my bathroom (it took many many coats to cover that wallpaper), the song incubated and my mind followed the various paths of meaning the simple lyric could take, and I was pretty intrigued by the metaphors I came up with. The finished product, as I'm always saying, has its moments.

Posted by lld at 11:21 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

June 23, 2005

More music

Here's another song I just finished. It's not really finished so much as I just got tired of working on it, and it's not really a song so much as a songlet or something, since it's just over 2 minutes long and has just a handful of words and one barely-changing chord progression. As with everything I do, sometimes I like it and sometimes I don't, but maybe you will.

›› Equation.mp3

Tools: Powerbook, Cubase, built-in mic, guitar, some drum software

Oh, and you can now use this handy link to view all the posts I've made that contain my songs: right here.

Posted by lld at 11:05 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

May 08, 2005

Another song for you

Here's something I recorded recently. It's an a capella arrangement I did of a Russian folk tune with words by Lermontov, usually referred to as "Cossack Lullaby". I learned this song when I was studying Russian in school, and have always thought is was lovely. I wanted to record one of the Russian folk songs that I knew, and this one seemed well-suited to the solo treatment.

I only did the first two stanzas--there are two more, but the first two make a nice short song and stand well on their own. The translation as I understand it is:

Sleep, beautiful little one
Lull-a-by
Quietly the clear moon looks down
Into your cradle
I will tell you stories,
I will sing you a song,
Sleep on, close your eyes,
Lull-a-by

Over the rocks runs the Terek
And splashes its dark wave;
An angry Chechen crawls along the bank
Sharpening his dagger;
But your father is an old warrior
Hardened in battle;
So sleep, my darling, be peaceful,
Lull-a-by

So here's the deal: I don't know if it's due to the fact that the song is a capella, but sounds basically terrible coming out of computer speakers. Even the pair of relatively nice Bose computer speakers we have just do not handle this song well. And my Powerbook speakers absolutely destroy it--all kinds of odd buzzing and stuff happens, I think probably due to the vocal sound causing the actual computer to vibrate. It sounds just great in headphones though, so I encourage you to use them. If not, I make no promises. I'm sure this is in part an issue that could be solved by mastering, so I'll leave that to one of my more talented friends.

›› Cossack Lullaby (Spi mlodyenyetz).mp3

Toolbox: Powerbook G4, Garageband, Tascam 424mkIII as mixer/XLR converter, cheap AKG mic, three tracks of vocals.

Posted by lld at 10:38 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

March 26, 2005

New Tunes

While the JD is away on tour, I've been trying to fill the time with creative endeavors--if I don't, I end up sitting all night in front of the computer. The more I do that, the harder it becomes to break the inertia of it all.

So I've been playing my new guitar a little. Here's a song I made over the last couple of days.

›› To Catch A Sparrow.mp3

Tools: Powerbook G4, Garageband, internal microphone and guitar plugged directly into the computer.

Posted by lld at 10:56 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

January 12, 2005

The Highly Anticipated Music Post

As I type this, Stuffit is compressing my NaSoAlMo songs into one convenient .tgz archive. This is making my computer horribly slow and the words I'm typing aren't showing up on the screen right away, and that's a bit annoying. I really think a new laptop is on the horizon for me, right after a new iPod, but hmm, we did have our eyes on that hybrid Highlander that Toyota is introducing this year--What's that you say? Get to the point already? Sorry.

Here then are some songs I did for Douglas's National Solo Album Month thingy. It happened in November of 2004, and the charge was to write and record an album no shorter than 29:29, entirely by yourself. One of the songs could be a cover. Not a hard task for professionals or super-creative types, but I don't think that's why Douglas created NaSoAlMo. The way I saw it, it was for people like me who'd like to make music but lack motivation to overcome their shyness/self-confidence issues/laziness/other excuses. I found it grueling at times, uplifting at times, really fun and really aggravating, and hell on my back as I sat at the computer chair for six hours a night for about a week and a half (I did the bulk of the work while John was out of town, so I could make noise and not be self-conscious about it). I just made it under the wire--finished the last song on the last day in November.

I let the stuff sorta sit and age for awhile, because when I was finally done I didn't really want to look at it or listen for a good month. Yesterday I sat down with headphones, converted everything to mp3, and listened. Some of it isn't bad. Some of it is, but oh well, that's okay for now. Hmm, I just realized the album doesn't have a title, and since our DSL has the crappiest of all upload speeds, there's no way I'm changing it and re-uploading it. Ha HA!

Okay so here's the deal: I'm hosting this, but my account runs two other sites, so in the interest of bandwidth, I also uploaded a few individually just in case you don't want to download the whole thing. It's okay really, I don't expect everyone to grab the whole thing with the honest intent to listen to it all and save it, so if you just want to sample, you can.

The whole thing is right here: NaSoAlMo.tgz (35 MB) Took this down. Contact me if you REALLY want to hear it; otherwise, maybe I'll re-work some of them for later 'release'.

So there you go. I hope you like it. I wish I had the time to go all out and make cool cover art and stuff like Mark did, and maybe someday I will, but knowing how much time it took me to simply upload this stuff, let's not hold our breaths, k?

Update: Fixed the download link for "Holiday Junction", sorry friends.

Posted by lld at 09:07 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack