Back in the 1980s I wrote a bunch of what, for lack of a better term, I will call "songs" and recorded them using a couple of guitars, a bass, a Casio keyboard and a cheesy drum machine, all on a 4-track tape deck. Recently I dug those tapes up and was horrified, or perhaps gratified, to see that they had been badly damaged by years of high humidity and the occasional flood. So I've started trying to get them digitized and cleaned up as well as I can.
Some tapes are almost totally lost, leading to the horrifying realization that I may end up relearning some of these old songs and re-recording them. That'll teach me to not take care of my crappy old tapes.
Anyway, I plan to start posting them now and then as I get them ready. Here are the first three. As you (if you're foolish enough to download them) will soon see, when I write lyrics they tend to be a bit, well, silly. Love songs and political statements were not generally on my agenda. Nor was, how can I put this, knowing how to carry a tune.
So the songs are:
Toothpaste (2.83MB mp3) download from MediaFire
When I was about 20 I found a copy of a book aimed at young male readers, which I had read several times as a young male. It was part of a long-running, popular series. Even back then I realized it wasn't very good, but as the woman said, we didn't have cable and had to make our own fun. Re-reading it, one scene in particular struck me as being, well, stupid. So I wrote a song about it. If you are of a certain gender and age group, you will immediately recognize the book. If you're also psychic, that is.
It Doesn't Bother Me (3.3MB mp3) download from MediaFire
I was so intent on making this song sound Indian that I bought a cheap electric guitar and mutilated the bridge to make it buzz like a sitar. So much for that. Boy, with all the tabla loops and sitar samples available these days, I could probably make a new version that sucks marginally less than this does. Yeah. These are possibly the most sarcastic lyrics I've ever written.
It Was The Other Day (3.95MB mp3) download from MediaFire
This isn't even really a song. I used to carry a blank book around with me in case I felt like being creative and sometimes I'd just blurt out a bit of stream-of-consciousness. I don't do that any more. Stream consciousness I mean. Nowadays my consciousness is more of a dribble. Maybe I should see a urologist. So basically this is me vamping for 4 minutes so I could read this silly story. There are some other voices in between. Probably from a TV show, but I can't tell what it is.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Casual Recordings: Don's Boat Nos. 1, 3 & 5
Edit: For those who have trouble with Rapidshare, I've added links for using MediaFire to download the songs.
Way back in the olden days - I don't know exactly when, but I was doing my MIDI sequencing on an Atari ST computer - some siblings-in-law, who were into amateur video making, asked me if I would provide some music for a video they were making about Don, another family member who was a competitive bass fisherman. Without having seen the footage, or having the first clue about making effective score music for that matter, I eventually tossed off a dozen or so tunes, gave them catchy titles like "No. 01", sequenced them for the drum machine and synths I had on hand, and recorded them straight to a cassette which I mailed to them. I don't remember if they actually used them.
Anyway, time passed and in 2008 I needed to get a file off the old Atari, leading to a few days spent recovering as much stuff as I could off the old dusty disks. I recovered most of the MIDI files from the Boat video and played them for the first time in years.
Boy, were they bad.
No, not all bad, but a lot of them sort of sounded the same: 120 beats per minute, bouncy synth bass, and (since I had just gotten a sample player that had decent horn sounds) lots of horns. It sounded like a bad marching band trying to play disco jazz.
Anyway, since I'm getting back into recording after a long hiatus, I thought it might be amusing (for me anyway) to take these songs and see if I can't make them sound very different, and also replace all those freakin' horn samples with, I dunno, guitars maybe? And so here are three of them, all MP3, 128kb.
Don's Boat Number One - 3.9MB
download from MediaFire or Rapidshare
I'd been messing around with a bit of quasi-Hawaiian slide playing, so I decided to slow this one way down and try to make it Hawaiian. Well, so much for that. I actually had it even slower than this, but I wanted a quick-and-dirty substitute for the bongo track I had sequenced, and I found a few bongo loops at this speed, so there you go.
Don's Boat Number Three - 4.3MB
download from MediaFire or Rapidshare
Well, this one had a very happy sound to it, so the logical response was, 'I wonder if it will still sound happy if I do it with super-overdriven guitars?' I believe the answer is Yes. And the cheesy resolve is still cheesy! Hooray! Longest fade ever.
Don's Boat Number Five - 4.6MB
download from MediaFire or Rapidshare
This one was all bouncy bass and trombones, with a muted-trumpet lead that was me trying to do a Miles Davis thing, although Miles would've used about 1/3 as many notes, and, you know, been good. Nothing to do but take the bounce out of the bass, ditch the trombones, and play the trumpet part on a guitar, even thought the notes don't really sound right on a guitar.
mood: spearmint
Way back in the olden days - I don't know exactly when, but I was doing my MIDI sequencing on an Atari ST computer - some siblings-in-law, who were into amateur video making, asked me if I would provide some music for a video they were making about Don, another family member who was a competitive bass fisherman. Without having seen the footage, or having the first clue about making effective score music for that matter, I eventually tossed off a dozen or so tunes, gave them catchy titles like "No. 01", sequenced them for the drum machine and synths I had on hand, and recorded them straight to a cassette which I mailed to them. I don't remember if they actually used them.
Anyway, time passed and in 2008 I needed to get a file off the old Atari, leading to a few days spent recovering as much stuff as I could off the old dusty disks. I recovered most of the MIDI files from the Boat video and played them for the first time in years.
Boy, were they bad.
No, not all bad, but a lot of them sort of sounded the same: 120 beats per minute, bouncy synth bass, and (since I had just gotten a sample player that had decent horn sounds) lots of horns. It sounded like a bad marching band trying to play disco jazz.
Anyway, since I'm getting back into recording after a long hiatus, I thought it might be amusing (for me anyway) to take these songs and see if I can't make them sound very different, and also replace all those freakin' horn samples with, I dunno, guitars maybe? And so here are three of them, all MP3, 128kb.
Don's Boat Number One - 3.9MB
download from MediaFire or Rapidshare
I'd been messing around with a bit of quasi-Hawaiian slide playing, so I decided to slow this one way down and try to make it Hawaiian. Well, so much for that. I actually had it even slower than this, but I wanted a quick-and-dirty substitute for the bongo track I had sequenced, and I found a few bongo loops at this speed, so there you go.
Don's Boat Number Three - 4.3MB
download from MediaFire or Rapidshare
Well, this one had a very happy sound to it, so the logical response was, 'I wonder if it will still sound happy if I do it with super-overdriven guitars?' I believe the answer is Yes. And the cheesy resolve is still cheesy! Hooray! Longest fade ever.
Don's Boat Number Five - 4.6MB
download from MediaFire or Rapidshare
This one was all bouncy bass and trombones, with a muted-trumpet lead that was me trying to do a Miles Davis thing, although Miles would've used about 1/3 as many notes, and, you know, been good. Nothing to do but take the bounce out of the bass, ditch the trombones, and play the trumpet part on a guitar, even thought the notes don't really sound right on a guitar.
mood: spearmint
Thursday, April 27, 2006
The Hall of Dead Records: The Baby Flies
The Baby Flies were a NYC band in the late 1980's. They had three releases that I know of. The first was a 7" single by a 5-person version of the group with a male lead singer, Pictures and Parties on the A-side, and I Only Burn in the Morning, which was given new lyrics and a general spiffing up and became Washing Over Me on their last record. After the self-released single they put out two albums, Rain and A Colorful View, on an indie label. By the end they were a three-piece with a female lead singer.
I've never seen Rain, but the CD version of A Colorful View included six tracks from it as bonus tracks.
Track List
From A Colorful View:
1. Let it Fall 2. Washing Over Me 3. A Colorful View 4. Chains 5. Where the Creatures Call 6. Coming Back to Haunt You 7. Just the Beginning 8. The Only One 9. Searching Everyday 10. Give Me The Light
From Rain:
11. In This Town 12. Don't Be a Stranger 13. Without You 14. Rain 15. Turn Around 16. Undertow
7" single:
17. Pictures and Parties 18. I Only Burn in the Morning
It's about 70MB, encoded at 128kbps.
Download the whole dang thing
If that's too big a chunk, here's one song: Washing Over Me.
mood: versimilitude
I've never seen Rain, but the CD version of A Colorful View included six tracks from it as bonus tracks.
Track List
From A Colorful View:
1. Let it Fall 2. Washing Over Me 3. A Colorful View 4. Chains 5. Where the Creatures Call 6. Coming Back to Haunt You 7. Just the Beginning 8. The Only One 9. Searching Everyday 10. Give Me The Light
From Rain:
11. In This Town 12. Don't Be a Stranger 13. Without You 14. Rain 15. Turn Around 16. Undertow
7" single:
17. Pictures and Parties 18. I Only Burn in the Morning
It's about 70MB, encoded at 128kbps.
Download the whole dang thing
If that's too big a chunk, here's one song: Washing Over Me.
mood: versimilitude
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