Vault

In 2006, towards the end of August, I wrote out a rough 45 seconds or so of ideas in MIDI based around a 7/8 rhythm and tentatively called it “Weird Violence”.

Weird Violence (MIDI)

A few days later, I started working on another idea; unlike the previous, this one had some legs, and I wound up incorporating the core idea of Weird Violence into one of its sections. By the end it was about five and a half minutes long.

The Seventh Formation (MIDI)

After bringing the song into Reason and cleaning it up, I sensed that it was right up the alley of some of the other music I had been writing at the time; tunes like Jump Error. As a result I decided to include it in my plans for the space concept album that I’d eventually release four years later. The track was called “The Seventh Formation”, a slight nod to the meter of the earliest idea for this song.

The Seventh Formation (MP3)

The similarities between The Seventh Formation and its new counterpart “The New Formation” are heard right away, but with each passing second the contrast between the two becomes greater. By the end of each piece, their relationship to each other is hard to determine. The New Formation really only uses a few of the original elements, and takes the material in an entirely new direction.

The New Formation (MP3)

Back by popular demand, I’ve decided to make Until the Sun Rises publicly available again. I wrote and recorded this song in 2006 as a birthday present for my girlfriend at the time, an awesome gal and artist.

This song was a first in a lot of ways for me. I’ve been singing since I was little but this was one of my first attempts at singing on a track, as well as writing lyrics. Listening to this now, I’d love to redo this song with MUCH better vocals (which I’ll probably do at some point), maybe change up the lyrics a little bit as well. I also utilized some techniques I had never tried before, like adding vinyl sounds underneath to give it a little bit of an old feeling … in hindsight I’m not sure how successful it was at making it sound “old”, but I do like the vinyl sounds regardless (haha).

There are a few influences for this track, including Radiohead (the vibe, harmonic decisions), Tortoise (tremolo guitar lines), and Wintersleep/Kary (some of the vocal chanting towards the end). I might have been listening to The Postal Service at the time too because I think it does feel a little reminiscent of a darker equivalent of that group at times. There’s also a hint of chip towards the back end, though this stays mostly outside of that realm.

I did this track in Garageband my first semester at music school, and recorded the vocals in my dorm room.

MP3: Until the Sun Rises

Back in 2007 I was hired by UIEvolution (they’ve been gracious enough to allow me to share this material) to write 16 one minute loops of general MIDI music for a puzzle game. Over a span of about three months I wrote these tracks, which generally speaking have very little specific direction, except a request to make them somewhat dancy.

This track I’m sharing is the eighth track, and probably one of the better ones of the bunch. Given the requirements I took the opportunity to use my favorite tool at the time Tabledit (MIDI Guitar Tablature Editor Software) to create all of the music. This was one of the first game-related projects I ever took on, and the experience helped at least somewhat in getting me interested in writing for games in general. Since then I haven’t really looked back. Check out my portfolio if you’re interested in what I do when I’m not writing for the sake of writing.

MP3: Wasabi: Track 08

I thought it might be cool to share with you guys from a different perspective. I try to approach my music from a lot of different directions when it comes to coming up with new ideas … sometimes I write on the piano, sometimes in Logic with a synth … other times I will write straight from my head to a sequencer. In the past I’ve used guitar to come up with a lot of ideas, and while it’s not really my go-to anymore (maybe it should be!), I do pick it up on a regular basis.

This recording isn’t very old at all — July 27th, 2009. The truth is I’ve been wanting to do some music with singing for quite a while. I’ve done a little bit — there was a track on my myspace a few years ago called Until the Sun Rises (I’ll talk about that one another time), and there’s Lullatwerp from the Disastertron record Cereal Code (does that even count?!) but since then I haven’t released anything with vocals. I’ve been slowly and quietly putting together some lyrics, and hopefully I’ll have something to show for it soon.

About this recording — Some time last year I started using my voice as a means of improvising new ideas with guitar, with varied amounts of success. This is one example of that. I’ll generally jam on an idea for a couple of minutes, and try different things, before editing things down afterwards (notice the clicks from rough editing and the pitch-shifted section at the end) so that I can return to the idea and not have to fumble through lots of excess fat. I read or heard somewhere once that the Beatles wrote “Yesterday” with fake lyrics about scrambled eggs and other random things. It’s a very useful tool. When I try it I usually wind up talking about the sun. I like the sun.

MP3: Jelly Sandwich

I have an Aunt in New York who has a piano. When I visit I always make time for the ivories — playing piano is one of my favorite things to do. This somewhat well defined, somewhat unfinished piece started with some simple piano voicing and evolved into a couple of piano overdubs … some of the overdubs could have been done easily by a good player I’m sure, but I haven’t quite gotten the hang of hand independency.

It was April of 2007 and I have a vague recollection of it raining and being at night. I got a hold of some storm sounds to hammer that home, and whipped up a Garageband session (my tool of choice at the time) complete with Apple Loop drums which I’ve never had an opportunity to replace. This is a very straightforward tune, but for me there’s always been something about this kind of downward motion that I find appealing. There’s a piano ostinato that is established and eventually mimicked by a synth, and that’s really about it!

MP3: April

Marathon is a track I wrote in 2007 but was never really sure it was finished. It sat on my hard drive for about a year and then I made a few cosmetic changes and gave it to Pterodactyl Squad for a compilation. The whole introduction and pad sound was heavily influenced by late 70s/ early 80s horror soundtracks such as “Solamente Nero” (1978), composed by Stelvio Cipriani and performed by the Italian group Goblin. I wrote and produced the track in Reason, which I’ve always found lends itself well to writing mechanical sounding music. Reason also has some nice effects that you can automate to do cool things, like the bitcrushed swell-out around 03:30.

There’s also some glitchy drum elements, though those are less prominent. Around this time I was exploring Squarepusher a bit, so I could probably make a connection between the two. The melody was originally vibraphone, but I switched it out with a pulse lead which I think works out better in this case.

MP3: Marathon

Fresh out of a short but intense Dream Theater phase (a band which I no longer have any particular interest in) in 2004, I set out to write my most challenging piece of music yet up until that point. What started out as a collection of unrelated ideas strewn about my hard drive turned into a 12-headed monster that eventually reared its ugly head, complete with an allusion to the popular ragtime piece “The Entertainer” (scary!). I’m still fond of some of the ideas in this piece but I laid the track out haphazardly, and as a result it sounds like a showcase of riffs and has no noticeable direction — it picks up rather early in and never lets up, for the next seven minutes or so, going from riff to riff, all largely in the key of (Drop) D.

I tried numerous times since I wrote it to find a proper place for it. It was a MIDI file, and then a “tracked” tune with Garageband instruments, and finally I tried to make it a chiptune. I also tried to fit it onto one of my many attempts at reproducing my first album (The Chronicles of Jammage the Jam Mage, which I still haven’t released yet and will talk about more later on). Three years or so ago I thought it would be cool to take this song that has so many ideas in it, and split it into a couple of tracks, an EP called “The Labyrinth of the Skulltaker”. As of now I have no idea what I’ll do with it. I may try to whittle it down into something more presentable. Though the thought of doing an EP of heavy, instrument based music is still very appealing to me.

In the meantime, here’s the song in question, in all of its questionable glory!

MP3: Labyrinth of the Skulltaker

In the fall of 2005, I was planning a full-length album of video game covers, tentatively titled “The Distance Between Start and Select”. Being as obsessed with “epic” as I was (and still am, haha), I wanted to dedicate songs to entire games, trying to incorporate all of the themes that I enjoyed. One such game that more or less got that treatment was “Marble Madness”, a wonderfully tricky puzzle game where you had to roll a ball through obstacles on an isometric grid. It came out on a few systems but I had the Nintendo version growing up. Naturally there was a lot of nostalgic value in the music for me, and upon revisiting it later I was surprised at how heavy the music was. One part of the track I put together I gave a Tool treatment, which I think sounded pretty cool.

This track started as three individual ones for the various levels of the game, respectively, in TablEdit. TablEdit is Guitar Tablature Software that happens to be great for doing multitrack MIDI arrangements. It was my number one resource for writing out music and initial ideas for a very long time. I still use it from time to time as it’s an extremely fast way to write music, using the computer keyboard entirely to input your notes. Kudos if you can figure out which part of the song this is!

It might be important to note that back in 2005 my music was quite different from how it is now. It’s funny to listen to this now and point out all the silly things that I would never do now (listen to those super athletic tom fills in the beginning! haha) Still, I think it’s easy to see where the evolution came from. I’ll get more into my roots and the evolution in other posts. As well as the super underrated Garageband.

I think I’ll let the music say the rest. The track is called “Fun With Marbles” because I had a lot of fun writing and making it! And because it wrongfully leads people to believe it’s about that old schoolyard game.

In the month of February in 2006 in New York, I joined friends Tim and Dan (aka Disasterock) a handful of times for epic jam sessions into the late hours (until the neighbors would knock on the door and complain). I vividly remember lots of snow, Pizza, and it being frigid in Dan’s house, having to play guitar for about an hour to get the cold out of my fingers. Nonetheless as a collective experience it’s one of the best I’ve had, not to mention musically.

This jam came out of a session a week earlier and we played it a couple of times afterwards incorporating new ideas and refining it. Still, it’s a jam. We originally called it “Can I Still Rock While I Get My B.A.”. This version is lovingly called, “Can I Still Rock and Hang with the Bachelor’s Associates”.

At this point I’d only been playing guitar a few years, and writing even fewer. Pretty much everything I’m playing is on ear and memory of positions.

Nonetheless, I think this is a cool little number that has some potential. Kind’ve has a Tortoise/Slint/Assorted Post-Rock vibe to it.