Day 487: Romance

Per one of my previous posts I wanted to take a stab at something that sounded "Romantic".  I don't know if this is that exactly, but it's a start.  Especially considering I've never tried something of this style before.

Enjoy.

Day 478: Lay Back

A chill, laid back beat for Friday.  Even though the weekend will be lots of work, this beat is still cool.

Audio field recordings are from the Lost and Found Refill from New Atlantis Audio.

Day 466: Quiet Struggle

Today is a quiet meditation on dreams.  I wanted to do this project and had very specific goals in mind (not world domination, but close - that's a joke.)

I have grown immensely as an artist and producer (I feel) during this Opus.  I also feel it is very much something to be proud of.  I've created a lot of music that will hopefully get placement somewhere, someday.  I've learned SO MUCH about using Reason software, which will continue to reward everything I do musically for some time to come.  I wish I could keep it going.  Part of me wanted to go for about 3 years, but I truly would like to spend some quality time on a few projects and it's just not possible when I'm doing this every day.

Here's Day 467.  Thanks for listening.

Day 464: Throwback

No time for a new creation.  There are some things in the works, but they aren't ready yet.  Here's a piece that you probably haven't heard.

Day 460: Converge

A short instrumental intermission to nod your head to.

Day 456: Electro Experiment

Getting over illness, may be able to focus a little more intently on what I was doing before I got sick.  Have felt spread too thin lately.

Even without the illness I'm coming to the realization that I just need to call it on the One-a-day project for now.  It feels like I could put out some top-notch quality stuff now and need the time to focus on it.  The OAD project prevents that from happening.  As much fun as it is and has been, I've got to come to terms with ending it in another 43 days.

Day 452: ER

Had to put other pieces on hold due to an emergency room visit today with one of my children.  It wasn't very serious, but it was the first one ever for us as parents, so it was a little scary.

Speaking of scary, here's some scary noise landscape stuff.

Day 449: One More Project

I'm going to take a stab at creating an album within an album.  For the next 12 - 20 days the tracks will feature (mostly) the same instrumentation and the songs will be a concept album, or something like that.  Today's track is the first track, hence the title: Introduction.

Day 426: A minute

So, it's been a minute since I've been able to actually type anything here.  Mostly it's been because I've been quite busy with the children and family/home life and making music daily, let alone blogging about it, has just been impossible.  There have been many days where I was holding a baby with one hand and typing with the other.  Even a few sentences in those cases was difficult, let alone a full paragraph or six.

Right now, I've gotten a cold and lost my voice, so that video I was going to do on a day when I was at home alone (like right now) isn't going to happen because I can't talk.... sigh....

One thing that is happening is more music on iTunes!  An artist by the name of Abe Wantland painted a few water colors for me that will be the album covers for six albums that I have ready to upload to iTunes.  The albums are compilations of the first 400 days of music.  I tried to limit each album to 25 songs and got pretty close.  I originally wanted to only do four, but all the genres weren't really covered by only 4, so it got bumped to six.

The first album, Ambient, Like You, is already up there.  Here's the link.

There's more, but I need to go do house work and I'm getting dizzy again.

Day 413: Short and Sweat

A really short malfunction due to limited time.

Day 409: Cause

Here's an experiment I've had sitting on my phone for awhile.  I wanted to flesh it out, add some length, and get a little more creative, but honestly it felt like it didn't need it.

I decided to stick with the stripped down version straight from my iPhone. I did end up doing a little bit of mastering in Reason and adding just a touch of reverb to soften it a little.

Hope you like.

Even if you don't it's a quick listen.

Day 408: Dip Your Wick

Started off going in one direction.  Was basically able to stay in said direction for the entire time.  I'll call that a win.

In addition, I didn't give a whole lot of thought to the sounds that were chosen.  I mostly tried to go with "the first thing you land on" approach.  Sometimes I find it's the only way I'll use some sounds, they just don't seem to fit in my world view of acceptable sounds.  That doesn't really make much sense, since I like noise so much, but for whatever reason I have to force myself to go for certain types of sounds.  It usually works out fine, but sometimes they are problem children.  Maybe it's just intuition?

Day 354: Hordes

The electronic orcs streamed from Middle Earth.  Their metallic jaws dripping nanobot infested saliva.  It's color, one of blood and oil.  They only dreamed of one thing.  Infecting the world.  They only had two states, on and off.  Off would not come until every last fibre of their bodies was destroyed by fire or particle beam.

Who will save us?

Day 341: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

It's good to see you after so long,
Didn't you say you were gonna call?
Now that I think about it you said you'd see me on Saturday.

So your house burned down,
Then you moved out of town,
and your sister's in jail,
and your mother died last week.
Then your car broke down
and you lost your phone.
Then you had a fire and lost everything you own.

How 'bout we skip the lies and go straight to the shame?
How 'bout you look in my eyes and stop playing your games?
Just tell me the truth.

So you're moving to Tibet next week and becoming a monk?
Or you might join NASA?
You're the newest member of P-Funk.
Your album just dropped, so you're going on tour.
You got a line for everything I say, so won't you just tell me the truth?

How 'bout we skip the lies and go straight to the shame?
How 'bout you look in my eyes and stop playing your games?
Just tell me the truth.

credits

from 8 Bit RoundHouse, released 23 November 2013

Day 328: With Fingers

An early effort using Figure (by Propellerheads) as a live instrument recorded into Reason. Added some additional instrumentation to the beat in post.

Day 324: i, Album now available

Soon after purchasing my first smartphone (an android) I learned that Garageband was available on the iPhone. I knew I HAD to HAVE ONE. Sadly, it wouldn't be until my contract was up that I could actually afford one. Within a few days of getting the iPhone I was working on the first tracks.

My initial thought was to do everything on the phone. Recording, mixing, mastering, etc, but I quickly realized that was not very practical, and decided I'd use the phone as the primary instrument/recording tool and do final mixing/mastering on the computer.

There are some vocals that were done via computer, as well as some instruments added here and there for color, but the bulk of it was done on an iPhone (a 4s, to be specific). On "Promise Not to Tell" almost everything was done on the phone. No additional instruments were added, only mixing and mastering done on computer, but I wanted more variety that what I was able to achieve on that song, so I moved to Plan B.

I hope you enjoy listening to these songs and it opens your eyes to the possibilities you may be carrying in your pocket right now.

Sincerely,
Chad Taylor

credits

Day 319: Space Invading

Insect aliens from outer space are invading the planet and it doesn't sound very musical!

The good news is they are really dumb, the bad news is that they are really hungry and not very picky.

Day 316: Wha?

Still sick, still working on other things, but still making time for this.

This track ended up being somewhat unintentionally lo-fi.

Day 308: Tripback

A retro-ish flashback today.  Not sure what it means.

Day 270: Mr. Big Brother

This past week or so, in American media, people have been absolutely loosing their minds regarding Syria and whether or not we are going to go to war with them.  As I listened to all the talking heads and politicians trying to justify their positions it really started to seem like people were, to some degree, opposite robots.  That is, the president says left, they say right.  If he says up, they say down.  When they do the opposite of what they expect him to do (like say, be pro-war) they kind of lose their minds a little.  It felt like I was listening to and watching a real life example of doublethink, the idea proposed by George Orwell in 1984, that is two opposite ideas can be accepted and neither thought wrong or false simultaneously.

Lyrics:
Can you deal with the loss, 
Can you deal with the rules? 
Can you deal with the fools who run this thing?
Can you deal with all the scratching and clawing up?

Just be ready to lie, roll over, beg, and be fooled.  
Double think is real.

Can you deal with the right?  
Can you deal with the left? 
Can you deal with the empty space
Where nothing was actually said? 
Can you show us how you deal?