Just a little something for the Naviar Haiku Project.

Day 485: Piano Haiku

Today's work is part of the Naviar Haiku project.

Here's the haiku:

A piano is a conversation

best answered

by a violin

Here's the music:

Day 467: Depths of Despair, Cave of Wonders

Piano improv recorded in the depths of despair.  Altered in the Light of Day.  Using Sugarbytes Slice Arranger, piano patch from Reason Pianos, and good ol' Scream4 for distortion.

Personal drama really sucks sometimes.

Day 436: For Commercials

Listened to some heavily downloaded tracks on Pond5 and quickly realized that I can easily do much of what I heard.  For pieces in the Pop Rock genre they're mostly instrumental imitations of popular bands/songs, or original compositions influenced by such.  In the area of film scoring that was a little more complicated, although I don't think that stuff gets sold as much, so I should probably focus on the areas where I can make some kind of money.

This piece isn't quite as "commercial" as it could be.  I had already started it before listening to the above mentioned works, but it could still be in something.

Day 428: NYC

Using several kong's from the Krush Refill from New Atlantis Audio.  They are each named after a NYC borough and they all have a very unique character.  Subtle, but unique.  It made me instantly feel like I was in New York.

The piano is from the Abbey Road Refill.  It's the "Mrs. Mills" piano from Abbey Road studios.

Day 417: Shhhhh....

A simple, quiet piece.  A brief moment of clarity without interruption, yelling, diapers, juice, fevers, tickling, tears, or television.  Nothing real complex going on here, just nice.

Tomorrow I'll return to noise and glitchy confusion.

Day 393: Cold

It's really cold outside.

I continue to mess around with the No. 32 Refill.  I've created a couple of more patches here.  This time utilizing the drum sounds and creating a special combi from those.

More to come.

Lyrics:
This is how we measure loss, 

No way to measure this.  
You are my dream.  
You are my nightmare.

This is how we measure fate, 
No one here, 
what's your name? 
We are living in a dream.

This is how we measure hate, 
No one here what's your fate? 
I can't believe what you say.

This is how we measure lies, 
No one here, no surprise. 
Forgive me, I know not what I do.

Day 246: High Five Piano Alive!

A few days ago I was having a REALLY BAD DAY, so I went into my studio, shut the door, hit record, and started playing piano.  It's a little noodley, but it was one take.  To be completely transparent, I did clean up some notes in post.  After that I added a little accompaniment and voila!  Insta-filmmusic!

Day 223: Quietly

We listen to the sound of bells,
No one can hear them,
No one can tell,
You wait with ears strained, patient to see,
Is anyone listening to you or to me?

Day 192: Is it the end?

I started this experiment with the intention of going as long as I possibly can, exploring every possibility, trying to take each idea to it's proper end.  During these extremely productive days I've learned much.  I've learned a lot about synth routing, production, song-writing, and collaboration.  The short version is that it was extremely educational and valuable.

On the flip side, I have several other projects that are in various states of disarray.  There are a couple of albums that are nearly finished, there are a couple that are just in the beginning stages, there is one that's DONE, but just needs a final listen and sign-off.

Over the next 7 days I'm going to be thinking very seriously about whether to stop this experiment at 200 days or keep going.  I was initially hoping for stopping at 2,000 days, but in all honesty, I don't know if keeping it going helps or hurts me as a musician.  If I stop at 200 I'll definitely come back to it on occasion and post thoughts, musings, and musical ideas, but it won't be anything like these 200 days.

Feel free to comment.  I appreciate your thoughts.

Today's track is a (now) uncommon singer/songwriter work.

Lyrics:
It's cold and wet and dark outside,
And if you only knew.
It's hard and fast and take awhile.
And if you only knew.

We took a left when we should have stopped 
and now, now we're lost.

It's gray and white  and I'm blue today,
because you now know.
It's shallow of me to be so deep,
but I know you know.

REFRAIN

It's just a dream, but it's so real.
It's just a thought, but it can knock down walls.

REFRAIN 2X

Day 173: Hiding around every corner

Sometimes I will, very quickly, try to jot down some random idea to just have something started.  On many occasions these simple and spontaneous ideas have been the beginning of what ended up being some very original and unique works.  Today's piece was just such an occasion.

I had only a few minutes to sit down and essentially throw paint on the canvas and that ended up being the start of, what I think is a pretty solid piece.  It's not for everyone and it's not very "normal" (what is "normal" anyway?), but it has its own disturbing beauty.

Please enjoy.

Day 115: Nostalgic for Simpler Times

Had this one sitting on the hard drive for awhile.  I used to be in a band called Rehoboth Edom and the guitarist had (and still has) a very signature style of writing guitar riffs.  This piece was me trying to imitate his style.  I felt like it succeeded, but where it would have taken him thirty seconds writing these two riffs, I spent 30 minutes.  Anyways, I've tried putting several different kinds of accompaniment with this duet and none of it sounded right.  Finally decided it was best left the way you hear it here.

Day 102: Over Shanghai

The other day while perusing Reddit I came across an entry that said something like "Joseph Gordon-

Levitt wants you to create content for his new show.  Really."  or something like that.  So, being someone who creates a LOT of content I checked it out and it was legit.  A site I'd never heard of called HitRecord.org takes content from users all over the world and gives them the ability to mash it up in any way they so choose.  It's non-exclusive and if they end up making money with it you get a share of the profits.  If they don't, it's better than it just sitting on your hard drive until it crashes and all your beautiful work is gone forever.

So, I checked out the site, found some video I liked, then immediately set about making music for it.  Today's offering is that result.  The video will be posted on the blog here once it's done.  That will be in a day at most... hopefully.  In the meantime, enjoy.

Day 97: 3 Little Words

A simple and strange experiment for three simple words.

By the way,  we're almost at 100 days of music.

Day 85: Garage in the Studio

Just a quick little piece using the Abbey Road Refill.  I thought it was going to end up sounding stellar, but instead it ended up sounding like a garageband.  Kind of weird, but we'll just call it operator error.

Also snuck in -

THIS (on bass)

and

THIS (on drums)

Day 77: Film Still Not Made

More music for a film that has yet to be made.

  This one finds our heroine stuck in a tight spot.  She is looking out over the land where the antagonist has her cornered, then looking back at her rag-tag group of followers.

•   Will she launch a full-on assault and fight her way out? 
• Will she hide and ambush him when he comes looking for her?  
• Will she come up with some third option that is truly original and no one in the theatre is expecting?  

What ever the case may be, you probably shouldn't get up to go to the bathroom right now.


Looks like it's about to get real.

Just for reference I keep going back to these drums.  They aren't the only ones here, but they are key.  In addition, the piano came from this.

Day 73: Dark, Quick

Just a short work with horns, celeste, and piano.   The piano and celeste are from the Abbey Road Refills collection from Propellerheads.  One of my favorites.

Day 52: Very Quickly

A short, noisy work to start Monday morning.  Does have a little groove though.

Day 49: Piece in Our Time

Another in the series for string trio + piano.  In case you were wondering, all of the pieces in this series were written anywhere from 8 - 48 hours before you hear them.  In other words, the ink is barely dry on the page before it's in your ears.  Welcome to the modern age.

My dream now is to get these performed by real players.

Day 44: Adagio

Another piece for the imaginary string trio with piano.  It's slow and somber.