2019 in sound

2019 was my second full year throwing myself at music. the more i learned, the more i wanted to apply it to whatever i was working on. i definitely got pulled in a lot of different directions this year. i always pictured people making music and sticking to one type of genre. i have been experiencing the opposite. it’s been such a fun experience so far and i’m so grateful for all of my friends who offer me feedback and support.

i selected 15 recordings i made throughout 2019. they are in chronological order. i was really all over the place sonically. most of these are unfinished ideas. that might be all they ever are. i’m proud of them all.

the showdown (vocal demo)

1/10/19

i had spaghetti westerns on the brain. this idea came from trying to support a different song i wrote. i wasn’t sure what to do with this riff and then my friend greg offered to do some vocals over it. he convinced my friend blake and myself to harmonize with him. it was a really fun session and i even left our banter in at the end where we are congratulating ourselves.

introducing

3/23/19

this is the first song i have ever written. it had always been a goal of mine to write a song and it was more challenging than i would have guessed. i had written a little lead part back at the end of 2018. by the end of january a demo had been recorded. i had never written parts for brass or strings. i threw myself at it with all the youtube knowledge i had built over the past year. i shared the demo with a friend who plays trumpet for a living. he offered to record the parts i wrote. he also added some beautiful harmonies at the end of the song. another friend plays cello and although this particular recording doesn’t have live cello, we did do some takes with her. my goal is to get them mixed in and put out a finished version in 2020.

this song is a tribute to ennio morricone and how his music makes me feel.

night sketch

4/22/19

this all started with the droning guitar. i just zoned out and played it for a while. the majority of the sounds on this track were made from my microkorg. this was actually me reintroducing myself to that instrument. synthesizers can feel unwieldy and i was definitely guessing at a lot of it. the footsteps and bird chirping are stock sounds. it was also an attempt to do something looser and more ambient. i’ve always admired that type of music. i didn’t anticipate how challenging it would be to give sounds space.

stuffy beats (ft b complex and MF DOOM)

4/23/19

i had discovered this youtube channel that has music producers play a game called rhythm roulette. they have to take 3 records and make a beat with them. i was always intimidated by beat making and i never knew where to begin in terms of sampling. after watching hours of these videos i decided to give it a shot. i didn’t blindfold myself. i chose to sample from les baxter because i love his music. i made a lot of this inside logic in a pretty scrappy way. MF DOOM is one of my favorite rappers so it felt right to put him over the beat. it wasn’t until my friend blake came by and helped really tie the song together that it was ready to be heard. at the end of the track you can hear blake and myself saying “let me watch” which was a reference to a viktor vaughn track called “can i watch?”.

nobody trusts anybody now

5/28/19

this song was so much fun to make. this all happened over the course of an hour. it was super late and i couldn’t sleep. i had just set up a microphone and wanted to play with it. i went pretty crazy and layered a lot of sounds in here. you can hear the following: lighter (with background ambulance sounds), pringles can with crumbs in it, polaroid, mechanical camera wind and click, scissors, hand farts. accompanying all of that noise is my microkorg and an 808 loop i made in logic. i had recently purchased a casio sk-1 that has this 1.5 second sampler built into it. it’s from 1985 and really distorts the source recording. i sampled kurt russel from the thing.

sk1 sk00l

6/1/19

this was me experimenting with the casio sk-1 sampler. i used a drum machine and let that do its thing. the samples were from some 1950’s psa about keeping christ in your home. my friend blake came by and helped lay down some bass on the microkorg. i added some other synth sounds and a shaker. i think it was a successful experiment.

creepin

6/16/19

i love this. i wouldn’t be surprised if this turns up somewhere else. it came to me on a saturday afternoon. unfortunately i didn’t know where to go with it so i would just sit in my room looping it over and over and jam on it. this was another adventure into live percussion. the groove is a lot of fun which made writing the bass line come naturally. each part i added made me feel like i was being more of a creep.

melody sur un autre theme w:pierre

7/30/19

this track is me adding over something that was made by someone else. a friend of mine had mentioned that they made music with code. they sent me a really interesting piece with chord strikes. i really enjoyed the movement and heard things to add over it. this track always makes me feel warm. i think it really captures how i feel about my friend as well.

perm rez

8/10/19

i was spending a lot of time with my microkorg and finally felt like i could get it to make the sounds i wanted. this came together one evening while i was playing around with a drum machine.

the boss

9/5/19

another spaghetti western song idea. one of the things i find funny is how close a western song could sound like a surf rock or spy movie song as well. it really comes down to the sounds. unfortunately the software instruments (brass and strings) don’t sound great. i really like playing around with this arrangement. it’s still pretty rough but the process of putting it together was a lot of fun. it was also an excuse to use a guerro and i’m not going to not use one.

trashtern

10/5/19

i was in a pretty bad drought creatively for a few months and i remember writing this and feeling myself coming out of it. what’s funny is i’m pretty sure these are the same chords as hotel california and i can’t unhear it (i’m sorry). i end up going to my tried and true riff on this track because it always works. the claps were an experiment with live ones. i believe there’s 13 clap tracks in total. i was running all over my room to capture the different sounds my claps were making. it’s one of those things that i would never expect anyone to notice. i don’t even notice it and i was clapping all over my room while freaking my roommate’s cat out.

something about me

10/16/19

this is a cover of daft punk’s something about us. it’s my favorite song by them. i’ve listened to it so many times and love what every sound is doing. i thought it would be fun to try and recreate it and learn how to mix. i ended up using this as a loop to practice the solo in the song. i didn’t record myself at the time because i was pretty sloppy. learning someone else’s song had a larger impact than i would have guessed. learning each part and seeing how it interacted with the other parts was a great learning experience. i actually messed up on this recording with the bass line and kick drum. i didn’t notice it at the time. being this close to a song taught me a lot and i can already see how it’s improved my writing dynamics.

i love my friends

11/11/19

i picked up one of my musical instrument holy grails on craigslist. the sp-404sx is used by all of my music heroes. i spent every day trying to make beats. by the time of this recording i probably had it for about a month. the beat and piano parts are samples that i made and then performed on the 404. it’s been hard but rewarding learning this instrument. one evening i had some friends over and was sharing how i was struggling to come up with a bass line. i played them what i had and my friend greg offered to take a stab at the bass. he is performing on the first half of the song. my friend nick actually picked up my electric bass and laid down the bass for the second half. while we were recording bass, i noticed my friend zain had been humming to himself. we all encouraged him to just go with it. he and greg took over and it was really cool to watch them record a few harmony tracks and mix them in so well. this is the bounce from that evening. i haven’t worked on it since but plan on fleshing it out in 2020. my friends are the best.

disconnect (demo)

11/24/19

i’d like to think of this as a musical collage. it’s inspired by j dilla and madlib. i love how they can just take you on a ride. there’s something freeing about songs being around 1:40 seconds. you can really thread together some different ideas. this started with the second part. i had added the dialup modem sound and really liked how it sounded. it made me think about how weird the internet was when i was a kid. my friends and i always joke about how jim carrey called it in the cable guy. once i laid that quote down the rest of the song just happened. i mined heavily from a youtube video called “the kids guide to the internet”. other samples are from wayne’s world, futurama, the simpsons, and the today show. once again, my friend greg is on the track laying down some tasty bass lines. it’s always a treat when he offers something. he always levels my work up. i’d like to do more things like this in 2020.

captain geech

12/9/19

i love the vibe of this song. i was going for a surf vibe. heck, it’s in the name! i’m not sure if i got surf but i’m digging whatever it is. i’ve been working on a new part but it’s hard to add it in when you have such a complete idea already. it’s a great exercise and a good reminder that it’s alright to go back and change things. the two chords i’m playing here are two that i play A LOT. it was helpful to realize how easy it is to make some slight modifications to something and make it sound completely different. be on the lookout for this chord progression for the next 1-3 years.