Posts Tagged ‘mp3’

Oldies: Chinese Drop

Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009

So I wrote this song probably in 1996 or 1997, in my living room. I recall coming up with the chord progression while sitting on my couch, my bong on the coffee table, skipping class from college. The first time I recorded it was with planet zorn, tho I played it for many years prior to this recording with several bands.

The lyrics are a play on rhyming schemes. I wanted to have an artificial AAAAA BBBBB CCCCC rhyme scheme, where for each verse, there is only one repeating rhyme. The subject is a general paranoia song about fear of the Chinese and their nuclear missiles, their suppression of the Falun Gong, and their menacing of Taiwan. Next I move to the police and their fun practices with mace and smashing faces. Then I move on to the hypocrisy of America’s obsession with fame and giving passes to famous and/or powerful people.

The chorus was written as a separate song, which I cut up and inserted into the middle of this song. The song that the chorus comes from was a silly tuning song that was literally following the progression of the strings, which we played so everyone could tune without the normal choatic, boring tuning that most people do. The lyrics in the chorus refer to how hard it will be for us to get to the ideal, an impossibility.

I have played many, many roles in bands throughout my ‘career’: Keyboardist in my first band, and from there, bass player, singer/bass player, guitarist, singer/guitarist, singer, singer/keyboardist. I’ve played drums, as well as singer/drummer. One time I was a singer/guitarist/bassist, but we won’t get into that.

In this first track, it’s all guitars. I don’t like the production, but that is merely amateur work - and who plays the guitar solo? me, that’s who:

The next recording is from a live show:

You can hear me talking like the fool I normally am on stage at the beginning.

And finally, the latest version, recorded with a beautiful Wurlitzer organ for the main track:

This last track is definitely my favorite version. The third time is a charm, as they say.

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Oldies: Solarx, Tomorrow

Wednesday, March 4th, 2009

So I formed a band called Solar X (yes, I have abysmal taste in band names.  so sue me.  you come up with a good band name), and we had a female singer, who goes by the name of Rola, a 19 year old Lebanese (I think) girl with a really nice voice.  The recording was made out at the bassist’s, (Brandon Simpson) house, which was out in the Hill Country southwest of Austin, recorded and produced by yours truly.  Which would explain the terrible production quality.  I learned not to produce my own music with this experience.  I still like the way the song turned out, nonetheless.  Chris McNelis, guitar, me, keys and backing vocals.

The chord progression for this song was written by Chris McNelis, and I wrote the vocal melody and lyrics.  It was the first really successful collaboration that I had done with any other musician up to that point.

Wear your heart upon your sleeve
Show the world what you believe

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Newness: Nice

Thursday, February 12th, 2009

6a00e3933bfd61883400e553869dc98833-800wiHere is a song I am simply calling nice. All it is is an idea with some drapery around it. I felt funky at the time. I can’t really explain how I wrote it - I was drunk. I think it started with the drumbeat, then I recorded those weird bell sounds, played some funkass piano, then played the funky ass bass over the top of it.

Nice:

short post this time.

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Posted in Uncategorized, music, newness, personal | 1 Comment »

Oldies: Party Till it Hurts

Tuesday, February 10th, 2009

majormajor_itunesOldies: Party Till it Hurts from self titled by Major Major

This song took about a year to write from start to finish.  When I came up with the basic idea for this song, I was playing guitar on my son’s tiny little acoustic guitar that I bought at Walmart for $20.  It was so cheap that only the top two strings would stay in tune, and only to the 5th fret, at which point it became unbearable to play.

Anyways, I was having conversation with my wife about something, and I started subconsciously picking out a guitar tune that instantly caught my ear.  I had half a conversation with my wife (meaning half of my brain was involved), while at the same time I reveled in how cool this lick sounded.  When the conversation ended, here is what I recorded at that moment:

1st take of guitar line for verse from Party Till it Hurts, recorded by me:

Not a bad little start. Then, while my son beat on my guitar, I came up with the chorus chord progression, which walks up the Bmin scale with an interesting syncopation:

guitar line for chorus from Party Till it Hurts:

and finally, a bridge, as all good songs need a bridge. It is essentially the chorus, but cut to half time and spiced up a little bit:

guitar line for bridge of Party Till it Hurts

and, after about 6 months of on and off work between the hours of 10pm and 2am when the kid and wife was asleep, I finished the general idea of the song, complete with vocals, backing instruments and tone-deaf mixing (by me - I can not mix songs, as I destroyed my hearing playing in rock bands for 20 years).  The lyrics were written at the beginning of the second term of the Commander in Thieves, Bush, so I was compelled to write about that bastard.  The first lines of the song really sum up my feelings for the man and his ilk:

I’m rich, but I live the life of a thief,
I steal your stuff for relief
It makes me feel good in the night
To hold your things so tight

and the chorus:

I’m going to keep it for myself
Don’t want to share with nobody else
I’m going to party till it hurts, and then I’ll do it again

and the bridge, with the grand slam:

Ask me, beg me on your knees,
Tell me you can’t take anymore
I will put you where there’s
no one who will ever hear your pleas
Like a shadow in the night
Like a blinding flash of light
I will take it all and
You won’t even ever know it’s gone.

At the time, I had just found out about Abu Ghraib, and I was vehemently against everything the criminal stood for.  This was 2005, and not many people felt this way.  Almost this entire album is about the destruction of my country.

Now, stop thinking about that, and let’s get cheery again!

here is the full mp3 that I recorded in the process of writing the song:

Then, I included this song in the full album I was writing at the time to lure musicians into my project and form Major Major. Through the year of playing the song with a live band, it morphed into a very Spanish feeling song, complete with salsa piano.

I’ve noticed that some songs really don’t get written until they are played live by a band. It can start out well by itself, and stand by itself in a recording, but the natural feel of a really good song doesn’t come until it has been played and altered by a live band many times. So, in the process of teaching this song to many different musicians, who had their own interpretations of the music, this version of Party Till it Hurts came about.

Plus, the fact that it was produced by Lars Goransson makes it golden:

And that ends our trip down nostalgia lane for today.

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Posted in music, oldies | 3 Comments »

The Various Lives of Microwave

Monday, February 9th, 2009

Oldies: Microwave from the album Major Major, Self Titled, and Breaking, by Planet Zorn

This song has a very long history. I can remember writing it in 2000, and had just purchased my first cell phone. I had just broken up with a band, The Family, and was starting a new one with some friends. I wrote the lyrics after reading an article about how the now-ubiquitus cell phone apparently, according to some, causes cancer. I was also reminded of the song “Everything Gives You Cancer” by Joe Jackson.

Here is the first recording I made with Planet Zorn. Recorded and mixed by Paul Soroski (of the band Podunk), produced and mixed by me:

Phil Hampsten on drums, Brandon Simpson on bass, Chris Hampsten on guitar, me on guitar, vocals, keys

After Planet Zorn played the song for about a year,

here is a live recording:

Then, I left the song behind me for about 7 years. After Major Major was formed, we needed a good live song. I showed it to the band, and they liked it.

Then, I recorded it with Lars Goransson.

Here is the kick ass version, of which I am very proud:

Aaron Calhoun on drums, Dave Gignac on horns and guitar, It’s Craig on guitar, me on bass, vocals, keys

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Newness: Sack of Bones

Monday, February 9th, 2009

Newness: Sack of Bones from no album yet

So, I am currently writing new stuff for a new album.

I feel like it will be a good motivator for me to post these and write about the process I am going through to compose it.

Here is one I’ve been working on for almost 3 years now, off and on.  I am currently calling it Sack of Bones, but that will most probably change.

I wrote the melody, or more exactly, the chord changes, for this song on the guitar in 2005 during an unusually productive period in my life, in all facets: children, work, etc.  I had no lyrics or vocal melody, just the changes.

Here are the various phases it has gone through to get created:

First, the guitar line I recorded when I was inspired to write the the song:

Then, I recorded more guitars, and a bass along with it:

Then, I added vibraphone to it, which I could hear in my head before I played it:

Then, I recorded a really spooky version with all keys, which I kind of like

As you can see, I wrote this one from the chord changes on up.  After these were recorded, I began to actively play in Major Major, and this song fell by the wayside, to be forgotten among the electrical remains of my computer.

Fast forward 3 years: I have now returned to this song after finding it on my hard drive by searching for .wav files.

This is the version as of two days ago.  I have re-recorded almost all of it, and really focused on the piano.  I have recently begun to love the piano more than ever, and write most of my songs there now.

Since this version was recorded, I have been chopping it up to add a nice beginning that also ties in with a new bridge I have added.  I will post the changed version when I am satisfied with it.

I would like to point out that this is a VERY rough recording that I am making in order to write the song.  It is a process that involves alot of ugly stages until it is finished.  Keep that in mind.

The most recent version:

The lyrics for the chorus in this song came from nowhere.  I was just standing there with a microphone, and the melody just popped into my head, and those words came out.  Don’t ask me how, it just did.  These are not part of this recording, as I am not happy with the lyrics or the sound of my vocals so far.

Also, you might immediately notice that I blatantly ripped off a very well known classical musician for my chord progression during the chorus.  I’m cool with it,  I just hope no one pulls a steve vai on me.

I like to record many many tracks over the entire song for each instrument, and then I will slowly mix in and out various parts that I like to hear.  There are basically two or three tracks for every instrument you hear.  If you make it to the end, you will hear the slow decay of all the instruments, and can notice all the various different sounds and melodies that I’ve added.

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1st music post - Dethroned

Monday, February 9th, 2009

Oldies: Dethroned, from the album, The Freak

Dethroned, the subject of my first post, is a song I wrote when I think I was 19. The lyrics were based on a poem I had written in high school, about a scenario wherein the position of “God” is filled by humans, and is something sought after until it is attained, at which point it loses its luster, the person falls from grace, and is thrown into a sea of fire with the rest of the previous applicants.

I recorded this song, I believe, with two different bands (could have been more, but alot of my studio dat tapes broke with age). Here is the first incarnation:

Dethroned, Version 1

This was recorded in, I believe, 1996 at Star Dog Studios, by the guitarist for a band that did lounge-style covers of songs like Smells Like Teen Spirit - the Austin Lounge Lizards. He was a pretty good producer, and the product would have turned out much better if we had had any money. But we didn’t, so we recorded the entire album live. That’s right, live. Which explains the mistakes everywhere and the extremely rushed feeling. Plus, you can only mix with the sounds you record, and, as such, this sounds pretty bad. But my backing band was sure well practiced.  Tim Trentham on guitar, Ted Vanscoy on bass, me on guitar and vocals.

and, the final version:

Dethroned, Version 2

Here, we were produced by the marvelous Lars Goransson in 1997, whom I continue to have the pleasure to record with to this day. As you can see, this is a much more professional sounding track. We had more money (bankrolled by the wonderful Tom Palmer on guitar), and thus more time. I added a backing track of piano to the mix, and generally, this is my favorite song off the album.

The music was recorded one day, with extra tracks recorded the next, including a good 6 hours for vocal tracks.  Lars was a very good producer, and pushed me to my limit on this recording (my limits weren’t all that hot a the time, but I did reach them, nonetheless).  Phil Hampsten on drums, Ted Vanscoy on bass, Tom Palmer on lead guitar, me on vocals, keys and guitar.

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