Week 46 - Recording 11: Waltz #1

So, with my limited recording opportunities, it's become clear that I won't be able to finish 50 audio recordings this year.  This piece is not technically a recording.  It's produced through Finale, which is a music writing program.  I've decided that it counts.  I'm able to work on Finale while my son is asleep or otherwise occupied.  Since the original goal was to complete songs I'd been working on, but also to force me to write new music, working in this way accomplishes the second part of that goal.  I'm going to try and work on Finale a little bit every day and also make audio recordings on the weekend.

Week 41 - Recording 10: You Will be Praised (Psalm 65)

I wrote this last year.  I have an idea to record an album of songs based on hymns written by King David.  This is the first one I've written.

Week 41 - Recording 9: Mombasa Moon

This one is a bit of a cheat, since I didn't record any of it this weekend.  The bulk of it was actually recorded years ago and then put on hold because my arrangement idea called for a drum set and I didn't have a drum set or the ability to record one.  Instead, earlier this year I recorded a frame drum struck with a rubber mallet to stand in for the bass drum, a clay drum from Yemen struck with a harder stick instead of a snare drum and a shaker made out of bottle caps to replace what would have been some sort of sizzle cymbal.

Week 41 - Recording 8: Here is Love

I've been working on a full arrangement of this one, but decided to go ahead and just record it with me and the guitar.  This is how it would sound if you came to our meeting on Sunday.  The full version will be pitched higher to allow some harmony parts, will include other instruments and maybe even a recorder solo.  Hopefully I can get it done this year, but until then, I'm putting this one out there.

Week 41 - Recording 7: Alas! And did my Savior Bleed?

My wife took our son to the park again on Saturday, giving me a couple of hours to spend recording.  I was able to get more done than I expected to, but was not quite finished with this one when they returned.  If you listen carefully, you might hear him in the background of one of the percussion tracks.  You may also hear a cat, since they live in the room I use for recording.

Week 41 - Recording 6: Just a Closer Walk with Thee

This has been one of my favorite songs since I was very young.  I was surprised to find it listed as "anonymous" in my hymnal, which means it's public domain and fair game for recording.  Some day I might try to redo this one with a full band arrangement and some styling on the melody, but for this recording, it's just me and the guitar and I'm sticking pretty close to the melody as written.  I played and sang this at the same time.  It took a few takes, though, mostly because of the fully diminished seventh chord in the sixth measure.  This is the first time I've recorded a fully diminished seventh chord.  I've only recently started to play them much since I've been learning some hymns and they're fairly commonly used in some older hymns and gospel songs.

Week 40 - Recording 5: Amazing Grace

So it's clear that I'm not on pace to get 50 recordings done this year. In fact, 3 a week wouldn't get me there at this point, and I'm certainly not getting 3 a week done. The problem is that there's no time during the day. It's too loud while the baby's asleep and he's too loud while he's awake. In the evenings, it seems like there's always plenty to do, with supper, feeding the animals and catching up on gardening that needs doing.

This Saturday, though, my wife took the baby to go to the park with a friend, which left me a couple of hours at home alone. I took the opportunity to lay down this recording of "Amazing Grace." There are some things I'd redo if I had the time, but I don't, so I'm putting it out there. Everything you hear was the first take for that part except the guitar intro which took ten tries to get right.

Week 24 - Recording 4: Lady of Light

In honor of my seventh wedding anniversary, I decided to record a song that I wrote for my wife while we were dating.  The arrangement is all new this week, except for the string part in the fade-out that I made years ago (and was lucky to find last night). 

Week 20 - Recording 3: untitled

So, I've realized that I'm not going to be able to finish 50 polished, multi-track recordings this year.  I'm going to have to post some fragments and sketches.  In that spirit, I wanted to share a melody I wrote earlier this week.  Given my track record, it may be years before I write words or an arrangement, but I'm going ahead and posting what I have so far.

Week 18 - Recording 2: "Down in the Willow Garden"

"Down in the Willow Garden" is an old folk song from Appalachia that's probably based on an even older song from Ireland.  It's a murder ballad, told in the first person by the killer.  It's been recorded by artists as diverse as the Everly Brothers and Nick Cave.  I first came across it in the movie "Raising Arizona."  When H.I. wakes up from a nightmare, his wife is singing it to calm the baby they just stole.  I saw it again in my teach yourself bluegrass guitar book, in the section "simple melodic playing."

The recording process was very different than my usual way, which I used on "Lighthouse."  Instead of recording a "click track" to keep me on beat (and make it easier to sync up parts and edit, cut/paste, etc.) and recording various parts as separate tracks to allow me to control relative volume, I recorded this as one track.  The mic was pointed in between my guitar and mouth and I played and sang at the same time.

Week 15 - Recording 1: "Lighthouse"

I know what you're thinking.  Making 50 recordings this year was a ridiculous goal.  I had to go and name the blog that and everything.  Maybe 10 would have been a better goal.  At this rate I'll be lucky to do 3 or 4.  Of course, that'll be 2 or 3 more than I recorded last year!

So, I finally finished a song I started over 15 years ago.  I wrote the lyrics, the melody, the basic chord structure and the solo during my senior year of high school.  In college I added the major seventh to the chord in the verses and wrote the keyboard part.  After college, when I was learning to play the guitar, I wrote the opening riff and came up with the arrangement concept.  The day I finished recording, I added the extra rhythm parts and the recorder parts in the fade-out.

I actually finished recording this a couple of weeks ago, but have been hesitant to call it "finished."  There are some things I'd like to change, but I've realized that if it wasn't finished until it was perfect, then it would never be finished.  So, I'm calling this one done, and moving on.

Week 4 - Recording 0

No, I haven't recorded anything yet, so that means that I'll have to record at least twice during two weeks this year to catch up.  I haven't even found the time to make sure my home studio equipment is functioning properly.  Last time I tried to record something, I wasn't able to get it to work, and never figured out why.  I haven't even turned that computer on.  What I have done, though, is figure out how to play music here on my blog.

So, as a test run, I'm posting the totality of my recorded catalog.  It's a piece I'm calling "Flow Pace," and is the piece I've written that I've taken the least seriously (which is probably why I finished it).  The story starts when a book called Chi Running changed the way I run.  One element of the technique laid out in this book is to keep your feet moving at a consistent (and speedy) rate no matter how fast or slow you're running, or whether you're going up-hill or not.  The rate is 170 steps per minute.  I was already enjoying running with an mp3 player, so I searched my collection for songs that fell somewhere between 168 and 172 beats a minute.  I found surprisingly few such songs in my collection, so I decided to write one myself.

Starting with the tempo and a very simple chord progression, I recorded each section within minutes of writing it, all but improvising the parts.  I never wrote any of them down, and did not apply any of the rules of part-writing.  I used a cut and paste tool to avoid having to play any section more than once.  That's why you hear the same timing error in the bass every time it repeats.  The whole piece is performed on the acoustic guitar, the djembe and a plastic soprano recorder.  The bass line is created by taking the guitar down an octave after recording it.  You can hear the original recorded part in the last repetition.

I hope to record something this weekend, or some evening next week.

Week 3 - 0 Recordings

So, I had this idea for a blog.  I thought it would be cool to write a song every day and then blog about it, maybe finding some way to play the songs on the blog.  This would be an incredible achievement, considering I write, on average, less than a song a year.  It's obviously too late to start this sort of thing this year, but I found myself obsessed with the idea.  When describing the thought to my wife, she challenged me to start with one a week.  Not only is this significantly less challenging, it's also not too late to start this year.  Since we've already had a few weeks, and I haven't recording anything, pretty much ever, I decided that 50 recordings would be an admirable goal for 2011.

Now, this doesn't mean that I'm going to write and record 50 new songs this year.  I don't think I could handle that.  Instead, I'll start by recording the 12 or so songs that I've already written, as well as hymns, gospel songs, children's songs and folk songs that are in the public domain.  Even with all of that, I'm sure that this goal will force me to write some new songs this year.  That's kind of the point.  A desire to write only good music has basically kept me from writing any music at all (that's not to say that what I have managed to write is at all good).  I'm hoping that having some sort of deadline will force me to be productive.  I've come to believe that in order to learn to write good music, I have to spend some time writing bad music.  So that's what this is: a year's worth of music that might not live up to my standards, but that I'm throwing out there anyway.  I invite any and all criticism. 

Unless I can figure out a way to play music within a blog, I'll probably have to start a MySpace page to play what I do record.  If you can help me with that, let me know.

Well, I'm already one song behind.  If you don't hear from me within a week, I'll be two songs behind.