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.