1. Children Again (emily vox)

2. A Sweet Arrangement (emily vox)

3. Why don’t they get it? (instrumental)

4. Limbo Eye Lily (instrumental)

5. The Playground (emily vox)

6. I got out my guitar (emily vox)

7. Oceanic Eyes (emily vox)

8. Straight to Jazz (emily vox)

9. Stupid People (tony vox)

10. A Void Dance (emily vox)

11. Lint Trap (emily vox)

12. Mug Shot (emily vox)

I aim to have both lyrics and backing tracks finished before the end of the month, adding vocals in September; mixing and remixing and mastering, culminating in a CD release in either October or November.

A new website design is in the works, which will be deployed once I get a handle on the new structure of this alternative media project. 

I am still working on The State of things CD and am looking to introduce vocals to the mix early next month.  Then back to mixing and mastering.  I’m sure we’ll have a CD release party shortly after the master is finished.  I haven’t yet decided fully on just how I want to distribute this music.  My own music I’ve always put out there, carte blanche, for anyone to take for free.   But I think I want to do something different with this new CD.  We’ll see!

I originally set a goal of finishing five tracks this weekend but I’ve stepped down from that perhaps unrealistic aim and am now focusing on completing three tracks.   I’m doing a whole lot more midi in this project than any previous.   Software synths have come such a long way now that you can make the simplest midi pattern sound like the London Philharmonic or like it was produced by prodigious aliens from alpha centauri. 

The main thing is to create mixes which compliment Emily’s voice.  I’m hearing Portishead meets Morcheeba, but perhaps not so wistful.  Melancholy funk, maybe?  With some ambient sonic backgrounds?

Everything has been back-burnered.  The current HC project is a down-tempo, trip-hoppy, bluesy, ambient excursion featuring a great deal of synth work and the astonishing vocals of Emily Biolley.   The name of the album was originally called “The Deflectives,” but I came across a quote by Charlotte Bronte and took an excerpt which became the name of the album: “The state of things without and around us.”  While I’ve done remixes featuring vocalists before I’ve never actually designed a whole project around one singer.   Emily’s wondrous voice came to my attention just recently; I had this “down-tempo” idea in progress when I heard her sing.  Wow.  I began to get ideas: I felt like her voice and the music I was writing might just mesh perfectly.   I asked her and she graciously agreed to participate! 

I’m presently writing and recording all the tracks, penning the lyrics and will then have Emily lend her ethereal, evocative vocals to the mix.   I’m very excited about this album/CD.  This represents somewhat of a distinct departure from the “rock-jazz-weirdo-fusion" I’ve been doing for the last ten years or so. 

Anyway, I will continue to post on the album’s progress – more consistently than I’ve tracked any previous project on the site.

I began the thing as a FAWM entry, three years ago. Now we’re chipping away at it again….

Track Seventeen from Error Supremacy. Some scales, patterns and modalities reminiscent of stuff from Deconstructing Shred.

So this is me playing with this “ethnic instruments” VST, primarily in the Aeolian mode, hence the song’s title. Only about two minutes. I added some “free” drumming to the mix just to make it more confused.

Larry Coryell and Phillip Catherine performed a jazz tune they called “the no-booze blues.” Well, I’m finding that I have to get on the old proverbial water wagon and stay there for good. Or things will turn out very bad. So this little tune, which BTW meets a current Guitar Collective Task, is called Sansgrog, or “without grog.”

This is the latest album project, created for FAWM (February Album Writing Month). While my intentions were to complete the required 14 songs before the close of Feb, it ain’t gonna happen. Things have transpired this month (life things, such as the need to move out of present lodgings for reasons too absurd to go into) that make the goal unrealistic. However, I will continue to work on Pettier Onus with a revised aim to complete it by April.

I’ve mapped out the main structure for each of the fourteen tracks and have laid down some guitar, bass and synth tracks, but thus far I’ve only completed one track, called, appropriately enough “Inept Routes.”

Synthia

Master Faster

Recycle Been

Bettamax

A slightly spacy piece, featuring some backwards lead towards the end. The drums are canned, but lack not a bit of attitude.

CRYPTYCH

Cool bop meets shred and shred takes over, with perhaps not the best of intentions. However it was fun. With apologies to the Gershwin Brothers.

RIP to Cool Hand Luke, Brick, the Hustler Eddie…..

It Ain’t Necessarily So

This is not an endorsement of any particular brand of kettle chips, but rather my brain’s inability to come up with a compelling name for this piece. Sometimes when I go to save a file and have to create a name, I’ll just look around the room for ideas; well when I began this thing, I’d been eating kettle chips.

This is another fusion shred guitar drill in 6/8 time, 160 BPM, though it doesn’t sound like it.

kettlechips

My spacy/shreddy tribute to one of my favorite musicians. A piece that also fulfills this month’s Guitar Collective Task.

OuttaSpace

Trio con Brio
Aries
NexusSeven
Third Rate Romance
MRTC
Kabniz
Cane
nexusSeven Take-Out
Flippin’ all them burgers

The task over at the collective this month was to make a “composition,” that is, no improvisation or excessive noodling, but rather an ordered opus with every note counting, so to speak. I cloned myself and made a guitar trio and the result you may listen to below. Namaste.

The Guitar Collective task for March was to take the major chords FACE and do something with them. I did a little shredfest thingy, complete with a number of sweep picking cliches here and there.

The Guitar Collective task for February was to do a “period” piece. I’m not sure what era I’m aiming for here, but I added some dust and scratches to give it that “lo-fi” vintage sheen.

An excursion using a midified string section, originally played on guitar. 20th Century Classical written all over it.

Another semi-ethereal jazz tinged rambling after a trio of pale ales. No bass, but enough Impulse Response backing to provide a good sonic canopy.