new track: 'Making the Grade (A Robot's Lament)'

Once again, my songwriting class prompted me - out of necessity - to take an old song idea (this one from last summer) and finish it up.  Well, finish it enough to turn it in.

For this project, we had to collaborate.  Our professor - who always stresses the fact that in the music business, writing music by one's self is the exception rather than the rule - assigned us into groups of 2-3 people.  Now, up front, this filled me with terror.  Let's just say that I would rather stuff angry hornets under my eyelids than collaborate with some of the people from this class.  Most of them are decent songwriters and cool people, but there are a handful that I just can not stand.  That said, there were several times while he was naming off groups, that my bowels froze in fear of a painfully forced collaboration of contradictory styles and artistic philosophies.

I was pretty much exhausted by the end, because my group was named last.  I lucked out and got put with my good buddy Sage Min.  He's a fantastic musician, has a great ear for chords, plays the keys like a maniac and we have similar tastes in music.  When we got together to collaborate, we had lots of ideas but weren't sure which direction to go.  In a moment of goofing off, I showed him a track I had started last summer which I'd decided needed to go back into the oven for a while.  Like I said in my last post, this is par for the course for me.  My typical progression happened here as well.

Sage liked it and decided to help me finish it off.  The chords were kind of chunky and disconnected, and Sage helped me to smooth them out and transition more nicely.  Also, the song didn't have a bridge.  I came up with the first chord, and Sage basically finished it off.  Since I haven't reinstalled all my old synthesizer plugins yet, we actually took slices of the audio from the bass line from the verses and re-sequenced and re-pitched them to create a bassline for the bridge that matched the rest of the song.  Sage also laid down a perfect keyboard solo with which to end the song.

I wrote the lyrics for the verses last summer, and couldn't come up with lyrics for the bridge until I this project.  The impetus for the song was that I was newly married and I felt like I wasn't very good at it.  I loved my wife so much and I wanted to do everything perfectly for her, but I was learning about shortcomings and inadequacies that I never even knew I had.  Not because she was pointing them out - certainly do not take it that way - but because I was devoted to her and wanted desperately to be everything she'd ever need.

I often think in metaphors, because I'm usually thinking of ways to phrase my thoughts in such a way that they'd be convincing if pressed to defend them.  I guess that's what I get from growing up with a brilliant older brother who is a master of rhetoric and argumentation.  Or maybe it's because about 5 or 6 years ago, I realized that lyrics were far more important than I had previously given them credit for, and that since I was terrible at writing them, I should start working on the art of lyricism.  I think it's about six of one and a half-dozen of the other.  But anyway, the metaphor that came into my mind as a result of the newest addition to the pantheon of my shortcomings, was that of a machine that wasn't very good at doing the the main thing it was built to do.  I thought it a simultaneously amusing and sad thought and began considering how that machine would feel if it could feel.

The result of my musings on that silly idea are the lyrics to this song.  I realized that the verses made it appear that my marriage generally saddens me, which couldn't be further from the truth.  I've never been happier in my life.  So, since the bridge of a song usually represents a shift in thinking or some sort of catharsis, I used it as a vehicle to demonstrate the happy meliorism that my original chain of thought eventually led me to.

Now, after being a blowhard for several paragraphs, I'll let you listen to it. The lyrics are below.

Verse 1:

I'd like to hold her hand

but sadly, I don't have one

I've come so wrongfully equipped.

All my components were

just makeshift substitutions

and when she ordered, I was shipped.

Verse 2:

I know the purpose in my blueprint

was to love her

and all specifics that entailed.

I came with all the right intentions

but was missing

the knowledge needed not to fail.

Bridge:

Not everything that serves our purposes

and needs is tailor made

and even less-than-perfect tools

can even prove to make the grade.

Oftentimes we find that we prefer

a move we wouldn't normally play

even with things we think that we are certain

that we want another way.

final synth project: 'Pick Up the Phone'

Here's my Christmas gift to you! Haha.

So for my synthesizer lessons, I had to create a pop-type song using the materials we had in the project studio on campus. I took that to heart and actually recorded most of the instruments live. I brought in my good buddy Tyler Nickl to play electric bass and acoustic guitar, and actually pulled out an old, crappy drumkit that was hidden in the back of the room. I had forgotten my DI box at home, so we had to record everything with the one mic they had set up. Luckily, it was the wonderful SE M1C Mini (discussed at length here), which I cherish and adore. We tracked each instrument separately, including doing a mono drum track I played which distorted like hell but sounded fun and funky nonetheless.

I had decided to do a mockup of a song that will be on my next album called "Pick Up the Phone." We recorded a verse and a chorus and then some more, but after that, it started falling apart like crazy. Since my "synthesizer lessons" focus mainly on production, I took the tracks home, to tweak them there. The mix went basically as follows:

1. I spent some time manipulating the tempo to get things synced up.
   
2. I went all the way through the first verse up to the end of the chorus and stretched everting so it grooved right on the beat. This mainly consisted of stretching the beginnings of certain measures and leaving the rest alone, though there were a couple measures where I did a lot more.
   
3. I created a lowpass filter send to boost the kickdrum, and sidechained the lowest frequencies of that to the compressor on the bass guitar, so they wouldn't step on each others' feet. I also created a reverb send to gel the track a little more.
   
4. I put Native Instruments "Guitar Rig" on the bass guitar and fiddled with the settings to give it a little more growl. I think that in the end I gave it a little too much "growl" and not enough "boom."
   
5. I panned the keyboard and guitar off center, opposite from one another.
6. I smashed the heck out of the background vocals, panned about 3/4 left and right, and put them on their own submix so I could manipulate them with onefader.
7. I added a couple clap and latin percussion loops I had on my computer, dialed in fairly low, to just add a little more texture.
8. I created a submix to which everything except the lead vocals were sent, to make the balance of melody to backing track a little easier to play with.
9. I used the Izotope Ozone mastering plugin on my master bus.

That's about it. Not much to show for all that explanation. Here it is:

In case you're interested, here's a screen cap of the Arrangement View in Live (click to enlarge):

all is hip and funky in the MFJQ

Well after 6 years of prodigality, I have returned to my roots. Throughout jr. high and high school, I lived, ate and breathed jazz. I was in zero-hour jazz band, I was in numerous jazz combos (including one which took 1st place in the AAAA division at the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival), and I spent an ungodly amount on concerts at Seattle's wonderful Jazz Alley. I have continued to be a consumer and lover of jazz ever since, but have had precious few opportunities to play. I have a ton of fun in the rock band I play for, but jazz is something that I've been missing for years now like some kind of precious, lost teddy bear. Enter my friend, Mat Foley.

Last week, I was working at my recording job at the Madsen Recital Hall and a buddy from one of my classes, Mat Foley, came up to me and asked - knowing that I was a drummer - how my jazz chops were. My ears immediately perked up, and I informed that jazz was my bread and butter. He then asked if I could sit in with his combo at a gig that Friday. I just about crapped my pants with excitement. I asked if it was cool to bring a friend, and when given the green light, I got my good and incredibly talented friend, Tyler Nickl in on the action.

I had heard Mat play rock, and had jammed with Tyler countless times, and on top of that, I found out that a sax player whom I had heard and been impressed by before was going to be playing with us. I couldn't have been more excited.

The gig was at FroYo, a new frozen yogurt place in Provo (yeah, that sentence was a mouthful). Friday rolled around and as we all showed up for the gig, it looked pretty sparse. I didn't give it much thought, because all I cared about was playing some stinkin' jazz. As the night progressed, however, more and more and more people continued to filter in, out and through the room. And it wasn't just a good turnout (quantitatively speaking), but the also a great audience (qualitatively speaking). They were attentive, interested, expressive and into it.

Tyler and I settled into the combo, which already played well together, as if we'd always played with them. It was so incredibly natural. It was like the locked-in groove that Ty and I have when we play together was designed to fit right into the Mat Foley Jazz Quintet. Also, much to my pleasure, we supplimented our jazz repretoire with a healthy dose of blues and funk. It was so incredibly fun. The audience members who had watched the MFJQ before seemed to take to me well and apparently the band did as well, because at the end of the night, they told me that if I wanted the position, I was their new drummer. I accepted, chomping at the bit.

We have a show next tuesday, December 16th, at Muse Music, and now have a standing, monthly gig at FroYo. Hope you all can come out and see us! I'll try to get some pictures and video up soon.

nerdcore for life

So, there is a relatively new genre of music. Actually, it's a subgenre. It's called Nerdcore Hip-hop. My brother recently blogged about it, as there's a documentary being made about it right now. It's pretty much exactly what it sounds like. Nerds rapping. The founder of nerdcore, qua official genre, by the pseudonym of MC Frontalot, describes it as hip-hop that doesn't require you to be cool. Nerdcore is hip-hop that feels totally comfortable discussing computers, science fiction and RPG's, and - as opposed to traditional rap - being incredibly self-deprecatory.
After this most recent* hip-hop project we did, Aaron and I decided it would be fun to do a whole album. I introduced Aaron to Nerdcore staples like MC Frontalot, Optimus Rhyme and MC Chris, and he said, "We have to do this." As the title of my blog denotes, I am all for embracing my nerdity, so we've embarked. Keep your ear to the ground, and check back on the blog regularly for updates and advance leaks.
Oh, and my nerdcore hip-hop name (or rather, my handle)? One and the same with this blog's name: Geek is the New Cool.


*Way back in 2006, Aaron and I made a 3-track hip-hop project, titled "Nimbus." To hear the tracks click here and go to the tracks that start with the word "Nimbus."