This week, I took a one-off fly date gig in Aurora, Illinois. So, I took this opportunity to try out my purchase of Arturia’s V Collection, which includes some great vintage synth emulators (Jupiter 8, MiniMoog, Oberheim SEM, Prophet V, and several others).

Came up with this last week. I fleshed the first two sections in about an hour, then sat on it for a week. I wanted initially to experiment with a jungle-type drum beat in Ultrabeat (which comes with Logic), so I looked up a tutorial online. Instead, I came up with something that sounds nothing like a jungle beat. Go figure.

Came up with this last week. I fleshed the first two sections in about an hour, then sat on it for a week. I wanted initially to experiment with a jungle-type drum beat in Ultrabeat (which comes with Logic), so I looked up a tutorial online. Instead, I came up with something that sounds nothing like a jungle beat. Go figure.

A few other plugins on this track:

• u-he Podolski (synth bass)
• Camel Audio Alchemy (D-50 chime pad)
• Synapse Dune (arpeggiator sequence starting at 0:10 seconds)
• u-he Zebralette (clean synth guitar chords)
• SampleTron (Melltron Strings)
  

This week’s tune has a bit more background than usual. Please forgive the rather heavy tone of this post.
I started work on a completely different tune last night, and gotten most of it done. I’d had a busy day today in Atlanta with rehearsals and meetings, with plan’s to tweak last night’s project a bit to get it ready to upload.

When I got home around 5:00 p.m., I received news that a friend’s family member had passed away this afternoon. She had been hospitalized only recently, and in spite of signs of an improved condition, she took a turn for the worse. This shocked me a bit, and lead me down a different road.
I actually wrote this piece about a week ago, again with the intent to upload it as a “song of the week”. I improvised it on the piano after coming home one night, emotionally drained from dealing with some personal matters. Feeling numb, I sat down at the keyboard and came up with what you hear. It was borne out of a deep grief and sadness, and a sense that I struggle with occasionally which is that, no matter which way I go with my decisions, I will lose.
I don’t like to be the guy that has the negative attitude, with the sullen face and the depressed countenance. As a man of faith, I believe in something and someone bigger than myself orchestrating events. Having a fatalistic outlook on life is not a viewpoint I typically shoot for. Just the same, the sense of numbness that comes from pain is a real thing. Between dealing with my own personal issues this week and hearing of my friend’s loss (and all of this in the middle of the holiday season), I decided to orchestrate the improvised piano piece and came up with “Either Way You Lose”.
In spite of the rather pessimistic title of the song, I really wanted it to convey a sense of hope, thematically, which I think it does.
I hope you enjoy it!

This is an unfinished piece that I dusted off this week. I started it some 3 years ago, and like many other projects, never really knew where to go with it. I don’t particularly like the working title. It is so named because I use so many major 7 chords in the song.

It starts with an improvised piano intro (which thematically has little to do with the rest of the piece), and then moves into some sort of jazzy territory. I experimented with singing a melody section towards the end in a Pat Metheny Group -esque kind of way, though I’m still working on it all.

I’d like to develop some of the melodic statements, and find a better way of wrapping it than a fade out. It’s far from complete in my mind, but I think it’s in a good enough condition to qualify for song of the week!

Enjoy!

I decided a couple of weeks ago to embark on a new little adventure. I’ve set a personal goal to write and record one new song every week, and post it on my blog. This is the third offering in the series. So far, so good.

Some back story on this particular tune: I wrote the main chords and melody about 18 years ago, jamming in a rehearsal space that I had with a band I played with in Athens called Volare. I never played it with the band; in fact, I’m not so sure the guys ever even heard it. Truth is I never finished writing it. I’d only gotten two sections, represented in this piece by the first 0:29 seconds of the song, and then the descending chord sequence and melody starting at 0:43.

For this week’s project, I thought I’d dust off those old melodies and flesh it out a little bit. While I have dozens of unfinished projects lying around on my harddrive, I’ve set about this song-of-the-week adventure with the mind to write completely new material. Though this tune is not brand new in strictest sense, I feel it meets the criteria.

I hope you enjoy it!