VLog for 5/24/11 Bands

Blogging Fuyu Persimmon, Song IV -- The Things I Didn't Do

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This is one of two songs from this collection of songs that feature Deadman Turner on lead guitar.

This one is exploring the self destructive side of my imagination. Once again, we return to the feeling of being trapped, and the cost of getting free. What do you think: is the feeling at the ending of this song scary or hopeful?

Collab w/ Steve K

Oddment Ops is the next song for Admin Apse & Other Design Choices, the new album I'm making & posting at macidol.com. This one is a track that already existed in an incomplete form, which Steve has finished perfectly. There's more info about how I'm connected to Steve on the other side.

Stromlight Night video

Here's what I've been working on for the last few weeks:



I'm happy with the video itself. I worked really hard on timing, so it's disappointing to me to watch it hang up when it streams. I hope your streaming works better than mine. Part of what makes me love this vid so much is how much it gets from all of my friends and family. So many of these images are references to people who are important in my life.

What I did in February.

I took the RPM Challenge and failed.

But I feel really good about it! I reconnected with a bunch of different musician friends and made, I think, some great music. There's something about a collab with someone you know well but haven't worked with in a while. It almost always produces something great.

The reason I didn't finish is that the tracks were a little more detailed than they probably should have been for efficient completion. Last year I worked with a set instrumentation and a formatted recording approach, but this year, all that went out the window because I wanted to do mostly collaborations, and each song on the record is totally different. I'm still working on it. I have 3 more songs planned for the project, "sound collage" is going to get split in two, and I haven't decided if I'm replacing "Golden Burger", editing it, or leaving it as it is.

So anyway, here are links to the songs. They are all downloadable as 192kbps mp3s on the flip:

Patent Leather Robots Will Get Us First

This is a collab with P. J. Shapiro. I had originally envisioned it as chopped up into a single track of instrumentation and a single track of vocals, and I may get there yet, but as I've listened to and massaged the tracks, I'm hearing it very differetly now.

Turn Away, Yesterday

I love the whole idea of collaborating with someone I have never met, especially when it turns out this well. I think slumbering is awesome, and making this song together was a real treat for me. They say it's wrong to choose between your children, but... This one. This is the one...

Talkin' 'Bout Words

This was a really fun day. Susan, Karen, and I spent the whole day together, Malcolm, Susan and I came up with this recording and Susan and I did the next one down the list. TBW is full of very important information. Please study it carefully for the secret message.

Golden Burger of the Great Goddess Lakshmi

This is pure, in the moment improv. I played my lap dulcimer and Susan played banjo, perhaps for the first time, though it doesn't sound like it.

Medisin

is it 1978 again yet?

Sound Collage

this was fun to do. As I said, this will get split in two and placed at the beginning and end of the sequence.

Lost in the Woods

This collab with Josh Russell is probably the closest thing here to my 2007 CD for RPM, but it's also one of my faves of the record. Josh has studiously avoided getting hisself on the interwebs, so sorry, no link. But if you're ever in Damariscotta Maine, look him up!

carpet

carpet, originally uploaded by mattduanegriffin.

This carpet was on the floor of my office at work. It's gone now. I came back after a Doctor's appointment last Thursday and over half the room was flooded with grey sewage. The room had too much stuff in it. There are things we have to have on the floor, there's just nowhere else to put them! So we chose fairly well, I think, and we're pretty much in tact, having lost a bit of software, but nothing too horrible.

This week I've had my own office because of it. Kinda cool, actually.

But I better not get used to it, I'm going back to the dungeon (what we call the basement room I work in) next Thursday.

UPDATE: Thursday is over and we didn't move. How long will we wait? January? Thanksgiving? meantime I have a window to look out of at work. Ah, amenities...

Recording Others.

As I may have said previously, my passion is music. The recent channel for that passion, for the last 18 months or so, as I may also have said previously, is macidol.com. Making music and posting it at macidol has been a great pleasure and an interesting experience. There is a community there in the forums that I feel pretty strongly attached to. All but one of the blog links on the right side of this page currently goes to a macidoler.

One aspect of this style of musicmaking is that it is somewhat masturbatory. But so is solo folksinging, which I've also done for years.

But let me tell ya a secret about me. I used to be in bands, and in those days couldn't imagine making music any other way.

I used to wanna play fast & loud. I still do in a way, but I have developed into an acoustic musician. That's what I like & what I do. I do not own an electric guitar. I would like to at some point, but for now, I have a small collection of cheap folk instruments and as my ethic as a recordist is decidedly lofi, I do pretty well with that. I will brag just enough to say that I think I have a couple of good tunes. But not many of them are in any way collaborative. Collaborating is hard. You have to give ego space up enough that you can let someone else's ideas in.

I am not the best at this. But I'm trying to get better at it. I've done it a few times and it sure isn't easy. Everybody brings expectations to these things. Me, too. But I try to have an open mind and can usually (not always) accomplish it. In my younger days, when bands were what I wanted to do with my passion, I could be pretty hardnosed. And that is something no musician deals with well. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I understand that people get an idea of what they want from a collaborative experience. In a band, that could change over time. A band can evolve its memberships' expectations, and to some extent their expectations can be met. Makes me wonder what it's like to be in a totally democratic band like R. E. M. that is still sharing all writing credits, and still almost all the same people since 1982 (they lost drummer Bill Berry in 1997).

I have managed a few things, though, and some of them are in my jamroom, some are in other's jamrooms (look for "Greyhound Run") and some ain't nowhere.

Nature of the game I guess.