you think too much
full song (3:14, 3032 Kb)
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I'm pleased with this one. The sound wasn't at all what I originally intended; I had envisioned it as an upbeat electronic dance track, but instead it settled into a laid-back groove which I think suits it much better. Despite its length, this isn't what I would call an actual song-- there are no significant musical changes, just layers over a constant theme. Nevertheless, there is some semblance of a beginning, middle, and end, and I think it could be fun to listen to.

I'm really happy with the loudness. When I made Run, I spent hours fiddling with compressors and it still turned out too quiet. Since this one is a lot simpler, I was able to get it reasonably loud without ruining the sound. The weak point is the transition out of the break, near the end. It kind of drops off there, which wasn't what I intended. This is partially because CoolEdit couldn't do the kind of time-dependent filtering that I wanted, and partially because I didn't spend the time I should have to rework it.

As usual, the hardest part was coming with the drum track, which isn't even that complicated. Hopefully, that will get easier with practice. The main theme that you hear all the way through is something that has been sitting in my notebook for a week or two. The lead melodies on bass and oboe were improvised on the spot. And this is the first piece I've produced that uses no pads! I normally pad obsessively, but the digital piano choruses enough that I didn't need to with this one.

Weekend Elimination
full song (1:59, 1873 Kb)
thumbnail (92 Kb)

My first contribution to the Barnyard Dinosaur Project will leave the listener doubting that I've even picked up an instrument since the BA days. I decided to make the song an instrumental and center it around piano, since words take a long time to write and piano's what I'm used to. The theme is that of some simple blues sounds interspersed between a bizarre chord progression. The bizarre portion is generally C, Cb5, Ab, Db then back to C or G. In between and around this progression are some simple primary chords that allow me to throw in a few blues licks without too much dissonance. There's a bit of electric guitar which is just little riffs that survived many deletings. Then there's a super basic drum track to fill things out. This piece was about 8 hours of work, including a lot of dead-ends and equipment issues. Hopefully I'll be able to put out something cleaner and quicker in the future. Other thoughts-- I had a lot of trouble getting used to playing in time again. I mainly used the chord progression so that I wouldn't have to play anything very creative (the old "shoot from center-court and be expected to miss" strategy.) I think this song is bearable to listen to but I wouldn't put it on my mix tape.