I know it’s been ages since we’ve posted anything here. Malin and I use Facebook quite a lot, so we find the need to blog less and less given that all of our friends can keep up with us on FB… (everyone who is seeing this as a note on FB already knows how we’ve been doing). But sometimes I get a hankerin’ to post something to the blog – when I have something more to talk about than what goes into a simple status update…

By the way, I have a draft on this blog that dates back to early August. It’s an outline. It was an attempt to “catch up” on our lives (for those that don’t track us via Facebook). If I find some motivation, I may dig up some pictures and flesh that draft out and post it. Of course, by then, it will be months and months out of date. C’est la vie…

Is That Music From a Video Game?

I’ve mentioned in the past that almost all of my original music sounds like video game music. To be more correct, it sounds like video game music from old PC titles or from old consoles – back when video game music was all synthesized. As mentioned before, it’s because I don’t really have good software and equipment for recording actual instruments (which could only include guitar or mandolin anyway), but I do have halfway decent MIDI composition software.

Well, I’ve written a few more songs recently. I always start on my guitar. But in order to flesh out the piece and add all of the layers together (without suitable equipment and/or software for recording and overdubbing), I type it all up in MIDI Compozer.

You can rummage through the two links above to hear some of the songs I’ve posted previously. And I now have three new tracks to submit for your listening pleasure:

  1. Driving Through The Storm. No, this is nothing like The Doors’ Riders in the Storm. Don’t ask me how I come up with song names. It’s often random. Something pops in my head as I listen to the tune, and – boom! – there’s the song name. Sometimes it’s an impression I get from the music, and sometimes it’s just a reference to something I’ve had in my head recently (from reading, surfing, etc…). I can’t say for certain the source of this title, so don’t focus too much on titles.
  2. Helios. This is actually the most recent tune I’ve written. I’m sure Malin is tired of hearing it by now (she probably hasn’t heard the whole thing through even once, but likely heard bits of it over and over as I was composing…).
  3. Starry Void. This was something I wrote years ago (2002 I think?), but just now got around to completing it in MIDI form… I wrote it when playing around with a fancy digital effects processor I borrowed from my brother. I’ve recently purchased that very same effects processor from him, so I’ve been dorking around with some of the same sounds. The main effects that influenced the writing of this tune were in from a wicked-sounding preset featuring lots of echo.

Music Less Likely To Be Heard In a Video Game

Just over a year ago, I also posted non-MIDI tracks. The only ones I have are ones I recorded in high school (with the assistance of my then-neighbor and friend Keith Groover – who happened to have a four-track tape recorder/mixer).

In that previous post, I indicated almost all of them as “Untitled”. They now have names. Here’s a recap. (Same logic – or lack thereof – behind the titles as for the MIDI songs.)

  1. Forward In Reverse – Take 1. Apologies in advance for the very poor recording quality. The backmasked voice is courtesy of Keith Groover. I think he’s saying something like “Drink milk. It’s good for you”…
  2. Forward In Reverse – Take 2. No voice. Different guitar sound. Better recording quality, but less interesting performance.
  3. This Saturday. The intro is slightly plagiarized. I’d give proper credits, but I can’t remember the guy’s name (he was in a guitar class of mine my senior year in high school). The vast majority of the tune, however, is all original.

And now – previously unreleased recordings! These first four are old (from high school, like all of my other recordings). Pretty much all of the original music I wrote in high school was hard rock / progressive metal (okay, maybe “progressive” is a little pretentious and arguably untrue). These songs are no exception.

  1. The Conqueror Worm
  2. The Ancient Mariner
  3. Resonance
  4. Long, Dark March

These next and final three were recorded with fellow musicians (a band per se) and played by a DJ at a “Casino Night” holiday party where I worked (at the time we were NewEnergy Associates, A Siemens Company). No, it’s not my voice. No, I do not play all of the instruments (unlike all of the other recordings above). Our band called itself many things. The NewEnergy Rockers might have been the most suitable name, but Artie Fufkin and The Dictator-Tots was always my favorite.

  1. Siemens L3 Waffle House Club Band – sung to the tune of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
  2. Jesse Davis – sung to the tune of Weezer’s Buddy Holly. Jesse Davis was the name of the President and CEO of NewEnergy when I started and when we recorded this. We had some other fun tunes that celebrated the CEO – like Rick Springfield’s Jesse’s Girl and Rock Me, Jesse Davis sung to the tune of Falco’s Rock Me, Amadeus. I’m still working on getting some video posted to YouTube of the NewEnergy Rockers’ live performances – which include these latter two JD tunes.
  3. Cleveland Rocks (Daugherty, Humphries, and McNeil too) – sung to the tune of The Presidents of The United States of America’s Cleveland Rocks.