Omegaps EP

It's been awhile since I released anything.  Over half a year, in fact.

During that half a year, most of the songs I've written have been instrumental, and I find it incredibly difficult to come up with names for instrumental songs.  During 50/90, I started titling instrumental songs just by picking a word that started with the same note letter as the song did.  Because "Figments" started with an F note, I called it "Figments," and so on.  I kept writing songs like that until I'd made my way through the musical alphabet (excluding accidentals), and those are the seven songs on Omegaps.

The title itself is a nod to that alphabetisation.  Where alphabet combines alpha and beta, Omegaps combines omega and psi.

I recorded Omegaps over the course of the past three months, taking February off to work on FAWM.  So while many of these songs were written back in July or September, I've changed the structure or instrumentation to make them better.  Because it's still a do-it-yourself effort, it's a bit rough, but it's certainly better than my last release - Newcastle City Gaol.

You can stream the whole thing for free on Bandcamp, and you can even buy it if you are so inclined.

---&---

"Figments"

I unconsciously based part of this mandolin part off of a guitar part from Argent's "Celebration" from Ring of Hands.

---&---

"Glasse"

The only thing I really remember about this is that I wrote it while watching an episode of Star Trek:  The Next Generation.

---&---

"Apparition"

I think I came up with part of the guitar part for this at the same time that I came up with the guitar part for "Figments." It just took me about a month longer to finish writing this one.

---&---

"Belvedere"

I'd been playing around with the guitar part for this for about a year and a half before I finally came up with something else to put with it.  This is sort of the outlier of the album because it uses a minor chord for the titular note, and all of the other song use major chords.

---&---

"Corona"

I had come up with this melody and recorded it, thinking that I may use it again, but then I came up with the same melody again over a year later, so I figured I should use it for something.

---&---

"Denizen"

This is an-other outlier, both because it doesn't involve guitar at all and because it actually starts on an A.

---&---

"Ebullience"

This is the only one that I didn't re-record, but that's because I wrote it at the same time I started re-recording the older songs.  This chord progression is an-other one I'd been playing around with for over a year.

---&---

{YouTube}{Tumblr}{Bandcamp}

One Year

A year ago to-day, I set up a YouTube channel specifically for my music.  I'd uploaded a few songs before, but this was to be a channel where I focused solely on music.  And for the past year, it has been.  I'm not sure of the specific numbers, but I've probably posted about a video a week.  There were some months were I'd post only one or two, but then there were things like FAWM and 50/90, where I'd upload three in one week.  Over the past year, I've certainly put a lot of effort into it.

And yet, a year later, I have only five subscribers, three of which I think are dead accounts.

I'm not going to do an-other retrospective thing; it would end up being too similar to what I wrote about a month ago when it was my four year anniversary of starting to play guitar.  This is just a post to encourage you to look at it and subscribe if you're so inclined.

---&---

{YouTube}{Tumblr}{Bandcamp}

Practical Pianism (FAWM 2013)

I've been doing February Album Writing Month ever since 2010.  (I set up a new profile this year, so the dates may not corroborate that.)  Technically, I've completed the challenge every year, but I feel that I earned that distinction only for the last two years because it was only for the last two years that I actually recorded versions of most of the songs - each song had an actual musical component rather than melody-less lyrics, which was the case for most of 2010 and much of 2011.

Last year, my FAWM songs all had a common theme - 19th century criminals.  Concept albums and common themes are suggested for FAWM, so for this year, I had the idea to constrict my instrumentation.  Originally, I had planned to use only keyboard instruments, but I eventually widened that and just outlawed string instruments.  By now, I've been playing guitar for four years, so I felt that having to be without it would help me grow musically.  I'm not sure if it did or not.

Within the next few months, I'm planning to revamp a few of these songs and completely re-record some others.  I'll then put the album on Bandcamp.  My Bandcamp page looks a little bare, since the only thing I currently have on there is the album that I wrote during FAWM 2012.  I'm considering putting no minimum price on this one, but I'm not sure about that yet.  The most expensive I would make it is $1.

---&---

"I"

I'd been playing around with the core of this since the end of December.  I think this was the first time I recorded something with harmonica since 50/90 in 2011.

---&---

"II"

I took the idea of the octaves in the left hand from Graham Nash's "Simple Man," which I had either recently learned or was in the process of learning (though I realise it's fairly common).  I tried to make it more interesting than just octaves in the one hand and chords in the other, so I included Esus2 and Esus4 instead of just a straight E major (though they're all partial chords because I didn't play the B note in any of them).

The second part of this (beginning around 1:13) became one of my favourite things that I wrote during February.  I had just written this piece shortly before I recorded it, and since then I've become much better at playing it.  Here, it's a bit slow because it's new.

Notice at the end how I don't just go from A to D.  I hit the A note, and then play the A and D simultaneously.  I did that because I wanted all of the songs to flow to-gether (see my Note Continuity project), and the next one starts on an A note.

---&---

"III"

I actually wrote the first part of this on guitar.  About a month before, I'd restrung my old electric guitar and tuned it in open D.  In playing around with that, I wrote this opening part, which - without my realising it until after I'd recorded this - somehow transferred over to electric piano.

---&---

"IV"

I hadn't planned on this one at all.  But since I had moved myself to a Bb note, I took advantage of the freedom that FAWM allows and dug out my trombone, which I haven't really played for ten years, because trombones and Bb go well to-gether.  Or at least they would if my playing hadn't deteriorated so much.

---&---

"V"

This is a melody I'd been working on for a really long time.  I recorded a guitar version way back on 15 October 2011.  (I came up with the chords during FAWM though.)  If I remember correctly, we had talked about Rudyard Kipling's "The White Man's Burden" in my history class, and I inadvertently wrote a melody that fit his poem.  What I had written sounded vaguely hymn-like, so I thought it would transfer well to a keyboard instrument.  I think the organ settings sounded too heavy though, so I went with the electric piano again.

---&---

"VI"

This exemplifies one of the few things I remember from the piano class I took in spring 2011 - inversions.  This is the longest of all of the pieces I wrote for FAWM, simply because I could combine the chords and the melody in so many different ways.

Again, note the end, where I manipulate the notes so I could get to a C.

---&---

"VII"

This turned out better than I thought it would, but I think I was more surprised that I made it through the harmonica parts than anything else.  When I first started learning harmonica, I figured out that the only two chords you can really get are C major and G major, so I had to figure out a melody that sounded OK with just those two chords and that had no accidentals.

---&---

"VIII"

I first started playing around with the origins of this in July 2012.  I may have had thoughts about developing it into a song for 50/90, but instead it languished until FAWM, when I remembered that I had a few keyboard-based pieces that I could expand.

---&---

"IX"

I had started working on some organ overdubs for this, but I had fallen behind because of school work, so I didn't finish those.

---&---

"X"

I really went all-out with the inversions on this one.  Also parallel motion, which I'm always surprised I can still do.  I'd intended on using trombone in this one too, but it was too low.  And because I don't have a trumpet, I used melodica instead.  I'm not particularly happy with the ending of this one.  I think I go from A major to C# minor too much, just because that chord change is in the Zombies' "This Will Be Our Year," which is one of the few piano songs that I know (though only until the key change).

Also, for what it's worth, I wrote this while watching an episode of Bones.

---&---

"XI"

This is almost certainly the best thing that I wrote during FAWM.  I'd become tired of the paradigm that I'd used almost without exception to this point - chords in the left hand and melody in the right.  I wanted to do something more complex.

I'm not sure if it's evident, but I was thinking of the organ parts in Argent's "Rejoice" while writing this.

---&---

"XII"

Since I'd written such a (at least comparatively) complex piece, I wanted to stay at that level, but I guess I just didn't have the ideas because this one saw me revert to the octave-in-the-left-hand convention.  The other parts come in too abruptly, which is something I'll have to fix.

---&---

"XIII"

The structure of this is really similar to "VI" - there're the same two chords (one played as an inversion), but just different melodies on top of them.  It's also similar to "VII" since the two chords are C major and G major.

---&---

"XIV"

The first part of this is too fast.  It's supposed to be up-beat, but I overdid it.  The second part is pretty similar to the second part of "II," though it also has some similarities with "Mandeville" - the only solo keyboard piece I'd written before FAWM.

---&---

I still don't think I'm that proficient at keyboards, but I'm certainly a lot better than I was before FAWM.  I'm not sure if it's true for every song, but I feel that these melodies are a lot more chromatic than mine usually are.  Since 50/90 last year, I've been paying more attention to what keys my songs are in, but even aside from that, I think these melodies are more chromatic because I used keyboard instruments.  One of the things I learned in piano class was the five-fingered position, and I think that may have had an effect on my writing.

---&---

{YouTube}{Tumblr}{Bandcamp}

Practise

I realise that I wrote a blog post just yester-day, but I'm writing an-other one to-day.  I also realise that I said I would write a post about FAWM in a week or so.  This isn't that.

But I effected a rather significant change to-day, which got me thinking about other stuff, so I'm writing this.

At the very end of November, I started this project where I record a hymn every week.  My knowledge of musical notation had effectively evaporated from the minimal amount that I'd learned from 6th grade band, and what I learned in piano class two years ago didn't really stick, so I thought that this project would help to rekindle it.  (I decided on hymns because I'm familiar with the melodies and I have a hymnal, which contains the music.)  I believe that, even at the on-set, I made connexions between my project and Rod Argent's teaching himself to sight read and Roger McGuinn's monthly recording of a folk song.

I don't even remember where I read it, but I learned somewhere that Rod Argent sat down for an hour or two a day everyday and practised sight reading pieces until after two or three years he could do it to some degree of skill.  (And since it's Rod Argent, you can bet that it's a high degree of skill.)

Back in April, I learned about Roger McGuinn's Folk Den via NPR.  This is a project where he records a folk song every month.  He's been doing it for something like fifteen years and hasn't missed a month yet, which is pretty impressive.  (I'm considering doing the same thing in 2013 if I can learn enough folk songs.)

So I sort of just took those two ideas and combined them - a set schedule, like McGuinn's, by which I would learn musical notation, not as impressive as Argent's sight reading, but still similar.  I've been doing that for about three months now, but to-day I transitioned from guitar to mandolin, for a few reasons:

1. I've been playing guitar for over four years, so I know the fret board pretty well by now.  I've been playing mandolin for only about two and a half years (and only about one and a half years if you measure by any sort of proficiency).  I figured that by moving to mandolin, I would not only continue to learn musical notation, but I would also become more familiar with the mandolin fret board.
2. Up until now, I'd recorded everything with electric guitar, and now I have to record mandolin acoustically.  I get really nervous about recording things acoustically, so I figured that forcing myself into doing that would help to allay my apprehension.

It also doesn't hurt that mandolin players are fairly rare when compared to the glut of guitarists.

---&---

{YouTube}{Tumblr}{Bandcamp}

More Musical Prescriptions

February Album Writing Month ended yester-day.  I did complete my fourteen songs though it seemed to be more of a challenge this year than last year.  I'm going to put that off to my depriving myself of string instruments and not really planning anything.  I'm planning on writing a more in-depth post about FAWM within a week or so.

In order to indoctrinate myself to keyboard-based songs, I listened to Rod Argent's Classically Speaking everyday from 22 January to 28 February.  But now since FAWM is over, I don't have to do that anymore. I enjoyed it though - listening to something multiple times (and especially with that sort of frequency) naturally causes one to become more familiar with it.  So I sort of want to do that again this month with a different album.

But while I was trying to decide which album I should listen to every month, I noticed that I have stacks of albums that I haven't even listened to once.  So I'm going to postpone that intensive every-day-for-a-month album listening for awhile.  Instead, I'm going to work my way through the albums that I haven't listened to yet.  But even before I get to those, I'm going to listen to the CDs that I've borrowed from my sister.  (Many of which I've had for about a year.)

So to-day I'm starting a project which essentially entails listening to something new everyday.  If you're so inclined, you can follow my progress over on the music listening journal I started at the beginning of the year. Asterisks indicate the first time I've listened to something.

---&---

{YouTube}{Tumblr}{Bandcamp}