I even finished a few days early (on 20 September).
Below are the individual demos, along with the "liner notes" (as the 50/90 website calls them) that I wrote when I finished the songs. Comments in brackets are from later. The titles followed by asterisks are the ones I now consider worth keeping, although they might need some changes or improvements.
1. "Een geluid van foto's" (*)
There's a D augmented at the end of the A section, which I stuck in because I recently discovered that the Dave Clark Five's "'Til the Right One Comes Along" has a G augmented (so I was thinking about augmented chords).
The B section has mellotron flute and mellotron violin as a nod to some sections of the Zombies' "Hung up on a Dream." Some of the chords there are somewhat similar in that one chord shares two notes with the next chord. I have E minor | C major | A minor; "Hung up on a Dream" uses G major | E minor | C major. I wasn't thinking of that when I wrote the chord progression, but the mellotron flute part is meant to be similar.
2. "Ebenso..."
Usually, I write songs by coming up with a chord progression and then filling in the melody; this time I had the melody first and had to write around it.
3. "Et rose og en sang" (*)
Like my first 50/90 song from this year, this is in G major but with F major chords. I'd intended that song to go with this introduction, but it was too different and stood well enough on its own.
The fuzz guitar part has some similarity with a guitar part I used for 50/90 in (I think) 2013, which I wrote after listening to Les Paul for the first time. This is less jazzy though.
The introduction is way too slow (which made it difficult to edit it and the body together), and the fuzz guitar part seems off somehow. I should have cut the mellotron brass part earlier too.
4. "Trąbka"
It's a bit short and a bit repetitive, but it's an-other 50/90 song.
5. "Den solrike åndene"
My referent for the two trills in the electric piano part was the Zombies' "Butcher's Tale," although mine are quite a bit faster. The second is between A and G, which is the trill that famously starts BWV 565.
I filmed the organ part (which is the first thing I recorded) because I think it's likely I'll forget what I played and not be able to figure it out later. For the record, I used the Vox organ voice, with 16' 8' 4' 2' and III all at 8, and the wave differentiation at 2.
6. "En vakre negl" (*)
I missed a note in the bass part during the glissandi, but I didn't want to go back to re-do it. The first mandolin part overlaps the piano part a bit too much, but since I recorded that first, I couldn't do anything short of re-recording the part.
I filmed the piano part so I would have a visual record, partially because I wanted to know what notes I played and partially because I was so surprised I could actually play the part I wrote that I wanted proof I did it. I tried three times to sync the video with the audio I recorded, but it still seems off. Maybe it's just me.
7. "Hestene sier nei"
I recorded an organ introduction part, but it doesn't really go with this (the only real link was the key), so I'm keeping that to use for something better.
8. "Monstre!"
All of the instruments are "fake," to put it bluntly. Clavinet, vibraphone, and clarinet. There's one note in the clavinet part that I either missed completely or didn't hit as loud as the rest, and I'm not sure the vibraphone and clarinet parts always fit together very well, but otherwise I'm pretty happy with this one, even though it's rather short.
9. Study in A melodic minor
It's rather short.
Mostly for my own reference: I used the pipe organ model on my Nord Electro, with 8' at 8 and 4' at 4. The accompaniment part is just I IV V, but only the root and fifth because using the third would have been too complicated.
10. "Arvum Australis" (*)
It translated really well to guitar, but I actually wrote the first half of the melody for the A section on keyboard (I couldn't play it on keyboard in tempo). This is in C major, but it was in G major originally, which makes me think now that I might have taken a bit from the Minuet in G featured so prominently in The Music Man, which I watched right before 50/90 started. The chord progression is pretty standard (I IV V for the A section and going to vi to start the B section), so I stuck in a II to make things more interesting.
I listened to the Guess Who's Wheatfield Soul this morning (I hadn't listened to it for about two years) and was surprised by how much Hohner Pianet is on the album, so (because I love the Hohner Pianet), I put a bit of it in this. Just rolled chords and some doubling of the bass part.
The mandolin part isn't that great in some places. I like to write a lot of glissandi in my string parts, but I always forget that I can't do glissandi very well on mandolin (or maybe they just don't record well). I rarely play chords on it, and I had to do more mixing than usual to get the levels where I wanted them. I eventually just cut out the chord parts, moved them to an-other track, and mixed the whole track lower. One of the mandolin phrases resembles a piano phrase from the Searchers' "Sea of Heartbreak," but I don't know if the intervals match or anything. I decided to use it anyway.
11. "Gibt es en Haken?"
I missed a note while practicing the F minor scale on guitar, and that was the beginning of this (F Db C). I wrote the guitar part on the electric guitar I keep in open D tuning, and I actually used it to record this. I don't use it much anymore because the connection isn't very good, and it seems that the slightest move can result in a loud, unpleasant buzz. The melody for the second section is better than that for the first. I wasn't paying attention to what notes I was playing though; I just went for what sounded good. That's usually what happens when I play in open D.
The phrase in the bottom of the electric piano part is used a lot in the bass parts of Zombies songs, notably "Tell Her No," "Whenever You're Ready," and "Time of the Season." As a note to myself: I used parallel ascending fourths for one bit.
I guess I don't like F minor that much because in this and the last 50/90 song I wrote in F minor, there are a slew of accidentals. This one resolves to F major, even.
12. "Gli animali"
I recently got an expression pedal for my keyboard, and this was the first time I've really done anything with it. The introduction is actually celeste, but I used the pedal to bring the volume down when I hit the keys and then bring it up to hear the chime bars after they've been struck. That's probably the best part of the whole song.
Last 50/90, I re-wrote a song from the previous 50/90, and that's what I tried to do with this one too. I used this chord progression (which I actually wrote way back in 2012) for a FAWM song earlier this year, but I didn't particularly like how it came out. I liked the chord progression though, so I changed the time signature and the key and tried again. I like the electric piano melody, but that's about it.
The guitar part in the middle is pretty close to the bass part in a FAWM song I wrote in 2017. It just sort of happened, but since I was already unimpressed by what I had, I just went with it. I changed the rhythm a bit.
I've been meaning to comment on this as a general observation: most of my 50/90 songs this year have an A B A' B A structure.
13. "Anfang und Erfüllung"
It took me a long time to get decent parts (especially because I hadn't played it for about a year), but I used real trombone on this. There are two different parts, and I double-tracked both.
I didn't know what to do for the middle A section, so I just used a Bach melody I really like (from BWV 1: III), altered a bit to fit my chord progression (sort of). It doesn't really work that well, but that was the last section I had to fill in and I wanted to be done with this, so I went with it.
I recorded the electric piano part before the clavinet part (before I wrote the clavinet part, even); otherwise, I would have doubled (or maybe even harmonized) the clavinet at the very end with electric piano, like I did for the section B section.
Originally, I was going to end this after the second B section, but while I was recording the chord progression, I thought that this would be too short, so I repeated half of the A section, once again writing a 50/90 song with an A B A' B A structure.
I'm relatively happy with this, but it seems a bit sparse in some places.
14. "Orso d'oro"
I came up with the basic guitar part for one section in June and saved it for 50/90. Last night, when I started thinking about it again, I had the intention to use mandolin, but after I recorded the first guitar part, I was playing around on guitar again and wrote parts with nice glissandi, so I just used those. I'm not sure some of the notes in the second acoustic guitar part really work though. I don't know if they double what I played in the first acoustic guitar track or form dissonances with it. I suppose I could figure it out, but I don't want to take the time to do that now.
15. "Le requin"
I recorded the mellotron brass and electric piano part on the same track, just switching between the two voices on my keyboard for whichever I needed in a particular section. I thought this would facilitate the recording process, but it actually make it harder because the two sounds are at different levels. I turned down the brass and turned up the electric piano, but I still don't think it's a great balance.
I wanted to use my keyboard's marimba voice on something, so I used it here to double the chord progression in various ways and add some variety, but I'm not sure it really fits.
16. "Å strømme"
I took some of the chords and bass notes from Bach's Prelude in C major, BWV 846. Because of that, I wanted to use oboe (the oboe voice on my keyboard, at least); it seems like there are a lot of good Bach oboe parts. And because I'd doubled the bass register of the piano part on electric bass, like I did in an earlier 50/90 song that featured celeste, I wanted to use celeste. I workt out close harmony parts between the celeste and the oboe (something like the trumpets in Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire," which I figured out to-day), but after I recorded the parts, I discovered that they don't go together that well (in terms of timbre).
Usually, I record everything to a click track, but I couldn't do that with this because of the tempo change in the B section (for which my referent was actually the beginning of the Beatles' "With a Little Help from My Friends"). That also make it difficult to record anything on top of those sections, so there's a lot of empty space there (and at the end of the A section, where I once again nicked the chords from Jeff Lynne's ELO's "When I Was a Boy," although I changed the key this time). Filling in those spots and picking instruments that harmonize well would make this a lot better.
[I later realized that my referent for the structure of this (celeste on its own, oboe on its own, celeste and oboe harmonized) was the Roulettes' "Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow," which does the same thing with electric piano and electric guitar.]
17. "Ein Tanz"
I came up with the basic organ part for this about a week ago. Mostly for my own reference: I used the pipe organ voice on my keyboard, with a split between the bass register (16' at 8 and 5 1/3' at 2) and the upper register (8' and 4' at 8 and 2 2/3' at 4). Both are with the rotary speaker effect (on slow), and the upper register has a wah effect (both effects set at around 1.3, I think). The organ on top of that is the Farfisa model on my keyboard, with presets I came up with a while ago so that it sounds a bit like a clavioline. I put that through the rotary effect too (slow speed for the first section; fast speed for the second), so it sounds a bit different from my preset.
I recorded the basic organ track first and then wrote a melody for it, so it's not that great structurally. I'd reorganize the order of some of the melodic segments.
I wanted to use xylophone on something (partially because I hadn't used the xylophone voice on my keyboard yet and partially because I was recently reminded of the "Fossils" melody in Saint-Saëns' The Carnival of the Animals, which was the referent [chiefly rhythmic] for my part). I'm not sure it works very well though. I should have done it just under the long notes in the organ part, but I recorded the xylophone part before that second organ part.
18. "Une voix parle"
I recorded the organ part first and left spots to fill in with an-other instrument (I went with the Hohner electric piano for something of a Decca-era Zombies sound). I could have done without repeating some of the sections, and I still think this needs something (it's a bit sparse), but I'm relatively happy with it. I'm not sure the organ part is always in time with the click track I used though, which might have thrown off the electric piano part.
I took the rhythm and something of the melody for one section of the electric piano part from the pizzicati strings in the Kinks' "Village Green."
19. "Essayez couleur"
I wanted to try something with clavinet again. This is the "clavinet B" setting on my keyboard. I recently discovered that - after much practice - I can now play different rhythms in left and right hands (or at least quarter notes in the right hand and a dotted rhythm in the left). This was an exercise in that. My referents were the beginning of the Beach Boys' "God Only Knows" and the beginning of ELO's "Waterfall" (which are the two things I've been practicing). I wrote the clavinet part first, and while I thought it was in A major, it turned out to be E major. I took the arpeggiated section from the beginning (I used the damper pedal there, but I'm not sure if clavinets have damper pedals, so I don't know if that's technically accurate) and transposed it so that it also fit at the end.
Rather than go for the mellotron flute setting, I used actual flute, even though I'm not very good at playing it or recording it (I double-tracked it, but I don't know if that helpt very much). Eventually, I doubled it with melodica, which might have cheapened it a bit (I'm not sure I have the same articulation, either). I didn't have a flute part for the end, so that's solely melodica, and (for the first time, I think) I wrote a melodica part with a change in dynamics (crescendo). I'd intended the melodica part at the very end to be the same as the flute part at the beginning, just transposed, but somehow it turned out different.
I double-tracked the acoustic guitar, mostly to increase the volume. The bass part is supposed to double the bass register of the clavinet, but I don't know if it matches exactly (I recorded the clavinet and flutes yester-day and everything else to-day).
This was something of an experiment in mixing tonal colors, especially the very last note, which is a fifth on the clavinet (E and B), with the E note doubled on acoustic guitar. That's the best part, I think. I like the chromatic, descending triplet in the bass part too.
20. "A Parliamentary Hoot"
I started with the bass part of this, roughly working from the chords of the Moody Blues' "Thank You Baby," which I figured out the day I started writing this (the 21st). I wrote it on my keyboard and intended to transfer it to electric bass, but the range goes lower than standard tuning on electric bass, so I kept it on keyboard. I wrote some chords over it, although I ended up playing only thirds and fourths. Since I used harpsichord, I decided to write a melody on recorder, to give this something of a baroque feel. Originally, I was going to use soprano recorder, but the melody felt too high, so I played it on tenor recorder, although now parts of it feel too low.
There's one note at the end of the second recorder part that I held for an absurdly long time (eight measures), even going a measure longer than I'd intended because I got a bit lost.
21. "Eine vierfältige Furcht" (*)
Initially, I was just going to play a couple notes as a transition to repeat from the beginning, but then I realized that "Westminster Quarters" fit, so I played that. In the middle, I meant to play two of the phrases that skip notes, but I accidentally played the one with the straight descent. I suppose I could have re-done it, but whatever. The "Westminster Quarters" quote got me thinking about foreign words for "quarter" and "four" and whatnot, which is how I came up with the title. I might have tried too hard to come up with a pun; it seems convoluted to the point that it doesn't make any sense.
For some reason, the electric piano part reminded me of the Searchers' "He's Got No Love" (I don't know if there's any resemblance though), so I used twelve-string guitar for this. I used finger cymbals and harmonica mostly because those are the only two instruments I have that I haven't used for 50/90 yet this year (although the finger cymbals might connect to "Westminster Quarters" as a clock chime or something). I wanted the harmonicas to be sort of off in the distance, but I'm not sure I really achieved that.
I used my new-ish expression pedal for the organ part: for one section, I decreased the volume and played just bass notes (which aren't really distinguishable) and for the last measure or two, I increased the volume.
[After I'd finished 50/90, I remixed this and took out the harmonica tracks. It's much better without them.]
22. "Fremdeles" (*)
I tried to vary the rhythm and structure a bit so this wasn't so repetitive, but I don't know if it really works. Still, this turned out better than I thought it would.
23. "Einsam"
I wrote the bass part (and a few of the chords) for the A section first, but I wrote it on keyboard, and the range was uncomfortably large for electric bass. This is at least the third time that's happened this 50/90, so I changed it a bit so it fit better. Then I elaborated on it a little. Yester-day, I figured out the bass part for the first verse of the Beatles' "With a Little Help from My Friends" (it's only eight measures), and I put in a phrase somewhat like a phrase from that.
The B section sounded a bit empty with just melodica and bass, so I doubled the melodica part with electric piano (the Wurlitzer voice on my keyboard). Mostly it just seems to show how off my melodica playing is.
Just for my own reference: I used the "Black Upright" piano voice on my keyboard.
24. "Des cierges"
I wrote an eight-measure melody, but I didn't think I could really expand it, so I just repeated it and tried to add some variation in the arrangement. Mostly for my own reference: the pipe organ starts with 8'; the second verse adds 4'; and the third adds 16'.
I feel like a lot of my musical writing has antecedents and consequents that are 1) really obvious and 2) of the same musical length, so I tried to smooth the third and fourth phrases together. I'm not sure how successful I was though.
The mandolin part was the most difficult thing to record so far this 50/90. I just kept messing up. But, of course, when I doubled-tracked it, I got it on the first take.
I'm not sure the mix of this is all that great.
25. "Kaj brilu" (*)
This took me only about an hour.
My last two 50/90 songs were in minor keys and didn't have any guitar, and I think this was something of a reaction to that: it's mostly guitar and in G major.
26. "Nelle montagne"
I didn't play on overdubbing anything, so I didn't set a click track to record this to, but now I sort of wish I had. Doubling the melody on piano or something for one section would have varied the texture, and my tempo is a bit too fast and fluctuates. I didn't want to take the time to re-do it though.
Mostly for my own reference: I used the pipe organ sound on my keyboard, with 8' at 6, 4' at 8, and 2' at 2.
27. "Un oiseau dans une foule" (*)
During FAWM this year, I used electric piano with vibes and thought it sounded pretty good, so I tried that again. I sort of ran out of melodic ideas for the last section though. There are some pairs of notes at the very end that I took straight from the end of a celeste part in the Moody Blues' "Emily's Song."
Of my 50/90 songs so far, this took the longest to record. I did bits and pieces over the course of three days. Listening to it now, I think it feels a bit disjointed, but that's probably just because of that temporal spread.
28. "Ârretez"
It's not that great, but it's an-other 50/90 song.
I came up with the title only after I'd recorded everything. If I had that first, I would have used French harpsichord.
29. "Altså" (*)
The bass part in one section of this sounds really similar to part of Beirut's "Elephant Gun," but I just went with it. I'd intended to use real trombone, but I ended up using the mellotron brass sound because it was a lot faster and easier.
30. "Eine nackte Nacht"
While I used harmonium because it's on "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!" the referent for my part was actually the Zombies' "Butcher's Tale," mostly just the rhythm. The single bass note at the beginning is something I took from "Got to Get You into My Life." I played a G on the fifth fret of the D string and with the open G string.
Rather than have the French horn play throughout, I decided to put the bass forward for one section. Because I played that part mostly on the highest string though, it sounds a bit weak.
I purposely staggered the instruments' ending, but now I'm not so sure I like it.
31. "Genethliacon" (*)
I went through all the trouble to double-track the melodies, but then I ended up using only one track for each. I recorded the guitar melody before I even wrote the mandolin melody, so I'm not sure those two go together that well.
32. "Ward 28"
Usually for me, this started with a melodic idea, specifically the section where the bass jumps octaves. Last night, I wrote a pretty standard chord progression around it (I IV V for one section) and a bass part, and to-day I filled in the melodies. I wrote the fuzz guitar parts first, and I think I may have taken something from Duke Ellington's "Caravan." I've been listening to Ellington a lot lately. I doubled a couple sections an octave lower, and I don't think my guitar is very much in tune, but because of the fuzz tone, it still sort of works. I tried to take something of the rhythm and general shape of that melody and use it for the clavinet parts at the beginning. And I contrasted the fuzz guitar with the mellotron flute voice, although the mellotron part seems a bit uneven to me. Some spots have three notes at once, and some spots have only a single note. I'd prefer it to be a bit more balanced.
33. "Des chapeaux verts"
The clavinet sound is a bit thinner and brighter than I'd like. I used the "Clavinet D" voice on my keyboard, but I probably should have gone with "Clavinet A."
Mostly for my own reference: I used the Vox organ voice with my usual settings, except for the wave differentiation, which is at 4.
34. "A Sketch"
I wanted a slow tempo, but I still think this is a bit fast. My rolled chords aren't always that great either.
I used the "Queen Upright" piano voice (a Bösendorfer) on my keyboard. I'd been practicing the first piece in Schumann's Album für die Jugend, and I thought that was a good piano tone for it. When I went to record this, that voice was still loaded, so I just used it.
35. "Et olim et olim"
Once again, I used the mellotron brass sound instead of getting out my trombone because it's faster and easier.
Mostly for my own reference, here are the specific voices I used on my keyboard: Hohner Pianet, 2 brass (mellotron), French harpsichord C, Queen Upright piano (Bösendorfer), Hammond organ (16', 8', 4', and 2' at 8).
36. "Farfisa festa" (*)
For both Farfisa parts, I set all of the drawbars at 1, except for 1 3/5' and 1 1/3'. For the lead part, I also used the "light/slow" vibrato.
This is pretty short, but I like how it turned out.
This throws off my numbering; it's the 36th 50/90 song I've finished, but it's the 38th I started recording.
37. "Morbus Februari"
I don't remember the specific Farfisa drawbar settings I used, but I think the bottom four were all at 8. The Hammond organ part is 16', 8', 4', and 2' at 8 and 5 1/3' at 4. Not that that really matters because I probably won't revisit this one.
38. "Errant"
The main idea I had for this was to double a chord progression on mandolin and on guitar with a capo. To add some variety, I changed the rhythms a bit and put in a section of single notes. I found it difficult to come up with a melody for the A section, and by the time I did (five days after I recorded the chord progression), I had sort of lost interest in the whole thing, so I just played the same melody for every section, adding an organ stop every other time (starting with 16' and 8' and going all way the up to 1'). The last section is a bit different, but that's because I messed up when I was recording it and didn't want to go back and fix it.
39. "Heddiw"
I think this would be a bit better if I hadn't used so many glissandi. The guitar parts would fit better with the mandolin/electric piano parts then.
40. "På veien"
I wrote the A section for this way back on 8 July, but I thought it was too short on its own and didn't know what else to do with it. Recently, I wrote part of a chord progression using the same picking pattern, and it was easy enough to stick the two together. I wanted to (try to) use flute again, so I wrote a part that I could play with my limited ability. It turned out better than I thought it would, although this still isn't that great.
41. "Vis zeep"
I might have unintentionally taken a bit of the melody from the Beach Boys' "A Day in the Life of a Tree," which I listened to recently.
42. "I går, i tåke" (*)
I used the Queen Upright piano voice on my keyboard. That's the Bösendorfer, which I thought would give a good, sort of dark tone for this. I also used the Hammond organ voice: 16', 8', 4', and 2' at 8 for the first section, and then drawing 1' to 8 for the second half. I had the percussion on too (soft/fast, third).
[On 5 September, I realized something (moderately) interesting about one section of this, specifically:
(I did this notation based on my memory of what I played, so there might be some differences. Also, I played it an octave lower than this.)
The rhythm in the treble clef in measures 1, 3, and 5 (three eighth notes, one quarter note, three eighth notes) is something that Rod Argent uses in a lot of the bass parts in his songs (including "Indication," "Is This the Dream," and "She Does Everything for Me"). (It's also in "It's Alright," which the Zombies did live, but I don't know how much of that is faithful cover and how much is the Zombies themselves.)
Looking at this now, I discovered that I also used a rather Argentian three-note chromatic phrase in the bass register (measures 3 to 5).
I just thought it interesting that - apparently - I've immersed myself in the Zombies so much that I'm now subconsciously using specific musical features from Rod Argent's songs.
Yester-day morning I also realized that the melodies for the A and B sections are rather similar in that they start with an ascent (roughly diatonic) from E to B and then a descent with just a slightly larger span. I hadn't planned this and wasn't even conscious of it, but I like how there's a similarity there.]
43. "Celui"
As usual, I wrote the chord progression first. I pickt G major because it's a good key for mandolin, but to make things a bit more interesting, I stuck in a C minor. That's probably the only noteworthy feature.
This isn't what I was going for, but it might be decent after some revision.
44. "Omsorg"
I recently figured out the organ part in the verses of the Beatles' "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill," and I used the same keyboard settings I came up with to emulate that sound. It's the Hammond organ voice with just the 8' stop at 8 and without the Leslie speaker effect. For the last section, I also pulled out the 4' stop to 8.
This is a little repetitive, and the arrangement is a bit stark, but I like the melodies I wrote.
45. "Cerise"
I'm not sure the vibes and marimba parts go together that well, but I'd already recorded the marimba part by the time I decided to use vibes for the melody there. Likewise with the mellotron violin and vibes, but I thought it sounded too empty with just the mellotron violin, which basically just arpeggiates the chords.
Although my intent was to use musical features from songs by Ben E. King and the Drifters, I couldn't resist starting with the E-to-A falling fifth in the bass from the Zombies' "She's Not There."
46. "Un bateau et des nuages"
I recorded the chords and then started writing a melody over it. Aside from one phrase, the finished B section is what I improvised in my rough demo. I'm not very good at improvisation, so coming up with something I liked while improvising was exciting for me.
I wanted to have a second guitar part, but I couldn't really come up with a good harmony part, so I mostly just played a constituent note of the chord for each measure.
47. "Gern geschehen" (*)
I recently listened to a couple albums of German swing music, which is where I got the idea to do two melodies that almost overlap (from Willy Berking's "Rhythmus" specifically). My referent for the title was mostly Fud Candrix's "Was geschah in dieser Nacht?" with a little nod to the Beach Boys' "You're Welcome."
I recently added the Bösendorfer Grand Imperial piano voice to my keyboard, and this is the first thing I've used it for. I used the Hammond organ voice with 16', 5 1/3', 8', and 4' at 8 and 2' and 1' at 4. The weird sound at the end is a pair of Bb notes played with my keyboard's vibes voice with the rotary speaker effect turned on and the overdrive cranked up to 10. I had to fade out the last fuzz guitar notes, otherwise this would have gone on ten seconds longer. And I didn't want to cut corners, so I used real trombone (double-tracked).
Mixing this gave me some troubles, and I sort of wish the piano were a bit louder. I varied the dynamics in a couple sections and played just bass notes in an-other, but it's not that obvious because the piano's sort of buried in the mix. I considered adding guitar strumming too, but I knew that that would make mixing even harder. When I was playing around with guitar strumming, one chord just didn't sound right on guitar anyway, even though I played the same chord in the piano track.
48. "Für und für"
I played the chord progression on piano (the Bösendorfer Grand Imperial voice again), but because I came up with those chords via harpsichord pieces, I felt I had to use harpsichord, so I played the melody on it (the French harpsichord A on my keyboard).
Aside from my errors (I think I accidentally hit a couple of extra notes and/or missed some notes in the bass register of the piano, and I missed my cue for one section of harpsichord and had to squeeze some notes together, which probably improved that section, actually), I think this could be better, but I don't know how. Maybe more instruments or a faster tempo. It's a bit too long and plain.
49. "Hollow" (*)
I came up with the chord progression for the B section way back in May and decided to save it for 50/90. About two weeks ago, I came up with an-other, somewhat similar chord progression, and I stuck the two together. It's in B minor (with some accidentals), and originally every section ended with a modulation to the major, but I had to change that in order to string the sections together. I kept it at the very end though.
In one of my other 50/90 songs, I recorded my electric twelve-string both acoustically and through my amplifier. As a whole, that song didn't turn out that well, but that dual recording of my twelve-string was something I liked, so I tried to replicate it here. I think it turned out pretty well. To add a bit of a warmer timbre, I added acoustic guitar too.
I wrote the guitar parts on twelve-string and intended to play them on regular six-string, but they didn't sound right, so I ended up playing them on twelve-string. One phrase sounds a bit weird because it's in a higher register where the strings play the same note, not doubled at the octave.
50. "Ovce"
I think part of the reason I was having trouble writing a harmony part is that harmony parts in hymns are below the melody, which is opposite to the way I usually write. I think without exception, my harmony parts are always above the melody.
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Now that I've actually completed 50/90 for once, I don't know if I want to do it again. It took up a lot of time that I probably could have better spent catching up on all of the things I was already behind on (and am now even further behind on). On the other hand, I really like some of the songs I wrote, and I'm sure that I developed some more keyboard skills in the process.
I know for sure that - if I do it again - I'm not going to post my demos publicly. For the last few years, I kept them private on the 50/90 site (I didn't like getting comments on them because it seemed that people commented just to comment, which I found useless and annoying), but I posted them publicly on my YouTube channel and embedded them elsewhere. It's a bit embarrassing to have the not-so-good ones floating around out there though, and it's discouraging to see that (combined) the fifty songs I wrote have a paltry fifteen views.
