Category: Jamuary 2023

I was thinking of a few things when writing this one. First, it’s a clear “Get Pumped” song in the vein of “Dare” or “The Touch,” both excellent bangers from the 1986 animated Transformers film. But underneath the surface layer of “Be awesome, use your power for good, prevail in any fight,” I was thinking of a couple other things. One is about my first grader, who is becoming quite adept at video games, which I wanted to celebrate in the corniest way possible. The second thing I was thinking about was generations younger than my own, who seem to be a bit more accepting and diverse than older cohorts, which gives me a little shred of hope about the future, which otherwise has looked pretty bleak to me. Musically, I was playing around with sus chords. The intro is built around an Eb_sus2 to Cm vamp, but with a uke playing it there’s a bit of harmonic ambiguity on that first chord. Since ukes have a small range their chords don’t tend to be “properly” constructed with the root note in the bass, like on a guitar where the lowest note in an open chord is also the root note (for chords in root position, obviously). In a major key, the I_sus2 and the V_sus4 chords share the same notes but are spelled differently — Eb, F, and Bb vs. Bb, Eb, and F, respectively. So your bass note choice here could lead to the chord being perceived differently. Adam Neely has a video about this which he talk about as the power of the bass to re-frame harmony.

This one has tenor uke and Hohner acoustic guitar recorded via the XY condensers on the Zoom recorder. The rest of the instruments are electric ones recorded using the BOSS interface (except the drum, which as always are arranged, this time the Blasting Room kit). Vocals were captured using an SM-58 into the Zoom. I spent entirely too much time recording the guitar parts and mixing them. Creating big, multitracked, power chord-filled choruses is just so addictive! I also enjoyed playing the “filler”  Given more time, I think I would definitely add some snyths to this, as well as a powerful piano. And a full-size, steel-string guitar. Since Eb is a rough uke key, I played this one in C with capo on the third fret, and it made fretting chords a bit of a pain. I had originally written this one in C as well, but the verse vocals parts were a bit low for my liking.

Continue reading “Jamuary 2023 Day 27: “The Power and the Will”” →

This song is about direct action. Extremists want to harm people for characteristics that are either social constructs or immutable, and we must all stand up to protect anyone they target. In the U.S. there’s a lot of hemming and hawing from the ‘left’ (true Liberals in the global sense of the word) about whether or not the use of violence to prevent greater violence is morally justifiable. Was the Battle of Cable Street morally justifiable? Was the Allied response to Nazi Germany justifiable? The only redeeming feature of fascism is that it is not an intrinsic trait. At any point, you can choose to stop being a fascist. Unfortunately, they get support-by-default in many Liberal democracies. This brings to mind the old adage: “If there is a table with nine people listening to a Nazi, then there are ten Nazis at the table.”

This was recorded with the Zoom recorder. My mandolin makes an appearance, but I think it needs some setup work because it was buzzing a bit. The microphones are not clipping and I didn’t add distortin in post; it just has some loose components that were rattling.

Continue reading “Jamuary Day 26: “My Baby’s an Antifascist”” →

I think it’s pretty common to be embarrassed by how we behaved in our youth. In my case, I had a bizarre superiority complex that was infused with a punk rock sneer, and I think it made be a lot less pleasant to be around than a lot of my peers. It took me a long time to realize that if somebody enjoys something I don’t, like pop music or certain T.V. shows, it doesn’t really impact me at all. Just celebrate the stuff that’s cool and leave everybody to their own personal preferences.

This was recorded with the Zoom recorder for the Hohner mini acoustic, and the vocals via an SM-58. The electric guitars were captured by the BOSS interface, which I haven’t used in a few days. The bass was the Kala U-Bass, because I originally was gonna keep this to just acoustic, drums, and bass before deciding to add some distorted power chords on the chorus.

Continue reading “Jamuary 2023 Day 25: “Kid I Was”” →

This is a song about the way I work. People underestimate procrastinators, but remember that if we’re good at it — and I think I’m a fairly Advanced Procrastinator — you don’t even know they waited until the last minute to start the work, which means we can estimate sometimes down to the minute exactly how long a given task will take us. This is a kind of skill. I am acutely aware of how much simpler my life would be if I paced out my work instead of delaying it until there’s exactly enough time left to do a decent job. But until there is a serious consequence with real repercussions, I know myself well enough to understand that I will not change my habits.

This one was recorded with just the Hohner guitar and vocals, both via the Zoom recorder. I really wanted to go heavy with the mix, to reflect how I imagine a complete recording would go, but opted to keep it simple for simplicity’s sake.

Continue reading “Jamuary 2023 Day 24: “Next Week”” →

This song is about spreading yourself too thin. Even thought the stellar material that constitutes you is spread out over vast distances, it’s still you.

The Hohner was recorded with the H6, as were the vocals. The U-Bass makes another appearance (via DI), and the piano and organ parts were played on my mini MIDI keyboard.

Continue reading “Jamuary 2023 Day 23: “I Am a Nebula”” →