Category: Jamuary 2023

Songs written during the month of January 2023 as part of Jamuary.

A giant and slightly wavy ukulele, in low earth orbit.

This song is about one of my favorite instruments — the small but mighty ukulele! I decided to make the melody a little bluesy on this one. My favorite part is probably the line about George Harrison, who was an avid uke player. It also happens to have a nifty little turnaround with some augmented chords and diminished sevenths, which I don’t believe have appeared in my tonal palette yet this Jamuary. Also, I realized I had not yet written a song with a full key change, so this one modulates from G to A. I had originally written it in A, but didn’t want to play some of the crazy chords in B. And I’m not talking diminished or augmented, just the F# is a pain in the butt.

All the instruments are ukes, of course — a tenor and soprano providing the rhythm instrumentation, a concert providing the intro lead and first, shorter solo, and a baritaone uke providing the second, longer solo. A U-Bass rounds out the frequency range. There’s also a guitalele providing the backbeat chopping.

Continue reading “Jamuary 2023 Day 22: “Rock the Uke”” →

An abstract, stylized image of two faceless rock musicians, possibly on stage with their instruments.

This song is about the joy in playing music, inspired by musical collaborations I’ve had both in the past and in the present. The main riff is a little odd — it ends with a bar of 5/4, except before a verse, where that’s replaced by a bar of 6/4 to give the sections a beat to breathe. I left the first, false ending chord as a measure of 6/4 as a call-back to this. There’s also some sneaky double bass drum action going on right before the solo because… why not?

Again, I had weekend time, so I put in a little bit more work on this one. It’s kind of funny, because I say that but still left out at least one extra part — I wanted to add an acoustic guitar track — and one extra vocal (some “Oozin’ Awes” on the second half of the choruses). I guess that’s why these are just demos, right? Anyway, I picked the key because Db is the only one unused on a Jamuary song so far. Since C# is a rough key on the ukulele, I used a capo but had a hell fretting chords because of how tiny a uke is in my big, sweaty meat hooks.

Continue reading “Jamuary 2023 Day 21: “Let’s Play Music”” →

A few stylized yellow emoji faces, showing a range of emotions.

This one is about emotional issues we might pass to our children.

I used the Hohner mini guitar, recorded with the Zoom recorder (as were the vocals, via an SM-58). Bass and electric guitars via the BOSS interface.

Lyrics

Didn’t mean to make you blow up
Didn’t mean to make you mad
Didn’t mean to make you have the worst day
You’ve felt you ever had
So what do we do now?
How can I make this right?
‘Cuz I want you to feel happy again
And avoid your birthright

I’m sorry you have bad feelings
I know ‘cause I have them too
And if I could, you know I would
Feel those feelings instead of you
I’m sorry you have bad feelings
I’ll try to help you grow
Please be strong, ‘cause it might take long
And progress could be slow
Sorry you have bad feelings

Let’s work through this together
And see what we might learn
If we ignore the feelings now then the
Hotter they will burn
And do I blame my genes
I know it’s not your mom
Who gave you the fuel and lit up the match
Made you a volatile time bomb

A stylized image of a man and a woman, fairly glamorous looking.

This song is pretty straightforward. It’s about how we see a manufactured image from the rich and famous, carefully controlled to make them appear to lead flawless lives. We then turn around and do the same thing on a smaller scale on social media. The end result is a certain selection bias that makes it seem that everyone around us is living glamorous, fun, meaningful, brag-worthy lives. Which is not true — a lot of the time we’re hating our jobs or struggling to help our kids or pooping. But you wouldn’t know any of that mundane stuff by looking at the average person’s social media feed.

This was recorded with all electric instruments (except the drums, arranged as always) via the BOSS amp simulator. The vocals were a simple SM-57 through the Zoom recorder.

Continue reading “Jamuary 2023 Day 19: “Unbroken Humans”” →