Category: Jamuary 2023

I think the concept is fairly straightforward here. Corporations think they deserve our eyes and our ears and if they could, every waking moment would be sponsored by something. One thing I like about the form is the bridge modulating down a whole step, from D to C.

This one is multitracked via just my laptop’s mono microphone, built on top of a base track of just the Hohner guitar and my vocals. Ukulele adds some more oomph for the choruses and some chopping in the verses, and some fingerpicked arpeggiated chords in the bridge, which also has a piano piece played on my laptop’s keyboard. A keyboard keyboard, if you will. I tried to stick to the “4 track rule” but vocals likely would have required bouncing down since the chorus has the base track, the uke, two vocal tracks, and the sampled handclaps all at once. I had originally recorded the claps with laptop microphone, but they sounded brittle and weak, so I went with a sample instead of overdubbing lots and lots of takes of me clapping.

Continue reading “Jamuary 2023 Day 7: “Limited Time Offer”” →

This track is about my self-perception, specifically how skewed toward the negative it is. I also wanted to experiment with the classic soft-loud-soft dynamic. I had originally written a little lead guitar line that served as an intro, but couldn’t get it to gel with the rest of the song, so I replaced that with a simpler, 4-bar little ringing chord thing.

For this recording, I think I found a good balance between capturing the idea simply and getting something that sounds decent. I worked under the self-imposed limitation that I wouldn’t do more than would be possible on 4-track tape recorder. This allowed me to flesh things out a bit more, while still limiting the amount of time devoted to the recording itself. The basis of the track is the Hohner half-sized guitar with vocals recorded at the same time, with a ukulele providing some oomph in the choruses (and some mandolin-esque chopping on the verses). The other two tracks are devoted to some vocal doubling and harmony on the chorus, with a little ukulele lead part sharing that space. All the recording itself was done on my laptop’s mono microphone again.

Continue reading “Jamuary 2023 Day 6: “King of the Imposters”” →

This song is about growing through failure. Similar in spirit to what Adam Savage of MythBusters has said about “embracing failure.” In the fine tradition of these sorts of challenges, I didn’t really have an idea so I took an existing one (hopefully it’s obvious, “Learning to Fly” by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers) and used that as the basis for something new. Similar to “Uncomfortably Numb” by American Football in terms of execution (but not in terms of sound).

I wanted to do something in a minor key and almost got there, settling on the Dorian mode because that little tiny extra lift in the raised sixth (as compared to natural minor / Aeolian) fit the mood of the song better. For this one I also wanted to do a bit of multi-tracking, but I probably took it too far as the recording process extended a few minutes past midnight. I don’t consider this a cheat because the song itself was written well before 12 a.m. came around. This one was recorded in my home studio, with acoustic guitar, electric bass, claves, tamborine, a shaker, a electric guitar solo, and some harmony vocals.

This is a pop-punk song intended to be about the classic trope of “Splitting a Room in Half” (time-waster warning: TVTropes link).

I imagine a fully fleshed out version would be something like a downtempo Ramones-inspired pop-punk tune, like “Crying in My Beer” by Screeching Weasel or “Number One” by the Queers. I had come up with a little lead guitar line and intended to do a tiny bit of multi-tracking, with the recording uploaded being an earlier demo. However, I ran out of motivation and had to go with what I had. So imagine the “Na na na’s” that open the song are instead a lead guitar line. Since I was still forming the song in my head when recording this version, I also had forgotten the fully riff by the time I got to its second repetition. Bottom line is, this recording’s a little rougher than I’d like. This was recorded on my trusty Hohnrt HAG-250P half-size guitar, which is just incredible for expressing ideas quickly, and is the type of guitar it’s totally fine to take to beach and get sunscreen all over.

Continue reading “Jamuary 2023 Day 4: “Half a Room”” →

Being the first day back to my day job after a nice late-year break, I couldn’t help but think of how we sometimes get into “survival mode,” hopping between isolated islands of events to look forward to. There can be a therapeutic element to writing songs. I get hit pretty hard by post-Christmas blues for a number of reasons, so the month of January can really be a struggle for me. It’s a combination of not having holidays to look forward to, having work spin up again after lots of people have been out, and probably a bit of Seasonal Affective Disorder — I do live in Seattle, after all, and our January – June timeframe can be… bleak, to say the least.

The original idea for this song, the “spark” or “seed,” was to do a Bob’s Burgers end credits style song, with a call-and-response portion. Something like, “Visiting the park with my family / that’s an island in the week / Playing music with my friends / that’s an island in the week.” However, by the time I had the rest of the material it didn’t really seem to fit, so I had to leave it on the cutting floor. It still did its duty, because I’ve been finding that a huge part of writing one song a day is coming up with something to write about.

Recorded live with just a ukulele as accompaniment, into the mono microphone on my laptop.

Continue reading “Jamuary 2023 Day 3: “Islands in the Week”” →