Category: Jamuary

Kicking off Jamuary 2024, I think this song is a spiritual successor to the final one from 2023, “Reasons To Smile.” It’s a song about having a positive outlook, and not being so self-critical, and how it takes time to fundamentally change your world view. I have a lot of reasons to be excited and hopeful for the new year, and while I don’t want to claim that this song is a “mission statement” for the project as a whole, I think it’s at least fair to say that I want it to set the tone for what’s to come.

Musically, this is in 6/8 time. The chords are mostly garden-variety, with everything diatonic except for flat-VII and flat-III appearing in the bridge. I suppose you could make the argument that the bridge temporarily modulates to G or C (I hear it more as G, but the “F” kind of fools you into thinking it might be C). The rest of the song makes use of purely diatonic material (including a chord rooted on every scale degree but vii°), with the “fanciest” voicing being the Em7sus4 and A7sus4 chords used at the end and in the middle of the verses, respectively. Otherwise, nothing really fancy or notable here.

I recorded this one in my studio, with 6-string and 12-string acoustic guitar, electric guitar, Kala U-Bass, and the instrumental part is played on a melodica. The drums are from Kontakt’s “60 Drums” package. There is a bit of noodling on the 12-strings during the verses (they are absent in the first half of the verses, play a low-key lead line on the second half, then strummed fully in the chorus) that I kept in because I like the movement it lends to the section.

Lyrics

I’m taking it easy on myself

I’m cutting my own brain some slack

I’m banishing my harshest critic

And I promise I won’t let him back

 

It’s so easy to write off your credit

It’s so easy to lean on the lie

Those times you said “forget it”

Or “Why would I even try?”

Now I’m done being dismissive

Done downplaying success

From this moment I’ll be permissive

And open my heart to yes

 

So I’m getting rid of excuses

I’m clearing the scales from my eyes

‘Cause all my slights and abuses

Were purely internalized

I’m shaking off the stiffness

It won’t come easy to me

I’m leaning my best on forgiveness

And taking some time to breathe

 

I’m firing up the synapses now

They’ve laid dormant so long

I’ll push and push and then push some more

Till they finally grow up strong

Continue reading “Jamuary 2024 Day 1: “Banishing My Harshest Critic”” →

On this final day, I mulled a couple of options before deciding to go with something positive to close out the month. This is a song about actively trying to re-frame your thoughts and focus on the positive. It’s very easy to to dwell on things that make you anxious or angry or worried, and it takes effort to think about what makes you happy. This song uses a different mode — A mixolydian — and with the two modes that are closest to major/Ionian (Lydian and Mixolydian) I always struggle to keep the tonal center locked on the root note. Here, I think there’s not much danger of your ear hearing the song in D, though.

This one was recorded with the Zoom Recorder to capture the acoustic guitars (there are two of them), using the XY pair, the SM-57, and the guitar’s pickup to blend a good mix. Similarly, the vocals are via the SM-58 into the Zoom recorder. The electric guitars and bass are from the BOSS interface. The drums are Superior Drummer. The piano is the Grandeur piano library, but I only sequenced it instead of playing it on my keyboard.

Continue reading “Jamuary 2023 Day 31: “Reasons to Smile”” →

I wrote this song about a legendary moment from my youth. In high school, I was in a punk band called Killing the Hare. We had played a couple of shows at this venue called the Energy Plant, which was an all-ages juice bar. We had a show scheduled for the weekend, playing with another band called Horseshoes and Handgrenades. Unfortunately, the week of our show the owner of the venue got into some legal trouble and the venue closed down. One of the H&H members knew the night manager at the local Pizza Hut, and they gave their okay to play our show in the parking lot. What followed was a formative moment in my life, as described in the song.

This was recorded with the Zoom recorder on the Hohner guitar, an SM-58 for the vocals, the BOSS interface for the guitar solo, and my mini keyboard for the piano parts.

Continue reading “Jamuary 2023 Day 30: “Bitterroot Hardcore”” →

This song is about all the stuff we involuntarily commit to memory, like random lines from TV and movies, or some of the super-catchy jingles we see in ads. Since I haven’t even done one ska song yet (which is a huge oversight on my part), I also made it a ska-punk song. I never thought I’d write a song that references a talking butt gag from a Jim Carrey movie, but here we are.

The drums are Blasting Room synthesized. The horns are the Session Horns Pro library by Native Instruments. I spent a good chunk of the day on this, but I left sequencing the horns until the end so they’re sparse (only appearing in the two instrumental sections). The guitars and bass came from the DI on the BOSS recorder, and the vocals are done via an SM-58 into the Zoom Recorder.

Continue reading “Jamuary 2023 Day 29: “Pop Culture Nightmare”” →