This song is about negative self-talk. If you’re your own harshest critic then you’re probably often wrong. That’s a message I could really do better about sinking into my head because I’m very hard on myself in pretty much every aspect of my life — work, family, creativity, the list goes on — and I guess I wrote it as a reminder about maintaining perspective.

This one used a recording setup than usual — I have a Zoom recorder with a stereo XY pair, and I used that for the ukulele and the Hohner. I also recorded the vocals using the same recorder. The piano part is actually played on a tiny Akai MIDI keyboard I have, as is the lead instrumental line. There’s only 2 octaves on that sucker, so I had to transpose from the song’s key of Bb down a tritone to E so that I could play the little mixolydian chorus bit with two hands. I also used that keyboard to input the 808 kick and snare heard in the song. I think this song would benefit from an upright bass, but I don’t have one of those (and couldn’t play it, even if I had one lying around).

Continue reading “Jamuary 2023 Day 13: “The Wrong Man””

A real 90's kid. He's even got that if-Picasso-art-were-real 90s vibe, in an Uncanny Valley sort of way.

I decided to go with nostalgia, because that’s an easy way to appeal to a lot of people, right? I feel like I could add all sort of stuff — where is the content about the food, the Jack Doritos and the Squeeze-Its and the (delicious) Hostess Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles pies? Maybe I should add a third verse?

This was recorded with a combination of the BOSS guitar sim and the mono laptop microphone. It’s slightly over the 4-track limit, since it’s got the double-tracked electric guitars.

Continue reading “Jamuary 2023 Day 12: “Saturday Morning, 1991””

I decided to go with something a bit more lighthearted for today’s song, since the last few have been heavy subject-wise. And yes, I recognize the irony of calling a song “lighthearted” when it has “sad” in its title. I was trying to do something simpler and shorter than the last few, which feel like they’ve been expanding away from me. This one has a fairly simple structure and harmony (nothing fancier than V7-of-V and I7), unless you count the modulation to the 4th scale degree for the bridge.

Recorded as per usual with the laptop mono speaker. This time, I used a tenor uke and a soprano uke for the two instruments, with the tenor also playing the little instrumental leads. Those lead sections are the only things standing in the way of this being in standard 32 bar form, by the way (I guess the extra bar pivoting to the bridge also counts).

Continue reading “Jamuary 2023 Day 11: “My Sad Beard””

The song asks a question about how many times we try the same or similar things, before we decide those attempts have failed and try something radically different. How long have we had entirely too much poverty, overcrowded prisons, and the majority of our fellow humans one accident away from financial ruin? The longer I think of the line “for nearly forty years,” the more bummed out I get, because I have my doubts that it won’t need to be updated to nearly 50, nearly 60, and then nearly 70 years. I don’t necessarily want an answer to the questions asked here, and I certainly don’t want the answer to “how long” to be “never.”

This one’s a true 4-tracker. Just the uke + vocals on one, another instrumental track from the Hohner, and then two vocal backing tracks. Could have done it on an analog Portastudio! It’s also the first one to use a time signature other than 4/4. Not completely, though — for some reason I felt it necessary to switch from 6/8 time on the verses to 4/4 time on the bridge.

Continue reading “Jamuary 2023 Day 10: “A Better World Is Possible””

I struggled with an idea, trying in vain to find something in a “brainstorming session” (this is what I call taking a nap and thinking of ideas). I eventually decided to use a constraint to kick-start creativity, and in this case, that constraint was to limit myself to just the 3 major chords in the key (B, E, and F#). This is standard pop-punk fare; it’s probably at least partially inspired by the Mr. T Experience album I was listening to this morning while dropping off my kid at school.

This is back to the 4-track format, with the acoustic elements (Hohner mini guitar, soprano ukulele, vocals) recorded as usual with the laptop mic in mono. The electric lead line was recorded using a guitar simulation pedal via its USB interface. Technically there’s a tiny bit of overlap between the backing vocals and the guitar line — and technically the guitar line is in stereo — but rules were made to be broken… right?
Continue reading “Jamuary 2023 Day 9: “Cheer Up””