A portrait of a punk rock baby, with a mohawk and one hell of sneer.

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”” →

Abstract illustrated image of a woman sitting at a desk (or in front of a book, or both) holding a giant clock with another gigantic clock behind her. Her face also vaguely resembles the face of a clock.

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”” →

A blue and purple nebula, floating in space.

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”” →

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”” →