Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Greatest Hits, Vol. 8: the early-ish years

So, I started this blog a couple of years ago to have a way to share the music I play with people I know.  I thought that way I could better justify the time I spend playing music and I might then be driven to actually finish pieces (my hard drive was swollen with bits and pieces of songs).  It continues to be a fun way to share music that would never leave my practice room otherwise.

The playback and download stats are not stunning: a few thousand plays and a few hundred downloads, but in the process I've been able to get in touch with a whole community of amateur musicians who make music around the world.  I often hear people lament the changes in classical music, rock, or some other sector of the music world, but overall I think that music is more diverse and adaptive than it has ever been.

I looked over my playback statistics and have decided to re-post my most played 5 tracks.

Number 5 isn't really my song at all.  It's a James Brown song over which I decided to add more instrumentation.  In a strangely lucid moment, his zombie body will manage to find me and exact his revenge.




Number 4 is an instrumental track inspired by jazz fusion.  It's name is a twist of "Mr. Gone", an album by the phenomenal fusion band Weather Report.




Track 3 is a cover I did of a song by the folk band the Indigo Girls.  It's me singing and playing guitar (both at once!  That's harder than I thought it would be).




My second most played track was a group effort.  It was inspired by a missionary I knew who used incessantly the weird songs that he would make up.  I got my kids to contribute vocals and background noise. 




The most played track that I've published on the blog is a song that I wrote soon after we found out that Sarah was pregnant with Lucy.  It allowed me to preserve some of the mix of emotions that I felt at the time.

Thank you for visiting, listening, and being part of my life.