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So, it always seems like I've just posted something, but the weeks get away from me.  There have been a few little musical projects that I've stopped and started during May, but none have reached a state suitable for posting.  For now they go into the massive folder of half-done projects that I'll sort through in a couple of months on an evening when the muses are particularly distant.

Tonight I've got another new song to post.  Everyone gets overwhelmed and confused from time to time, and while it's not a good feeling to wallow in, it is humbling.  It's a pleasing thought to imagine a life with a clear path always in front of me, but I think the reality would be disappointing.  This song was an attempt to convert those thoughts to ones and zeros, suitable for storage and transmission.

It really is amazing that we manage to live as long as we do.  A vast number of mechanical, chemical, electrical, and thermal conditions must be preserved to keep our bodies ticking.  And a significant chunk of our time is taken up by things that our bodies tell us we need to do to continue the process.  But then, what are we to do with the time and energy that remains?  Good things, right?  But that's quite hard for us to figure out on our own.  So many of the initial conditions that help determine the ultimate effects of our actions are unknown to us. 

So, here's the song that resulted from that soup of thought.  The annoying distorted glissing with delay in the background is slide guitar.  What?  You haven't tried that before?  Well, you've got to eat it all if you want dessert.  And that's final.


Enormity by are.kay.more

There are rougher edges on this one than I typically like to leave, but I'd hate to have a month go by with only one post.  Maybe I'll apply fixes later and upload an improved version in the future.

It's a tough job, but somebody's got to do it

Any of you who follow my blog know that it impacts not only your life, but the lives of many others. There are in fact, three dedicated followers to this blog, proudly listed on the right sidebar. It is for them and for the faceless masses that I must continue to produce sounds. In case there are any naysayers out there that think that Bono and I can't change the world with music, here are some graphs to prove my point:

There you have it.  Collected by Google herself.

Oh wait, that one doesn't have the axis label.  Here you go:

Impressive, eh?  But wait, there's more.  It's not just the job seekers that I care about, it's the eaters, too.  Or, more correctly, the eat-seekers, since not everyone is able to acquire food to eat successfully.  See for yourself:

Now you're asking, how do I ensure that people do virtuous and effective things with the energy provided by the food from oprahsfavoritedeathmetal?  Easy: a worldwide network of cameras feeding information about everyone's actions back to a central positronic brain that controls us all like puppets.

Here's a list of other things that have taken place since (and likely because of) the beginning of Uncle Reeree's Music Blog:
-Mimi got an A in Calculus
-the World Cup
-Somebody in England got married
-the Olympics
-the government decided shutting down was a bad idea
-no world-crushing meteors
-India beat Pakistan in cricket

We will stop there.  Point made.  In some small way, the sounds that flow out of the internet and into your ear buds are the butterfly wings that continue to stave off eminent destruction.  The inadvertent twitch of your rump as you listen to "Rumble and Bounce" just made somebody decide to get a smoothie instead of raiding a peasant village.  So, carry on, my children.  Your work is as important as mine.

Brownie recipe found during monkey brain vivisection by are.kay.more

Gone postal

Sorry guys, but this one is even less than half done, but I think that's how it's going to stay. I mostly want to push the last post farther down the blog's page. I liked it, but it's too depressing to stay on top for long.

This one is a very incomplete cover of the song Brand New Colony by the Postal Service. They're an excellent electronic band from the 2000's. I wondered what one of they're songs, which are typically heavy on drum machines and synthesizers, would sound like with only piano and vocals. In the end I allowed myself to process the different parts, but all of the sounds other than the vocals come from the piano.

It was fun, but some bad recording technique on my part means that it would be difficult to extend. Here it goes:

Brand New Colony Cover by are.kay.more

Dark side of the Reeree

Professional musicians who play original music have to build a style and a brand. If they put out a track that achieves success, fans will expect similar elements in the musician's future works. If a musician breaks to abruptly from the brand that they've built, listeners feel betrayed and angry. I would bet, for instance, that if Weird Al released a sappy love song, his house would get torched.

As a guy making music in the dining room while his family sleeps, I am in a different situation. I can play whatever I like, without having to cater to any external expectations. It's often rewarding to make something beautiful or humorous, but sometimes it's interesting to explore darker emotions. So, tonight I present a cover of a Steely Dan song called "Do It Again." Be warned: it's a real downer of a song. It had been stuck in my head recently, though, and I wanted to try to record something unsettling and torturous. I used a portable recorded to collect sounds of things hitting our ceiling fan and played with it a bit. Also in the mix are guitar, bass, and synthesizer. Let me know what you think:

Do It Again by are.kay.more

Where there's a will, there's a dead guy

...or at least someone who's going to be dead. Or maybe there's a lawyer? Hmmmm. This is not working out too well so far.

Some music has a purpose: emotional, political, or religious. Some music serves as a catalyst to lend power to other art forms, as movie sound tracks do. Other music just keeps me awake when I'm driving a van full of sleeping kids back from some adventure out of town. Each week people gather in churches around the world and sing hymns, some hundreds of years old. Each weekend trios in play new music in bars and cafes, while people look for other people who look better in the dark. National anthems are sung at sporting events for fans who came to see something else instead.

In almost every case music seems to be an over-elaborate waste. Not to say that the music is bad, but why have any at all? Other arts make sense. Literature can be used as a tool to record history, to analyze arguments, or to explore situations not fit for real-world application. Some aspects of visual arts allow for recording and expressing things that may be cumbersome to capture with language alone. Even engineers use drawings to specify mechanical parts. The culinary arts leverage our need to sustain ourselves physically. But what does music do? What does it help us do that we couldn't do otherwise? How does it help us to more effectively live or reproduce?

I have no idea. Moreover, I have no idea why I put time into it. In a life already packed with responsibilities, I still feel a need to carve out part of my time, our living space, and our finances to make music. The cost can be measured, but not the benefit. At the same time, I don't feel cheated. I don't want more from music than it has provided me. Perhaps it is the part of me that will keep engineering from making me completely inhuman. It will remind me that there are unquantifiables that are worthwhile. As long as music gives me goosebumps when there's no good reason to feel anything, I'll know that there's some magic to be sought and found.

So, with that, here's a short piece. Enjoy.

Rumble & Bounce by are.kay.more

Pop goes the synthesizer

Sorry guys. Things got pretty crazy there for a couple of months. For some reason, Sarah's body thinks that turning itself inside out is an important part of making a baby, and it always take a while to convince it otherwise. She's doing much, much better now, though. Thank you, everyone, for your help and well wishes.

I'm still not finding time to play music much, but here's one that I wrote and recorded last year but never posted. So much of what I end up noodling around with ends up as minor key instrumental stuff, that I thought it would be fun to write kind of a bouncy carefree song. I also wanted to see if I could shoe-horn a bassoon line and some recorder (y'know, the little flute things) in the mix somewhere.

Please disregard the 30 seconds of silence at the end. I was having issues rendering from the recording software...

Eskimos by are.kay.more

P.S. I mixed it on my $20 headphones, which means that it sounds great on THEM, but it seems to be growly and distorted on most other speakers I've tried. Maybe I'll spring for some proper studio reference monitor speakers one day .

Bundle of joy

My darling wife is pregnant with our fourth child. Over this last week the sickness has set in and I'm reminded of how much she willingly sacrifices herself for those she loves.

As we considered having another child and later discovered she had conceived, a lot of different feelings fight for attention in my head. Memory reminds me of Sarah's pain and discomfort in pregnancy and childbirth, the sleepless nights after the baby is born, and the many months of marathon parenting that babies require. At the same time it's amazing to be the first person that someone else meets in this world and for them to learn from you what love is; that there are important things beyond the needs of which our bodies constantly remind us. And babies do offer up occasional rewarding grins, gurgles, and cuddles. In the end, it seems that the discomfort is only temporary while the joy has no limit.

It pushed me to do something that I don't do often: write a song with actual lyrics. I tried to give voice to both sides of what I was feeling at the moment. This was mostly written and recorded in an evening before Sarah got very sick. It's my first tune to include ukelele. The needs of her and my children will probably put the music blog way on the back burner, so you may need to find a new source of bleepity-bloopity instrumental synth music to get you through the next months.

Enjoy.

Make Room by are.kay.more