If anything brings me closer to achieving happiness it is the act of traveling. Los Angeles brought me so far away from the spiritual journey I began 5 years ago but upon returning to Olympia I realize that to taint the soul with evil is to learn to cleanse the soul of evil. I have never felt so a part of something larger than myself and my ego. It’s as if my destiny is riding slowly underneath me to keep me from falling through the earth. I am insanely lucky. I am outrageously blessed. This quarter has given me faith in the revolutions of our planet.

People are what connects music to the city or to anything for that matter. How much of myself did I carry there and into my music? How much of what I interpret is through an unshakable lens? My music took a turn towards greater accessibility with a more popesque style. My writing content this quarter revolved around temptation, desire and possession. Sure, these are changes brought about by my experience but they are changes in the meta. I didn’t write about the sun, sand, surf and palm trees. My compositions do not reflect the wide open geography, traffic or smog of Los Angeles. What is buried in the cracks of my LA music are the people whom I met that reside there. These people are not from LA. They are not long time residents. They are young, they are successful, they are professional, discourteous, rude, uplifting, inspirational and fleshy. They are the hands of the urban space. They reach out to you as if the city were a living vessel for life. The music is the sound they make, the sound they listen to and the sounds I heard. What if I did all of a sudden begin to make my compositions reflect the physical world of Los Angeles? I could create anything from classical music to hip hop and still have identifiable correlations. It seems that the act of adapting music directly from the geography of a place is a specific style in and of itself like adaptations of literature into film and is not so much indicative of the place the musician is in rather of their preferred method of composing.

Consciousness stays the same. Try to exist in the third dimension in a way that is not somehow relatable to a constant state of ‘experience’ which metaphysically ‘feels’ the same no matter where you go or what you do. I’ve been all over the world and one thing has always remained the same: ego. The variables of what occurs may be wildly different waking up in Japan from waking up at home but the true essence of your experience retains its state; your identity with identity, awareness of temporality and fear. Identity is what keeps you doing what you do, temporality rules what you do and fear keeps you not doing what you don’t do. All three of these metaphysical principles interact with the physical world and therefore the physical world must in some way shape the metaphysical laws that govern these principles.

I move closer and closer to a complete understanding of my life’s work in metaphysics while remaining true to my creative expression through music. I am growing closer to the people who inhabit this earth through sound of and the study of human interaction.

REKS was an album I released April 11th, 2015 following the conclusion of Winter Quarter. It is a solo album with an appearance from Eli on Bass Guitar in one track. This album focused around my relationship with my mother and the concept of predetermined initial conditions. I sampled from a lot of sad music, Cocorosie specifically whose music is often about abuse and trauma. I also used a lot of old music; jazz, classical, and 50’s love lamentations. I created about 25 original songs in this vein and selected the tracks I thought were ‘best.’ It’s my first major work using the Sp404 SX Sampler. The drum samples used were from a compilation of old school producers samples released in the alley’s of some production forums. It’s the first time I used these particular drum sounds and veered away from the collection I had been using on previous albums. There’s a heavy amount of piano work for the very first time where I attempted to utilize the grids and structures from classwork in my playing style. The compositions were created before and during a few live performances prior to any physical recording of the composed material. This was my first time experimenting with composition through live performances rather than only performing in the studio. Two major aspects of this album are its lack of dependency on synthesizers and increased usage of Bass Guitar. I used bass synths in this album mostly to fill out the low end of the music to maintain a contemporary atmosphere while layering old school sampling, light piano and old school drum samples on top. When not using the bass synth there is actual line-in bass guitar, which I prefer, and have used a lot previously. The album contains 8 songs. All the songs are under 3 minutes besides one. Some are even under 2 minutes or significantly close to 2 minutes. Almost every song has a ‘cut to black’ ending without any fading out or trailing outro. This album was the best display of my production quality to date, it was the easiest to mix and closest to completion “right out of the box.” It is still technically unmastered.

(This Widget is huge)

While in Los Angeles I composed 13 songs in 5 weeks and performed 7 of them while residing there. Few of the songs have names but the naming has taken on a more variant style than i’m used to. Cloud 9, These Days, The Magic of Money and I Just Want it All, are some examples. It seemed that the experience of temporary travel influenced the conceptual commitment to any particular ideas that would bring forth a name for some of our songs. They are currently named by the date of creation for my reflection. About 80% of the tracks were created without any lyrical writing and only three currently have vocals recorded. It’s been a spacey experience. The process of making these songs is not at all what I am comfortable with: Sparse recording sessions, “quantity over initial quality,” and lack of conceptual identification. Only after returning home have I begun to fully organize the stages of the compositions along with their vocal recordings. My experience in Los Angeles bred an odd composing style. I continued to use a turntable to aggregate samples from vinyl, the SP404 for manipulating those samples and Logic Pro X, Massive and Reaktor 5 as usual. However I lacked any realistic sound monitoring system (besides flat frequency headphones,) a piano/keyboard/midi controller, studio microphone, guitar and Bass.

It seems to me that the way in which music and cities are connected is ever evolving. Could it not be said that any change that is happening is happening simultaneously in congruence with all other changes? It has come to my attention many times at the farce of divulging a grand exposition about music and cities. It’s mentally impossible to narrow the causes and effects of geographic ecosystems over any period of time without anthropological investigation and even then we’re only able to interpret off of what we see. The inexplicable possibilities of everything in a world so governed by mass media, transportation technology and internet interaction mutes any point of reference for cause and effect in western society. Look at EDM. What isn’t EDM now? Where can’t you find EDM? Is anything within EDM original at all and therefore who is to be credited and what is their geographical location? Were they born there? How long have they lived there? There are individuals who travel the world multiple times in a single lifetime. Is earth their city? How does earth effect the music on earth? Earth is the reason there is music to begin with. No earth, no people. No people, No music.

People are what connects music to the city or to anything for that matter. How much of myself did I carry there and into my music? How much of what I interpret is through an unshakable lens? My music took a turn towards greater accessibility with a more popesque style. The writing content revolved around temptation, desire and possession. Sure, these are changes brought about by my experience but they are changes in the meta. I didn’t write about the sun, sand, surf and palm trees. My compositions do not reflect the wide open geography, traffic or smog. What is buried in the cracks of my Los Angeles music are the people whom I met that reside there. These people are not from LA. They are not long time residents. They are young, they are successful, they are professional, discourteous, rude, uplifting, inspirational and fleshy. They are the hands of the urban space. They reach out to you as if the city were a living vessel for life. The music is the sound they make, the sound they listen to and the sounds I heard. What if I did all of a sudden begin to make my compositions reflect the physical world of Los Angeles? I could create anything from classical music to hip hop and still have identifiable correlations. It seems that the act of adapting music directly from the geography of a place is a specific style in and of itself like adaptations of literature into film and is not so much indicative of the place the musician is in rather of their preferred method of composing.

Possibly related thoughts: Consciousness stays the same. Try to exist in the third dimension in a way that is not somehow relatable to a constant state of ‘experience’ which metaphysically ‘feels’ the same no matter where you go or what you do. I’ve been all over and one thing has always remained the same: ego. The variables of what occurs may be wildly different waking up in Japan from waking up at home but the true essence of your experience retains its state; your identity with identity, awareness of temporality and fear. Identity is what keeps you doing what you do, temporality rules what you do and fear keeps you not doing what you don’t do. All three of these metaphysical principles interact with the physical world and therefore the physical world must in some way shape the metaphysical laws that govern these principles.

Dirty Heads (Huntington Beach)

Much of experience seems to be treading water. The LSD. The Psilocybin. DMT. Factories for mind management rotating motors, cogs combusting and moving wheels. Lennon once said,

“If the Beatles or the Sixties had a message, it was to learn to swim. Period. And once you learn to swim, swim. The people who are hung up on the Beatles’ and the Sixties’ dream missed the whole point when the Beatles’ and the Sixties’ dream became the point. Carrying the Beatles’ or the Sixties’ dream around all your life is like carrying the Second World War and Glenn Miller around. That’s not to say you can’t enjoy Glenn Miller or the Beatles, but to live in that dream is the twilight zone. It’s not living now. It’s an illusion.”

Yet we backpedal over The Beatles as individuals because only a few ever learn to swim. We idolize and enshrine those people when it is the music itself that is the product of swimming. You don’t swim for yourself or to reach a destination; there is none. You swim for the music, for the people, to show others how. We all drown in the end so swim now.

Frank Ocean

Some of the Los Angeles based musical influences I was surrounded with in her hazy twilight were Frank Ocean, Dirty Heads, Tyler the Creator, Kendrick Lamar and Dr. Dre. Producing hip hop for Eli has led me to examine a lot of popular Hip Hop and contrast it with a deeper understanding of older rap and Rn’B. I’m not sure which, if any, of these artists I’ll hear in our music when it is finished in the coming weeks but what I did notice is how much of an effect working with another producer had on my knowledge of production, audio quality and use of Logic Pro X. Perhaps if I were to specifically target an artists sound with the technical knowledge I have I can create similar sounding instrumentals. This means that if a grid were applied to learning how to compose music electronically the initial foundation that genre specific grooves are laid on is an abstract technical knowledge of “How to__.” You can always watch youtube videos and learn specific tricks that others use to produce sounds but I am engaged in discovering how exactly my experience sounds when given the same tools as professionals but with no avenue specific education. What elements of music do I hear and extract? Then, how do I implement those ideas into new compositions without knowing ‘how’ it was done initially? It is through my experience of other musicians I meet in the flesh that I learn how my individual consciousness distributes expectation and anticipation in my music. When someone I respect advises me on music I will always try it at least once. There are pieces of advice that have worked for me for years and others I used for years that turned out to be holding me back. By reading texts on the effect of music on the industry of music business and the effect of music on the brain I comprehend the methods of musicians around me with greater detail, perhaps discovering patterns that they didn’t intend to be exercising. As a producer, the capability to coach an artist to attain the desired effect of their musicianship is part of my job. Listening to the needs of others and, with an open mind, absorbing the process of those around me will bring me to a broader understanding of the grid of music. There is a time for examining the intricate details of ‘how – t0′ and a time for looking at music from beyond the atmosphere through the eyes of other dreamers.

Tyler the Creator

The sun influenced me. Hours I would spend laying in the grass turned to days and I believe, other than the people I met, I will always remember floating two feet high over Kory’s lawn as dusk settled into a warm night. Surrounded on all sides; walls of successful and expectant people crowd around. What do you have to offer? Dreams became part of my sleep again.

“Nothing.”

Drifting off in a White Suburban I remember my 4-cylinder. I think about the young kids living in Compton beating their fists against Hollywood Blvd. I think about Childish Gambino and how he is from Georgia and how that makes sense. The thread of thought moves into Drake’s Canadian heritage, his name is Aubrey, this all makes sense. Kendrick comes on.

Dre comes on. “People come from all over the world for the women weed and weather.”

I fell asleep with a blunt in my hand.

I dreamt of women I’d never met.

The sun lives in my skin.

“It ain’t my fault that it’s 82 degrees and my tops peeled off.”

I never left. Im always here.

[Geo_mashup_map]

I only makes text posts because we’re threatened with a loss of credit if we don’t (this is gauging the value of learning based off of ones ability to follow directions, no thanks). But the blog site has a maximum amount of data that can be hosted at one time. 100MB. Apparently we live in 1995. I can’t upload anymore music or photographs and this directly conflicts with my prospectus, my ability to construct my education creatively as well as my requirement to post sketches. This is discouraging and I’ve decided to take the path of not giving a f*ck.

Here’s one track (of seven) Eli and I performed in Huntington Beach:

I have a lot more to post and reflect on but I’m over it until the presentations. Playing games with technology is not how I learn.

-Seacrest out.

Connections between cities and music. Cities and Music. Music and Cities. The closest you’re going to get to a Los Angeles native musician is a local musician. Yet, most, if not all local musicians are transplants from other places.

Including us.

Tuesday was a day of outer musical exploration. Surf City has a main street with a weekly block party every Tuesday. The street is lined with fruit vendors, dessert
shops and 40-50% off surf, skate and Rec gear. Where the perpendicular streets meet with Main St. there is a PA system, drum set and multiple amplifiers (or some minimalist variation of this set up). The grid there makes for four simultaneous musical acts from the late afternoon until around 10 O’Clock that play for people as they walk by. Eli, Kory and I were watching a band play, Satisfaction by The Rolling Stones, when Kory recognized two of his friends; Hannah and Cindy. Hannah and Cindy are in a group called, “Hippie Heidi” and they played outside the surf museum at the end of Main St. where they promote a show every Tuesday night. We introduced ourselves and did that thing where you network with people. They offered us a spot in the next week’s line up.

We had two songs.

Fortunately I had been producing like a mad man and already had enough skeletons to begin preparing a concept for this performance. However, I didn’t do much work all weekend: I partied. This seems unproductive but all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

So, Wednesday we went into the Hollywood Hills to pick up a friend of Eli’s: Jack. Jack just returned from filming a promotional tour across American college campuses for a Social Media Application called Yik-Yak. If you wonder where all the social media junkies and juggernauts live, hang-out and network: it’s in Los Angeles. They defend their culture rationally but the sheer economic existence of it is maddening: seventeen and eighteen year old kids making tens of thousands of dollars to tweet, to vine, to…be connected. To be liked.

It was on this day that Eli and I toured melrose ave. Everything in the fashion district sounds like traffic. A ghost town of rubber tread drones sans skateboard clicks and sidewalk cracks. No one is walking. It’s too dry. Occasionally an employee is huddled adjacent a shaded wall puffing away insecurity. “Get out of here with your floral suit and bugati and your watering can and your patch of maintained grass and stained glass furniture. People are starving out here!”

He doesn’t say it, he thinks it. You can see his children in his face; the sullen crest of his crashing expression. The gravity of materialism pulls at the faces of these people. Some can afford to pick them up and some cannot. Some work for others mouths and some mouths here only work for themselves. You can’t hear them, though. The bleached streets manufacture goods in silence. This is art. This is avant-garde, Mon Amie. This is the shadow beneath the Hollywood Sign: advertisements plastered across windows of buses and buildings with pinholes for the impoverished eyes to peek out at you between models breasts and reflect sunset blvd like stars in an eery night.

I would paint it if not for the darkness of my own soul that I’d expose.

That night a group of us crashed an expensive hotel where we were invited to party with has-been pop stars and ‘want-to-be’ Egyptian fashion forward adolescents. These people adorn so many falsities it only justifies to speak of them with countless adjectives. We drank their bud-light and ran a muk. We stole three crystal wine glasses.

Back at the surf shack I Dj’d a three hour set from a graveyard catalogue of music whilst sipping tequila out of my free goblet. I haven’t taken to the 1’s and 2’s since I started producing heavily. I played out a few times in downtown Olympia last year but the crowds there are partially apathetic to any music that requires you to dance. Population density affects crowd mentality. If the musicians in LA are not native than something could simply be said of the vastness and density of niche or conformist groups here and what that means for frequency. If frequency is a set amount of times a particular energetic motion occurs over a period of time than a larger frequency implies more energy and vice versa. More energy is more momentum; the more momentum you have the larger object of still energy you can set into motion. With a higher frequency of people existing in a space of time the energy within that space and time is going to be of an equal frequency when these people gather to support something. Low population = low involvement. High population = high involvement. I’m realizing that this is something observable on a personal level. Each person I meet has a much higher resonating momentum than people I have experienced enjoying Olympia. When meeting people vibrating at higher frequencies I feel myself being pulled higher and higher. I can see artistic success in their eyes and genius between the teeth of their smile. Everything you dream of is just within reach here. Vibrate a little faster. Surround yourself with the kinetic energy of those moving in a positive direction and watch as your wings catch the Los Angeles thermal into the sky.

The pot weather is pretty good here, too.

Thankfully because Eli and I took 48 hours after our eventful weekend to write, arrange and rehearse a seven song performance for Cinco De Mayo. We’ll post photos, videos and other miscellaneous content in next weeks post. I recovered my HardDrive from Keaton’s Studio and have attached the song temporarily coined, “Cloud 9” which we wrote, composed and produced during our first week in Los Angeles and performed on May 5th. Next week I will include some more of the finished instrumentals we performed.

Beginnings have the potential to be the most difficult; beginning a sentence or a paragraph, beginning new friendships or sports. Parts of ourselves rest between who we are and what we experience. Going beyond our preconceptions of identity becomes easier as we become more comfortable with where we are, who we’re with and what we’re doing. Comfortability comes with preconceptions reaffirmed consistently over time. This is the experience of change.

It’s difficult to talk about change when it’s happening but even more so before it’s happened. As of my writing this I have spent exactly two weeks in Southern California minus a five day emergency trip back to Olympia. The process of journeying from point A to point B wether from the kitchen to the garage or Olympia to Los Angeles is an experience of consciousness to validate the ego’s continuity. Plotting the points between would be frustrating and useless. Let’s just say there is such thing as a large metal bus that flies and carries people all over the world in a period of hours, sometimes without any lapse in the passengers consciousness, and voila there they are.

Here I am.

Costa Mesa.

This place carries an air of “touch and go.”

The traffic is touch an go. The waves are touch and go. The food is touch and go. I am touch and go.

Away from the touching and going roars mighty metal buses miles high in the sky traveling to and fro. Jet engines swallow the keynote to trail off like distant thunder. Motorcycles feast across the distant expressways, yet youfeel as if you’re right near the beach. The traffic is easily mistaken for waves; birds singing sweet melodies between seagull belches.

Sirens.

No one shouts.

They’re all about their business. Each individual holds themselves responsible for their lives. They see themselves as storefronts, computers and machines. The imageability of this city is the refracted plastering of the inhabitants collected self-imageability. Los Angeles could only be as centralized and beautiful as the identities of 8.6 million people spread through the basin of a valley. I can’t imagine the diversity of artists, businessmen and tourists that frequent and depart on a daily basis. The technological level of the earth is too damn high. How is one supposed to study the living anthropology of a region if it’s changing too rapidly to be identified? I don’t intend to be defeatist but it’s akin to seeing an electron: by the time you see it, it’s gone.

Artists come from all over the world to pursue careers in music and some happen upon careers in music coming from a completely different field. Billions of records are recorded and distributed in Southern California but the artists don’t live in LA. Hell, most of the people who function in LA don’t live in LA; I’m not even in LA! The cultural identity is completely semantical and political. If they didn’t draw a line, LA would be a state of mind.

As for what I do in Costa Mesa: I’m not here to be a tourist. I am not here to listen to bands from other parts of the world and pass that off as a cultural study of Southern California. I am here to make music. I am here to unobtrusively observe, learn and reflect on a new environment. How will this affect the music that the artist composes?

Below I have included four very rough draft skeletons that I am producing and composing in collaboration with Eli, of course. The fact that these songs are in such primitive stages is partially who I am and partially the effect this region has had on me. Since waves (and therefore surfing) are inconsistent we frequently ride off to the beach at a moments notice. The friend we are staying with, Kory, is an artist as well and has no set schedule. The weather is almost perfect, almost all the time. Nothing is stopping you from riding a skateboard to the record store, taco bar or 7-eleven. Less sequential hours are spent on music than when Eli and I are were in Woodland Hills. I forgot my hard drive at the studio we were working in there and have been making music without it since (this also means the other complete instrumental from the first week is yet to be retrieved). Is this place affecting the music? It’s too soon to tell compositionally, although I have purchased a few records here that are LA based musicians. What I am sure of is that this place affects my process in music making, my approach to music and my views as my self as a business.

So finally, here’s some fucking music:

Created 4/27/2015. Logic Pro X, “A Taste of Honey” vinyl sample using Roland Sp-404SX, Steinway Studio Piano. There is another sample used as textured effect with delay and so on. The piano is way too loud especially for systems with high treble. You’ve been warned. The vinyl for this track was purchased at SecondSpin in Costa Mesa.

Created 4/26/2015. Logic Pro X, Massive, Vinyl sample from Jefferson Starship using Roland Sp-404SX. I use a bass synthesizer here that I became aware of working in Woodland Hills with Keaton. On smaller computers this synth sound will go unrecognized in the mix. Get a better sound system, ya kook. I have recently been playing with different 1/32 hi hats instead of 1/8 or 1/16. This change was made after creative conversations in LA with Eli as to what he enjoys to listen to in his music. The vinyl for this track was purchased at SecondSpin in Costa Mesa.

Created 4/21/2015. Logic Pro X, “As Tears Go By,” The Rolling Stones; sampled using Roland Sp-404SX. There is a vocal sample of my voice that was discarded in the process of creating my last album. The phrase is, “Everything’s fine.” We found the record in Kory’s collection.

Created 4/20/2015. Save the Best for Last. This track is the most developed of our second week. It was made prior to my departure back to Olympia on a very stoney day. It uses all the usual gadgets and tricks, however, the sample is one I have utilized before. At the time we didn’t have a turntable to rip new samples with so we delved into the graveyard. Reaktor 5 and Massive were both used in the synthesis as well as the Bass Synth derived from working with Keaton.

Week 3 Readings:

• The Lost Gate, Orson Scott Card. (Fiction)
• Chapters 1-23

All You Need to Know About the Music Business, Donald S. Passman.

• Chapters 1-10

Donald Passman dissects the Music Business in a choose-your-own-ending style. Depending on what is relevant to interest or inquiry the reader can flip around the book. Within the text he gives parenthetic references to future or past pages that contain more in-depth explanations. The book is written chronologically parallel to the life of an artist who is strategically planning a career in music from the floor to the ceiling. No previous experience necessary. 

Passman begins the text laying out who should be apart of an artists team, why, and how to acquire them. This all entangles itself within the branded image of the artist: the artists philosophy and goals. Who do others see you as or who do you want others to see you as?

There are many options, he explains, but there are ways that the music industry already flows. Knowing this information is useful in navigating the currents of a music career.

As an artist who takes control of 100% of my personal life, musical career and finances I consider myself worth 100% of my profit. However my profit from music is currently $0.00 and I cannot very well have 100% of nothing. I need a team; managers, agents, attorneys. Their time and resources are worth something and within the industry there are standards to how much they are worth. This is usually calculated as a percentage of the artists earnings. It is up to me to decide what tasks I can’t handle, what tasks I can and who is best to fill the gaps.

Once an artist establishes a team (the largest part of this collective is a fan base) they are ready to begin selling their music and negotiating with labels. This is a fork in the road for the artist and for the text. Reading through how record contracts operate is useful in one of two ways:

1) You plan to sign away your career to the benefit of a benefactor (your label) wether major or independent and need this information to assist you in contract negotiations, bargaining power and lowering the cost of an attorney by not being a pretty stool with a voice.

2) It reinforces your motivation to be independent because you aren’t a pretty stool with a voice and now you know the face of the monster you’re avoiding. Curiosity kills the cat. Im not a cat. I only have one life.

Since I subscribe to benefit number two I will forgo any further explanation of record contracting and utilize the readings to supplement my creative experiences in Los Angeles as well as my other readings. I will return to responding when I reach Chapter 15: Songwriting and Music Publishing.

 We see more of ourselves in others than we see who they are. What we despise in others is what we despise that we see in ourselves that we cannot embrace. Wrestle the evils and see that within judgment is discernment, within discernment is caution and within caution is fear. You are afraid and so am I. What quiets your fears? That is what quiets mine. It’s not enough to seek to escape our own suffering. We will escape it by learning how to escape others suffering, do you see?

I see and when I see I must look for kindness and forgiveness. Instead, what makes its image in the mirror? Silver reflections give way to sets of self-aware waves and I see a young, dry landscape ready to burst into flames. There is a patch of yellowing grass that rustles in the breeze below both balconies of this home overlooking a dense forest of trees who seem not to know the way that brought them to this place. The paper grass speaks to me of impending flames and irresponsibility. So I clean my bong with a match stick and throw it in. 

Faith. Religion. Money. Love. Beauty. The sun eats away the skin of the maggots as they strive to eat every bit of oxygen in the air. In youth the power of the earth gives us jubilance but in age it reveals the scars that have laid underneath filters on our social media screens. You cannot hide from the humility of the weather that takes away everything it gives. We are eating off plastic and paper to save water on a planet that has more than enough to occupy an entire solar system. Here we are in the mist of a planetary ballet, fog machines and laser beams but what have we done? Filled our lungs with carbon. Exhale. 

The highways are streams; the cautious, stones being smoothed by the raging movement of those who are carried with the water. But these are dry lands. These streets sparkle star dust. Tumbleweed personalities roll through with smiles as I thrust a herring into their hand. 

Eggy. Ovular personalities of superiority. Guarded children fenced in the den become feral posters of territory. I am angry because I cannot find fault in this place; only in the way I perceive can error be margined. Receding I know what they say:

This is our home. 

So my ostrich legs fold me back away into a desert of one track thought. 

“Exist. 

Let them live and perhaps you, too, shall learn to live. Oh sagittarius, maker of hearts and haver of homes, you wandering traveller, carry a piece of each of them in your chest and sprinkle their dust across the earth, then others, too, may learn to live. Listen to the roll of a mid-spring Los Angeles heart and see that its timbre is made from the fell of a thousand suns beating down on shining teeth waiting to meet your gaze in smile.”

_____________________________________

The song at the top was recorded in Calabasas, CA; just north of Los Angeles. The recording took place at a friends studio using Logic Pro X, Manley Dynamic Microphone, Roland SP-404 SX, Kontakt 5 and Massive. The hook/bridge is sung by myself and Keaton separating two verses: one by Eli and one by me. The song did not take all that long to create, probably somewhere around eight hours. We were in Calabasas for only three or four days and left with one complete song and a skeleton.

This track is unmixed and unmastered. It has accompanying vocals that are not on the recording. It is only instrumental.

I have been writing and performing this song so often that it almost seems opaque to me. It started out in a series of recordings I was working on utilizing record samples inspired from our classwork. I picked up a Stravinsky record, Gregorian Chanting record and Shoenberg/Beethoven record from Rainy Day in Olympia. This was the ninth song in a series of sixteen and counting. The exact sample is from the beginning of the Concerto in D. The piano I wrote is rooted in D major but spends most of its time in the minors surrounding it. It wasn’t until this afternoon that the piano was actually recorded into the song file. This instrumental was used simultaneously with slight variations for two different performance collaborations. I practiced performing this song for two weeks with three different people; each version was equally as powerful and met with similar reception.  The first performance took place at Pig Bar in downtown Olympia with Ladexx. It was the only original in a series of three songs we performed and I used the Akai MPK49 to perform the piano live. The next morning I awoke and came into class to perform the piece for our quarters final performance workshop with Eli and Kimani. This time I decided to use the actual grand piano rather than a keyboard. The difference in key weight had an unexpected effect on my ability to play some of the softer parts audibly and stronger parts with restraint. For the first time I was able to contrast separate performances and instruments before writing a finalized version of instrumentation. The piece is still in development and is due to be performed in Eli’s future set lists as well as Wednesday March 18th at Pig Bar’s Open Mic. There is a recording of the original performance floating in cyberspace that I am trying to aggregate. I will post when I find it.

This track is lightly mixed and unmastered. It is only the instrumental.

Chad Leaf is a classmate, friend and LA native whom I collaborated with in Fall quarter. I thought this a pertinent inclusion in the study considering the connections between Olympia, Musical Cities and LA. With idle hands I slowly pieced this track together. It began as essentially a long series of trial and error experiences between two jams separated by a cigarette comma. The instrumentals consist of myself on the piano, Chad on the guitars and bass and Eli with lyrical accompaniment, however, this has yet to make it onto the recording. The drums and beats were produced by myself and a unique drum program to Logic Pro X.

The collaboration started as a rough idea chad had recorded and an inquiry to my involvement. Chad came over to my place with Eli and we set out to replicate the drums Chad had included in his rough draft. This process was relatively easy considering the ability to program and quantize in DAW’s. I took the beat Chad had in mind and added my own flair to it with the quick snap 808 Snare drum and the live sounding cymbals and fills. After this loop was created, Chad tuned into the Digital Audio Workstation and accompanying instruments set out we jammed over the guitar riffs and melodies that were written beforehand. This process went on for a few hours. We eventually decided on a few solid ideas and recorded an instrumental with rhythmic repetition and movement over-layed with sparse dances of guitar.

A second recording session brought Chad in on the Bass Guitar and filled out the bottom of the song like an old wedding dress.

Okay. I’m bad at simile.