I finished a new song today called "It's Called For...". It features a lot of samples of Audrey Hepburn, in the film "Charade".

I've written often about my struggles with sampling. I am no singer. I can create the whole song, but have no vocals to provide. I grew up in the 1980's where Hip Hop artists used samples as a palate of pop-culture references that furthered the meaning of the song. Since then, the world has clamped down on sampling from obviously owned works. I used samples to fill in the gaps left by my lack of vocal ability. It took me a while to realize that sampling was a non-starter if I intended to release the song. In the mean time, I sampled a lot, making pop-culture references, and developing a style dependent on samples. It wasn't until I tried to press a vinyl single that I realized that I had hit a wall. I couldn't sign the wavers necessary to release my songs with the samples I used. I didn't have the legal right. I was at a stalemate. Then I had an epiphany. Many films and TV shows are in the public domain. I could use these.

I rehash this story because one of my earlier songs was a song called "Own Me". In it I heavily sampled Audrey Hepburn in "Breakfast at Tiffany's". It was an early song. It was a rough song... but it was a good song. It has fallen into a category of songs I shouldn't publish because of its sampling of works I do not have rights to use. It wasn't even making much of a pop-culture reference, as it isn't a famous line or anything... except for the pop-culture reference of her distinctive voice. 

The new song, "It's Called For..." is using Audrey Hepburn again, sampled from a movie called "Charade", which is in the public domain, and thus free to use. I was able to sample her being every bit of Audrey hepburn, with a little bit of cary grant for good measure... and I can release it...

It's been more than a year since my last entry, or my last recording. The year has been a busy one, as my wife and I prepared for the arrival of our son, who was born in February. Obviously my priorities shifted in the year leading up to his birth. I was pleased with "The Witness", and was well prepared for it to be my last recording for a while. Our time was beginning to shift toward prepping for the baby's arrival. Much to my surprise, he's a pretty chill baby. The first month is always an adjustment, but honestly, he has settled into a predictable rhythm quite early. They wife and I discussed taking advantage of his chill-nature, and the reclaiming of small bits of ourselves and our creativity. We traded days of baby-duties with each other in order to allow us to have just a little bit of time to pursue some creative outlets. Mine is MechaniCrash. I was back in the studio this weekend, and blew off the cobwebs with a new track. 

This song is called "Stay Away From Wasps", and it is a funky little guitar-driven song with samples from a 1959 public domain film called "The Wasp Woman". There isn't anyone particularly famous in it. I was more sucked in by the subject matter. It is about a woman who heads up a cosmetic company. She was formerly a model, and as she approaches 40, is disappointed by the effect her aging is having on her appearance. She is approached by a guy who convinces her that the key to returning her youth is injections of royal jelly from wasps. Needless to say, mayhem ensues, culminating with her in a full wasp-head (Think Vincent Price in "the Fly"), eating her friends. the samples I chose aren't nearly as dramatic, but everyone speaks in that droll sort of cadence that people in the 50's used to use.

Also of note is that all of the guitar work on this track was done on a new guitar that I haven't had a chance to record with until now. It is a Fender Limited Edition guitar called the "Meteora". Its a strange Telecaster with a radically different body. It's a pretty high-spec guitar, and played every-bit like one. It was really fantastic... and it kinda looks like a wasp...

The song "Stay Away From Wasps" can be found on iTunes, Spotify, Soundcloud, YouTube, or here on this site!

It is the end of February, and I have participated in my third RPM Challenge, finishing an entire album during the month of February. For my friends who draw, it is sort of the music-version of "Inktober". February is usually a rough month for me. Typically I have at least one week-long business trip. This shortens the already-short month to a down and dirty 21 days to write and record ten songs OR thirty-five minutes of music. 

It has been four years since the first time I participated , and I have recorded roughly 30 songs between that batch and this batch. The difference in my knowledge, abilities and confidence made this version of the challenge much more about creative choices than technical execution. This is a nice piece of evolution on which to reflect.

I solved my technical issue of copyrights-on-samples by using only public domain sample-sources. I fully implemented my new AKAI MPCX as both a sampler and a drum machine, the latter really upping my beat-game. And... I have progressed as a guitarist, doing more competent solos, and guitar work in general. 

Most importantly, I like the results. One wants to think one is getting better at one's hobbies, but when the attempt is to create something with some artistic merit, It is very satisfying to catch myself humming some of these songs. Music is so visceral... the technical details often don't add up to a song someone actually likes.

So... check out the album "The Witness". You can get it here, listen on Soundcloud, or buy it on iTunes today, or it should be up on Spotify in a couple of days.

It is New Year's Day, 2018. It's a good day to reflect. 

I'm approaching 50 recordings in the four years since taking on the "MechaniCrash" project. I'm still having fun, and pushing myself creatively. I'm incrementally a better musician and producer than I was a year ago... at least a little bit.

I had a moment of moral enlightenment last year, and moved from sampling anything to only sampling things in the public domain. Even the images I use for album-art are of my own creation, or in the public domain.

My trusty old Roland SP-808 Zip-disk-driven sampler finally shit the bed, and was replaced by the magnificent Akai MPC-X, a machine that I am absolutely not worthy of. I can already do everything I was doing on the old Roland, and seem to only be using 0.05% of the machine's ability.

Yesterday I finished the 12th recording of 2017. Besides recording, I expanded distribution. You can now find some MechaniCrash songs on iTunes, Spotify, Amazon, Google Play, and Pandora. I pressed a vinyl single that can be ordered here.

Two of this year's songs ("20th Century Regrets", and "I'll Try It") included donated drum-tracks from my friend Krister Friday, from Chicago. Thanks Krister! Keep sending me beats!

All in all, not a bad year. Now what?

Hear all of the 2017 MechaniCrash songs here, or on a SoundCloud playlist here:

MechaniCrash 2017 Soundcloud playlist

Look for MechaniCrash songs on iTunes, Spotify, and wherever-else...

Happy new year!

 

 

 

 

Today I post/publish another song, "Like To Pick", after what feels like a bit of a drought, but in actuality isn't. This is the tenth song I've recorded this year... not too bad for it not being my day-job, and not too droughty.

It feels like a drought because eight of those songs were recorded in February. I recorded one in August/September, and that song, "Kathleen" is the culprit. It was a tough song. I just couldn't get it to a place where I loved it. It took three times as long to record as a typical MechaniCrash song, and even after all of that, I was left unsatisfied with it. I forced my way through it, to finish it, and posted it anyway. I really believe that the way forward in any creative endeavor is to finish things. There is so much to gain by even finishing work you are less than satisfied with, to gain the experience. I have also learned, especially when applying this to my much-more-dominant visual art skills, that the ones that I loathed the most were often ones that others loved... so I finished and published "Kathleen".

Starting "Like To Pick", with "Kathleen" finally birthed, was absolutely refreshing. It went quickly, and I like it a lot. So, here, for your listening pleasure (...possibly) is "Like To Pick". It has a lot of recently acquired guitars ( a 70's Greco Bass, a Korean Danelectro reissue, and a project guitar I made from parts...) on it, and has samples from the 1958 film "The Screaming Skull". I only sample from public domain sources these days... lol.

 

I got my first vinyl single pressed ("The Strong" b/w "Fez"), and delivered in a rainbow of colored vinyl. It is a truly satisfying thing. I plan to send some out as a promotional device. I printed up some cards to help turn the vinyl single into the centerpiece of a promo kit. I also added a "DPK (Digital Press kit) page to the site. Why? MARKETING! My friend "big Fat Greg Morris" hooked me up with some logos and stuff, and it all looks way more pro than the effort deserves.

My trusty Roland SP808 sampler (powered by Zip Discs) died in February after nearly 20 years of service. Its place in my studio has finally been filled by the mighty Akai MPCX Professional. Fucking-hell this thing a beast. It seems to do a bit of everything, and thus might take a minute to wrap my head around. 

With the addition of the Akai, which, despite it's depth, is proving to be rather intuitive and yielding some immediate results, I am back in the studio and getting back to a regular recording cadence. I was off for a few months, and am feeling fresh and ready. It might take a bit longer to get the first few songs out, but I have no deadline. Full speed ahead.

...looks like fucking NASA in that room...

It's been about a month since my last post, and my last recording. The past six months have been an intense period of recording. I initially started recording, and sharing recordings online, as a creative exercise. The purpose was to become better at it by forcing myself to finish recordings, and to make them available to be heard. This would also make them available to be critiqued too, but that would be part of the process. 40 songs later, I decided that I should evolve to more challenges. I decided that my next big thing would be to actually create a physical product. No band I have ever played with has ever produced a physical offering (record, CD, etc...) of a song that I participated in its recording. After finishing my last recording in February, I decided to piece together an album, and press it!

Well... long story short... I prepared the files, designed the album at, and was all ready to go. I uploaded everything to the record-presser's site. The last stage was a form to  certify ownership of the materials uploaded. Then it hits me right in the face. I use samples heavily. Samples from recognizable pop-culture references. I never cared if they were others intellectual property because I wasn't selling or distributing anything. I thought of it as found pieces in collage hanging in my home that only my friends would see. Because pressing a record was a bit of an afterthought, I had prepared a work that wasn't mine to reproduce, even if intended just to give away. I stopped. The image above is the in-progres art for the unreleasable album.

An interesting sidebar is that my beloved Roland sampler, mainstay of my recording arsenal for 20 years fatally broke down before I finished my February recording project. The situation forced me to complete several songs without samples. To my surprise, they turned out quite well. I realized I was probably using recognizable samples, and the cultural frames of reference they contained, as a bit of a crutch to distract from too much attention on my actual playing. These sample-free songs forced me to rethink my sampling approach.

In the end, I decided to only press a vinyl single of two songs that have no intellectual property issues. Those files have been sent, and the order delivered!

I also decided to move forward with a new sampling mandate. Creating the next block of songs would be done in a manner that only samples public domain sounds, or sounds I created myself, or otherwise own. The goal would be to create a body of work that I own enough to reproduce, distribute, and even sell, if I want. This is a meaningful evolution of my process, and I look forward to the challenge.

Last week I completed the "2017 RPM Challenge". As I have mentioned in the past, this whole "MechaniCrash" project started with the 2014 RPM Challenge. I described the challenge like this in an earlier blog post: 

This is a thing where a couple of audiophile/musicians were having a discussion about the recording realities of modern mass music. They observed that in the 60's, studios like Motown or Stax would send a group of musicians into a studio for a week with nothing pre-written and no multi-track recording abilities, and end up with an album that we are all still listening to today. In contrast, a typical modern pop single could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to make, and involve 100 people. Meanwhile, there are thousands of us amateur musicians and bands with home studios that make the equipment that Motown used seem like it was made by Fred Flintstone. 

The RPM Challenge is for us, with our closets full of guitars and multi-track home studios, to get off our collective asses and record something. It wasn't a contest, but a challenge... to record an album (at least 10 songs or 30 minutes of music) in one month. By the way, they picked February, the shortest month. They ask you to not even think about it until 12:01am on February 1st, and that you send them a CD of your efforts with a postmark dated and time-stamped before noon on March 1st. All they offer for your efforts is a spot on the page's "jukebox" streaming player... oh.. and the enormous satisfaction of actually recording an album in a month.

I did the challenge in 2014, resulting in the concept of the "fake band" called MechaniCrash, and the album "Time Crash". Time Crash was hacky and rough, but the product of a fun and rewarding creative exercise. I skipped the 2015 and 2016 challenges, as I generally have very travel-heavy Februarys, but this year was oddly free of travel, so I jumped in again. The result was the album called "20th Century Regrets". You can find it in the FREE MUSIC section of the site. The completion of the challenge marks the 39th song recorded since the start of the "2014 RPM Challenge". 

Let me just say... this challenge is hard. It is like having a second job. In retrospect, I don't know how I actually completed the first challenge. This time I was plagued by equipment issues as both my digital recorder and sampler went bad during the month. These things were almost insurmountable, as I had to pause and rebuild big parts of my recording infrastructure. The resulting album just barely hits the minimum requirements of 10 songs or 35 minutes of music, clocking in at 8 songs and 36 minutes of music. These problems forced some deviation from my normal methodology, creating some new sounds, and made the finish line feel like much more of an accomplishment than the first time. 

Cheers to three years and 39 songs under my belt, and more to come.
 

I have had roughly two weeks off work for Christmas, and I spent a meaningful chunk of my leisure time in my little makeshift recording studio. I recorded two songs during the break. I spoke about "Absolute Gentleman" in a post a few days ago. The new song is called "Tattered". It's just a song... but it represents the last song in the "album" with the working title "MechaniCrash IV". "MechaniCrash IV" has 11 songs and is about 55 minutes of music, perfect size for a vinyl record.

My intention was to record an album's worth of music, and spring for a pressing of about 50 copies, and give them to my friends. As I have said before, there is no money to be made here. All of the songs are posted here for free download anyway. The completion of this particular body of work, on the last day of the year at that, causes me to reflect again on the point of this exercise. 

I have no delusions as to the quality of my music. I am a bit of a hack, getting a little bit more proficient at playing and producing with each effort. More to the point is the fact that I gain a lot of spiritual comfort from my recording activities. I have a very stressful job, and really loose myself in making music. Its hard to do while thinking of anything else. It is also a very satisfying means of personal expression.

I think the real point is twofold:

1. To put my music out there, accessible to friends and public, and critique. If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it... etc...
2. To finish songs, and complete a body of work to the best of my ability. Finishing things is important.

I will now be taking a break from active recording, as the beginning of the year can be a very busy time in my industry. I will focus on taking these tracks, and creating a finished vinyl record. I need to determine an order, accounting for the end of side-one, and the beginning of side two, accounting for flow, strong starts and strong finishes to each side. I need art for the cover (which I should probably do), and a logo too (which I may farm out...lol). I need to decide on a real title for the body of work. This tactile product will be the completion of this album. Giving it to people, getting it out in the world, will add a new dimension to the "fake band" project.

More to come... 

Happy New Year!