A Weekend Affair

The album, "A Weekend Affair" by The City Veins, is finished, click here to download it. The album is zipped up, which I don't think should be a problem for most people, but you may need to download a program to unzip it. Feel free to share it, burn it, trade it, post links to it, or whatever. All that I ask is that if by the grace of God you manage to actually make any money with it, please give me some.

We called the album "A Weekend Affair" because the whole thing was recorded, and mostly written, over the course of a single weekend. Overall, I must say that I am surprised at how happy I am with the whole thing. Don't get me wrong, I still hate everything, but I always hate everything I record. Given that we decided to record the album on a lark, and that we hadn't really written or arranged anything, things could have been a lot worse. There are a few things that I would change if I had more time, but not many.

The only other thing that I want to add is to explain that I intentionally put very little time between songs. I wanted the experience of listening to the album to be like the experience of recording it. We just moved quickly from one song to the next without any time really to reflect on what we had done, and I think that I mostly captured that feeling with the sequencing of the songs.

In other news, it looks like we might actually become a real band. Hopefully I will have news of a show in the D.C. area by the end of the week, or early next week. While we don't have a "drummer" yet, or remember how to "play the songs," we are reasonably confident that we can get our act together in time. Hell, we recorded an album without any real preparation, how bad can a concert be? Assuming that it isn't at the Grog anyway.

Lefou, I'm afraid I've been thinking...

A couple of quick things.

First, I posted a link to a song that I have been working on and have apparently used up my download limit for the week. While I doubt that this is because thousands upon thousands of people are eagerly awaiting my next project, it does look like I might need a better way to host these things in the future. Does anyone know of a better way to post mp3s on blogs? The only caveat is that it has to be free.

Also, I would like to thank whoever is responsible for the mystery valentines that are going around for including me. I have to agree with the Pygs, I have not been a good enough blogger to deserve it. So I thank you, unless you are planning to kill us all. I have been picturing a scenario where you kill each of us using a method from the Disney movies. For example, the valentine I received features Belle from Beauty and the Beast. I kinda believe that you are going to kill me by throwing me off of a castle. Frankly, there are worse ways to go.

Independent Room

I am not sure how far around the internet this has made, but let me recommend Party Ben's "Independent Room" mashup. You can find it down on the linked page. It is a mashup between Destiny's Child's "Independent Women" and Fugazi's "Waiting Room." The combination works surprisingly well. If you didn't know the two original songs, you would probably just think this is the way the song was written in the first place.

Is Your Figure Less Than Greek?

In honor of Valentines day, I am going to engage in self promotion. Here is a link to a recording I did of "My Funny Valentine" by Rodgers and Hart. The song has a lovely melody by Richard Rodgers and fairly mean lyrics by Lorenz Hart. You can read what I originally wrote about the song here.

The Hour Hand

This weeks song is “The Hour Hand” by my old band Roosevelt Roosevelt. I have mentioned my old band a few times so I decided to put up one of our songs. This song is off of our last album A Wish to be Blind. It was recorded at Inner Ear Studio and mastered by Chad Clark as Silver Sonya Studios.

The main reason that I chose this song is because I think it contains the best lyrics that I have written. We wrote this album in college, and I was in class that studied Nietzsche. At the time I was fascinated by his writings, and the Eternal Recurrence in particular. Briefly, the Eternal Recurrence is the idea that nothing ever changes and thus life is meaningless. I tried to use the image of a clock to express this, the hour hand returns to the same place every hour and nothing new ever happens. So yeah, we were that obnoxious. It is little wonder that we didn't have scores of groupies. I mean what are you gonna say, “Hey baby, want to come home with me and read The Gay Science?”

I also like this song because of the guitar solo. We originally recorded a different bridge/guitar solo. But after listening to it numerous times, which is what you do in a studio, we decided that it was too anthem rock. It evoked images of lighters in the air and me with my foot on the monitor, and we were already uncomfortable with Creed comparisons. So Aaron wrote the piano part that we recorded. This meant that I had to change my guitar solo. I decided to do a slide guitar thing, but unfortunately didn't have a slide so I used a beer bottle instead. The actual solo is fine, not my best. I just like that I used a beer bottle.

Some might point out that I have railed against drum solos, so it is slightly hypocritical to talk about my guitar solo. Well it is, but guitarist have their own issues to deal with also, particularly guitarist who don't sing, so back off. And no one likes drum solos.

Caprice

This weeks download is Caprice, Opus 59, part 3, no. 16, by Matteo Carcassi. This is a solo guitar piece in D harmonic minor. Again, you can tell that it is in harmonic minor because the V chord, A, in the third measure is major instead of minor. A lot of classical pieces are in harmonic, rather than natural, minor. I think that this piece points to one of the reasons why the harmonic scale is the preferred scale.

The major scale and the natural scale are essentially the same scale. Here is F major:

Here is D Minor:

As you can see the notes are identical, D minor just starts on the 6^th note of the F major scale. That is why D is the relative minor of F. Now here is D Harmonic Minor:

As you can see the C# sets D harmonic minor apart from F major. This note creates an important difference. In any key, the one, I, and the five, V, chords are the strong chords in the key. A perfect cadence, which pretty much tells the ear this is what key a piece is in, is V to I in root position. In F major the I chord is F major and the V chord is C major. So if you are in D natural minor and happen to use a C to F progression at any point, it is going to strongly imply a major key. This actually occurs in measure 6 of this piece. The song spends two measures in F, the relative major, and you know this because measure 6 starts with a C major chord and then moves to F major.

In harmonic minor, the V chord in the relative major becomes diminished. A diminished chord has a very unsettling feel, it is an unstable chord that just begs to be resolved. That resolution is frequently to the chord above it, which in this case is up to D minor. What was a strong chord in major now strongly reinforces minor. When a song is in harmonic minor it is absolutely in minor, where sometimes natural minor and major can be confused. There is just more clarity in the piece by using the harmonic minor scale. This isn't to say that a piece can't be decidedly minor in natural minor, it is just that the ways you do it are more limiting.

I am sorry if this is boring and overly technical, but you made it this far so it can't have been that bad. To those who are not reading this, you are all big jerks. I have been on a more classical bent recently. I just find the music is more deliberate and thus easier to learn from. I get more ideas for composition and technique from classical music than anything else. I promise something rocking and fun next week.

In an administrative note...

I am going to remove the links to past Friday downloads, Christ the Lord is Risen Today, My Funny Valentine, Fandango, and Toe the Line, on Monday. If you want those songs after that, just leave a comment here and it will put up the link. I am just trying to conserve bandwidth at O Street Studio.

UPDATE: I made the changes that Tommy mentioned in the comments, and everything seems to be working. The links to the songs will stay up, but let me know if you have any problems downloading anything.

Drifting Apart

This week's song is Drifting Apart. This is a song that Aaron and I recorded in about 3 hours in my basement last year. Like most of our experiments, I don't really remember anything about this song. Like a lot of our recordings last year, we just wrote parts as we needed them, and can't play them now. Also, don't pay any attention to the lyrics, Aaron just made them up as he went along to get the melody down. Though I am amazed at his ability to just spout off meaningless crap that sounds like it should make sense.


I have been sort of aimless since my band broke up about 2 years ago. While I have been practicing more, and I am a considerably better musician since the band, I haven't played seriously in a while. I am sure that my posters appreciate my improvement, but they don't want to give me the accolades that I need. Also, Paul Simonon remains poised to destroy his bass, and I was really hoping my playing could make him change his mind.


This song is an example of my music career for the last 2 years. Experimenting and practicing so that I will learn more for when I start playing music seriously again. Don't get me wrong, I think it is a pretty good song and there are some interesting things in it, but it could be better. I think the fact that I can't play the song speaks volumes.


Well, I have a new project in mind now. I will post more details as they become clear. My sister describes me as a music snob, and I think that it is time to prove her right... although I can't imagine there was much debate.

Christ the Lord is Risen Today

This weeks download is “Christ the Lord is Risen Today” by Charles Wesley and Lyra Davidica. Charles Wesley is one of the great Methodist hymns writers, and I coincidently happen to share his name. As a kid, I would see my name at the bottom of some hymns, and I quickly decided that these were the best hymns ever written. The music is from the Lyra Davidica. I have not been able to find much information about the Lyra, other than that it was a hymnal that appeared in England in 1708, and no one knows who wrote the music.

For a man that goes to church a lot, I don't consider myself a particularly religious man. I probably got only two things out of all my church'n. First, I have a good shot at knowing the answer to questions at a pub quiz that start “In the Bible...” The other thing is a love of old hymns.

I recently drove my grandmother to Baltimore, and we spent most of the car ride singing these old hymns. My biggest problem with contemporary worship is that it loses this connection to past generations. Kids who only go to contemporary worship won't know these songs, and and what are they going to sing with their grandparents? Every Move I Make? I doubt it.

But as Kayne says, “I am not here to convert atheists to believers.” I present this song as just a well written piece of music, which unfortunately casts my namesake aside. When I recorded it I tried to go for that Southern Baptist feel. Upon hearing it last night, Kriston felt that the bass was too high and the song came perilously close to rock and or roll, I leave that up to you to decide. One interesting thing I learned while recording this was that a single clap doesn't sound believable. I had to record my self clapping four times to get the right sound. Also, I can't actually play that piano part, a lot of studio magic went into getting that down.

My Funny Valentine

This weeks download is My Funny Valentine by Rodgers and Hart. It is one of my favorite jazz songs. This version is arranged for a solo guitar by my old guitar teacher Eric Waters.

My playing style is the result of spending most of my musical career outside of a band. I would spend most of my time in my room playing for myself. The result was that I gravitated towards classical guitar. I love The Clash, but playing Clampdown by yourself is not as satisfying as one would think it would be. So I started playing classical pieces because they sounded good when I played them alone. The solitary nature of my playing led me to a lot of finger picking. To this day, I still don't play with a pick, even when playing rock music. I briefly entertained ideas of being the first great punk rock fingerpicker.

Eric arranged this song for me because most of my playing was alone. We had studied some jazz charts, but it is difficult to play jazz by yourself. The interaction of the band members is paramount in any jazz song, and while I am pretty good at communicating with myself, the dialog isn't very interesting or audible.

When he arranged this song, Eric taught me how a song is constructed, how to analyze melodies and harmonies, and how to convey the essential nature of a song with as few parts as possible. For example, the chords for the opening four bars of the song are: | C- | C-(maj 7) | C-7 | C-6| (note, - means minor). Here is what the chords look like on a staff:

As you can see, the chords create a descending line in the top voice. When Eric arranged the song, he put that line into the bass, and kept the G that is constant throughout all of the chords because it occurs on an open string on the guitar and thus doesn't tie up the left hand. The A in the C-6 chord in measure 4 also leads nicely to the Ab maj7 that occurs in measure 5. The result is that the essential nature of the chords, and the harmonies that they imply is conveyed with only two notes.

I have mentioned Eric before, but the influence that he had on me cannot be overstated. During some lessons, we would just sit and talk about music for the whole time. At first my mother was a little upset, why pay for music lessons if you are not going to play any music. Eventually she decided that paying for guitar lessons was cheaper than paying for a therapist.

Fandango

In what I hope will become a weekly feature, I am offering a free song again. Again, feel free to burn this song, trade it, do whatever.

This weeks song is “Fandango (Danse Espagnole)” by Ferdinando Carulli, op. 73, no. 2. This is one of my favorite solo guitar pieces. In many ways it is a very simple song, but Carulli accomplishes a lot with it.

The song is in ¾ time, and is in the key of A harmonic minor. Harmonic minor is a popular scale used in classical music, and Arabic music. In this scale, the seventh note is raised a half step (one key on a keyboard, or one fret on a guitar). In this song, that means that the G is sharp, rather than natural in natural minor. The most obvious examples of harmonic minor from recent rock music are “Last Stop” by the Dave Matthews Band off Before These Crowded Streets, and “Worlds Apart” by Bruce Springsteen from The Rising.

After the first two measures, the song starts its basic progression that will continue for most of the song. The progression is V – i, specifically E to Am. The easiest way to tell that this song is in harmonic minor is the fact that the E is major. E major is comprised of E – G# - B. If we were in natural minor, the chord would be E – G – B, and thus minor. The song is basically different arpeggios going from E to Am.

In measure 23, :53, we get a brief melody that will return at the end of the song, measure 72, 3:30. At measure 39, 1:37 the song switches to the key of C major, with the G dominant 7^th chord. At measure 42, the song starts a I – V progression in C major. Until the very end of the song, at measure 84, the song uses only tonic and dominant chords, I and V. The song returns to A harmonic minor in measure 52, 2:23, and stays in that key for the rest of the song.

One part I particularly like begins in measure 60, 2:50. The way he uses thirds, hammered off to the open E, and moves them up a second each time does a fantastic job of building tension, while keeping the V – i progression intact. This tension is released by the high E chord in measure 68.

I have tried to point out some of the interesting, but by no mean all, of the things I find interesting about this song. I hope you enjoy it.

Free Music Friday

I decided that if I am going to spend my time pretending that I know anything about music, then I should give everyone an example of music that I have created. As such, I have put a song, Toe the Line, up for download. It is free, so do with it what you will. Burn it, trade it, sell it if you can sucker anyone into buying it.

I recorded this song with the lead singer, Aaron, of my old band. We wrote, recorded and mixed the song in about three and a half hours.

The song started with the drum beat. When I first got the technology to record in my house, I sat down to start writing some music and realized that I knew nothing about the drums. I just sat at the keyboard and had no idea how to create a drum beat. So I went out and bought The Complete Idiot's Guide to Playing Drums. Aaron and I were sitting around when I saw a drum beat in 12/8 in it. Aaron wrote the chord structure while I recorded the drum beat. Without getting into a long explanation of different time signatures and their purposes, I will say that we found that 12/8 allowed us to break each measure up differently to make the song more interesting. For example, we break the first measure up into 3 sections of 4 beats and the second measure into 2 sections of 6 beats. One interesting effect of writing drum tracks on a keyboard is that any drummer recreating what I have written here would have to have 3 arms, particularly in the chorus.

As for the rest, I play the bass and 2 guitars on the song. The first guitar is the high eight note you hear in the right channel. The second guitar is just distorted chords to beef up the chorus. With the bass line, I just tried to mimic the rhythm that Aaron came up with for his guitar part. Aaron plays one guitar and a short distorted piano lick during the chorus. We wrote the song so quickly that I can't actually remember the specific parts that I played, or even the chords to the song. Finally, don't pay much attention to the lyrics, Aaron just made them up as he went along so he could get the melody down.