At one point I started multi-tracking the piano, adding layers of piano on top of other layers of piano. Since I didn’t have a click track to play along with or anything, the rhythms were all really chaotic, but I liked that, thought it gave it a good random quality. This is my favorite of the multi-tracked piano pieces: Mellow Warpath. I like this one a lot, it starts off sweet, locks in around :20 and then kind of goes nuts until the end. I also like the very end, with the last notes coming from an underlying piano track that you kind of didn’t know was there.
One of the only good things to come from my eye scenario is that I finally hooked a tape player up to the computer to digitize all the stuff I recorded to cassette during college. I’d had this box of tapes laying around forever, so it’s great to finally get this stuff recorded and mp3’d. Also, since most of doing the task was just listening, it was the perfect project for my eye. I figured this week I would post some of the recordings — not sure how many, most of them are so cringe-inducingly cheezy that I’m not really sure why I digitized them.
This first one is recorded in a piano practice room when I was going to college. My pal JW lent me his 4-track and I recorded a bunch of piano songs that I had been working on; digitizing this tape made me realize how much time I must have spent that Freshman year in the piano room. Freshman year wasn’t a good time, and I guess I channeled that stuff into the piano. The weird thing is, I would record these tracks and not re-do them if I made mistakes, so you’ll hear little wobbles in there and parts that aren’t quite 100%, but so be it. I think at the time I was mainly influenced by Windham Hill New Age music.
At the end of Freshman year I had to turn in a cassette of a bunch of tracks for some kind of class project, so my friend PH and I named them with the cheeziest names we could think of as a joke.
Unfortunatley I am still experiencing (bio)technical difficulties in my left eye…look up “corneal ulcer” for a hint of the fun I’m having. Regular posting will resume once this is sorted out, hopefully no more than a week or so…
Now this is more like it. It’s been a while since I felt like I hit a vein of gold on the ole internet, but this is jaw-dropping solid. Using clips found deep deep in the belly of youtube, this artiste has sampled, cut, sliced and diced them to create some phat trax. Sure, it’s the same thing folks have been doing with James Brown and P-Funk samples for years, but there’s something fantastic about harnessing the collective talent of the crowd and resampling that.
The site has an album’s worth of tracks, and there’s no easy embedding, so go check it out over lunch or whatever…I’ve recorded the first track as a sample so you can see what I’m talking about, but the other tracks as just as good and some moments are better…this one is nice ‘cuz it starts slow so you can see what he’s doing, and then it kicks off into the stratosphere…
I mean, this is why the copyfight is a good thing, because appropriating footage of The Monkees lets us a, re-appreciate the original and b, add to the exuberance and joy that this song and video can bring us. Keep fighting.
