Duets!

I spent most of the day hanging out with my friend Laura, and we ended up recording some songs. First we did a duet of my new song, Vines and Scaffolds, which came out way better than I expected (despite an out-of-tune piano):

http://www.silentellipsis.com/music/VinesDuet.mp3

I was on guitar and lead vocals, Laura on piano and harmonies.

Then we decided to lighten the mood a bit with an Ingrid Michaelson cover:

http://www.silentellipsis.com/music/YouandI.mp3

We both played uke, and hopefully you can tell which voice is which at this point.

It was a pretty great day, basically.

New Song: Vines and Scaffolds

So FAWM was a long time ago, but that doesn't mean I stopped making music. Here's a demo of a song I just wrote (and recorded on my cellphone - welcome to the future?):

http://www.silentellipsis.com/music/VinesandScaffolds.mp3

EDIT: And check out the duet version I just recorded with my friend Laura (admittedly with an out-of-tune piano):

http://www.silentellipsis.com/music/VinesDuet.mp3

And since I know I'm not always intelligible, lyrics:


Vines and Scaffolds

Build a scaffold in my mind
And ask me where I learned to breathe
Show me who I used to be
Then make me answer for his deeds

I always knew you were a child
Because your soul still has its wings
But I mistook your fear for wisdom
And now your fear inside me sings

You never had to make me whole
You only had to make me weak
So I could shatter my own soul
And teach the pieces how to speak

I let your vines crawl up my wall
And wreck it like the cruel sea
And when we pushed that wall it crumbled
But I'm the only one we freed

Now if you gave me seeds and stones
I'd build a garden for my sweet
And if you didn't love your chains
I'd lay my freedom at your feet

I don't want to make you whole
I only want to make you sing
So when you shatter your own soul
You can build a scaffold for your wings

The Other Otter: FAWM Fallout

Well I should have made this post a month ago, probably, but February Album Writing Month resulted in me and my Philadelphia cohort (codenamed The Other Otter) completing (more or less) 5 songs, and writing several more that I intend to work on more once the semester is over. That's a bit shy of the 14-song theoretical goal of FAWM, but it was plenty of fun anyway. The songs are all available on our FAWM page: http://fawm.org/fawmers/theotherotter/

More specifically, we recorded the following demos (all available from these links):

Lorelai - The first song we recorded, written by myself, includes the most instrumental variety (ukes, guitar, harmonica, glockenspiel, and vocals)

Silverware - The song was written and recorded by Angela. We intended to include accompaniment, but it didn't sound right when we first tried it, so the demo currently just includes one uke and voice.

A Song About Physics - This got written when our Delaware friend Em visited. The lyrics were written via a poetry game - we wrote one line at a time on three pieces of paper and then handed them each to another person to write the next. The theme we picked beforehand was "science".

Downtown - A creation of Josh combined with a strange mood, this song is a masterpiece of incoherence, and feature 4 ukes and voices. In each take we did, Josh improvised lyrics on the fly.

City People - A second song by me. Em's bass line was contributed via email.

Also, it turns out collaborative song-writing is pretty fun, so if anyone wants to visit Philly with an instrument and jam, let me know.

Lorelai

For the hypothetical people who read my blog but don't follow me on other social media, I've been convinced to get involved in February Album Writing Month. The goal is simple: write a song every other day for the month of February. That's 14 1/2 songs this year (since it's a leap year - the 1/2 song is usually interepreted as a collaboration). So my roommate, a friend, and I signed up as "The Other Otter" and started writing. I'm not sure we'll finish 14 1/2 by the end of the month, but we've got one down and recorded, and you can listen to it:

On Bandcamp

or

On our Wix Site

We have more songs in the works, so stay tuned!

FFIV OC Remix

First thing's first, it's my blog's birthday today! Happy birthday, Dreamscape.

Next on the agenda - I've been listening to the OC Remix of the FFIV soundtrack. You can grab it here. I don't know why they have Yang on the cover art and not Cid/Pallom&Porom/Tellah/Edward, but whatever. It covers the whole of FFIV and is pretty faithful (though obviously with more techno beats and electric guitars than the original had).

Personally, it's kind of hit-and-miss: some of the tracks are awesome, like Tundra of Dwarves, Evoking the Dawn, or Somewhere to Hide, and some are less awesome (I'm not going to name names). The Zeromus music seems to encapsulate this by being both awesome and bad at the same time. It's like they had a good song going, and then ended up cooking it too long and burnt it. There's also seems to be an implicit admission that the song has something wrong with it, since there's another version included by most of the same people (and a couple by other people). The second attempt is somehow worse, though. And by somehow, I mean because what passes for evil villain speech when executed with a death metal voice sounds simply absurd when executed with a voice that sounds vaguely human.

Despite my being frustrated with it, I keep listening to the Zeromus music, and it reminds me of something - writing good music is really hard. This might seem obvious, but every once in a while I do stop and wonder if I like the music I do simply because I gave it time to grow on me. This is more likely to pop in my head if I go for a while listening only to music I like (and thus have little standard of comparison). So I find it really fascinating to listen to things that are close to being awesome - the "less awesome" tracks here aren't really bad, they're just unbalanced in one way or another, and when I listen to them a couple times I feel like I can start to pick out exactly where they started going wrong.

Anyway, despite my having some reservations, I recommend you download the music (it's free, afterall!).

-Silent Ellipsis