RPM
Challenge.

Due to touring, we had to FINISH this record by February 16th. The Entire EP was recorded on the evening of February 16th. We're happy with these live, acoustic demos, and can't wait to flesh out the material in the studio over the coming 6 months.

Originally an idea I sketched out on my MPC that I scrapped. I decided it was worth trying it in earnest and the RPM Challenge was the prod I needed. It may not be very good, but I think it's the most listenable music I've made so far.

It's been a long year.. ups, downs, and sideway steps

Composed, performed, and recorded 19 Feb 2023

This year was the first that I had attempted more than one track. I knew I wanted some very different styles. I started with the piano and went from there.

Finally wrapped up my RPM this year just in the nick of time and am pleased to share it with the community! These are songs about finding a home. About accepting past mistakes. About moving on. It’s an album about the long drive home from work. We hope you enjoy hearing it as much as we enjoyed making it.

I used an old instrumental track from 2020-2021. I made several modifications thoughout this month to make it sound the way it does now. I haven't added vocals yet because I wrote the lyrics too late and recording my voice will take longer than usual due to not having the proper equipment. Hopefully you enjoy this instrumental version of my pop/electronic song, it even includes an accordion!

Recorded over 3 days and maybe as many sessions per day. It all kind of just came together.

It started with a soothing improv session with my friend firephly, I let it sit for quite a while. Had a lot going on irl but carved out quiet mornings and peaceful late nights to work on it in short sessions, it was a soothing experience. I like following my intuition and everything I recorded on the track was a first raw take, staying true to expressing in the moment, in sound. I like experimenting with textures, weird vocals and drones. The cover art is a quick water doodle I made on a scrap of paper from my notepad of half-ideas. :).

I played banjo and made loops to manipulate them in some way. There was an organic relationship between the banjo and the computer, because I got into playing a tentative playing style as I was teaching myself a bit of Round Peak Style Clawhammer banjo, and sometimes I made the programming follow the banjo's pace, and sometimes I set a tempo in the software and made the banjo play along with that. I would record the banjo using a Shure MV88 mic on phone and then import that in adaptive mode to Logic Pro where I did most of the actual arranging, chopping and dicing in various ways. I played a bunch of bass and guitar and ukulele as well, and tried to keep it focused on the banjo while throwing a lot of variety in there sonically.

This was recorded with one mic. I like the rythym and some lyrics

More electronic thrums and swells created in part to learn more about VCV Rack and MuseScore.

in the moment music

family band. first project. sister wrote songs and sang. brother played drums. ma and pa played guitars.

We made a midwinter experimental spoken word album inspired by St. John's and late December darkness.

Just a song to work on my songwriting skills. Life kind of got in the way, so I ended up doing each part in a single take and did very little post processing. There is more I would have liked to have done, but I am happy with how it came out.

This was pretty haphazardly thrown together while I was in the middle of a country and job move! Started the album as an exercise to just do really short tracks that keep rampin up, but at some point, I guess I ended up in a diversion because I got really into the Hyper Light Drifter OST so ended up going into some darker territory somewhere in the middle.

electronic experimental gritty sci-fi soundtrack video game

Four extractions from a musical conversation between between father & son.

This is a populist record, and it's also about geography, relocation, and the dislocation I feel in a country where I've been for six decades. It's a DIY/Lo-fi record that hearkens back to the halcyon days of early to mid-90s indie rock.

my first instrumental acoustic-ish album ever

We wanted to explore behind the curtain of the woke movement to see what is really going on. So, we did exploratory surgery and made a collection of tracks with all the themes that suited the subject. What we got was, we think, our best work to date. Multiple genres and too much fun. We each created parts of the tracks separately as we are spread out across the globe, then put it all together here in Tokyo. Hope you all enjoy it as much as we did. Peace & Luv

It's really an LP, just shy a couple minutes...

A space country ballad. Special in that it's one of the few songs I've ever written from a parental perspective.

This is a ten song experiment in approaching songwriting from new angles and with new software. It's special to me because of how varied the songs are. Everything was written and recorded in my bedroom

I recorded everything by myself, it is part 3 of an album about deep thought, meditation and psychedelic experiences. It's meant to be listened to with the first 2 volumes. Not needed though, but it flows better as a whole. I recorded it in my basement, using lots of mics, Cubase, Line 6 Pod Farm and Toontrack. It is a beast and I don't want to slow down anytime soon!

I tried to create an album using the same processes that the artist Willem deKooning might've used if he were a musician. His wife Elaine deKooning was a greater influence as I believe she was a more important artist, so the album is more about her than him.

I was doing a Healing Forest walk or forest Bathing and the song came to me from being connected to Tree spirit

An instrumental demo EP, recorded in the spare room of my new flat

The album consists of a number of improvisation approaches. As the title implies, this is an attempt at wrangling the possibillities which abound in the Universe. The pieces mainly used multitracking with Cubase, but also some of the rhythms generated were created with Python and translated to MIDI where they were later executed for a given virtual instrument. There are also some live takes that were integrated within multitracks.

I really wanted to make an album with lyrics and "songy songs" this year, but I also had a truly wacky February that made cohesive thoughts or time to work on stuff impossible, so I made this album of instrumental pieces that are all at least partially improvised in a day. Oops!

I mixed video game music and progressive rock. The full version of this track loops. The title refers to the first monkey to be launched in a spacecraft. He's rolling down a hill because this idea was once going to be for a soundtrack for a fan made Super Monkey Ball 2 level pack. It's a game where you roll a monkey in a ball. It's an infinite hill because the track loops. My favorite thing about this track is the combination of plugins I used to make the hammond organ sound real, and the fact I successfully combined two perviously separate tracks in a cohesive piece. It's such a relief to be done this...

One single. A true story

A cheeky original campfire favorite that my family has wanted me to record for years. The RPM Challange gave me a reason to get it done, with their help. We worked on it together and I am happy they pushed me to finally release it. What started with me, an acustic guitar and a campfire has turned into a pretty catchy surf rock tune.

I wanted to make an album that I enjoyed singing along to and that had plenty of cool synth solos. With some of the songs I chose to be a bit more abstract or surreal and sometimes go for nontraditional forms.

all written and recorded month of feb 2023. an eclectic batch of songs done with my great friends

Echoes of Dreamscapes is my first full ambient album. I've really dug into the exploration of ambient music in the last few months. Composing ambient music creates an exploratory atmosphere for me to escape the hecticness of everyday life. I hope this album gives peace and serenity to those that listen to it. This album was made by a combination of synthisizers and effects pedals.

I had no idea I had this in me!!

I made an instrumental synth track on my iPad, using Garageband. It’s meant to evoke a sense of hope and beauty, and it sounds like something you would find in a film score.

Reticent M E was born out of an evening jam where all the celestial bodies seemed to align. It is a perfect storm of uncooperative sequences, deconstructed bass, bastardized guitar/synth hybrids and healthy noise. As far as the album’s concept is concerned, any of the following can be ascribed: alien abduction, parallel planes of existence, atmosphere re-entry, SETI and the like. Oh, and there’s a bunch of vocoded drums on the record which really make the beats speak.

I had three hours on the last day and let my damn heart break free.

An ode to out-of-tune upright pianos with stories to tell. And ghosts. We made this track over the internet using a 'digital audio workstation'. Only regret is not muting everything except the sax and looping the sax for 6 minutes. Maybe next year?

A collection of dystopian tales of humanity's bleak future. I'm trying to combine Hip-Hop with Death Metal, and this is my first frankenstein-esque concoction. Made it solo in my office with a DAW, guitar, keyboard, and patience.