Dirty Fingernails

One of the things I’ve used Song-A-Day for is to experiment with producing styles of music that I like but haven’t tried before. These are often things that I wouldn’t do on my own outside of the challenge, like a country song, but since I’m getting to check off another day, it provides that experiment with a purpose. Even if it sucks, it’s still my track for today. Dirty Fingernails is a dirty blues-oriented rock … Continue reading

Small (Esme D Cover)

Cover day. Many Song-A-Day folks really enjoy this day. I normally find it to be a huge source of stress, and am normally disappointed in my results. The stress comes from trying to sift through the hundreds of tracks that have been posted and choosing one. I wrote about all of this in far more detail the last two years, so if you’re interested in that or my criteria for what a good cover song … Continue reading

Mare Insularum

Ok, at this point, I’m increasingly sleep deprived. This isn’t entirely Song-A-Day’s fault, I’ve had to be up earlier than I typically am for various reasons. I’m also procrastinating the start of new tracks until almost midnight or later, then working on them in the morning. It’s not exactly the “working a day in advance” process I’d meant to do, but I still kind of like it. Taking that break to sleep allows me to … Continue reading

Hypnos

After posting Tori’s Reef, I looked back at the genres I’d been writing for the previous week: Classical, Chill, Deep Ambient, Big Beat, Synth Wave, Classical, Chill… I decided that it would be fun to do something a bit more dancey, but maybe not as adventurous as Mind Your Own. Since I’d gotten a lot of positive feedback on D-13, I decided to go back to house. The fracturing of genres into micro-genres is one … Continue reading

Tori’s Reef

With the bombast and majesty of Hymnos behind me, and being increasingly deprived of a good night’s sleep, I decided to do a more laid-back track. I’ve been listening a lot to what is now called “lo-fi,” but which used to be known in a positive sense as “chill” or derisively as  “Muzak.” It’s wonderful music, especially in the background when you’re engaged in something pleasant. When Mary and I go on our scuba diving … Continue reading