jam

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 piece. And I may as well own up to this right now, it’s a pretty blatant rip of a song from the movie Twin Peaks: … Continue reading

Mind Your Own

I love Big Beat. Fatboy Slim, Mint Royale, Chemical Brothers, Prodigy… its’ one of my favorite genres. When energy is needed, whether it’s on the dancefloor or just vacuuming the living room, there’s something about the frenetic chaos and multilayered samples that just grabs me and gets me moving. Whether or not I intended for this to be Big Beat, and how successful I was in the end, remains to be seen… I’ll need some listening time. It veers wildly into old school jazz-funk or R&B, but the sample over the top of everything just sort of nails it all … Continue reading

No Molesté

1984 I’m a junior in high school. My father, a professional musician, has brought home a drum kit, an electric piano, and an electric guitar and practice amp to see if his sons might be interested in any of it. We were. My dad may have regretted bringing all of that home, and ultimately nothing came of it (because my parents were too nice to push us to the point where we might have done something), but we definitely had some fun jamming. My brother, Eric, still plays the piano part from one of those jams/songs every time we sit … Continue reading