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

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

Hymnos

The last four days have been electronic or beat-based, so I was in the mood to go back to some orchestral instruments. My sample library acquisitions over the last couple of years have been as much of an expansion for me as when I got my first sampler in the late 80s, my first really good workstation synth in the late 90s, not to mention what digital audio workstations (DAWs) have done to make professional-level … Continue reading