My band's most recent album, 'Storm of Crows', is on Bandcamp. It started out as a concept album but at some point I dropped the idea. I still think it's the best album from the band, though, especially when it comes to the guitar tone and mixing quality. Lyrically, it's maybe not as "complex" as The Art of War. I also think toning down the sarcastic nature of the lyrics was a better choice this time around.
Some of my favorite songs on the album are 'Kara Sells Dreams', 'Weather the Storm', and 'The Raven'. You can download it for free (or name your price) from the links above.
This is one of my favorite songs from my band's most recent album 'Storm of Crows'. There's a weird effect on the lead guitar that I don't remember how exactly it got there. I must have been messing with the effects in Fender Fuse before I started recording and just forgot to reset it. I liked the way it made the song sound "older" though, so I kept it.
This is the first song off my upcoming album 'The Art of War'. The song is of the same name. It's a pop rock song you can dance to.
Looking back on my first album, Blazing Son, I feel like all of the songs are a little slow. Good, but slow. So when I was writing the music for this album my main focus was making it more upbeat and energetic. This song might exemplify that more than any other track on the album.
I hope everybody enjoys it. (And shares it with their friends!)
I've listened to the new Radiohead album and all I can think is "they could pretty much do whatever they wanted and their fans would eat it up." And that's pretty much what they did.
There are a few decent songs on the album (Little by Little, Give Up the Ghost) but nothing that good really. All but one song on the album run over 4:30 and each song is pretty much the same endless loop for that entire 4 minutes.
The vocals have almost no melody at all. It sounds like a long drawn out drone listening to Yorke wallow incoherently. It does feel like he's emotionally connected to the music, but I'm not. And I didn't come here to stare in awe at his amazing power to become that self-involved. I came to be entertained.
I may not be the right person to ask about new Radiohead music, though, considering I haven't been a big fan since The Bends and OK Computer. But $9 for 8 average songs isn't worth it to me.
I've read a lot of blogs and forums lately where people have described the bass as an instrument that's "main purpose" is to basically aid the drums. These arguments have ranged from "the best thing to keep in mind while playing bass is to only hit notes timed to the drums" to almost cryptic posts like "the purpose of the bass is to emphasize the drums."
Posts like that are idiotic and a major clue that the person telling you this shit probably has no idea what they're talking about and their own music probably sucks. If the Bass was that limited in it's purpose, it wouldn't be such a major part of rock bands.
Imagine 'A Day in the Life' with a simple little bass line that just followed the drums... It wouldn't sound the same because a major part of the song is the incredible bass line. Another great Beatles song that gains a lot from an amazing bass line is 'Rain'. Try to picture that song without the bass line (if it's even possible)
Sometimes it is a good idea to just use a simple bass line that just repeats the root, but if you get into a habit of doing this on every track you're music is gonna start to sound the same on every song. It's just as important to experiment with the bass as any instrument. Don't be afraid to try something different.
I've been pretty busy lately working on a new rock album for my virtual band The Four Suns. It's a concept album that's a little more ambitious than Blazing Son. On that album, I just used the concept of the virtual band itself be the concept of the album (basically). This time it's a little different.
The title of the album is 'The Art of War' and every song takes place in an alternate reality caught up in World War III. But it's still not a straight up rock opera. It's somewhere in between. I'm also using a lot more electric guitars on this one.
I've completely finished four songs for the album and completed the instrumental arrangements for just about every song. I've got about 30 songs all together, but I'm gonna cut it down to around 14 for the album. Hopefully it'll be finished by the end of February.
This is the last new video I'm posting today. This is a completely remixed version of If There Is A Day. The original version is here if you want to compare the two versions. The biggest change is that the new version adds an electric guitar, the first chorus loops a second time and the middle section is completely different.
This is the updated video for Scarecrow. The changes for this might not be as noticeable on computer speakers as the remastered audio from Revelation Dream, but if you get the free download from Bandcamp you'll definitely notice a difference when you play it on a real stereo. The bass is deeper and the kick drums are improved. The vocals are a little louder too, which gives them more clarity and makes them sound 100x better.
Here is the updated lyric video for Revelation Dream. I finally got my head around the mixing process and you can tell when you listen to th new audio.
Rock music is in decline. It doesn't chart, it's overshadowed by pop princesses and overrated corporate packages like Kanye West. There's no doubt about that. Why? Because of shit bands like Arcade Fire and Kings of Leon.
Nobody wants to listen to flat beats with even flatter vocals. It's boring and unimaginative. Modern rock bands have lost the sense of melody and it's killing the genre. The Rock N Roll bands of the late 50s and early 60s were hugely popular because the music had life. It was upbeat, energetic, and it had melody. Something sorely missing in the "flat-line" rock of today.
A few years after Rock N Roll became huge there was the folk-rock period of 65-67 where Paul McCartney wrote some of his most popular melodies. The Byrds played some amazing and influential guitar riffs that felt fully fleshed out. Compare that to Arcade Fire... See what I mean by unimaginative and boring? It's flat by comparison.
After folk-rock (with a little overlap) came the Psychedelic period that's arguably the biggest turning point in rock's history. Here again McCartney wrote some unforgettable melodies, Lennon wrote songs that felt like they came straight out of a dream. Pink Floyd could put you in a trance with songs that managed to be laid back and yet still full of energy. Bands like Arcade Fire and Kings of Leon just put you to sleep and make you dream of a more melodic song.
And I'm not just saying "the 60s were better." There's also the Punk Rock era and the Grunge and Brit-Pop years of the 90s. In fact, I'd say the 90s were almost equal to the 60s in terms of quality, influence and longevity. What's the best mainstream song I've heard in the last several months? Bring The Light by Beady Eye
The Brit-Pop legends of the 90s, Oasis (minus Noel) playing a throwback song that sounds like it came straight out of the late 50s, early 60s. Is it the greatest song in the world? No. Does it advance music? Not according to hipsters, but if you consider the fact that rock is dying of boredom and needs a jolt of energy then yeah, Bring The Light advances rock away from the abyss and back to where it should be.
This is just an acoustic demo and the sound quality isn't studio perfect. It's just me with an acoustic playing the rhythm and singing the lead vocals.
The last songwriting post I wrote was about how long a lot of unsigned/indie artists' songs are. One of the less obvious reasons for that is the tempo.
A lot of unsigned artists write songs that move so slow it puts you to sleep. Part of that is because the songs are meant to be slower which just ends up being melancholy and boring, but I'm not gonna talk about that specifically here.
I've listened to several songs by indie artists that should be more energetic than they are because the tempo is just a few beats per minute slower than they sound like they should be.
If you're an indie artist and you're familiar with audacity (which you more than likely are) take a .wav file of one of your favorite band's tracks and put it in audacity. Now go to "change speed" and slow it down about 2 or 3 percent. The difference may not seem that big at first, but if you play the two different speeds back to back a few times you should start to notice that the slower track doesn't sound as good. That's because it's not.
Now go through some of the songs you've written and recorded and re-evaluate the BPM and consider speeding it up. You'll probably want to re-record the song, since just speeding it up in audacity can actually change the key of the song and make your voice sound drastically different.
After reading this, keep in mind that most people prefer upbeat songs to sad songs on an average day.
I wrote this song when I was about 15 years old. It didn't sound like this back then though. I used to just play the rhythm on an acoustic guitar and just sit and play 10 minute versions of it.
I found a bunch of old tapes I recorded back then and realize now, while listening to them, that I must have been really really high when I recorded them. If the me that's writing this met the 15 year old me that made those recordings... I'd probably have to beat the shit out of myself.
16 years later and I've added a bass, drums and some string instruments. I re-wrote all new lyrics (with a few lines from the original) and re-recorded it and I honestly believe it's an amazing song now.
The musical composition is nowhere near as complex as the rest of the stuff I've written over the last few months - especially songs like If There Is A Day or Mr. Frost - but I think it's simplicity is part of it's appeal.
Lyrically, I used the violent imagery of mother nature and a falling civilization to describe the musical flow and vice versa. When I say "everything stops and time stands still" the song goes into a break, and when I say "stars fall out of the sky in madness" the strings come in behind the main rhythm.
Interesting side-note (maybe) - The King Is Dead started out as a remix of this song before I decided to make it a follow-up/sequal and (hopefully) put it on the same album.
I made this simple animation to go with a clip of Mary Goes Round on youtube. If you don't make taking a few seconds to go to youtube and give it a thumbs up please.
Posts
