The following works of music are not songs, but I think of them as sketches that explore certain themes and melodies. I imagine that at some point in my life I will convert these to actual songs or even orchestrations. For these, I usually have little to no forethought as to what I am going to play. I pick up an intrument and start playing, then go to another instrument and lay tracks over the first, and so on. The important thing is that little thought goes on during this creative process. More importantly is that I play all the intruments in the same setting, like within an hour or two. Sometimes I go back and overlay more guitar the next day. But I think that the sucess of this process requires that I play to the rhythms and melodies that somehow reside in my soul at the time that I choose to let them out. I play partly from this sub-conscious feeling, partly from what was played on the last track. Often I layer multiple takes, but I don't find it helps to listen to the last take. Or I don't pay that much attention to it.
The next step takes anywhere from a few hours to several days, weeks, months, and can occur at any time after the recording process. This is when I edit the material, taking out everything that doesn't sound good or belong. It is a long and sometimes tedious process to strip away 90% of the recorded material to leave behind what is as close as possible to what I think is music. Or at least it sounds good to me. It is amazing how much impact every little millisecond makes upon the finished piece. Sometimes taking out a "mistake" makes what follows sound bad. It difficult to limit myself to the original recorded material, but I have found that trying to overdub with new recordings DOES NOT WORK to help improve the music, becasue that type of work is a different part of the brain altogehter. No, if I were to do that, I might as well just sit down and score out the whole thing on paper. So I limit myself to what I originally recorded, and just have to live with certain parts that I can't take out without destroying the whole thing.
Generally, I find that it works better to keep everything in the same chronological order as when I recorded it. So I don't usually take sample from one part and put them in other places. This keeps the whole flow of the music intact.
The below peices of music are a combination of raw improvisation with precise editing. The result is a couple of hours of recording plus many hours of editing condensed into several minutes of music, with varying degrees of sucess. I believe that you will get a lot more out of each piece of music the more you listen to it. Or at least that is my hope.
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Here is some music from 2006\
Consolation 2006 (fun with violin bow included)
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and here is something recorded spring 2007 at Green "the leaf" Studio, but d-mixed at greenwood in July.
Palet Bus 2007 (Dmix)
Complete Reference 2007 (Dmix)
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A series from 2008:
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A couple of more from January 2009:
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I also work on actual songs. I write songs where I just practice and teach myself to play the same thing, verse, chorus, bridge, etc. with lyrics and everything. I like to also play covers.