I’m using a felt over the strings of the piano to give it a softer sound. Also, this is my debut playing cello. 4 tracks of G and C drone, about all I’m capable of in the strings department.
Ok, time to start using numbers instead of days, because I’ve skipped so many now. I’m still going to try for 30 pieces in 30 days, it’s just that I won’t necessarily do one every day. Yeah, I know, cheating…
Anyway, #6 is a jaunty little tune, suitable for a sunny Sunday like today.
Here’s something Mark and I have started working on. He had a whole backstory behind it which I can’t remember, something to do with swimming through an oil spill.
Mark is playing a repeating motif on electric guitar with a lot of reverb and echo, while I’m on acoustic guitar doing some arpeggiated figures. It’s mostly in minor, but it has this nice moment at 1:12, where it resolves to major in a very obvious way. I love that part of it, it’s a very satisfying resolution to the tension-building, and was completely accidental, which makes it even better.
Well, actually, day 8 maybe? I skipped a few days, but we’ll just keep that to ourselves, shall we?
This song has lyrics, haven’t recorded the vocal yet, I just wanted to get something up. Here’s the first verse:
Many miles across the ocean
In a house by the sea
Lives a man from another place
Taking off yet another face
Looks a lot like me.
This one has some more instrumentation to it: electric piano and french horns. Both of those are sample libraries. Since I’m recording with the piano which is situated in the back room of my house and not in my usual studio which is in the backyard, I don’t have my full complement of better quality samples. So, I’m just using what’s on the laptop, in this case, the Kontakt 3 built-in libraries. Another constraint which actually can be useful for this project.
I like this one, but it needs to go somewhere else with the form. After the project is over, I’ll probably revisit this and re-do the electric piano with my real Rhodes. I’m thinking getting one of the Awesome Orchestra horn players to record for real would be nice.
I like this one. I need to start playing in other keys though…
So I decided to give myself an assignment: write a new piece every day for 30 days. For this month, I’m going to limit myself to pieces featuring piano (some solo, some with other instruments as well). I’m sure some of it will suck, but I’m hoping to get a few usable ideas out of it.
Let’s go, #1…