Just decided to make a song based on some existing loops and samples to get me out of a funk this Tuesday. Enough people from the super secret sample audience liked it that I thought I would try to create a quick daily brain-starter and post them every day. Whether that actually happens is another question, but here you go. Happy Tuesday. 

The vibe is Gen X/Old Millennial Empty Dance Hall at 3am.

Happy Tuesday on August 10, 2021

Just continuing with the daily postings of quick 1-2 hour songs I make in Logic using samples and loops. Here's one for August 11, 2021, Hump Day.

I like to think the second half gets really dark.

Hump Day August 11, 2021

Just continuing with the daily postings of quick 1-2 hour songs I make in Logic using samples and loops. Here's one for August 12, 2021.

The vibe seems to evolve from an earthy Marimba to a ghostly piano and into the sparkle of cyberspace.

Hackers 2021 (August 12, 2021)

A chill track made up of loops and instruments from across the Asian continent. Absolutely did not mix.

This is the daily track for Monday, August 16, 2021!

Ehru Stuff on Monday August 16, 2021

Continuing the effort to post musical brain exercises on a near-daily basis. Here's a happy little track (short one today) that's a mix of pre-existing loops and loops that I made to get the exact notes and vibe I wanted. 

Thanks for all the likes & plays!

The track is called “Hope” because I hold out hope that we’ll all be able to get the fuck out of this pandemic insanity eventually.

Hope (August 18, 2021)

These daily tracks keep evolving. Here's my track for Thursday, August 19, 2021. 

I started getting bored of existing loops in Logic so I went hunting for new and interesting samples online. I found this naked vocal sample and put together all the music and instrumentals around it. 

Love that "digital baroque choir in a dance hall at 3am" vibe. 

I think this is my favorite daily track yet. Please repost and share if you like it.

The Garden (August 19, 2021)

Thank you for your patience on this track while I move and drive halfway across the country back to Chicago. Here's something I started mid-week but didn't get to finish. Just a short little thing I threw together based on some interesting vocal samples I found.

"When it's all gone," just like all the stuff in my New York apartment. 

Thanks again for all your listens, likes, and reposts! Y'all are cool.

When It's All Gone (August 30, 2021)

This is a track I created back when GarageBand was first introduced in 2004—at the time I was in leadership at the Purdue Mac Users Group and working on teaching GarageBand lessons to big lecture rooms of a couple hundred people. 

This hearkens back to when I first went to college in 1999. One of the first questions one of my peers in the dorm asked me, when he found out that I played violin, was whether I "played fiddle." I immediately felt the gap in our backgrounds and sheepishly (but honestly) told him no, I was a total n00b—that I was raised only on classical music. He and my other dorm friends then took it upon themselves to teach me about the rest of the midwest, outside of Chicago. 

My friends said we were "underground hillbillies" because we were a bunch of engineers and scientists who were into EDM but had back country character to our friendship. 

I ended up posting this online (remember blogs?) and it became a hit among my growing blog audience. 

This song is dedicated to my Purdue loves: Clint, Will, and Cara. And to Melissa, for digging up the mp3 file 16 years later. <3

Underground Hillbillies

This is an EDM arrangement of J.S. Bach's Little Fugue in G minor that I created as a little synth exercise. 

Several folks older than I compared it to Switched On Bach from 1968, which was the first time Bach's music (or any classical music) was applied to the original Moog synthesizer.

This track is very simple but builds in intensity toward the counterpoint at the end.

Little G minor Fugue

Vocals & vocal performance: Adonnis Williams. You can find him at @papi_sativa on both Instagram and Twitter.

Composition & instrumental performance: Jacqui Cheng. You can find me at @jacquicheng on Instagram and @ejacqui on Twitter.

This original track is a collaboration between myself and Chicago-based rapper & mayor-to-be, Adonnis Williams. I met and worked with Adonnis in Chicago a few years back in both of our younger days, so when I worked on this piece during the start of this second COVID-19 winter, I invited him to write and record the vocals. 

As I was composing the track, I had the idea to make fun of myself always bringing things back to classical in my club music, but I took a different approach than usual, starting by writing the rest of the track first and then finding the right classical piece later. In the end, I rearranged parts of Chopin's Nocturne in F minor (Op. 55, No. 1) to tie together the verses, which I love because the original piece by Chopin has such a different character while still conveying a sense of loss and unsettlement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3yrEEM5j_s

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