This song was constructed using Ableton's new Push controller/instrument hardware. I wrote it for my Father's birthday even though they style isn't really what he listens to, however I am strangely proud of the piece, and it was a great learning experience. Originally all that existed was part 2, but in an experiment with how I would both embellish the song live (particularly if my dad was around as I'd want to make it something  even more special being done in a performance manner) as well as use the push to perform it, part 1 was born out of improvisation. The whole thing is a single take, however a few of the droning pads in the beginning were added later when I realized that, while a bunch of stoned people could enjoy JUST a "guitar" jamming out, to just sit and listen is awful.

Also, while the key is listed "E Minor", I actually was experimenting with a Japanese scale called "Hirojoshi". I hope you like it. It seems the first album is adapting a kinda break-beat, hip/trip hop feel. I don't know if I'll be sticking to a single genre, but I'm also trying to just go with the flow and enjoying the afterglow. Please follow if you enjoy.

Guns Killed the Samurai (Live, Parts 1 & 2) [updated May 3 2014]

The working title for this melancholy mood melter, was "Captain Jack Harkness," a character from BBC's Doctor Who, later the star of Torchwood, who is unable to be killed, has lived an unfathomably long time, has seen probably everything possible due to his life expectancy and his ability to travel through time, and dies an unrecognizable creature known no longer by his stolen "human" name, but as a wise, revered being called "The Face of Boe."

If I thought the BBC would let me (or knew the exact rules about using the name) I wouldn't have renamed it. I feel like the song kind of paints a profile of the character, and how sad it must be to live the life he does. In Doctor Who, when we meet him, he is a cocky, selfish, incredibly charismatic, and ultimately mortal con-man from the future. In a battle against the infamous enemies of the Time Lords, the Daleks, "Captain Jack" dies to protect others. It is when another companion of the doctor named Rose Tyler looks into, and becomes one, with all of space and time, calling herself the "Bad Wolf" and brings him back to life, at the same time disintegrating the atoms of the invading bad guys. By the time we meet him as the "new" head of the Torchwood Institute, we face a completely different man, who has lost more people than anybody will ever meet in their life, trying so very hard to not become close to those he knows he will just lose anyway, and utterly failing, caring for and even falling in love with people through countless lifetimes- dying over and over again to save them for just a little bit longer and feeling the pain of fire, torture, bullets, blades, teeth, and any other normally fatal experience with each round he experiences all the while hoping "As long as they're okay, PLEASE let this be the last one!" just to gasp and suck up a lung full of air and sit up like somebody waking from a bad dream just a few minutes later. 

That must be true pain, and perhaps sad but certainly true, the times my life truly seems the darkest, I can look to this fictional character's own personal drama and say "but at least I'll NEVER have to face all of that."

The Current title, while not as strongly associated with the notes (which inspired both the original and final title, not the other way around) is still attached to the song for, what I feel, is just as legitimate and appropriate a reason. With most music, instrumental or not, I will always picture some sort of story; usually of my own making and sometimes completely opposite of what the lyrics may say the song is about if the sounds dictate something else. Though the number is nowhere near the amount that I do this with personally, there is a large percentage of songs where the lyrics are meant to be ironic- some the band or singer have come right out and admitted as much, and some, we must assume, the artist assumes that you'll know better because the music itself, nothing more than sound, being unable to mislead or decieve, and therefore must be the door that always speaks the truth (thanks Labyrinth, for the metaphor) tells you the singer is lying. 

That's not true. The music can lie too, it's up to the listener I think, ultimately, to decide which has done which.

Many of the times, however, I will picture what I would call more of a storyboard than, say, a music video. I imagine a series of still images, what I call "sonic paintings" or "aural paintings". They are very detailed, capable of movement/animation, but more often than not are static. This is because, I think, of the way I hear music. I know many other musicians do this, but not as many artists as you'd think, and certainly not the vast majority. I have actually trained friends to hear it this way as I was growing up, and watched it never erase something they liked previously, but unlock things they found previously un-listenable/noise/etc.

My sister told me that when she thinks about a song that she can't hear, all she hears is the singing. My mother, a huge Led Zeppelin fan (and genuine music fan), told me Zeppelin was all she listened to as a teen/early adult due to her obsession with the voice of Robert Plant, and that is what she hears when listening to the band. I for some reason have never been able to "hear it as a whole", yet I always hear the whole thing. I hear each instrument, each sound as it's own individual idea, and each part is only complete when the sonic painting has been completed- each part either contributing to one giant idea or presenting it's own personal idea, either complimenting each other in a theme or standing independently (this is the case in a cacophonous passage, as is often found in genres such as avant garde jazz and progressive rock; when the instruments seem to clash against each other and make what most call noise and few hear music). It is more often the case with an instrumental piece that I will be presented with several ideas that form a theme rather than a single idea, as there are no words to point me in any one direction. Think of it like a churches stained glass, where there may be one big picture, but all around it are smaller parts of the story. As I find it difficult to focus on all of them at once (really, impossible) I see the static or slightly moving images instead of the music video.

People have told me with much of my original rock music, as well as with this project that it reminds them of movie soundtracks. I don't disagree. However, I never intend for that to be the case. Often my music is melancholy. Not depressed or depressing, but written in minor keys and carrying an air of sadness with them. This, again, is unintentional, as most of the time I try to have moments of intense fury or unintelligible laughter or unreasonable happiness as well, but if there is to be only one theme, it tends to be a melancholy one, because I write alone so often and the song will begin softly with a single instrument playing, and that often portrays a darker feeling. "Cracks in the Lens of a Dim Film Projector" as a sentence alone projects (pun) more than just the image it's describing. You will also picture the theater it sits in perhaps. Is it empty, with cobwebs and dust clinging to the curtains or just sparsely populated, perhaps a run down independent or third-run theater that can't afford to change the bulb that doesn't shine bright enough or the scratched, lightly cracked lens - but not the lens itself, or the scratches or cracks- but instead the shadows they cast where the light splits coming through it, obscuring what's behind that strange, jagged black line. Or do you instead imagine the kinds of movies that are played on these projectors? Forgotten black and white classics, dark and underground pornography too filthy to describe, the hopeful art film that sold two tickets locally to a teenage couple that only ducked in because they just discovered that thrusting their tongues in each other's mouths in the dark, empty, air conditioned room is more pleasant that holding hands in the blistering summer sun. All of this and more just from the phrase. Now, combine that with the music.

Maybe that's why I often find vocals to be either too much or too restricting.

Cracks in the Lens of a Dim Film Projector

This song shares a similar concept as the track Guns Killed the Samurai, though focusing more on the aftermath vs the instigation of the events the title draws it's origin and the sounds pull their inspiration from. Though probably obvious to any resident of the USA, It is about generations of a native land being conquered, and though the spark that ignited the first key to be struck was the struggle faced by Native Americans, both many in the beginning of the coming of Europeans and today, the song really is about any place- country, building, land, or sea that has been taken, occupied, or destroyed by another.

The title, which may, for some, serve as a misleading reminder of the Led Zeppelin song, carries the true weight of its meaning in its parenthetic portion.. It's exceptionally important in instrumental music that the title help guide the listener to arrive in the same head space in which the composer found themselves while painting their aural pictures. This is done by guiding the listener emotionally via the manipulation of sonic waves, and something as simple as the title can help to outline the shapes and colors the music presents- "set the stage", so to speak. It's my hope that while you may not play the exact same scene in your head, the sadness, anger, hopelessness; the weight and severity of the loss experienced by anyone who has lost a home/nation/or even the history of their origin can be conveyed by the notes you hear.

How the West Was Won (For Some)

This song came about while staying with my as-of-recently former roommate and fellow artist <a href="http://www.soundcloud.com/jaronium">Jaronium</a> aka Jaron Morris at his family's new house. As this family had taken me in and provided a roof over my head for almost 3 years, my gratitude toward each individual is beyond measure, and they have become extended members of what I call my Ohana.

Yes, I spent a significant amount of time living directly across the hallway from a guy who has over 700 original tracks as of last week and each day you can expect at least one, if not two, new additions. Now I may have 5 (well, "Guns..." is technically two, so 6 tracks) finished for the Erich Zann EP, seemingly titled by somebody who just couldn't be bothered "No Need for A Title: The Songs Have Their Own," which was started almost or just over a year ago. I can't remember. Anyway, that doesn't mean in the last year I've written only 6 songs. I have a few progressive house/trance songs that made it to completion, have lost roughly 8-12 entire songs to harddrive failure (and the hard drives were the back up) and a couple more project files that have made going back to fix up tiny little things that bother me impossible. 

And then there's the unfinished selection. That probably is up there with Jaron's complete collection in numbers. Some of them I just decide I don't like, some I forget about, the excuses are as numerous as the unfinished bits themselves. I don't like that, and have asked my buddy and former occupant of the room across the hall how he does it every day and I don't know why I expected a different answer, or even if a different answer exists when it comes to that level of dedication. He said "I don't know. I just do it, man."

Waking up to Bassquakes (where his bass shook the walls to the point of making my room sound like the air was being fed through a distortion petal) and walking into his room half-asleep to stare at him arranging/composing/mixing in Logic/Maschine/Live/FL Studio on his Macbook Pro (hooked up, of course, to the hi-def TV on the wall for all to see) has been the inspiration behind many of the vigorous, energetic, motivated starts I have undertaken, but it's only when I tell myself I can't do anything, go anywhere, etc, that I am able to finish a track. While visiting Jaron that day, I told myself that I would not be satisified until I completed at least the composition of the different parts, and I did. I spent too much time going "what if it starts this way?" and got far too little sleep to actually finish it, and after moving and not having my computer set up, it was a visit from the ex-roommate that sparked the motivation to get in and finish it today. An embarrassing large part of the day consisted of me trying to play back the song as I'd decided to do it, completely unable to remember which buttons were which parts, what to let play for how long, and finally just spent another few hours creating more clip duplicates and scenes than I ever have so that I could just scroll down and know exactly what would happen when I hit that pad or triggered this scene. However by the time that was finished, the arrangement took 2 takes, a little bit of fixing up a part triggered just a hair late or cut off too soon manually. Don't worry, I know also have a "Performance" copy of the project and can pull it off without a hitch. I did a little basic EQing, and a little quick DYI mastering, but this will sound better when the album is released.

So, in reality, this song took two complete days to get to this stage. Today was spent with the already made pieces, sticking them together like legos or something to make a coherent track from random electronic blips, bloops, booms and bangs and then leveling them out. The truly creative part came the first day where my buddy, I think unknowingly since I wore headphones, inspired this composition, and hours of me playing with the launchpad and session view to figure out how the song would start, build up, break down, and simply keep your attention throughout. I know I'll have fun playing it, and live I can get away with extending a song for the sake of an extra 16 bars to add in something new or even to cover a missed cue that people probably won't notice unless I make my "oh shit" face. 

You see, when you're just listening to the song at home, in the car, on your smartphone while you walk to the Wilshire/Vermont metro station to tele-fundraise money for a bunch of non-profit and political organizations, there's got to be constant movement, especially with electronic music. Before I educated myself on things like filter automation to keep a synth line more interesting, I couldn't understand why all my songs sounded flat and you just lost interest unless I constantly changed the parts (resulting in the composition style of my now lost "Project Lithium" album, which featured constantly rolling pianos to distract from the fact I didn't really know much [read:anything] about sound design and thought everything revolved around samples swamped in far too much reverb). Due to the fact that we may not be able to pick it out, but natural sounds are never exactly the same twice, unless of course played back on a recording, our ears find static, unchanging, perfectly timed electronic sounds absolutely horrific. Let me tell you, I changed my mind very quickly about EDM being something anyone with a computer could do without trying.

They can't.

Jaron and his brother Joel (who will soon be moving into the same house I am currently in and DJs/Produces under the name Fractacality - Just click <a href="https://soundcloud.com/fractacality">HERE</a> are just as big of a reason as Parker that I ever embarked on this journey, and a certainly the reasons I was able to do it in some of my ...sparser times. Before I could afford my own (as I arrived in Tucson with a suitcase and a plush Stitch doll from the movie "Lilo and Stitch" and a guitar I'd had for roughly 4 months after not having one for almost as many years. I have borrowed USB, XLR, 1/4 inch, 1/8 inch, RCA, DVI cables and adapters and every combination of all of them. They have lent me interfaces, monitors of both the computer screen and pro audio speaker variety, computers, hard drives, flash drives, firewire cables, MIDI controllers, whatever I needed to be able to go in my room and make some music. They have gotten me DJing gigs when I first came out. They absolutely (though cautiously, at first) treated me like a brother. 

I'll never forget the first time either of them complemented any aspect of my music, as I'm very shy and they both have been doing what they do for a long time. I mean, previous to getting here, I had owned 1 M-Audio Axiom Pro 49 that I'd purchased with birthday money from my dad, and finding myself homeless and across the country from where I'd spent the last few years calling home with a broken back and nowhere to go, I sold it for 1/5 of what I'd paid for it (unopened) to the worst pawn shop ever.

Anyway, aside from the coincidence of the gear purchases I'd made opening my eyes to new styles and techniques, Jaron and I shared the guest house of a large property. He listens to all kinds of music, but when asked what he writes, he first told me Dubstep. We have both since decided that he writes kind of a mix between Dubstep (which personally I like making more than listening to) Breaks, Glitch, and BASS. Oh, don't forget Drum & Bass. I think this is what caused me to unconsciously drag the tempo from 128 BPM to a much slower 80 and approach the beat with more of a hip-hop eye.

Meanwhile Joel's G.O.C* is psytrance, and he uses Reason 7 as his primary DAW. Normally I would disagree with anybody (including me a few years back) who uses reason as their SOLE music production platform. Or well, I would have, had I not been impressed by the way in which he presented the track he'd been working on to me. I guess Joel doesn't believe in timelines/arrangements and instead would rather unleash each part one by one, live, using a pre-programmed redrum, kong, and matrix sequencers with acidic basslines and far away pads gating on their way out of subtractor, maelstrom, and thor, through the virtual wires inside and the real ones out of the computer, into his behringer mixer, and through his monitors/PA speakers never to be played the same again. Joel did his production and after work computer repair in a former workout room, converted into a cluttered, yet enormous studio attached to the main house of the property. This put Joel and I in each other's company less of often, resulting in Jaron and I interacting but never collaborating much more often. Also Joel works (at this time) in a computer shop and after hours in his room while Jaron is a bonafide, certified Audio Engineer, so that opened a lot more time for him to make original music instead of Joel. Me, with my broken back and fight with the disability office, also stayed home, however I spend a lot more time reading about how to make it sound like "this" or tricks to make sounds for "that", often failing at my plagiarism, but ending up with a neat little loop that doesn't sound like anything else really.

Though the brothers have been the biggest push to follow my dream of being a composer/performer, I would be remiss to leave out another major source of encouragement and honest criticism. Their father, <a href="http://http://www.resonantsoundtherapy.com/">Dr. Lance Morris</a> is a naturpathic (sp?) doctor who has written a book (recently finishing the second, expanded and more accessible volume) entitled "The Edge And Beyond​ A Journey For Personal Self-Discovery, Awakening, And Healing" about everything from the treatment he developed himself- Resonant Sound Therapy- and how it works with a part of the body less commonly known by John Q. Public than is really acceptable considering the importance it holds over every aspect of our experiences (this body-part is called the fascia and if you click Dr. Morris' name in the link above you can learn about the treatement, book, and Lance) to what our experiences really are, and how to open ourselves up to healing, self-acceptance, truth, and happiness naturally. This is a guess, so please don't hold him to this, but I believe his work with sound is what lead, introduced, and captivated Lance when he experienced what we half-wittingly call EDM and the culture and ideals of the now rare rave scene. It's been too long since we've talked about it, but as I understand it, he feels that our ticket to global consciousness lay in the very music that I had ignorantly written off as just an excuse to do drugs and found out that while they DO exist at raves, with or without inebriation, the music and patrons (and I later found out the drugs too... turns out they don't just instigate and orgy every time MDMA is taken) will actually bring people together to smile, dance, talk through whatever's bothering them and realize how much more powerful it is to be in the moment rather than worry about a moment that hasn't come and you can only guess at the outcome; no the entire course of events leading up to it, because the best laid plans, no matter how solid they seem, and when the time comes, so long as you prepare responsibily as well as party responsibily and just enjoy living and these songs that are being preached by the shamanistic DJ/Producers that fill the air with beats, melodies, and even sounds that are completely their own, they are birthed from a place beyond the mind-brain and are a part of that artist. And let me tell you, their willingness to become vulnerable and offer you that piece of them, and desire to share them with the world...

It really is amazing, because it's not for money, fame, or power. The artists, and I extend that to my fellow author friends, painter friends, whoever they may be. All of us freeze a moment, a thought, a feeling (maybe more than one) that we know we can't have back, that we won't experience EXACTLY the same again, but know that we can allow others to feel what we felt, to think what we thought, or- to create an experience completely unlike what our own was. But 

 The three Morris men have been wonderful tools of encouragement, and I thank each of them individually for the different ways they have helped me, musically or otherwise. There isn't an aspect of my life that at least one of them hasn't touched and changed for the better. Paintings, Drawings, Sculptures, Poetry, Prose, Music. They are all different approaches to the same thing, which is why they are called art, and that's what art is. Some people may say the latest pop stars album that contains one hit and a lot of filler is fake, emotionless, and artless. That is a mislead idea. You can claim it's fake because she didn't write the music, lyrics, or even the vocal melody, and all three of those may have come from somewhere else. The lyrics may be shallow, about sex, drugs, alcohol, and whatever you personally consider frivilous, but the fact remains that it captures a time, it captures a feeling, and it offers an escape as much as Mogwai or Godspeed does. Don't let something not falling within your tastes be discarded as trash. Recognize it for what it is and put on your favorite album and curl up with your favorite book, while your favorite movie is muted in the background. That's what this song is about. The words are nonsense. I chopped up multiple bits from multiple songs, but they play instruments in this track, not messages. What is "Your Nectareous God"? It is the sweet, sticky memories, the bits of a song that won't leave your head, and the same 8 seconds of your roommates new track on loop that inspire you to go and make something you can show somebody else and say "I made this and I want to share it with you."

Your Nectareous God

This is the set for Babylon 6-10-23 All tracks in this mix are produced by myself!!! Milestone Mix

Babylon Set

Babylon Set 6-10-23

PsyBreaks 2015 Tru - Vibe Lounge Mix (Rough Around the Edges)

One of my first properly done tracks. Thanks to Parallel for helping me and writing most of this track. Would love some feedback on this. 

Parallel and Josh D- Q's Word

If you like my music please donate!
PayPal: djkamakaflower@gmail.com

©2013 Kamaka
(P)2015 Sami Dee & Kamaka

Oceans of Emotions Remixes

Oceans of Emotions (Sami Dee's 67 East Street Remix)

Kamaka - Oceans Of Emotions ( Sami Dee's 67 East 3rd Street Mix )

need honest opnions of whats wrong and what can make this mix better 

track list:
1.arc-tritonal
2.scorpio-kryder
3.wake your mind-tritonal remix
4.perfectly-maison&dragen ft. christian burns
5.we are here to make some noise (maison&dragen remix)-armin van buuren
6.calrity (felix cartel remix)-ZEDD
7.elven-austin leeds 
8.come with me (lazy rich remix)-steve aoki 
9.nemisis-tangle&mateusz
10.hey!-bassjakers & showtek 
11.brohamer-topher jones
12.Y3AH!-ANSOL.vs.dzeko&torres 
13.kangaroo-sander van doorn
14.Niice-chris schwiezer 
15.outta my life-deadmau5 ft. billie newton davis 
16.gunsmoke(radio edit)-Bjorn Akesson
17.calling(lose my mind)-allesso &sebastian ingrosso

test mix

A Quick Thought

RÜFÜS DU SOL's Rose Ave Radio
Ep 8: RÜFÜS DU SOL DJ set

PsyBreaks 2015 Tru - Vibe Lounge Mix (Rough Around the Edges)

Fractacality

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