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MyFriendsComposition

Path Of The Nullanon

Drone

You are on a hospital bed with the beeping thing and it stops beeping.  Multi-layer original composition with me doing vocals, playing guitar, old Yamaha keyboard, and EWI4000s.

Flatline

Improvised multi-layer rock version of the classic taps military song.  Trying to emphasize that the battlefield has shifted to the digital world.  Old Yamaha keyboard, guitar, guitar effects pedal, EWI4000s.  Waveform artwork is one of my circuits I made of a functioning microcontroller on a breadboard.

Wiretaps

Improvised multi-layer rock with me on guitar, old Yamaha keyboard, and EWI4000s.  This song was later featured in a play called "Rock and Roll Mole" performed at a Chesterfield, VA library.

Now What

Improvised song on my old Yamaha keyboard through a guitar effects pedal.  The coolest part of this song is the unintentional recorded feedback matched up with what I was playing.

Standard

Multi-layer improvisation with Korg Radias keyboard and guitar, and TC Helicon Voice Pedal.

Ambivalence

This is the first song of my "Nullanon" series, which kind of correlates to a depression section of my life.  Little bit of funk at the end.  If you like the funk there is an extended version of that called "Turbulence Of The Nullanon".  The Nullanon is an anthropomorphized nothingness.

LYRICS:
Behold unto, O gentle love,
The nothing, Nullanon.
'Tis said on many scroll
He knows neither fate, nor reason.
Shall his will be evident?
His image sung through gifted tongue,
(Shall his will be evident?)
A voided hope and without shame,
(Shall his will be evident?)
Regardless of his coming seen,
Bring us to thy empty shell,
Shall his will be evident?
To others, an evil anathema,
Nay man is he, nor solid Earth.
Apathia, athambia, aphasia.
Man is but self-serving.
In hobo form, or merchant storm,
A wanderer o'er land and sea,
O Nullanon, join him now,
All nightmares expound from thee.

The Nullanon

This is the extended part of the end of my first "Nullanon" song.  Just some funky blues, that's all, moderately repetitive.

LYRICS (at the end):
Let there be something new?
No, it's all The Same.

Turbulence Of The Nullanon

This is number 3 in my "Nullanon" series.  The point is there is this thing called "The Same" and everything is part of it.  No matter what you do, all of life is vain.

LYRICS:
The air we breathe is The Same.
The light shown on us is The Same.
The sounds we hear are The Same.
The ground beneath our feet is The Same.
It's all The Same.
It's all The Same.
The light shown on us is The Same.
The sounds we hear are The Same.
The ground beneath our feet is The Same.
It's all The Same.
It's all The Same.
It's all The Same.
It's all The Same.
It's all The Same.

The Same

When someone asks you "What's the difference?", now you know.  It's this thing that came down from the sky and changed stuff after the Nullanon disappeared for a while.

At this point, I started concentrating on generating album covers using artist mannequins.  This is number 4 in my "Nullanon" series.  Imagine a bunch of people used to doing things very unambiguously and then there is something that forces them to start making more granular decisions based on evidence.

LYRICS:
Softly, slowly, swaying in the wind,
The trees reveal a message to begin,
As if a random group of people broke into a song,
The natural and man-made objects start to play along:
What is The Difference?
The great and mighty Nullanon is nowhere to be found,
A wave of synchronicity unfolds across the ground,
The people all are silent and they open up their eyes to the skies.
There's a difference that flies.
What is The Difference?
The Difference descends in graceful hidden coup d'etat.
It suffocates the people and their will.
What once was unambiguous is now a rolling hill,
And though they're happy they will cry inside.
What is The Difference?
It shines so bright,
Look at it and love.
It came from above, it must be good.
Give it all your energy, feed it like we should.
Feed The Difference.
What is The Difference?
What is The Difference?

What Is The Difference

I love the organ melody progression in this song at the beginning.  This is number 5 in my "Nullanon" series which is depression stuff, mixed with some funk organ.  The lyrics for this song is mostly about accepting what happened already and moving forward (stoic philosophy).

LYRICS:
Everything that was is now undone.
Every time we lost, we thought we won.
Everywhere we went is just a memory that fades,
Everything we said was just a promise that we'd made,
And now those promises are broken.
It took us way too long to figure out.
We didn't seem to start,
When we did, we never carried through.
We had a chance, but didn't try.
Pick up our mess, and collect ourselves,
Gather some hope, move forward again.
Rusted old tools in the dust on the shelf,
Moments before it's the end.
Might as well give it our all,
Nothing to lose,
One final attempt.
Maybe we're spent,
But that's how it went.
Might as well give it our all,
Nothing to lose.
One final attempt.
Maybe we're spent,
But that's how it went.

That's How It Went

A very very long psychedelic ambient drone rock song with multiple sections, some choral, some tribal handpan with didgeridoo, some funk, some blues, and some jazz.  Took me forever to make this one, lots of post filter work and manual audacity adjustments.  Trying to really get a continuous drone feeling across multiple genres.  I had to "Paul Stretch" the ending if you know what I mean.  Long Saturday and I'm not done yet and it's 4am.  Gonna start making a composite music video of me playing multiple instruments in a new song to add to Nullanon series.  I enabled this entire song to be free download and creative commons, meaning you can mostly do whatever you want with it.

The Long Drone

The Long Drone (Free Download, Creative Commons)

The image artwork for the album cover and waveform were created in watercolor by Rachel Rodgers, my sister.  This piece is a classical drone/ambient, where I attempt to have a constant lower drone noise behind a high pitched dissonant lead.

The accompanying video with effects is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2eHw1aFOP0

Watercolor Life

Collaboration with Alien Syndrome Deluxe, who composed the base concept.  I added the opening build, some audio filter drops, Korg Radias, Kaossilator, and Akai EWI4000s (flute sounds at the end).

https://soundcloud.com/alien-syndrome-deluxe

Moon Mites

Collaboration with Brendan Dempsey.

https://soundcloud.com/brendan-dempsey-3

Bass guitar, Korg Radias.

No Preconceptions

The 11th song in the Path Of The Nullanon.  Starts out with some drone into some heavy rock, then some soul hammond b3, then some reggae to close it off.

LYRICS:
Remember when it was simple?
When everything was hit or miss?
Now it's all just ups and downs at every turn.
Did we ask for this?
One moment you're above it all,
But then you fall.
Then you wake up,
And you're back on top.
Sometimes we just want things to be the same,
But things keep changing.
Chromatic game.

Chromatic Game

Morning song to wake up. It's melancholy but that's how most days are anyway. Starts out with some organ drone which continues through most of the song, a bit of soul, then into some trance then metal, and ending with some dubstep to get you fully awake.

Wake Up

I'm going to start doing some live looping performances on TEOP1 so this is a random practice session that is kind of Jam Band / Scat / Funk.  There is a 4-track on the TEOP1, so I can start out with drums or scat and then hit a key to end the loop, then just keep playing live and kind of overdub onto the other 3 tracks, and then also add in breaks by holding on one of the tracks while playing a B section.  I just live improvised the bass loop and then improvised the organ and keys as I went.  Random mood today, sorry to my dubstep and ambient fans :) This one is weird.

Bow Meow

Attentive

TEOP1 Field Keyboard and Korg Kaossilator, lots of Audacity post filters.

Halibut

I began writing this piece for minimalist organ with the intention of having multiple overlapping sections, but then I got bored and added some funk.  When I got to editing in Audacity, I added a "Paul Stretch" to a section which is the thing that makes it sometimes sound like it's "underwater", but this time it sounded like an airplane, so I got obsessed with that noise and put it all over the track in different forms and made that the general theme.

Well Clear ADSB

Experimental meditation oscillation song. TEOP1 Field keyboard, started with a layer of mid-level digital organ with some weird timber effect in it, then added an almost walking jazz bass accompaniment, then went back and added a higher layer of some more ethereal stuff.  The point of this song is drone background for some thinking/working.

Preoccupied Oscillation

For reasons unknown but time will tell...
Multi-instrumentalist, all types of music, all types of methods.
Occasional collaborations with other artists.
Sometimes I post the sheet music if it's piano.
Lately, my favorite instrument is a TE OP-1 Field keyboard.

Chromatic Game

NOSTRUMUVA