Rick’s Recordings

Jam Band

Summer

Everything

Funk

Rick Freeman 3_Wave_RM

Rick Freeman 3_My One and only love T1

Original interpretation sticking to the form alluding to the melody at times. Free drumming but still rhythmic. Interplay and a lovely bass solo and tag.

Rick Freeman 4_Autumn Leaves T

Rick Freeman 4_Black Dogs Back

Rick Freeman 4_Better Than Any

Bishop Berkeley was this dude in Ireland that came up with Solipsism, which is complete junk unfalsifiable philosophy that claims everything just exists in your own mind.  He experimented with Pine Tar a lot and died of paralytic stroke, likely due to ingesting the Pine Tar (my guess).  What's funny is when he died, we kept existing, so we must not have been a figment of his mind.  Multi-layer improvisation (improvised train of thought lyrics), harmonica, old Yamaha keyboard, shaker egg, clay whistle.

Here is the lyric video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7lN7L_b2Yc&list=PLvy_KXTNqcQeCK6_NNdtkBSxG_oWeuYEb&index=7

Bishop Berkeley Died

This song is about camping and worrying about gas prices.  The lyrics are completely improvised, and I added in some weird cat noises.  Multi-layer improvisation with Yamaha keyboard, guitar, and vocals through an echo pedal.

Gas Prices

Multi-layer improvised song with me playing my old Yamaha keyboard, and me singing multiple voice parts (lead and backup).  Let me also say that the lyrics were COMPLETELY improvised.  I was cooking some chicken in my old apartment in Williamsburg, VA.

I Cook My Chicken

Improvised Korg Radias keyboard, then I went back and improvised chromatic harmonica over top of it with an echo pedal.

By A Thread

This song is about my cat, who does not have object permanence.  It's a multi-layer improvisation with some planned lyrics added.

The Witter Knows

This is an improvised psychedelic drone song with a bit of funk on a Korg Radias keyboard.

Mystic Mustard

This is an inside joke with my girl.  Something to do with MST3K.  That's all you'll ever know.

Don't Look At The Sun

Dedicated to my sister.  She always went to the "Rock Dock" with her friends, which was at a local lake, and they would jump off a dock into the lake, and I tried to use reverse psychology to convince her to never dive head first into the lake.

Jump With Your Head

This is the remastered version of my very very old Lightningbug Night song. It is now more reggae sounding.  Imagine you are on a beach catching lightningbugs in a jar, with the intent to let them go afterwards.

Lightningbug Night

Lightningbug Night (Remastered)

I forced my little sister to sing some lyrics I wrote on a napkin, and I recorded it into my phone for the original version: https://soundcloud.com/nostrumuva/wish-i-were-a-butterfly
This is a remastered version with more of a jazzy trio middle section.

Wish I Were A Butterfly (Remastered)

This is a remastered version of my old Magnesium song that I improvised on my EWI4000s.
https://soundcloud.com/nostrumuva/magnesium
The old song was too quiet based on standard loudness normalization of -14db.  This version has more reggae feel to it.

Polished Magnesium

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

This is number 6 in my "Nullanon" series, which is about a depression period in my life.  Trying to figure out if there is still motivation to do things, or to just become a drone.

LYRICS:
Where did it go?
Why did it go?
Are we to know?
Is it still here?
Nothing is here.
Nothing is still here.
Where did it go?
Why did it go?
Are we to know?
Is it still here?
Nothing is here.
Nothing is still here.
Nothing is here.
Nothing is still here.
Nothing is here.
Nothing is still here.

Nothing Is Still Here

So this is an avant-garde dubstep song.  I began with TEOP1 and intentionally tried to be slightly offbeat and a bit random and to drag it out, then get it all to come together and pull out a primary melody with an electronic lead ("dimension" instrument on TEOP1) with a few piano sections ("pianistic" instrument on TEOP-1) and add in dub bass.  I went through 2 cycles of adding it to the 4-track on TEOP1, copying it out from COM to laptop, filtering in Audacity, copied it back, added more layers, then back to laptop again.  Normalized to -14dB with -1dB soft limit.  This song represents how I felt in the middle of the night at 3am while soldering random circuits for a supercapacitor experiment I was doing, and likely breathing in too much of the lead solder fumes.

Late Night Garage Experiments

Ambient soundscape of being inside of a heart.  TEOP1 keyboard with multiple really low modulated wumps, then a few lead layers mostly triplets of dissonant 2nds and 7ths, intentionally with no rhythm.  Then simple Audacity cleanup to -14dB normalization and -1dB soft limit.

Inside The Heart

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

Some basic ambient jamming out on Tidal Cycles with simultaneous TEOP1 keyboard at the same time.  If you want to watch me code in Haskell and play the keyboard at the same time, watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-g_n5ztNvvk

Multitasking

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.

Jump With Your Head

NOSTRUMUVA