Everything

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)

Multi-artist project of April 2025.

LYRICS AND ANNOTATIONS:

(Morse code for "we are just like you we promise. settle in.")
(birds)
Bones chilled in the old ghost forest,
Where the tide came in took the land away.
Hollow trees, still standing.
Knee deep in swamp water is where I stay (is where I stay).

Living lives of quiet desperation.
The haters, they just follow the herd,
Wearing masks of false inspiration,
Their festering wounds left undisturbed (undisturbed).

Running towards the pain,
The wicked voice of their disdain,
On that edge - the tired eyes reflect:
It’s only the first time we fear what’s next.

For those who live in risk,
In a society whose promises won’t stick,
Is this the end of the line?
Have we used up what’s left of our time?

In the old ghost forest, I stand tall
Like a stubborn oak tree that refuses to fall.
Empty cans and bottles lie nearby,
Artifacts from a past that will not die.

In the old ghost forest, I kneel to pray,
Confess my sins, wash them away.
In the old ghost forest, I scream aloud,
"Lord, gimme the strength to stand proud!"

(birds)
Our future's found: four circles deep.
Come slosh around; more misery, reaped.

What’s woes occurred: cursed, fate foreseen.
What does the word "worst" even mean?

A fitting gloom: stark, rank and sour.
A fetid tomb: dark, dank and dour.

We should have known how ends begin.
This is our home now; settle in.

Settle in.

(city street chatter)
We should have known how ends begin.
This is our home now; settle in!

Settle in!

We are just like you.
We promise, we promise.
Settle in…
We promise, we promise.
Settle in…

Black tar rains from a sky long dead,
We chew on rust, drink molten lead.
No dawn breaks through this crawling haze,
Just grinding teeth and static praise.
This is the hymn of bone and sin—
The sludge within did settle in.

Our tongues are ash, our limbs decay,
We march in place, still rot away.
This is the hymn of bone and sin—
The sludge within did settle in.

This is the hymn of bone and sin—
The sludge within did settle in.
(ocean sounds)

Settle In

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

A simple song with an important message.
Acoustic guitar, organ, alto saxophone.

LYRICS:
Calm down.
Don't worry.
Be happy.
Let go and calm down.

Calm Down

Collaboration between Keys from Neptune and NOSTRUMUVA.
Keys from Neptune wrote the main piano. NOSTRUMUVA added some more piano layers (TEOP1), Akai EWI4000s (electronic woodwind), cricket sound effects from a white water rafting trip.

Le Verrier is known for predicting the existence and position of Neptune using only mathematics.

Crickets Of Verrier

Acid jazz with some quality syncopation between the bass guitar and keys.  This is a tribute song to my old band - this is the kind of stuff we used to play in Williamsburg, VA.  I'd normally switch between playing alto sax or Akai EWI4000s, or my old Yamaha keyboard.

Burned Down Ordinary

Calm opening with woodwinds, then into some psychedelic rock, lots of me just doing voice blending on TEOP1, trumpet at end.

LYRICS:
And we're back.
Time to move on.
Pick up where we left off.
We finally found the right direction.
It was there all along.
Hidden between the different layers.
Just had to see through the fog.
We finally noticed that tiny little glimmer of light,
Breaking out from the clouds.
And we can let go now.
Finally, a break.
What did it take?
Finally, a break.
What did it take?

Finally A Break

I wrote the lyrics to this in 2019 as a poem and finally got around to using it.  Lots of voice blending me harmonizing with myself through different vocoders on the TEOP1.  I got out my old Hohner Chromonica 260 (I need to clean it, it was disgusting).

LYRICS:
We hope of false, a hope that’s false.
We toss our hope, soon to be lost.
It steals our mind and poisons our heart,
Out there among a floating nothing.
With dreams of someone to catch what’s sought,
Thrown like a rope, with hope it’s caught.
And then we pull with all our might,
In hope the rope will soon pull tight.
We pull, suspended in the air.
It seems as if there’s someone there.
And only when we realize, after pulling for your friend,
The rope has come up to the end.
You still are where you once began.
Your force from pulling was making it tight.
You reeled a fish that wasn’t there.
The smile you had was worth it, right?

False Hope

A cappella multi-voice harmonizing original pirate shanty about a lonely pirate that can not swim.  I live in Hampton, VA, where we have the Blackbeard Pirate Festival every year and these types of songs are very common.  Voice recordings into TEOP1 keyboard with the "Mother" voice setting.

LYRICS:
Lonely pirate by the ocean,
There is sand between his toes.
If he's ever feeling happy,
It's something he never shows.

Lonely pirate by the ocean,
But he didn't learn to swim.
He's been standing on the shoreline,
Waiting for the tide to come in.

I wonder what he's thinking.
Is he looking for a sign?
Does he see himself in me,
The way I see myself in him?

Lonely pirate by the ocean,
And I have so many questions,
But the answers are a sea away
And hidden like a treasure.

I wonder what he's thinking.
Is he looking for a sign?
Does he see himself in me,
The way I see myself in him?

Lonely pirate by the ocean,
The tide is coming in,
And he would rather drown than swim,
And I wonder if I should go with him.

Such a lonely pirate.

Lonely Pirate

Ambient soundscape with lead soft glockenspiel on TEOP1.

Expected

Breakcore EDM with a very prominent syncopated primary melody.

Thin Film Interference

This song is based on my previous "Second Soul" song.  I have some type of enjoyment from hearing a repetitive single note played on beat 3 for some reason.  I tried to stick close to the theme but add more of that repetitive note and made it more spacious.  I used some type of xylophone from TE-OP1 and a few different synth pads.

Supplemental Souls

Started this track out on my TE OP-1 Field with a very over-modulated organ noise, then added many more layers and some vox of me growling and laughing.  Lots of post production edits and filters in audacity... more than usual.

Evil Organ Grinder

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

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

Electronic horror song with dynamics at the beginning and end.  Lots of sliding trumpet.  Inspired by my other Evil Organ Grinder song.

My Little Puppet

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.