Tonight I've got another pretty finger picked acoustic base using the Spider capo with some acoustic lead and glockenspiel on top. I think this one's got a good vibe.

Fun-A-Day 2018

2018 Day 26

I got an mbira aka thumb piano for my birthday and tried to make something I coud use that in. I used a capo and the Spider capo to make some open tuning in C on the guitar to play some droney background chords and then layed up the mbira with some lap harp and glockenspiel.

2018 Day 29

Pushing through a multitude of technical and other difficulties to make some more instrumental music tonight. I wanted to make it "easy" on myself so I picked up the acoustic guitar and wrote some fingerpicking parts. But I also wanted to use the Spider Capo and another capo so I wound up making something I could only barely play, oops!

Jamuary 1 Fun-A-Day 2019

Jamuary 1 - Day 3

I again tried to make things "easy" tonight by trying to write a simple song with strummed acoustic guitar. But then I couldn't help myself and make it difficult again and try to play guitar, stomp my left foot on a stomp/bass pedal and my right foot with a strapped-on tambo, and alternate singing and playing harmonica. Eventually though I had to give up on that and multitrack this one, at which point I decided to double the guitar and throw in some bass. Stuff!!

Jamuary Fun-A-Day 2019

Jamuary 1 - Day 4

Here's my music/song for Tuesday the 8th. I made this song with my Song Fight! band Berkeley Social Scene for the upcoming fight titled "Sing of the Times". Ken wrote the lyrics per usual, but couldn't make practice, so I drummed. I'm also taking over engineering and mixing duties for BSS for a while. Glen and Martin wrote the music, Glen played the guitar solo, and Martin handled the vocals. This will be up soon on songfight.org.

Song Fight!

Sing of the Times

Erin and I wrote a silly corny little rock song last Saturday and now it is done! I recorded basic tracks Sunday and tongiht Erin did her vocals and got the rest of the tracking and mixing done. We've done a few songs in this style before with, some "oooh ee oooh ee oooh" synth lines. It's goofy but fun. One more day of Jamuary/Fun-A-Day!!

Jamuary 1 - Day 30 "Ghostwriter"

I watched some videos for inspiration and I wanted to do a chunky square wave bass line so I dialed in a good sound on the SH-101 and a bouncy pattern on the beats. I wound up with a very Star Trek theme reminiscent pad part on the keys plus the occasional live played melody. I'm running the PO-20 through the monotron delay for both the delay and the filter. This one is all live, the only things I did in the DAW were some EQ and compression after the fact.

Novembeat 2019

Novembeat 2019 13

Novembeat 2019 14

This one's loooooong. 6 minutes! I guess i was having too much fun. More live jamming, the usual gear. I tried leveraging the PO-20 more, playing with its chord progressions and chord pads and FX and running it through the monotron delay still for more noise. Stick around till the end, it's got a cool ending.

Novembeat 2019 15

Tonight I played around with the arpeggiator on the SH-101 and the hold button, just running a simple 1/8th note octave up/down arp bassline and transposing it around. I also paired that up with changing the chords on the PO-20. I tried to alternate between a fixed part on the keys and some live leads on the PO-20.

Novembeat 2019 16

Today's jam is sequenced bassline on the SH-101 through the Flashback x4 delay. with drums on the volca beats through the MojoMojo overdrive, and a pad part and later a bite of live melody on the volca keys running through the Hall of Fame reverb in stereo. I am very inspired by these guys and this time I'm sort of ripping off this jam of theirs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xPp0vwvbbQ

Novembeat 2019 17

Another jam. I have to confess that I messed up with this one and had to do some cleanup editing of mistake in the DAW. Oh well! The volca keys is tricky to stop/start on time, and to play cleanly, even with an external keyboard. Oy.

Novembeat 2019 18

I'm baaa-aaack. Live synth jam tonight for day 1 of Jamuary/Fun-A-Day 2020!

Jamuary Fun-A-Day 2020

Jamuary Funaday 2020 01

Another live synth jam for tonight! I tried a slightly different setup. I've been frustrated with syncing the volcas to the SH-101 because it meant I could only run the SH-101's sequencer at one step per eighth note. So while it was cool to use the 100 step sequencer to make long sequences like for chord changes, I couldn't syncopate bass lines the way I wanted. So today I tried instead syncing the volcas to the SQ-1 sequencer and settling for using its 16-step sequencer to control the SH-101. That worked pretty well. Sadly I'm one 1/8" cable short of being able to set that up and still use the PO-30. Aargh! Anyway, this is just bass, drums, and synth pads. I think it turned out pretty decent.

Jaumary Fun-A-Day 2020

Jamuary Funaday 2020 02

I busted out another live synth jam tonight. Same basic setup as last night. Tonight I actually switched between two different patterns on the volca beats for the first time. I should probably make more use of that! I tried to add some live played harmonizing and melody on the keys, to the pad noises.

Jamuary Funaday 2020 03

Did somebody say "more delay"?! I had a busy day and went out to see Star Wars after dinner so I had to make this jam in a hurry. I just used the same setup from last night, only I programmed the bass line on the volca keys and played some live melody on it too, and did a high arp part on the SH-101. No pattern switching on the beats this time, just muting and unmuting individual drums. This piece is unofficially titled "Star Wars Sucks"...

Samfun Aday

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