In 2018, my wife Cat costume designed the Amazon series Homecoming in Los Angeles, so we decamped Brooklyn for a 1930s cottage aerie perched halfway up Laurel Canyon for most of the year. I bought a knock-around Seagull Entourage Rustic Concert Hall at All-In-One Guitars (https://www.allinoneguitars.com), at the time in perfect-scaled storefront in Koreatown, and wrote a couple dozen demos in our Gould Avenue house. My "Gentleman of the Canyon" adventure took me to a songwriter time zero, stripped down and raw, to that place where I just sat and thought and wrote and strummed. And listened. And learned. 

This Canyon Drive video:
https://youtu.be/9M2kgtzeT6M

These tracks were recorded with the intention of evolution. But for now, they float the aether in their simplest, stripped state, kicking up some glorious west coast dust for me. Who knows where we'll meet again. Hopefully, in The Canyon.

Stripped State: Laurel Canyon

All the samples are from http://inbflat.net/ and I just put them together in a way that sounds good to me. It's pretty hard to make something that sounds bad from that website though :)

B Flat

improvised guitar drones, loops and melody lines over beats. 

guitar / amp:
jolie (gibson es-335 dot reissue, peekamoose custom electronics)
vox ac4c1-bl tube combo

efx chain:
(ebow -->) earthquaker "warden" compressor --> ehx pog2 --> ehx freeze --> ibanez ts-808 tube screamer --> small sound/big sound mini overdrive --> tc electronic flashback delay+looper --> strymon blue-sky reverberator --> line6 pod xt phaser modeler

software / hardware:
sony acid, motu 828mk2, XP

title is reference to jack kerouac's "list of essentials" in his <i>belief & technique for modern prose</i>:
17. write in recollection and amazement for yourself

bandcamp

prologue: in recollection and amazement

version: 20180307.3a

video:
https://youtu.be/9M2kgtzeT6M

well I'm climbing up this Canyon drive 
high enough to see across time 
to the days where you and I 
had nothing to leave behind 
up here, on this Canyon drive

a thousand feet up in the sky 
on a one-lane two-way graded switchback ride 
we opened up and saw ourselves from outside 
and knew we wanted no other life 
up here, on this Canyon drive

down in the Valley a relentless pursuit of dreams 
in every shadow a sorrow and a scheme 
a world designed to keep us from coming alive 
far away from all the light that shines 
up here, on this Canyon drive

what price wouldn't you pay 
to let nothing get in your soul's way 
to quiet dark echoes of unlived lives 
at least up here there's hope you'll find 
peace on this Canyon drive

Stripped State

This Canyon Drive

version: 20180308.8a

1/2 way up the hill
is a long way down
to extend your horizon
to wave away clouds

Into the great unknown
Into endless blue
1/2 way up the hill
was the best we could do

where calm clear sky
is the everyday
no wonder the sun
yearns to steal away

into the great unknown
into endless blue
1/2 way up the hill
was the best we could do

echoes of times
when we were strong
swirled into good bye
after so longs

what keeps you alive 
is not the same 
as what makes you live
or what flies away

Stripped State: Laurel Canyon Recordings

Into Endless Blue

Riding the D with Casey and Bob [20180310]

version: 20180412.7

time will not release
a missing puzzle piece
faded memories
don't know what you mean

you can't watch a sunrise
through someone else's eyes
if they never see you
in dreams

clouds over LA dance alone between skies

distant freeways shimmer 
traffic as rivers
red and white ribbons
valley to sky

lost friends reappear
in dusty windshields
as evening light hits
California 5

clouds over LA dance alone between skies

drifting the night
suspended from life
shadows of every last good bye

clouds over LA dance alone between skies

clouds over la

Clouds Over LA

Mattie was the kinda girl 
who saw the end of the world
every time she opened her eyes 
Roger was the kinda guy 
never turned down a ride
figured "the end of days is just down the line."

the price you pay 
counting on judgment day for love 
is to waste the light away
wide awake
wishing on the dark
(in Wonderland)

they found an acre and a half
halfway up Wonderland 
in September 1973 
they spent a few years
thinking the end was near
and cut down none of their trees

their earth gave way on a red flag day 
right around 1982
they held on fast 
against a backdraft
into the black they flew

they always thought of each other
as first time lovers
in an endless secret rendezvous 
but sometimes living a life of desire
leaves you dreaming of fire
in a state of always almost coming true

Wonderland

20180607.1

i believe in my dream
I believe in my dream
in my song, i believe you'll see
all the lives we are to lead

searching for answers
is a waste of precious time
destiny doesn't ring the bell,
doesn't tell you you've arrived

songbird on an electric line
only knows he's incomplete
caught up in a lookout for love
all his faith on endless repeat

may never know magic 
of a returned call
but he never sounds tragic
never sounds small

Canyon Songbird Dream #7

Original track here https://soundcloud.com/user-524526704/disquiet-junto-0367-trio

More on this 368th weekly Disquiet Junto project (Engage Duo / The Assignment: Record the second third of a trio, adding to a pre-existing track.) at:

https://disquiet.com/0368/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

https://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here:

http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0368-engage-duo/

There’s also on a Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for Slack inclusion.

Image associated with this project is adapted (edited, color altered, text added) from a photo by Anna J and is used via Flickr thanks to a Creative Commons license:

https://flic.kr/p/gcojn

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/

Engage Duo (disquiet0368)

I used https://soundcloud.com/jesuisgentil/spoons-disquiet0367 as the track on which to base the new composition on. It features two soft synths playing arpeggios with automation to give them movement. I used a random number generator to find the spoons track. Really happy with it.

Revolving Spoons // Disquiet0368

Northwoods + droney drone ~~** Disquiet0368

i used this lovely acoustic piece https://soundcloud.com/carlin-mclellan-751824513/texas-disquiet0367

played along with a mountain dulcimer, duplicated and pitched down, bit of preverb, reverb. recorded on my phone.
.
..
Disquiet Junto Project 0368: Engage Duo
The Assignment: Record the second third of a trio, adding to a pre-existing track.

Step 1: This week’s Disquiet Junto project is the second in a sequence that explores and encourages asynchronous collaboration. This week you will be adding music to a pre-existing track, which you will source from the previous week’s Junto project (disquiet.com/0367). Note that you aren’t creating a duet — you’re creating the second third of what will eventually be a trio. Keep this in mind.

Step 2: The plan is for you to record a short and original piece of music, on any instrumentation of your choice, as a complement to the pre-existing track. First, however, you must select the piece of music to which you will be adding your own music. There are more than 40 tracks to choose from, almost all of them in this playlist:

https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/sets/disquiet-junto-project-0367

And at least one more is available as part of a video in this discussion thread from last week:

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0367-trio-initiate/

To select a track, you can listen through all that and choose one, or you can use a random number generator. (Note: it’s perfectly fine if more than one person uses the same original track as the basis for their piece.)

Step 3: Record a short piece of music, roughly the length of the piece of music you selected in Step 2. Your track should complement the piece from Step 2, and leave room for an eventual third piece of music. When composing and recording your part, do not alter the original piece of music at all, except to pan the original fully to the left. In your finished audio track, your part should be panned fully to the right. To be clear: the track you upload won’t be your piece of music alone; it will be a combination of the track from Step 2 and yours.

Carlin McLellan's mate Mark + sevenism - Texas Nexus (disquiet0368)

The second week of a three-week Disquiet Junto collaboration project. I used the random number generator at random.org to select OHELEM's electric sitar drone track from last week. I added synthesized choir voices to continue the hypnotic meditative feel.

Trio the Second

Trio The Second - Disquiet0368

This track is part of the Disquiet Junto Project #0368. The objective of this step of the project is to choose another participant's musical submission from last week and record an additional accompaniment, with the idea that there will be one more addition next week. The new part is intended to be panned hard right.

More information on this project can be found here:
https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0368-engage-duo/19077

Tunnelwater's original track can be found here:
https://soundcloud.com/user-524526704/disquiet-junto-0367-trio

Wind in the Lavender (Disquiet0368)

Existing track was already perfect but I could hear a piano slowly fading in, so that's what I added. 
I just made a simple repeated piano part using a VST piano - The Maverick (Native Instruments). I cut the highs and lows and put it in mono to try to leave space for everything. 
Added a VHS effect (AfroDJMac)to everything to make it feel nice and floating...

More on this 369th weekly Disquiet Junto project (Final Solo / The Assignment: Record the final third of a trio, adding to a pre-existing track, based itself on a prior pre-existing track) at:

https://disquiet.com/0369/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

https://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here:

http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0369-final-solo/

There’s also on a Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for Slack inclusion.

Image associated with this project is adapted (edited, color altered, text added) from a photo by Anna J and is used via Flickr thanks to a Creative Commons license:

https://flic.kr/p/gcojn

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/

disquiet0369 Spooning underwater w/ TOTAL ENERGY & GENTIL

Sounds captured during several walks around lockdown Manhattan during the COVID-19 crisis in March 2020. Birds, sirens, ebbs and flows, does the city sound like a sea in parts? and a stray accordionist with Lara's Theme somewhere across the park. An oil tank truck struggles to reengage after stopping near the hospital, fossil fuel memories surging into the present.

This piece premiered as part of "Radio Free Plague Ship" Audio Zine (https://secretvenue.org/events/plagueship) on April 17, 2020.

Clouds Over LA

Westy Reflector

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