In the fall of 2005, I was planning a full-length album of video game covers, tentatively titled “The Distance Between Start and Select”. Being as obsessed with “epic” as I was (and still am, haha), I wanted to dedicate songs to entire games, trying to incorporate all of the themes that I enjoyed. One such game that more or less got that treatment was “Marble Madness“, a wonderfully tricky puzzle game where you had to roll a ball through obstacles on an isometric grid. It came out on a few systems but I had the Nintendo version growing up. Naturally there was a lot of nostalgic value in the music for me, and upon revisiting it later I was surprised at how heavy the music was. One part of the track I put together I gave a Tool treatment, which I think sounded pretty cool.
This track started as three individual ones for the various levels of the game, respectively, in TablEdit. TablEdit is Guitar Tablature Software that happens to be great for doing multitrack MIDI arrangements. It was my number one resource for writing out music and initial ideas for a very long time. I still use it from time to time as it’s an extremely fast way to write music, using the computer keyboard entirely to input your notes. Kudos if you can figure out which part of the song this is!
It might be important to note that back in 2005 my music was quite different from how it is now. It’s funny to listen to this now and point out all the silly things that I would never do now (listen to those super athletic tom fills in the beginning! haha) Still, I think it’s easy to see where the evolution came from. I’ll get more into my roots and the evolution in other posts. As well as the super underrated Garageband.
I think I’ll let the music say the rest. The track is called “Fun With Marbles” because I had a lot of fun writing and making it! And because it wrongfully leads people to believe it’s about that old schoolyard game.
MP3: Fun With Marbles
Posted in Vault | Also tagged arrangement, cover, Vault, vgm |
In the month of February in 2006 in New York, I joined friends Tim and Dan (aka Disasterock) a handful of times for epic jam sessions into the late hours (until the neighbors would knock on the door and complain). I vividly remember lots of snow, Pizza, and it being frigid in Dan’s house, having to play guitar for about an hour to get the cold out of my fingers. Nonetheless as a collective experience it’s one of the best I’ve had, not to mention musically.
This jam came out of a session a week earlier and we played it a couple of times afterwards incorporating new ideas and refining it. Still, it’s a jam. We originally called it “Can I Still Rock While I Get My B.A.”. This version is lovingly called, “Can I Still Rock and Hang with the Bachelor’s Associates”.
At this point I’d only been playing guitar a few years, and writing even fewer. Pretty much everything I’m playing is by ear and memory of positions.
Nonetheless, I think this is a cool little number that has some potential. Kind’ve has a Tortoise/Slint/Assorted Post-Rock vibe to it.
MP3: Can I Still Rock and Hang With the Bachelor’s Associates
Note: Vault is a new feature which you can also access directly at: Disasterpeace.Tumblr.com
30 Songs in 30 Days has taken a back seat to other priorities, but here are a few little ditties that I’ve put together over the last couple of days.
MP3: Backroads
This is a little fingerpicked acoustic guitar number I was messing around with; would go lovely with some vocals one day.
MP3: This Call is Important to You
This is an experiment in creating a new series of sonic limitations. There will be more of this in the future. I created a new drum kit for this track, and I ran the final product through my cassette player to give it an older, warmer sound.
MP3: Saints Hospital
This is a similar experiment as the previous, except focusing more on FM instrumentation. I whipped up a couple new FM patches for this.
Another one coming shortly!
This is a bit of a follow-up to the idea from the third piece for 30s30d, “The Battle of Vyazma” … more focus on ostinati-like guitar riffs and athletic drumming.. I could potentially see this idea melding with the prior one or acting on its own as a followup/sister piece.
MP3: The Battle of Varna
So today I decided to do something a little different. Or perhaps really different. I decided to rummage through my library and find some unusual things, put them together, and see what happens. What you have are monkey balls, paint cans, an organ sampled through an SNES, some big percussion, bells … I think that’s it.
On November 9th some 30 years ago there was a false nuclear alarm. People thought the Soviets were about to bomb us, but they didn’t.
MP3: Nuclear False Alarm
