Where “Level” and “NEUTRALITE” march full steam ahead in chiptune bombacity, “Midnight Orphans” floats between calm and chaotic, expected and unexpected. This is a collection of loose ends written over the last few years. The album material is as early as “Until the Sun Rises” and “Quartz” from 2006, and as recent as “Time Removed”, written in 2010.

This song was a first in a lot of ways for me. I’ve been singing since I was little but this was one of my first attempts at singing on a track, as well as writing lyrics. Listening to this now, I’d love to redo this song with MUCH better vocals (which I’ll probably do at some point), maybe change up the lyrics a little bit as well. I also utilized some techniques I had never tried before, like adding vinyl sounds underneath to give it a little bit of an old feeling … in hindsight I’m not sure how successful it was at making it sound “old”, but I do like the vinyl sounds regardless (haha).

There are a few influences for this track, including Radiohead (the vibe, harmonic decisions), Tortoise (tremolo guitar lines), and Wintersleep/Kary (some of the vocal chanting towards the end). I might have been listening to The Postal Service at the time too because I think it does feel a little reminiscent of a darker equivalent of that group at times. There’s also a hint of chip towards the back end, though this stays mostly outside of that realm.

I did this track in Garageband my first semester at music school, and recorded the vocals in my dorm room.

MP3: Until the Sun Rises

This track I’m sharing is the eighth track, and probably one of the better ones of the bunch. Given the requirements I took the opportunity to use my favorite tool at the time Tabledit (MIDI Guitar Tablature Editor Software) to create all of the music. This was one of the first game-related projects I ever took on, and the experience helped at least somewhat in getting me interested in writing for games in general. Since then I haven’t really looked back. Check out my portfolio if you’re interested in what I do when I’m not writing for the sake of writing.

MP3: Wasabi: Track 08

This recording isn’t very old at all — July 27th, 2009. The truth is I’ve been wanting to do some music with singing for quite a while. I’ve done a little bit — there was a track on my myspace a few years ago called Until the Sun Rises (I’ll talk about that one another time), and there’s Lullatwerp from the Disastertron record Cereal Code (does that even count?!) but since then I haven’t released anything with vocals. I’ve been slowly and quietly putting together some lyrics, and hopefully I’ll have something to show for it soon.

About this recording — Some time last year I started using my voice as a means of improvising new ideas with guitar, with varied amounts of success. This is one example of that. I’ll generally jam on an idea for a couple of minutes, and try different things, before editing things down afterwards (notice the clicks from rough editing and the pitch-shifted section at the end) so that I can return to the idea and not have to fumble through lots of excess fat. I read or heard somewhere once that the Beatles wrote “Yesterday” with fake lyrics about scrambled eggs and other random things. It’s a very useful tool. When I try it I usually wind up talking about the sun. I like the sun.

MP3: Jelly Sandwich

I have an Aunt in New York who has a piano. When I visit I always make time for the ivories — playing piano is one of my favorite things to do. This somewhat well defined, somewhat unfinished piece started with some simple piano voicing and evolved into a couple of piano overdubs … some of the overdubs could have been done easily by a good player I’m sure, but I haven’t quite gotten the hang of hand independency.

It was April of 2007 and I have a vague recollection of it raining and being at night. I got a hold of some storm sounds to hammer that home, and whipped up a Garageband session (my tool of choice at the time) complete with Apple Loop drums which I’ve never had an opportunity to replace. This is a very straightforward tune, but for me there’s always been something about this kind of downward motion that I find appealing. There’s a piano ostinato that is established and eventually mimicked by a synth, and that’s really about it!

MP3: April

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

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

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

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