March 13th

Malium - March 13th

Listen to Malium - March 13th in your browser's default web MP3 player, or right click to save a copy to your PC.

Naming stuff gets a bit complicated, especially when something doesn't seem complete. I tend to ID my projects by numbers or dates until they get to the point where they seem to need a name. In this case I started recording on March 13th, exploring a few chords that I have been fond for for years on keyboard and trying to flesh out some new ideas with synth textures and guitar to complement them.

Sometimes, in a case like this, I record a few tracks over a span of a few hours or less and then move on. Sometimes I come back over a few days or weeks to add more.

This is more of a fragment than much of the stuff I've posted so far. It's a good example of why I want to share works in progress even if it's flawed, incomplete or likely not to evolve much beyond the current mix in this particular recording. If you want to hear something a bit more polished please have a listen to some of the other projects shared here.

This features analog synthesizer, guitar, electric piano and other sundry bits blended together. The guitar tone has a quality I really love, but the performance hits some notes I don't like. Overall I love the texture of the piece, but if it were a fish I'd thrown it back to let it grow a bit bigger.

One of my biggest self criticisms is that I tend to gravitate towards textures (which I see as a collection of sound or instruments and a blend of them in space and time) and a groove around a basic structure like this. What's sometimes missing is any kind of break, chorus or modulation from the basic theme.

In this case I left out a few chord changes that I've been using in this basic sequence, as long ago as 1988, to try to find a different way of hearing it. It's an old friend, in a new suit, with a haircut but a few limbs missing.

This is a good example of why I tend to consider some of these works as fragments or sketches that I feel are worth sharing, but that I don't consider a "finished product". I also think it's interesting and a bit unusual to share the creative process behind the evolution of a recording, which is another reason I want to talk about how a project grows legs of it's own before it walks away or I tame it.

I'm not fond of the idea of music as a product, or of looking at my work as finite, complete, or finished. Pieces take on a life of their own, and eventually probably will thematically recycle themselves into future works as I continue to evolve my visions and technical skills.

For just about any piece here I could post alternate mixes that show the evolution of a composition, in some cases with significantly different takes and edits.

I've tried to break from my sense of my 20+ years of unreleased music as being fragments and raw sketches for the first few posts on this site so I could try to show that I'm capable of doing things that I consider polished enough for proper release, such as the tracks I've put up on last.fm.