Andrew Speaks/Types

Tomorrow morning I’m leaving for a short vacation. I’m bringing my computer, but odds are I won’t get any internet where I’m going. I’m hoping to be able to blog, it might just not be possible. I’m going to stay in a cabin with the family from Sunday through Wednesday.

I actually have a little demo that I want to share with you guys. This song doesn’t have any guitar in it, and a lot of it was improvised on the keyboard and the drums. It’s called “Glow In The Dark.”

I’m planning on putting guitar to it, but I’m not sure what I should do with the guitar. I can’t think of any places that the guitar should go, or how big of a role it should have. So, listen to this song, get back to me, and I’ll finish it when I get back.

“Glow In The Dark”
http://boomp3. com/listen/bzglyuh

Theres a new song on the Andrew In Latin myspace that I recorded this morning, about 2 hours ago. I’m pretty proud of it. It’s called “Gunslingin’” and you should check it out.

I’m still trying to find out how to upload music to the blog post itself. Hopefully that’ll happen in the near future.

This has been up for almost a week now, but I figured I’d share. The song is called “Good Idea” and can be located at the Andrew In Latin Myspace. I recorded it a lot differently that I’ve ever recorded a song. I experimented and recorded keyboard first, even though I don’t really know how to play keyboard, nor do I know any keyboard theory at all except that I can tell you what note is what.

But anyways, I made a part up and then started playing around with it and making it sound like a jumbled mess in the middle. Then I put a pre-set beat over it at the right moments. (Lame, I know, but I can’t play drums on a keyboard) Then I figured out a guitar riff that sounded good. Actually I’m thinking that it would sound good as a vocal melody. But whatever. I have what I have.

I’m happy with the song, though, it’s fun to listen to.

Right now my main annoyance is lazy people. Myself being a person who enjoys a good “doing nothing” from time to time, I may sound a little hypocritical towards myself saying this, but right now I’m just noticing that people are lazier than they should be allowed to be. I’m kind of lazy myself. I’m pretty lazy myself. But, I draw the line when my dad tells me to plug his computer in while sitting right next to the plug. That’s ridiculous.

On another note, I’m back from Travis’ house and I plan on going to bed at about 9 tonight to catch up on my Z’s after going to bed at about 11 for the last week or two. So this should be the last short blog for a while.

But, as an added bonus of reading this blog, here is a link to my music mySpace! Viola! I kind of gave this out yesterday but I never said that I had a few more songs up there. Regardless, go to my music mySpace and check it out.

Today was a fun day, because today is the day that me and my friend Travis made our own recording studio in a very small bathroom and actually wrote and recorded some decent songs.

The first song was all me, and it was called “Witch Doctor.” Technically, this song wasn’t recorded in Washroom Studios because I wasn’t exactly in the bathroom when I recorded it, but it was before we had the idea. But still, I wrote and recorded the song all sitting in one place, holding a guitar, having a keyboard in front of me, and a laptop to the side. (And relatively close to the bathroom) The song has a exotic sounding piano part going on in the background that’s all focused around one chord with some variations here and there, then some conga-esque drums kick in to give the song some rhythm. The solos that are over this background part are flute, keyboard-clav, and wah-wah guitar. (Everything but the guitar was made from the keyboard) It was only like a minute and a half, maybe two minutes, but it was fun to make and fun to play. Though I probably couldn’t play it again if I tried. These are always spur of the moment type of things.

Then, Travis came up with the “let’s make a recording studio in the bathroom” idea, so we got excited. The next song was supposed to be an all-Travis song, but we ended up collabo-ing because he needed some help and I wanted in on it. We decided to call the song “Faucetto” because of the environment we we’re in and because of some of the instruments we used. First, we made a drum loop and played that for about a minute and recorded it. This probably wasn’t a good idea because it was hard to work with anything else after recording the drums first. (In my opinion, you should record drums WHILE recording the main instrument, like I did with “Witch Doctor.” I recorded the piano and the drums at the same time.) Travis wanted to put some weird vocals like I did with my ambient Ben-collabo song (you’ll hear about this later), “Distended Tendencies.” So we were trying to make the wierdest vocal effects ever and found some amazing effects on his pedal board that made his beat-boxing sound like a nuclear bomb. It was awesome, so we ran with it. We ended up using tongue clicks over the drums and it sounded like a mad dripping faucet or something. We used the same effects on a running faucet in Travis’ bathtub to increase the effect; it sounded amazing. The coolest thing we recorded, though, was when Travis put effects on the microphone and rubbed the mic against his jeans and it sounded like a turntable scratch. Awesome. The, one thing remained: actual music. The first half of the song was all piano over all those effects that I told you about. Then, after all the effects ended, there was a keyboard rhythm part that went on for a bit by itself, and then guitar and drums kicked in and made a great coda to end the song with. Pretty sweet.

You can listen to “Witch Doctor” and “Faucetto” at my myspace music page, along with some old songs I made called “Real Grace,” “Retrogressive,” and a remake of a The Mars Volta song, which was once called “Cicatriz E.S.P.,” that I renamed as my own to “Cicatrix. Check them all out here:

http://www.myspace.com/andrewinlatin

Good night.

P.S.: I just watched Cloverfield again, and I stand by my score of 3.8 out of 4. Awesome movie.