12-23-09 Three Rivers

a sprightly guitar instrumental. Link.

12-7-09 Hang Up

Back in April, Sarah and I had taken a trip to San Francisco to see our friends Aaron and Bronwyn. Aaron plays this wonderful bizarre instrument called the hang, a sort of inverted steel drum that is played by hand instead of mallets. (I recorded a couple pieces with it during the trip - here and here.)

While visiting Seattle, they bestowed on us a fantastic late wedding gift - a brand new Halo, which is the close cousin to the hang. That's the instrument featured in today's piece.

11-22-09 Untitled #83

One of my favorite instrumentals of the year. Link.

11-14-09 60 Cycle Serenade

Inspiration comes from strange places sometimes.

The drone in this song was inspired by listening to a shorted-out streetlight while waiting for a ride home. When I first noticed it, it was annoying, but then I listened closer and realized that there was a very strong fundamental pitch underneath all of the electric growling. I recorded a snippet on my crappy cellphone, enough to get the feel of it and determine what the actual note was (B). The actual drone in the piece was a looped accordion note that was bitcrushed by Garageband. The build of the piece is really striking to me, and clocking in at over 6 minutes, wins the award for the longest piece of the year.

11-6-09 Untitled #79

Played on my $19 acoustic guitar. Cheaper guitar = more wistful back porch longing! Link.

10-27-09 Humming Uke Tune

Ah, the Lydian mode. John Osebold has taught me to love the lydian.

As Robyn Hitchcock says, the song is its own introduction to itself. Link.

10-17-09 In Deep

I think that with this one, all I really had was the one little short guitar loop. It didn't occur to me until later in the year to add the weird stacked vocals. Tone clustery! Link.

9-15-09 Walker Lane

An instrumental guitar piece with deliberately oblique parts. If this were developed more fully, it would have a full prog arrangement with 17 guitar parts and a church organ. Okay, maybe only 13 guitar parts. Titled after having watched the Scott Walker documentary 30 Century Man. Link.

8-15-09 New Mandolin

An instrumental improvisation on my (then) brand new Collings mandolin. Sweet. Link.

8-6-09 Stony Guitar Instrumental

Tellin' it like it is. link

8-3-09 Why Am I Doing This Again?

An acoustic instrumental in the CSN vein. I like the changes a lot. It's pretty clear that it took several takes to get it down. link.

7-28-09 By The Light Of The Fan

A nice little melodic fragment on the ukulele. Plus, I like the title. I might have tried to develop it further if it hadn't been so blasted hot this time last year. link.

7-23-09 Purring Furiously

Stevie decides that the song is done. Link.

6-25-09 Guessing Game

My parents' piano has been through a lot. Note the chipped keys in the picture, chipped by me with a hammer when I was four or five. (Don't ask me how or why I had a hammer then.)

It hasn't seen a lot of use in recent years, but I like to plonk around on it when I'm home. (The hand in the photo actually belongs to my nephew Shane.) It's not the best sounding piano. The action is wonky, and it's only marginally in tune with itself. But the sound of it brings back lots of memories, in the same way that familiar smells do. Because of the nostalgia evoked when playing it, the stuff I play on it these days usually sounds like this.

6-13-09 Sunshine

A pretty acoustic instrumental. Link.

6-8-09 Longing

An acoustic instrumental. A few clams in there, but I really like the chord changes. Weird guitar tunings always make for interesting surprises. Aptly named, too. Link.

5-24-09 Motorcycle Slapback

recorded in the living room, with traffic from 8th Ave NW providing the backdrop. Link.

5-4-09 Train Song

Aha. Now we come upon a piece that actually made it into West. The closest thing the show would have to real train sounds. Link.

4-11-09 Ember's Glop

A field recording of Aaron & Bronwyn's daughter enjoying her breakfast (and making a game out of dropping her cup). Accompanied by some instrumental uke 'n' hang. Link.

3-20-09 Spring Song

Just spent the afternoon walking along the ship canal with my wife in the promising spring air. Today, that is, not a year ago today. Anyways, this song felt like a nice, calming way to welcome in a new season. Link!