This piece came to me all at once. Or, more accurately, it is the result of a couple of years of pontification about the zeitgeist. I crafted the beat and the main synth theme during my lunch break; to have waited would have been torture.
I happened upon a really infectious beat I created a couple of years ago and, after an enjoyable session, pulled a catchy melody from the universe. As fate would have it, I decided to listen to The Doors for the heck of it, and realized what I had with this song is a Doors-influenced piece of classic rock with a twist of contemporary production. And so, On Fire was born. It was fun to channel a bit of Jim Morrison, walking the line between psychedelic and Sinatra in vocal and lyrical styling. Yep, looks pretentious to have typed that out loud.
I’ve been working on this song rather than processing my open mic videos (two shows in the backlog, one of which features a misguided attempt to play my piano arrangement of Redneck Vacation. Sometimes things don’t work out, but I do plan on sharing it soon.). At any rate, here is “Making a Living,” my first song of 2019. It is written for my daughter, who is 20 and feeling angsty about being an adult.
Listen on SoundCloud:
Hey now! I wanted to share this bit of nerdy audio mixing fun… In this video, I demonstrate how I separated a single percussion instrument recorded as a mono track into two distinctly panned tracks. The percussion instrument is slingshot-shaped, with a shaker and a wood block sound. This might be applicable for multiple percussion instruments recorded with a single mic, too, in a pinch.
Listen on SoundCloud:
