Monday, November 30, 2009

Everybody Knows This is Nowhere

I used to do this Neil Young song as a cover back when I performed solo acoustic. It was always a favorite of mine. I like the swampy sounds of the lead, the easy flow of the melody and the simplicity of the lyrics.

Everybody Knows This is Nowhere

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

You Could Have Had Me

"You Could Have Had Me" is a song I wrote and recorded a demo of during lunch a few months ago. I plan on rerecording it with drums and bass with some other musicians in what will be my first long-distance home recording session. It will be interesting to see how it will go.

This version was recorded with my Boss BR600 digital 8 track with the on-board microphones.

Listen to the song by clicking here.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

I'm Yours

I recorded this one a while ago. I was practicing it for a live performance and messed up in a few spots, but it was still fun.

Jason Mraz's I'm Yours

Be Still

The following link will take you to Youtube.

Be Still

I don't know who wrote this song, but I sure didn't. I'm sure it's a mix of traditional lyrics. If you know who is responsible for writing it, please let me know. This makes me feel all good inside when I sing it.

A New Start/A New Idea

Well, my one-a-day project was a complete failure. I made two drawings in the entire month of October and only posted 1. I'll eventually get around to posting the second one. I'll admit, I wasn't too driven.

So, I've decided to change my idea and do something that makes more sense to me. For those of you who know me well, you'll agree. I am now going to do database administration. I'm not talking about programming here.

I love to listen to music, I love play musical instruments and I love to sing. There are so many songs out there that I absolutely love and never get to play them live because when you play for money, most of the time you are catering to your audience. Nobody wants to hear the extra tracks to the Unforgettable Fire single at a bar, ya know? So, what I intend to do (to help my creative outlet) is to record (either video or just audio) songs I love to sing and share them with you. Some songs may be popular, some may be unknown and some may be originals. I don't plan on maintaining any kind of regularity, but I can assure you it will be often. I'm not trying to get one-a-day out there anymore. I don't want this to become an obligation of any kind.

So, with that said, I'll post a few that I've already done and hope if you enjoy them, you'll share them with others. Feel free to comment.

Thursday, October 1, 2009

Day One/Drawing One-Buddha

Wow, I almost missed day one. I'm pretty lame. Maybe I can't pull this off. I did get it in though. So, here's drawing number 1: buddha. It's not an original representation. Rather than coming up with my own idea of what I think the great buddha should look like, I searched the Internet for ideas. I won't always use other people's work to mimic.

Unfortunately, I had to start, stop, start, stop, continue, finish while doing this one. I usually prefer to start-finish. There's something very Zen about drawing. I find it to be very meditative.

This isn't really an exercise in becoming a better artist (although I do hope that it does make me into one), it's really an exercise in establishing good habits of using the brain.

I'm not sure if I'm happy with buddha. I mean, I like buddha, but I'm not sure if I am happy with this drawing. The scanner didn't do the shading justice and I didn't have the right tools. I used a #2 pencil rather than my drawing pencils, my finger for shading and a piece of printer paper rather than my sketchbook. It'll be interesting to see if drawings do come out better with better tools. Somehow, I really doubt it. Great artists can make masterpieces with crappy crayons. I've seen it done.

Getting Ready

OK...technically it's day one for me, but since I am at 1:45am and at the end of my September 30th work shift, I will hold off on drawing number 1 until the sun rises over the Atlantic.

I've never done anything like this before. I have to keep regimented about it and am looking forward to both the challenge and to the output.