More Banging on the Black & Whites

Hello there...

Another year since my last blog post. I really suck at blogging, don't I? :-)

Okay, now that we've established that...what's new? Well, the last few months I've gotten interested in piano-driven songs again. I was listening to an old Ben Folds Five album that I'd forgotten I even had and it occurred to me, why not do some music based around the instrument I started out on all those years ago? Maybe ease off on the sonic gimmickry, strip away a lot of the densely-layered synths and try doing some music that's based around piano, bass guitar and drums? So I did.

I previewed "Twisted Genius," the first track of that kind, a couple of months ago. I might have gotten a little too eccentric and weird on that one, but I'd rather be a little "off" than be boringly commercial and formulaic; there's enough easily-digested, uber-accessible pop music out there.

My website and Facebook page are now featuring the latest piano-based track, "The Voices." This one's more laid back and moody, with sort of a "smoky night club" feel. I put more synths on this one, but the piano still drives it. Lyrically, it's not based on any one person - more of a broad musing about those who always seem tormented by this little "voice" inside picking them apart and telling them they're not good enough, even when, by all appearances, their lives would seem to be going well. Sometimes, when we've gone through bad patches earlier in life and spent a long time being unhappy and feeling isolated, it can be hard to completely "unlearn" that mindset and just live in the present without repeatedly picking at old wounds. Some things just really need to be let go, eh?


For those interested in the technical stuff, the piano featured on this is a sampled Yamaha C7 from Sampletekk. It's a good-sounding piano, one of only a very few I've found that works for me in a mix the way I want it to. Most of the synthesizer parts came from the Waldorf PPG Wave 3.V, a software recreation of the classic PPG Wave 2.2/2.3 synths that were popular in the '80s. It does some really strange and ethereal pads and sweeps and often blends well with piano, which is a big plus at the moment. For the bass part, I went back to my Ibanez ATK with flatwound strings for this one, to get that darker, jazzier tone.

It's a beautiful day (over 70 degrees in March is pretty rare for Michigan), so I'm off. Maybe I'll even go outside for ten minutes. :-)

DV