If I'd made the time to rework this, my hope was to sit down and specifically lay out a more nuanced harmonic structure for the four backup voices (what's there now mostly works, but it's really straightforward for the most part) and get them coordinated into some more explicit counterpoint motion against the lead vocal.

A big part of that'd be some vocal callback action in the backing vocals—work in some echoes or anticipations or riffs off of the main lyrics to give it... [more]
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 6:28 AM on July 1, 2009

Yeah, there was just a little bug in our upload routine, all's well now.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 6:43 AM on June 30, 2009

Heh.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 8:52 AM on June 26, 2009

This is lovely, kingbenny. I wish I'd caught it when you posted it.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 8:51 AM on June 26, 2009

Ha! I like it, in all it's minimalist immature glory.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 8:31 AM on June 23, 2009

Nice! As a real straight-shooting, uptempo folk take I think it's great—this is exactly what I'd want to trip across at a campfire singalong jam.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 11:59 AM on June 22, 2009

Oh man, these lyrics kill me.

And eat my brain.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 8:54 AM on June 20, 2009

Also, this version uses all the verses that I don't prefer, because (a) I'm getting kind of tired of singing the verses I like at this point and (b) these verses seem to fit better into the Upbeat Talky Bob Dylan lyrical mold.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 11:52 AM on June 19, 2009

Hey, this is great! If indeed, man.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 11:35 AM on June 19, 2009

It's really pretty interesting to listen to this stuff and suss out what works vs. what doesn't as far as the synth instrumentation goes. I remember think Switched On Bach was just silly and corny when I first heard it as kid, having no context for it's place in recording history.

How far this stuff has come in the mean time, and yet how hard it is to sort of close that gap and get out of the uncanny valley, if you will, is pretty interesting to me.... [more]
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 10:40 AM on June 19, 2009

details, details
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 11:49 AM on June 18, 2009

There's a great line from the late mathematician Paul Erdos:

"A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems."

I think it's a good attitude. I haven't been recording nearly enough for a while now, and while I'd like to get my ass in gear and record some non-Hallelujah stuff, doing this beats doing nothing by a long shot.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 9:13 PM on June 18, 2009

Oh man, YoBananaBoy. If I had a panflute...

I cringed when I saw it because I was worried it would be all, "Haallleeewing-ding-diddly-luuuuyaaaa" but you didn't do that. You treated the genre with integrity and respect and this sounds really great.

Yeah, I felt a little bit cheap even invoking the Hillbilly meme, but I was stuck for a better silly, thematic name.

I thought about working in... [more]
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 7:55 AM on June 19, 2009

Lyrics:

They say that there's a secret dance
That leads to tropical romance
I hope you'll let me demonstrate it to ya

It goes like this, just move your feet
and shake your hips to the island beat
and lose your self inside the halle hula

Halle hula
Halle hula
Halle hula
Halle huuu-uuu-laaa

Your drink... [more]
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 10:10 AM on June 17, 2009

(Of all the tags to forget! Fixed.)
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 11:08 AM on June 17, 2009

Yeah, I was gonna say, of all the people to What at me for posting a song featuring ukulele and falsetto vox...

A uke album would be neat.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 11:46 AM on June 17, 2009

Nonsense. I think you've lost weight, actually.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 11:57 AM on June 17, 2009

Hey, cortex, I'm trying to learn to play uke, and I wonder if you might be willing to post the chords for this at some point?

Sure thing: here they are, in glorious Handwrite-O-Vision.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 1:03 PM on June 18, 2009

Yeah, and if you don't mind being a step down, you can just keep the fingerings the same and play it in C instead of D.

Yikes.

Pwned!

I ran into another uke player at a music thing recently and he helpfully offered to tune up my uke while I was doing some other pre-show stuff and apparently was not aware that default soprano tuning is a step higher, so I ended up having to helpfully retune the damn... [more]
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 9:11 PM on June 18, 2009

Holy butts, dude. Spot on. And, yeah, my voice doesn't go that low either, but the gravely struggle of it works.

The crowd noise is a wonderful addition; a straight up Cash take would have been fun enough on its own but giving it the Folson treatment is brilliant.

If I had one wish, it'd be for some extra, June-ish harmonies pushing in on the choruses. But I can never get her to sing on my recordings either.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 7:54 AM on June 17, 2009

It must have been really tricky to figure out how to make the melody scan right.

I feel like I should have done some more work on that, really; the piano is about what I had in mind and the guitar stuff more or less works, but the vocals I sort of hacked out in a few takes until it was Good Enough and left it at that. The harmonies are falling all over each other as a result—pushing at it longer to really work out some interesting phrasings that... [more]
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 5:40 PM on June 11, 2009

No fair! Go back to thinking worse of it. If I can post two, you can sure as heck post one, eh? Eh?
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 7:45 PM on June 12, 2009

Aces lofi recording. Do get your recording gear set up, but keep tracking and posting in the mean time.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 8:26 AM on June 9, 2009

Then you'd better get a bunch of use out of it in the short term, eh? Good luck with the job hunt, though.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 12:03 PM on June 11, 2009

Sing more! And, yeah, this is the version that goes on the alternate Donnie Darko soundtrack.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 11:57 AM on June 11, 2009

Oh man. Well freakin' done, sir.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 8:02 PM on June 10, 2009

Those dogs are having a great fucking party, man. This is the best party they have ever been to.

In the years to come, they will discuss this party and how great it was. "The hats," one will say to another, "were priceless." "Oh, yes," a third will reply, "those hats were aces."

They will discuss this party while bored at another, lesser party. The host will overhear, and, having been too long nose-in-the-kibble already, will lose his... [more]
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 5:00 PM on June 8, 2009

This may be the best cover of this song ever, sir.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 10:47 PM on June 7, 2009

That's just fantastic. And kudos on the turn-around time; we should really do some sort of Breakneck Song-off type thing eventually, have everybody commit to a quickie window and churn out one (or more) songs in 24 hours or something.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 10:47 PM on June 7, 2009

Aw, man, this is charming as heck.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 4:24 PM on June 6, 2009

I've been playing a lot more piano in the last year and a half. It was my first instrument growing up, we had an old beater upright around the house, but once I hit college I didn't really play regularly for a long time, until I got a keyboard winter before last.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 3:43 PM on June 4, 2009

Heh. Yeah, I think it took me a few takes to even get that line out.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 4:22 PM on June 4, 2009

Joy!
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 6:45 PM on June 3, 2009

This came out great. Nice work, everybody, Karlos doubly so.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 6:40 AM on June 2, 2009

That was specifically a tune by the group Barnes & Barnes, half of which was none other than a between-scifi-alsostardoms Bill Mumy. And it is one of the greatest songs in the history of music.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 6:53 AM on June 2, 2009

Yay! Came out great. I like how when I started singing harmonies along at home here you were actually singing the same damn thing on track.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 10:01 AM on May 29, 2009

Oh damn! It's so great to hear this come back around again. The layover vox really add some nice harmonic breadth to the choruses.

Whole thing sounds great, man. I'm glad you did this. And congrats on the album!
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 9:59 AM on May 29, 2009

Oh, man. Oh holy hell.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 7:12 AM on May 2, 2009

Amen, unc. Al was a guiding force in my early understanding of pop and rock music, and my get-the-gist, never-mind-the-fiddly-details approach to understanding song structures quickly instead of trying to memorize specific parts by rote probably owes a lot to that young exposure to his style of gleeful reconstruction of classic tunes.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 8:00 AM on May 14, 2009

Part of thing for me was that I hadn't heard a lot of the songs he parodied before I heard his versions, so on that front I didn't have a point of comparison to pick up on the details—it was more an investment, in that sense, for five years later when I started listening to classic rock and pop music at all and suddenly realized that, hey, "Smoke on the Water" also sounds like this!

The space between the Weird Al polka and Deep Purple... [more]
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 8:12 AM on May 17, 2009

The vocal result on this is just fantastic. Lovely.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 1:52 PM on May 6, 2009

You wonderful bastard. I'm tempted to lay down harmonies and a second uke part.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 1:24 PM on May 4, 2009

I love this. Burst into a smile at least twice.

Seriously, it's stupid how great this is. Dittoing the welcome aboard. Post more.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 1:12 PM on May 4, 2009

Ha! This is great. I never thought of my laugh as either (a) a percussive element or (b) horrifying, but you managed to do both with it. Heh.

The bit from 0:53 to 1:15 is some faboo editing.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 1:02 PM on April 20, 2009

The right-side super-enthusiastic shouting during the feel-the-beat section in the middle? Kills me.

I really like this. Like micayetoca says, welcome. Post more!
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 12:56 PM on April 20, 2009

Oh, man. So great.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 2:07 PM on April 14, 2009

Brian's voice is an adventure to work with. When I first met him he had just started in on songwriting and his singing wasn't so much rough around the edges as it was showing promise of having some edges hidden in all the rough, so working with him over the years has been in part a process of watching (and doing what I could to help make) his voice develop into a more nuanced and controlled instrument.

He does well on soft stuff and on loud stuff, and he's got weak... [more]
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 4:05 PM on April 13, 2009

Oh ho! Yes, he is. I missed that one when I was doing my Brian round-up for the post. Which reminds me, I need to track down my copy of the final mix of that old demo.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 2:02 PM on April 14, 2009

This is, in fact, filthy. Good on you two.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 8:40 AM on April 14, 2009

Ha! This is, lyrically speaking, the sort of thing that is going on in my head constantly.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 9:17 AM on April 13, 2009