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Sat. Oct 22, 2005

Mother's Slowest and Spanish Harlem

It’s time for two more … musical experiments … from the child inside to be added to the downloads page. While I don’t know that they’re completely successful experiments, they do both break a bit of new ground for me, and were quite successful at injecting fun into my otherwise busy days recently (though I actually play with these late at night). They are also pretty indicative of the diversity of my musical listening tastes, which I guess will tend to come out in this form.

The first one may ring a bell with anyone familiar with bands from Atlanta over the past couple of decades. Maybe. It’s an attempt at a combination of funk and rock that may require things not found inside a middle aged white guy with month old sKiLLz. Oh, well. The last minute and a half or so is completely “loop free.” Meaning, I created my own percussion track for the bridge and closing return to melody. Which is a lot harder than I expected, and an area I definitely need some more eddy-cay-shun.

And that’s the story of Mother’s Slowest (4:20, 5.95MB).

The second one actually came first, chronologically. It started one day when I was listening to Leon Russell’s version of “Spanish Harlem.” I knew there was no way I could mimic the keyboard wizardry he displays in that song … but there was a simple left-hand bass line he played that I thought I could pick out on the keyboard by ear.

And that’s how it started. I found those three notes, but before I knew it, I’d also picked out the rest of the melody line, one painful note at a time. So I decided to build it out into my own definitely non-Leon version. With horns. Lots of horns. Sometimes too many horns. It starts out with a nice light little groove, and has a decent extended bridge, but by the last time the melody line comes around, it sounds a bit like a high school marching band after a keg party.

And rather than beat it to death and turn it into work or something … I left it like that: Suburb of Spanish Harlem (4:18, 5.92MB). If nothing else, consider it a sign I’ll probably be sticking to original compositions.