Albums A-Z (50)

Originally created for the 2010 RPM Challenge (rpmchallenge.com), Adversapolis is a unique collection of songs written and recorded in a month. These are really "songs", too, as they all (save for one) have lyrics, unlike most everything I do. 

The words were largely written during a particularly self-reflective time in life, and it's hard to identify completely with the sentiments contained therein nowadays. Still, despite the hasty and crude recording of some of it, it's a time machine to a certain time in my life that I want to remember.

Downer tunes for these uncertain, trying times.

Good ol' square, triangle, and saw waves mixed together with shaped white noise in a lo-fi, NES-style package.

These are simple tunes with simple rhythms and melodies, and I like it that way.

I'm scared of jazzy distortion.

Sometimes you make a track and it never quite finds a home in an album, EP, or other collection. It needs a home, however, and here it is. In other words, here are some B-sides, singles, and other minutia that didn't fit on a proper album. Enjoy!

Tasteful, inordinate, and, most importantly, inanimate binary data posing as emotional support.

My first album ever (that wasn't just MIDI->WAV)! Written over several years, but recorded in a month, all using Cakewalk Guitar Tracks 2. Its content's inspiration comes fresh off of many repeated listenings of Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, and Eric Johnson, only with a fraction of the talent, and yet a significant amount of originality. 

CS13 was my initial foray into the world of instrumental guitar rock and, while it sounds pretty dated now, it was a masterful accomplishment for me at the time. Listen to Zoetic after listening to this and (hopefully!) FEEL the difference.

Handful of groovy, electronica covers/remixes of all the NES games I could find that start with "Metal". It doesn't get more metal than that, right? 

Note: Metal Max gets more of its share than the other games on this album, but that's because its soundtrack was so catchy, I just had to cover several tracks from it. To be honest, I'd never even heard of the game before this project, but the composer, Satoshi Kadokura (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satoshi_Kadokura), now rules my world. 

Note, again: each individual track has the source material for the track. Example: Metal Mech NSF1 = "NES game named Metal Mech, track 1, as per the Nintendo Sound Format file"

Album cover made with Canva (canva.com)

You ever develop intense feelings about people, places, and things in your teens, but they still persist into your 30s? No? Yeah, me neither.

Op. 1, No. 1 is a loooooooong bout of off-and-on work. Many iterations and reinventions have lead up to its final form. After 11+ years, I think I'm finally done with molding it into existence. 

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Affectionately known as "Dumeh", this piece could be referred to as contemporary classical, but I really don't know the "correct" genre. Regardless, Dumeh is in a modified sonata-allegro format with piano being the star. The string section is no slouch, however, and I had fun writing those parts to complement the keys. It's the one piece of music in my repertoire that I'd love to hear performed live at a concert, just as if I were one of those stodgy, yet eminently professional composer/conductors. 

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"To be is to do." - Socrates 
"To do is to be." - Sartre 
"Do be do be do." - Sinatra 
"Du. Meh. Dumeh." - Me