I've been posting the vocal demos I recorded at MetaFilter Music and MySpace. (Yeah, I didn't mention I have a MySpace page, huh? It's kind of a requirement for any musician to have one.)

Why put them there and not here? It boils down to "I don't feel like it right now". But if I were to come up with a reason, I'd want to be able to post all the vocal demos here than just a few. It would just seem jarring to hear vocals on one track, then a temp melody on another. So I'm going to wait for the time being.

If you want to put my contributions to MetaFilter Music in your news feed reader, there's an RSS feed available. The MySpace blog also has an RSS feed, but I only post to that when I change something in the MySpace profile.

— Posted: 2006-07-07 12:14:26

After announcing new demos were posted, I continued to remix and repost them. I think I've got them to the point where I'm satisfied enough. If you've downloaded "Untitled (Heaven Hide Yourself)" or "Untitled (Senorita de Misteria)", you may want to overwrite -- let me put that in bold, overwrite those files with the latest ones posted.

I've also gone back and remixed "Offertorium (from Dead Man's Mass)", "No Exit" and "Beat of the Heart".

"Offertorium" now includes some guitar parts that I had always wanted to include in the first place. I adjust some panning for "No Exit", and for "Beat of the Heart", I found this great Reason patch called "OldPiano" which I thought went better with the ambient street noise. Also, that bass drum was mixed way too loudly, so I turned it down.

I might do some remix work on "Five (Ambiguous Friendships)", but I haven't decided.

— Posted: 2006-06-30 02:50:36

Since the track listing of A Ghost in My Shadow has been extensively reconfigured, a few tracks were evicted to make room for the new ones.

Namely, the two class songs written for Sacred Hearts Academy in Honolulu were taken off the track listing because they didn't really fit the new feel of the album. I'm moving those two songs to their own single, titled "Orare et Labore".

"Orare et Labore" (Latin for "work and pray") is the motto for the school, and since both of these songs were commissioned by graduating students, they ought to have their own spot.

Because thematically, the optimism of a class song doesn't mesh with my art fag navel-gazing.

— Posted: 2006-06-27 13:59:49

I should know better than to post a whole bunch of untitled tracks here, since I have such a bad track record of writing lyrics for them. But I'm eagar to share what I've been working on for the past two weeks.

A while back, I had a vague notion of augmenting A Ghost in My Shadow with songs I wrote back in high school. That vague notion took off when I sat down and revised the very first song I ever wrote. Now I've gone back and heavily edited a number of old pieces.

The working titles are their original titles, but since I've changed the melodies on a number of these songs, they've become obsolete. (Never mind the fact the old lyrics were just really juvenile.)

I also posted new mixes of "Faith in Religion" and "No Exit" -- they got a bit of the Reason treatment.

To listen to these new songs, check out the project page for A Ghost in My Shadow.

— Posted: 2006-06-25 21:21:23

Will you look at that? It's been six months since I've had anything to report.

I've been busy with night classes these past two semesters, so I didn't make much progress with anything in the last 10 months. But during the semester break in December 2005, I did remix a number of tracks on Restraint, and back in May 2006, I remixed some tracks on Imprint.

My original plan was to upload these remixes after I start laying down vocals, but after hearing how much work my vocals need, I decided to upload the remixed tracks now. After I've had all summer to improve my singing (bleah!), I might, just might upload demos with actual lyrics.

These remixed tracks sound much closer to what I have in mind, so if you have earlier versions of these songs, do me a favor and overwrite them with the new versions. (Thanks!)

Read the full article ...

— Posted: 2006-06-02 10:42:22

In the interest of not seeing "Untitled" songs for months on end, I went on yet another marathon of writing. Working so fast makes me wonder whether I am finding the truly right words to go with each song. But over time, I'll forget.

• Epiphany, formerly "Untitled (Stylish Number Girl #1)"
• Contrition, formerly "Untitled (Stylish Number Girl #8)"
• Disengaged, formerly "Untitled (Stylish Number Girl #3)"
• Relent, formerly "Untitled (Stylish Number Girl #6)"
• Dismissal, formerly "Untitled (Stylish Number Girl #4)"
• Faith In Religion, rewritten from previously unpublished lyrics

— Posted: 2005-12-19 17:20:03

I re-uploaded just about every file this morning with versions sifted through a mastering limiter. I acquired the Voxengo Elephant VST plug-in for Cakewalk Sonar and applied limiting on all my mixes. Some of these quickly mastered versions are going to sound a bit off, but most of them should sound fine. And louder.

— Posted: 2005-12-18 21:40:27

I got off my duff and finally set some lyrics to the remaining untitled songs on Restraint. I have to say -- I'm not all that enamoured with the process of setting words to music, and I'm terrible with procrastinating on it. Perhaps my next iteration of shinkyoku moratorium is not to write any new music until lyrics have been done for all the songs unfinished. In any case, here are the new words:

• Melt, formerly "Untitled (Enjoy the Silence)"
• All the Times I Remember, formerly "Untitled (Stepwise)"
• On Paper, formerly "Untitled (Guitar)"
• Letter II
• Emancipation, formerly "Untitled (E-Dorian)"
• Reticence, formerly "Untitled (E-Mixolydian)"

— Posted: 2005-12-17 10:35:03

Just about a week ago, I decided to see how much work I could get done with a new project, Revulsion, and today, I'm about 99% done with writing the music. I'm missing a melody to one track, but aside from that, the seven songs which consist of this particular release as solid.

I still wouldn't mind going back with real live instruments and recording these songs again, but at least they're no longer the realm of vague sketches. I've used the blueprint analogy to describe pretty much all the work on this site, but it applies moreso with Revulsion.

Lyrics ... ugh. I'm just going to have to carve out some time and conduct a writing marathon. There are five songs each on both Restraint and Revulsion that need lyrics. I will feel much relief when I can rid those track lists of "Untitled" songs.

— Posted: 2005-12-13 09:29:09

Against my better judgment, I posted a new song, "Revulsion". It's supposed to be a rock song with a lot of very loud guitars. But I cannot play guitar very well, and I haven't yet experimented with trying to record live instruments on my setup.

So I'm making a blueprint of what I would like the song to be arranged. In actually fleshing out the song, I discovered I had to drop an entire verse, and I created a bridge for which I hadn't written lyrics. So don't consider the song you hear here as anywhere even begun.

— Posted: 2005-12-07 09:34:58