I may spend the next few weeks reconstructing music from my old demo than work on new material. I've reached something of a wall at the moment, but I don't want to lose the momentum of all this work. So tonight, I reworked the song from which the old demo takes it title -- "Beat of the Heart". (A Ghost In My Shadow is a phrase in the second verse.) When I finally arranged this song on my old workstation, it was adapted from a piano arrangement I had hope to perform in a college concert. But when I first imagined the song, I wanted it to be incredibly minimal -- a bass drum, an accompanying instrument, vocals and ambient sounds. So I went with that idea for this reworking.

— Posted: 2005-04-11 20:57:03

Yet another very, very rough mix is available, this time "Downtown Downpour", a song I wrote back in 1991. It's missing the solo in the middle, and maybe it could accomodate more instrumentation. But all the times I've tried to add anything more in the past just didn't sit well. So perhaps this is it. As with this file and "Hear the Wind Sing", I reserve the right at any time to change them without warning.

— Posted: 2005-04-08 17:29:20

I finished a very rough mix of a reconstructed "Hear the Wind Sing". Emphasis on very rough. There's still a lot more work to be done to cut back on some parts and to boost others. (And I notice there's a glitch at the end of the Meredith Monk vocal sample.) Still, it's nice to have a clear version of this song on MP3 than the fuzzy digitized-from-cassette version from A Ghost in My Shadow. You can find the MP3 in the Projects section.

P.S. I briefly considered renaming 「風の歌を聴け」 to Happy Birthday and White Christmas, which is a line from the song. I decided I didn't want listeners to expect covers of "Happy Birthday" and "White Christmas" on it.

— Posted: 2005-04-06 21:55:02

Actually, the site launched its new design a few weeks back, but tonight, I finally managed to get a database working with the site. Plus I created (yet another) weblog to post quick and dirty news items regarding this site.

(You can find more ponderous stuff about the nature of songwriting in my creative scrapbook.)

Right now, the bulk of the content is in the Projects section, where you'll find MP3 files and lyrics.

Now that this is up, I can go back to writing ...

— Posted: 2005-04-03 22:54:48