This is not my song.

This is a clip from the instrumentals of a song that a friend of mine from Hawaii is in the process of composing. I fell in love with the sound, and I think you might too.
This is the same guy that I'm hoping will produce my EP in the Summer. The name's Evan Van Kirk. Look him up!

http://soundcloud.com/evan_vk/devil-4/s-9TOqg

Incredible?

Yesh.

#2 This One Doesn't Have A Name...

This is an original composition that I started working on back in my Mexico days when I had at my disposal this classy, scratched up Wurlitzer studio piano that had made its way from Bermuda to Turkey, England, Puerto Rico, back to the U.S., and finally down to Mexico where it is now. (It traveled around with my mom and her family as my grandpa fulfilled his Air Force duties in those corners of the world). Someday I plan on keeping it next to my bed when I have a house of my own. Here's a picture of it:

(Photo credit: Christy Chang)

Anyway, a couple clarifications. Yes, I understand that it's absolutely foolish to record piano (or anything for that matter) through just the mic on your computer. As far as audio quality, there's no way I'm trying to show off for this video. Honestly, I do have the means to produce much better audio for these types of things. At least, I did until my Tascam US-144 interface kindly decided to stop working. (NEVER BUY A TASCAM US-144 INTERFACE, OKAY!?!?!?) And since then, I have been left only with my computer mic, which does a fine job for what it is. I plan on fixing this problem with... This! An M-Audio MobilePre mk II. From what I've heard, it has everything I need. Two inputs, volume control, manual mixing, all the good stuff. The only downside is it doesn't have MIDI inputs, but that's okay because I leave that sort of tech-y music to my better friends who know what they're doing. So yes, hopefully by the end of this break I should have enough monies to buy such a treasure.

And I just got completely sidetracked. Apologies for everyone!

So I also understand that this song is rather repetitive by nature. I'm not too worried about that, because for now all I wanted to do was to get the song's basic idea out there. Rest assured, that this song isn't finished (Are any songs ever finished?). Hopefully I might be able to slim down on the repetition and beef up on some variations. But I'm definitely planning on using at least part of this song for future work.

I suppose at the time that I first started working on this one, I was definitely under the influence of Yann Tiersen and W. A. Mozart. Mostly of the latter. I'm really very new to this classical-styled music scene and am just getting my hands on works by Mendelssohn and J.S. Bach and Chopin. I'm loving it all immensely. Hopefully I'll have a piece by Chopin up in the near future.
And yet, while finishing up this piece, or at least the basic idea of it, I was definitely influenced more-so by Yann Tiersen than by any others. You really should check out his music. The man's a present-day prodigy. Rather a miracle, in my opinion.
Here's a video of my personal favorite of his piano pieces. It doesn't really show off his complete mastery of the instrument, but it's packed with this thoughtful, sorrowful feeling inside it that for some reason is rare in our music culture.

And that's about it.
This song (My song) doesn't really have a name. I tried to come up with one in the past thirty minutes, but they all sounded lame, like "Ducks on the River" or "A Midnight in Silence." Either too flamboyant and silly or too much forced seriousness. Perhaps I'll come up with a name for it in the future. At the present, let's just call it Piano No. 1 in D Major. That's simple and uneasy to remember.

I think D Major is my favorite key. It's not quite E Major, but it's definitely not C Major.
This video is taking forever to upload. I just wrote all of this and it's still not done. Oh, the predicament.
Peace, Love, and Music!
(I'm a hippie tonight).
Thanks for reading
-Isaac

Song # 1 Freelance Whales- Location (Cover)

Well, this sure is incredibly relieving, having one song down and not a whole week has gone by in the first month of the year. We're off to a pretty good start, I think. Though, to be completely honest (I want this blog to be a Sanctuary of Honesty for us music folk), I've been working on this Cover for a little over three weeks. So to say that I completed this in three days would be a lie, indeed.

The song was written by Freelance Whales.

It's odd how music works, isn't it? When I hear a song by a band (let's use hmmmm...Freelance Whales?), I think of something completely different than what might come to your mind. Today, when I listen to the original recording of Location, my brain goes to Tucson, Arizona and road trips through the parched Southern Californian deserts. I think of odd Mars-looking rock formations and touristy gas stations and the Pacific Coast. I think of a white van and six friends and my parents. Most of all, I think of carefree curiosity for the world. All of this is instilled by one song. Isn't that remarkable? Another reason to love music.

So now, onto my version of this song.
When first setting out to record this one, I knew I wanted it to be a Video Song. However, having only done one Video Song in my entire life (to see that one, click Here), I was very much at a loss as to how to approach it. How do I get the video to line up with the audio? How do I record video and audio from a lap top at the same time, and then edit the audio, but not the video? How do I get proper lighting? Why is my video looking all yellow-y? On and on and on.

To put this out there right now, I use a Macbook Pro. For recording audio, I just use Garageband. For Video, it's iMovie. I didn't use any special mic or anything, just the mic on the laptop. So pretty much anybody with a Macbook Pro can do what I do. Haha.

What I Learned
Well, lots of things.
First, the significance of a metronome. For some terrible reason that I don't remember, I decided to start recording without any type of time keeper whatsoever. Perhaps I just wanted the music to "flow as music does" from my soul, and "whatever happens happens" or something along those lines. However, I must say that that was a terrible idea. So here's my advice: when recording the base track for a song, the track that every other instrument will branch off of, ALWAYS use a metronome. 
I guess that's not very profound, but whatevs.

Second, the importance of presence in front of the camera. Sure, okay. My laptop shoots thirty frames per second and there's not much to look at, anyway. But really. The way the music Looks in a VideoSong is almost just as important as how the music Sounds. I mean, weren't you kind of repulsed at the end of the video when I'm playing the last couple strums on my guitar, donning the facial expressions of doom across my face? It's like a conglomeration of sadness, boredom, hatred, and well... just plain ugliness. It doesn't sound like a big deal, but when it comes to VideoSongs, it kind of is.
To see what I mean, watch This.

Third, I can't whistle for the life of me.
Fourth, when recording a song that's a bit more folky, go easy on the Reverb when it comes to vocals and any instrument for that matter. Folk has this sort of dry, earthy feel to it. Reverb gives things a bit smoother of a touch. So what I did was use only about 10% Reverb or less on any of my instruments if it was necessary. And no Echo. The only exception was the Accordion. Some of its notes were off key, and there were some rough spots when changing chords. To fix this, I applied more reverb than usual (Around 40%) and a bit more echo. I also compressed it a bit tighter than anything else, to give it a more even sound throughout.

I feel like I'm writing a badly-written cookbook for musicians.... Haha.

Fifth, whenever you're listening to music, you're doing the musician a favor by turning up the volume as high as comfort lets you and wearing headphones. This way, you get to hear every detail in the music that you might've missed if you had listened to it through speakers or with lower volume. I mean... when I want you to listen to my music, I want you to listen to it with headphones and lots of volume. Please? Thanks. I knew you'd understand.


Anyway, I'm kind of rambling.
Did you like the Tennis Ball? I'm pretty proud of that one. To be honest, I did a lot of audio editing with the equalizer to give it a lot more bass and a lot less bounce. Haha. Aaaaaand, okay. I'll be honest again. I added a synthetic bass drum every once in a while when I thought it needed it. But honestly, it's not that big of a difference and I turned it down. For some reason I thought I could justify it and now it seems really stupid to. But yeah. What else....
Do you like my new haircut?
Okay I'm done.

This is Song #1 of Isaac Middleton's fifty-two-song thingy that he's doing for no legitimate reason other than Delight.
One Down! Fifty-one to go.
Thanks for reading and listening!
-Isaac

The Challenge!....yeah....

Movies move me. Sit me down with Slum Dog Millionaire for an hour and watch me pull out my laptop to research the Peace Corps so that I could join it and move to India to feed hungry children. Then we can watch Singing in the Rain and I'll look up tap dance lessons on youtube and learn how to perform a basic shuffle. I had seen Beauty and the Beast performed on stage once in the summer and am now minoring in Musical Theater. I wouldn't necessarily call this something to be proud of, because nothing ever lasts too long with me. I gave up tap after about two weeks (I still blame it on having never been able to find proper tap shoes, but really I was just lazy) and I honestly just don't know if Musical Theater is something I should be doing. No matter how much I'm moved by a movie or a play, I always end up fizzling out like an old lightbulb. Nevertheless, I shall never let my incompetence keep me from trying something new.

All this to say, I have just recently watched a movie called Julie & Julia. And..... well... I was moved.

The movie is about a girl (Julie) who, having fizzled out halfway through writing a novel (sound familiar?), has moved with her husband to Queens to live over a Pizzeria (living over the pizzeria wasn't really the point of the move... I guess I worded that a bit funkily). Between balancing her work and her married life, she also cooks simply because she likes it. I'm not really sure what drove her to do it; it could have been her boredom with her life and a desire to do something fresh and new, or perhaps a cry to the internet for some sort of attention, or a chance to talk about herself freely. But whatever the case, Julie decides to cook her way through Julia Child's cookbook in a year (Over 400 recipes in 365 days) and make a blog about it to freely publish her words.

What I like about this is that she took the two things she was good at (writing and cooking) and put them to work in a slightly unconventional fashion. And in the end, she learned how to Bone A Chicken (something not the average cook can do, I suppose). And she also wrote about it, which made her a better writer all-around and later led to the publishing of her very own book.

So I suppose this is a very childish thing of me to do. It's such the thing to do to try to include yourself into the experience of other people, so that perhaps you can feel a bit like how they felt. I usually make fun of people like that. Anyway...

I like writing. I like blogging. And I like music. All kinds of music. I like making it and composing it and recording it. I like talking about it and critiquing it. And lastly, I like sharing it. And I like challenging myself.

So after watching this one inspiring movie about two inspiring women, I was moved to this: make a blog about music. Any kind of music. My music. Someone else's music. Any music. The challenge? Blog four times a month, with each blog holding either an audio file or video file of music that I have created and recorded. The songs can be an original composition, a cover song, a piece by a composer, a video song, or whatever else. As long as it is me making the music. I suppose Four songs a month doesn't sound like much of a challenge. But what with my desire to do moderately well in school and to actually have friends, well... I think four is enough. And besides, songs are different. They need time to be digested and spit up and digested again, like the cud of a cow, you know? Oh, and I've even given myself some life lines. If by the end of a month, I only have three songs posted, I can either critique an album made this year, or..... I don't know. If I actually have some sort of following, I can let the public decide on my punishment.

Is that terribly cliche of me to do this? I mean, if I wasn't doing this, I would probably be spending my next year taking too long of showers and stalking too many people on Facebook. I do think I need some sort of solid hobby. Something with grit and deadlines. I want this blog to be about exploring music. So, sure... the idea was born by a movie... a chick flick, nonetheless. But I think this could be interesting.

And so, just like the housewife living above the pizzeria, Isaac Middleton, having fizzled out of many tasks in his life, takes up the task of a Fifty-two Song-a-year blog. What could drive him to such an idea? Could it be boredom with his life and a desire to do something fresh and new, or perhaps a cry to the internet for some sort of attention, or a chance to talk about himself freely? Whatever the case, the idea has been planted. I'm determined to not fizzle out. But then... I was determined not to fizzle out with tap dancing as well... Let's just see, then. Let the blogging begin!

..Well that was kind of a cheesy ending...

Thanks for reading
- Isaac