july 30, 2010
This week's song is called
An Indie Rock Birthday Wish, By Way Of A Few Remarks About Climate Change.
from WKRG, a Florida news website
You can listen to it here.
july 23, 2010
If you are looking for the toe-tapping, head bopping, feel-good hit of the summer,
Do not click here.
july 16, 2010
This week's song was inspired by Le Petit Prince and Palestrina. A strange combination? Peut-être.
You can listen to it here.
july 9, 2010
I may live on the wrong side of the tracks, but I don't care. I just love the sound of the train.
This week's song features a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay
and a recording of a Nathan train whistle.
You can listen to it here.
july 2, 2010
A few years
ago the wonderful Kara Davis
asked me if I'd want to be the accompanist for
one of the dance classes she teaches for the
Lines Ballet/Dominican University BFA program.
I had played piano for many different types of
dance rehearsals, (mostly related to musical
theatre) but never for a modern dance class.
Edgar Degas
The Dance Lesson, 1879 Danseuse, 1878
oil on canvas chalk on paper
The way it works is I watch Kara teach a combination of steps and then I come up with something that I think will support the idea.
Sometimes I play familiar pop songs
or classical material, but most of the time I improvise.
Once in a while I bring my iPod, which has a teeny tiny little microphone attached to the earpiece.
This week, I've been sick with the flu since Sunday. So I dug through some old dance class recordings and found three little sketches to share.
All three were improvised on the spot in class.
(I didn't give them names til now!)
You can dance along while you listen
to them here.
june 25, 2010
My dad loved cars.
He admired them, tinkered with them, obsessed over them.
He was meticulous about treating a car right. For every car he ever owned, he kept a small spiral notebook in which he recorded a detailed log of every oil change and repair, alongside the date and mileage.
The pride of his youth was a two-seater Porsche Roadster that he rebuilt himself. He used to shake his head slightly and say with reverence, "That car was cherry." This was sometime in the 1960's, well before I showed up on the scene, with my sticky fingerprints and leaky felt tip pens.
Not my dad. James Dean with his Porsche Speedster.
Once he had kids, my dad never owned another hot car.
It was strictly safe, family sedans from that point on.
But he did read the auto classifieds in the newspaper every weekend.
I guess he just couldn't resist.
I was thinking of him on Father's Day (last Sunday) and you can listen to the result here.
june 18, 2010
I usually set the kitchen timer when my clothes are in the washer (or dryer). Otherwise, I am apt to leave them in there for weeks.
So what do you do when the kitchen timer is ticking away, reminding you that you have not made a song yet this week?
You turn the microphone on!
My kitchen timer, the Mirromatic, is especially cute. I hope it sounds as good as it looks.
You can listen to it here.
june 11, 2010
This week's song is another one in the Dreams series.
Adam Shulman and I made it together, and we'll be performing it and our other new songs about dreams on Friday June 18 at the Red Poppy Art House.
James Whitcomb Riley 1913
This song is about the dream of flying, and you can listen to it here.
june 4, 2010
This song is about being naked.
Unexpectedly naked. Unpleasantly naked.
It's also an advertisement for an upcoming show
(Friday June 18!) at the Red Poppy Art House, on the theme Dreams.
Adam Shulman and I are writing several mini songs for the concert - several are less than one minute long. They're all about recurring dreams, including: Flying, Being Chased By Dogs, and Taking A Test You Didn't Study For.
Rembrandt van Rijn:
A Woman Sleeping, 1655
It was recorded in a very low-fi situation, so it sounds pretty rough. It's a demo.
You could choose to think of this as a peek into the secret backstage view of the creative process!
Or you could choose to think of this as a crappy sounding recording.
In any case, you can listen here.
may 29, 2010
It's a flower!
It's a toy!
It's NOT a weed!
Our great-grandmothers probably knew that dandelions could cure a lot of human ailments, especially the ones that are impolite to discuss because they involve human plumbing.
Doesn't the dandelion deserve a little ditty?
You can listen & sing along here.
may 21, 2010
The lyrics for this week's song were taken verbatim from a missing persons website.
While wasting time on the interwebs, I happened to come across a site full of weird, sad, often vague posts by people searching for their lost or estranged relatives.
Two postings from more than a decade ago caught my eye and I decided to set them both to music.
I didn't change a single word, although I did omit the contact information of the poster (yes, it's the same guy - looking for both his sister and his daughter).
daguerrotype, around 1850
I could have never invented a story like this, and I have been haunted by it since I read it. You can listen to the song here.
may 14, 2010
So. I've been making a song every week since January 1. That makes...let's see... 25 weeks of songs so far.
Most of the time I am trying to make a song within the borders of a certain style or sound - Something that I think sounds like me, or reflects my unique personal musical tastes.
(These include an abhorrence of electric instruments, rock beats and auto tune; and an irrational fondness for the glockenspiel.)
This is one of the few places where I don't have to try to tailor my music to please anyone else.
However, if this week's song sounds like it has wandered over to the road more-travelled, maybe that is because it is a song that is partly about pleasing other people. I almost called it "Martuni's And Other Jobs", but then I decided that would be a little too specific.
Here is a comic from a site I super love called Married To The Sea. It's made by a husband and wife team who post a new comic every single day, plus they have individual sites where they post their own comics every single day!!!! You will laugh! Then you will feel like a lazy, unproductive loser. You should check it out.
Check out this week's song here.
may 7, 2010
This song is a tribute to those wistful, willowy songs Michel Legrand made with Alan & Marilyn Bergman. I might have called it You Must Believe In The Windmills Of The Summer Knows Yentl.
The Thomas Crown Rolls Royce (like the one in the 1968 Thomas Crowne Affair), and a windmill (like the film's Oscar-winning song).
But I didn't, and you can listen to it here.
april 30, 2010
Chloe wanted to help me make this song.
She is really into the plastic whistle, for some reason. Maybe I was playing in the key of cat?
Anyway, this week's song is entitled Gavotte For
Plastic Siren Whistle, Piano, Glockenspiel, Viola, And Ankle Bells.
Always helpful.
You can listen to it (and dance along) here.
april 23, 2010
This week's song contains some background radiator hiss, at NO EXTRA CHARGE TO YOU, the customer. I just threw that in for free! because it was rainy and cold, and my apartment has steam heat, which is controlled by the landlord. Or possibly Satan.
Speaking of which,
[ This is not a real science fair project.
It's a photoshopped gag from somethingawful.com
]
This week's song debates the alleged features of a place that may or may not exist.
Listen to it here.
april 16, 2010
You love your city, right?
Even though it's not perfect.
Even though it sometimes socks you in the jaw in those messy, late-night, drunken fights you have.
Even though your fancier friends in L.A. or New York sometimes look really concerned and say "hey, are you still...? huh, really. Wow, okay."
This week's song is really not a valentine to san francisco. It's more of an excuse.
1960's san francisco-inspired match books
It's also much sketchier of a sketch than many of the songs I have posted here, although they are all just sketches.
Anyhoodle, you can listen to it here.
april 9, 2010
I hope you're sitting down.
Because this week's song is................
A HAPPY SONG.
really it is I swear!
It is not dark.
It is not melancholy.
It is not even wistful!
You can listen to it here.
april 2, 2010
success! this one is different!
I mean, it's not totally different from other songs of mine. It features pump organ and viola in addition to voice, as others have.
And it's not totally different from other songs of other people (Al Jolson's "All My Love" is suspiciously similar... oopsie).
But Einstein said "The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources," so forget I mentioned Jolson, and listen to the song here.
march 26, 2010
i feel like these songs are starting to sound all the same...
but part of the reason I wanted to write a song every week was to become aware of the ways I repeat myself instead of being creative.
so hopefully next week's song will be totally different!!
To listen to this week's song
Hitch Your Wagon To A Star
click here.
march 19, 2010
although I am very excited about spring,
and in fact a choir of birds is singing
right outside my window even as I type this,
as if to announce its arrival,
alas, this week's song is decidedly unspringy.
It also uses a little more computer help
than I usually employ (and a lot more reverb).
It's supposed to be dream-like? or something?
I don't know. Anyway, you can listen to it here.
march 12, 2010
All cats deserve their own theme song,
don't you think?
Adam & I have been singing to and about Chloe
since we adopted her as a teeny tiny kitten
almost four months ago.
This week Adam used the wonders of GarageBand
to record Chloe's theme song, and he and I
sang it.
You can listen to it here.
march 5, 2010
This week's song is called
"He's Just A Boy Who Can't Say Yes,"
a title obviously inspired by a certain Rogers & Hammerstein classic.
So is it a funny song?
ummm ... not intentionally.
Remember this scene from Say Anything:
"I wrote 63 songs this year. They're all about Joe. And I'm going to play each and every one of them tonight."
Bitter songs about an ex are what being a singer/songwriter is all about.
If you don't write a bitter breakup song at least once a year, you lose your invite to the singer/songwriter christmas pity party.
So this week I went in the "Joe lies... when he cries" direction.
Listen to this week's song here.
february 26, 2010
more mini cupcakes!
I mean, mini songs. Thanks to Thom, Kyran, Jon & Nadya for letting me use their status updates.
Listen to the songlets here.
february 19, 2010
After years of resistance, I recently joined the Facebook.
Maybe I shouldn't have been so crankypants about it, because I have found that sometimes people's status updates are funny, poetic or inspiring. Or all three a once!
A few weeks ago I started copying some of my friends' status updates into a notebook with the idea that it might be fun to make little mini songs out of them.
THANK YOU SO MUCH to all five of the friends I contacted, who graciously gave me permission to use their words - even without hearing my song ideas.
Each mini song is about a minute long. Listen to them here.
mini, in cotext
february 12, 2010
This week I used my sewing machine as the foundation for a song. I recorded it and then made up a melody and sang along.
Here is my kitten Chloe, who also finds the sewing machine fascinating.
(I swear I did not choose this particular model because it's also a singer.)
In addition to sewing machine and voice, this week's homemade song features pinking shears and masking tape, and you can listen to it here.
february 5, 2010
this week's song seemed to require the sound of a harpsichord. seriously.
so I used the harpsichord feature on my Roland electric keyboard, a feature I have used maybe once since I got the thing seventeen years ago.
I am hoping that if I neglect to mention the fact that this week's song might sound a little like a 1970's sitcom theme (Mork & Mindy? not sure), maybe no one will notice.
Decide for yourself by listening here.
Jan Miense Molinaer, Lady At Harpsichord, 1640
january 29, 2010
My friend Tanya called my attention to Day Of Amnesty For Unanswered Correspondences (January 28) - a day dedicated to making an effort to return the letters, calls, emails that you've recieved and meant to answer.
I love that idea so much!
I really suck at returning emails.
Of course, instead of answering correspondence this week, I made a song about not answering correspondence.
Listen to it here.
january 22, 2010
Five storms in as many days!
I was compelled to make a rainy day song but I didn't feel much like singing this week because my neck & back have been all stiff and spasmy. So this week's song features my sweet Lester "Betsy Ross" spinet [it's a piano], with a guest appearance by my little glockenspiel. Listen here.
january 15, 2010
Look at my lovely new autoharp!
It's actually not new, of course. I don't know its exact date of manufacture, but it's somewhere between 1910 and 1929. I found it in an antique store last friday and I've been tuning it ever since.
I think it might be like painting the Golden Gate Bridge - as soon as you're finished you have to start over.
In any case, it's unique sound inspired this week's song. To listen, click here.
january 8, 2010
Today I got my piano tuned. Yay!
Please pardon the sound of a sniff here or there in today's song. I am coming down with a cold.
To listen, click here.
january 1, 2010
I am excited to get back to the habit of making songs. Inspiration is nice, but as Nolan Bushnell said, the ultimate inspiration is the deadline.
Ironic that this quote comes from the founder of Atari, because one of the primary ways I distract myself from both inspiration and deadlines is video games.
I really don't want to look back at the end of my life with nothing to show for my time on earth than an impressive score on Yahoo WordSense. Instead, I want to look back on many half-baked, poorly recorded song ideas posted on the interwebs.
Enjoy!
To listen to this week's song sketch, click here.