This is somewhere between a soundtrack and a soundscape, with little percussion / beats, and a sort of wandering structure that unfurls towards the end. I am no Brian Eno (although I am a fan of his), but I do like the ambient genre now and then. There is something psychologically liberating about working on a track once I’ve decided that it is evolving into an ambient thing, like at that point I can basically do anything I can think of.

In this case, that included appropriating a bit of Carl Sagan. The end result is something you might be able to listen to as you fall asleep.

In the new Garageband, you can create ringtones for the iPhone. Of course, I don’t have an iPhone since I live in Japan…but my friends do! Yimay asked me to whip something together for her. This is the first draft of the Original Yangsta Theme.  

Here is a short experiment trying out some of the toys in Reason 3.0. Its a short piece, I am thinking about titling it, “The End of Time”, but I am not sure yet.

I never thought I would say this, but I am starting to think a full size keyboard would be a good investment. My small keyboard is very nice, but it feels very cramped recently. Maybe my hands are growing out of control…

So here is a more traditional version of the song (see this post for the other version).So I abandoned the West-Side-Roll feel (apparently being from Austin isn’t good enough, you have to be from San Antonio to make it work) and modeled the song into a more train / blues feeling. The idea still works well. I tossed a solo in there as a placeholder for the vocal track.

I had this idea for a song that was heavily inspired by a Sir Douglas Quintet tune, but the more I tried to go for that feeling, the trickier it got. Instead of a 1-4-5, I wrote a 1-4-1-6m-6# (?) sort of thing. 

It’s sort of feisty, which I like. But the keyboard part is too ‘Baba o’Reilly-meets-the-circus’.  Maybe I’ll take it out.

You can hear another version of this song posted here. 

Here is a snip of a tune I am working on for Nathan & the Naturals. I’ve been on the fence about what direction to take this song in. Right now it seems like it’s on the verge of being an upbeat Bill Withers tune (Good!) or one of Michael McDonald’s later works (maybe not so good).

(Guilty admission: I love Keep Forgettin’.

All instruments by me (guitar, midi instruments, samples. Software: Logic).