the Rattling

a critique of pure music day 9

aaron@aaronmacdonald.com (Aaron & Emily) — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 17:47:00 +0000

apollonius
pincushion
archimedes
reluctant robot
tacitus

lots of music going on around here - i'm playing bass with Jenn Rawling (& Basho Parks, among others..) for her CD release party, so that includes some rehearsals, but American Friction is busy right now and the New Mexican Revolution is still gaining steam.. whew.

and yet i only have one heart, and it belongs to these little one minute songs. ha!

a critique of pure music day 8

aaron@aaronmacdonald.com (Aaron & Emily) — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 16:39:00 +0000

copernicus
plutarch
ptolemy
virgil
kepler

sadface. emily is back at work, the rain clouds have returned, the apartment is cold & quiet.

except for all these beats.

a critique of pure music day 7

aaron@aaronmacdonald.com (Aaron & Emily) — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 16:16:00 +0000

copernicus
epictetus
thucydides
knight
rook

i really like some of these more recent ones.. little glitchy drums against the strings are kinda cool. can we combine Radiohead and Dr. Dre somehow? hmm.. i'm also getting better at making smoother loops, which is cool. it doesn't make it any faster or easier, but the final result is nicer.

a critique of pure music day 6

aaron@aaronmacdonald.com (Aaron & Emily) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:48:00 +0000

northside
queen
sophocles
lucretius
hippocrates

well, we took the weekend off to relax, 'cause emily has a four day weekend, but i figured i should start posting some more of them now. mostly 'cause i enjoy the five day work week so much. and also 'cause i've got so many of these little jams on the other computer i'm having a hard time keeping them straight. ha!

a critique of pure music day 5

aaron@aaronmacdonald.com (Aaron & Emily) — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 17:24:00 +0000

galen
euclid
king
equinox
bishop

making beats, yo. sometimes syncing up really different music is kinda maddening.. like tuning a piano or something. yeah. but i'm getting better at knowing ahead of time what might work.. a little bit better.

also, TGIF- 'cause now emily has got a four day weekend.

a critique of pure music day 4

aaron@aaronmacdonald.com (Aaron & Emily) — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 17:28:00 +0000

day 4, day 4. the weather here in portland is a little bit crazy-awesome.. no rain for a few days, even a fair bit of sunshine. i think i might take advantage of that weather and walk to the library today, in between making beats. i should be writing rhymes, too.

a critique of pure music day 3

aaron@aaronmacdonald.com (Aaron & Emily) — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 17:48:00 +0000

euripides
twilight
westside
spring
knight

hip hop kids, where are you? i need some verses.. 16 bars or so. ha!

a critique of pure music day 2

aaron@aaronmacdonald.com (Aaron & Emily) — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 17:19:00 +0000

making beats, making beats.. need to find some of those rapper guys.

a critique of pure music

aaron@aaronmacdonald.com (Aaron & Emily) — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 18:07:00 +0000

well, for the past week i've been pretty distracted, trying to make beats and hip hop instrumentals - which has turned out to be pretty cool.. although i'm not sure what to do with 'em. they're all short (i'm trying to work with about a 1 minute end result..) and pretty simple.. but it's all kinda theoretical/experimental until i can find some other people and get some songs together.

so i figure i'll start posting 'em, and maybe i can find some hip hop types who want to collaborate..

gloaming

dawn
dusk
evening
fall

hmm.. well, i got 20 more of these right now, so maybe i'll just limit myself to these few for now.. i'm not sure how the internets will handle my flood of mp3s in one post, so..

Alexander Sunset

aaron@aaronmacdonald.com (Aaron & Emily) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 00:19:00 +0000

Alexander Sunset

here's a little bit of a theme song for alex.. for some reason, when i think of super hero themes, the first one that pops up is darkwing duck. i think that's a little odd, but maybe not.. there was a short window of time where i really liked watching tale spin, rescue rangers, ducktales, and darkwing duck after school.. although, at the time, i think tale spin was my favorite. always been scared/fascinated with flying, i think.

anyhow, emily is still outta town, so i didn't really give her a chance to call this one finished.. but i think it'll be okay. it's kinda important to the overall super hero concept album thing.. not unlike the few unfinished songs i have left. i wrote some good words for something i'm calling "the ballad of windy & alex".. and i think that'll get it pretty close to finished. yeehaw!

also, on an unrelated note:

craigslist musicians seem to be uncommunicative flakes. i'm kinda still in disbelief.. i've been looking for other musicians, bands, people on tour, maybe somebody needs a multi-instrumentalist who can leave for tour tomorrow - anything.. but nobody even really replies to my emails, and if i get a single email, there's no phone number or anything. i figured it would be easy to play with a few different people, especially here in portland, make some new contacts, whatevs.. i can't even do that. hmph. yeehaw.

Alexander Uses His Powers (why the hellknot?)

aaron@aaronmacdonald.com (Aaron & Emily) — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 21:49:00 +0000

hahaha. today is monday, and i'm trying to finish up the a.f.c. stuff, which still includes another 5 or 6 tracks.. but this one is an odd one, a sorta dreamy noise wash.. mostly guitars feeding back in the old practice space, late at night.. it was pretty fun, using the acoustic and the electric to try and build these chords, moving around the room with the amp turned way up, trying to make the pretty noises.. kinda like whales or something. i can't make noises like this in the apartment, of course.. i keep trying to re-create those feedback swells and such, but it's never quite right..

Alexander Uses His Powers (why the hellknot?)

anyhow, i like how this one turned out.

Even Adam

aaron@aaronmacdonald.com (Aaron & Emily) — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 22:19:00 +0000

Even Adam

the music for this song started off with a cool cowbell part, and i like that a lot. of course, now it's got a bunch of other stuff going on, and it's hard to hear how neat it is, but still.. cool cowbell part. it's also got attempts to move between three similar but seperate song ideas, and that proved kinda difficult.. the swirly psychedelia of the first third, and the major key guitar rock, and the end.. whatever that is. ha! it was kinda hard to mix 'em all together all the same song.. trying to make the guitars sound big in the 2nd part, etc etc..

in other news, recording for American Friction is still underway, but it's slow going.. after spending some time on a particular take of 'Martians' we decided to scrap it and start over. tough decision sometimes. oh well. on the other hand, another new song that may or may not be called 'Nudist' is sounding pretty awesome. and we got a show coming up, jan 12th, so i imagine it'll be more rehearsal than recording for now.

Plastic Bags

aaron@aaronmacdonald.com (Aaron & Emily) — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 19:12:00 +0000

here's the bigger & longer side of our two-part release.. this song has been around since the days of the practice space (sometime in the summer, i suppose..) and that's probably obvious from the live drums. i had this crazy idea for a groove similar to Primus' My Name is Mud song.. sorta the inspiration for the end of the song, although my version comes out all square and full of guitar solo. ha!

Plastic Bags

life ain't that precious

aaron@aaronmacdonald.com (Aaron & Emily) — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 19:06:00 +0000

we keep getting closer to the end of this crazy album, sort of.. and here's a few more songs - but i also keep writing more, which is good and bad. today i'm gonna post two songs, but in two separate posts. crazy, huh?
yep. crazy.

anyhow, part of the reason i'm posting two is 'cause they're connected and this one is super short.

life ain't that precious

Bullies!

aaron@aaronmacdonald.com (Aaron & Emily) — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 16:02:00 +0000

yeehaw, december 19th. good times.

it may seem quiet around here, and i suppose it is - but not for lack of noise. we've been working on the new album for awhile now, and that recently included a long stretch of something like writer's block and dissatisfaction with the lyrics.. whew, tough times. we had a dozen songs all half finished, and i didn't like any of 'em.

but the good news: we seem to have found some new energy, and a lot of songs started to come together last week, even some new songs... all fitting together into the concept nicely, so it's probably time to start posting 'em.

this new song, Bullies, is kinda tough.. it's got some dimished chords, me trying to sing falsetto, a big thick bass/low-end mixdown to go with my dance-y hi hat stuff, all those crazy lyrics.. ha!

Bullies!

yeah, so i hope to be able to post a bunch more songs in the next few weeks, as we can get 'em squared away. and things are going well in both American Friction and the New Mexican Revolution. The Revolution just played the best show we've had in a few years - down in Eugene, OR at Luckey's on a Saturday night, with a traveling posse of drunk Santas filling up the bar and dancing. hard to compete with that. i also think jonpaul took a few photos from stage, so i look forward to seeing those. the band is really starting to gel, Geoff's back in shape already, it seems..

yep, dec 19th, good times.

Truly Daring

aaron@aaronmacdonald.com (Aaron & Emily) — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 14:20:00 +0000

Another for the A.F.C. album - Truly Daring is a song I wrote one night while at the practice space, all alone with a single strand of christmas lights for illumination. i was working with the big dynamic shift from the get-go, trying to figure out how i can come in with big guitars and live drums and screamy vocals, yet still contrast that with acoustic guitars.. and then, somehow along the line, we put together the intro - it started off with some more random piano bits, but really came together with emily's film noir trumpet solo..

Truly Daring

Boney is just this kid from back in grade school
a lizard's light beneath his skin
but he showed doubtand word got out
now i don't get to be his friend

Truly Daring is just the way I was in high school
a madness i could try and call my own
it rippled out in the dark - i swear i gave off sparks
to keep us warm against the cold

lets get wasted

aaron@aaronmacdonald.com (Aaron & Emily) — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 15:10:00 +0000

alright, so it's been a little quiet on the front these days, but it's not for lack of activity. emily and i have been working on a new album, a.f.c., for a while now, in addition to some other projects, but we're just now starting to see some results.. for our first offering, we've got "lets get wasted", a short little number that turned into something i'm really kinda proud of..

lets get wasted

i think it's cool, hopefully it sounds alright to other people.. i kinda struggled with the mix to this one, partly 'cause i don't have a strict deadline, and also 'cause i really like the song.

in addition, one of my other projects, American Friction, has been pretty busy lately, recording and playing shows.. and this weekend is gonna be kinda cool - friday at dante's, and saturday at slabtown. either show alone would be awesome, and back-to-back is kinda exciting - a tiny bit like tour.

as if that weren't enough, another awesome old friend is in town this weekend, one of the original guys i moved to portland with, from the first band.. neat-o.

Unreadable 2

aaron@aaronmacdonald.com (Aaron & Emily) — Fri, 20 May 2011 14:02:00 +0000

Unreadable version 2

i got a friend coming into town today with his fiance, a great guy i've known since kindergarten or something, a long time, *and* we have the same birthday, so that's kinda cool. and portland has had some awesome weather the past few days (70-72.. hmm.. can't find the degrees symbol).. so i'm in a pretty good mood, fairly excited. ha!

so, in light of this weekend's upcoming distractions, i can't foresee a lot of writing and recording in the immediate future.. but that's alright, i started some new stuff yesterday that has promise, with a neat tempo & feel change in the middle.. so next week, i figure, will be be pretty productive. i've gotten sorta comfortable in the space, working on quiet stuff during the day and getting louder (drums!) around 6pm..

a puny and a whopper

aaron@aaronmacdonald.com (Aaron & Emily) — Wed, 18 May 2011 17:20:00 +0000

so, working swing shift is basically less cool than working the early day shift, but there is one redeeming aspect: an awesome view of the sunset from the hill, giving way to dusk by the time i'm waiting (for what seems like forever) for the #9 downtown. there is a scrappy little rhododendron at the bus stop that glows a brilliant red-and-green in the gloaming.

swing shift does not leave much time for me to work on songs with aaron, but we dug up this old gem from the archives to post today --

a puny and A WHOPPER!

this song has existed for a while now, but the recorded version is pretty simple -- just the idea of the song, really. it germinated at dan and colae's wedding (which must be a couple years ago by now, since julien just had his first birthday and baby girl couch is on the way!), when i overheard a toddler named ziggy (impressively well-behaved for such an occasion) discussing garden bugs with his grandmother. i didn't actually see the bugs, but grandma described their relative sizes using the delightfully obscure terms "puny" and "whopper." later, this song emerged, co-written by leah.

if i had a photo of miles and indie side-by-side, or indie riding miles like a horse, i would post that for sure. but i don't. so i can't.

edit: jonpaul sent a photo!

Beauty and Suspicion

aaron@aaronmacdonald.com (Aaron & Emily) — Tue, 17 May 2011 18:17:00 +0000

Beauty and Suspicion 2 - with live drums

more time in the practice space (which needs a name, by the way) recording drums and such.. yesterday/last night i spent a lot of time there, playing drums, singing, even turning up the guitar and playing with some feedback.. so that was pretty cool. i had plans to stay there late, until emily got off work, but the neighboring metal band showed up, and their concept of loud and mine are still somewhat different..

so that kinda forced me out, but not before i'd made some progress.. for the record, i've "played" drums on all of the OneADay5 stuff, i think. some of it was beneficial for the songs, but not all of it. i re-sang some stuff, too.. but i'm not sure that it's really important enough to post. so maybe i'm being a little bit picky about some stuff.. maybe.

anyhow - i like the drums on this one.. a lot of energy, some silly fills, and in this case i think it improves the song. blah blah.

In The Belly 2

aaron@aaronmacdonald.com (Aaron & Emily) — Sun, 15 May 2011 15:39:00 +0000

In The Belly 2 - with live drums

i think this is the last one to be re-posted.

it's a shame about all my blurry christmas light photos.

hmm.. so the post re-appeared, so i cut and pasted..

In The Belly 2 - with live drums

i spent hours at the space last night, trying to work on drums and guitars - but i must've been there for the same 3 hours that another band was practicing, and it was kinda frustrating.. not nearly as successful as previous attempts. oh well.

that being said, i was able to try out some different things last night, getting pretty loud in the middle of the night, in beautiful downtown portland. fun.

Judith 2 - live drums

aaron@aaronmacdonald.com (Aaron & Emily) — Sun, 15 May 2011 15:30:00 +0000

Judith 2 - with live drums

fixing this blogger stuff is not very much fun, but i found this (an old saved draft!):

i kinda thought of this song a little bit like Wilco's "At Least That's What You Said.." - which is an awesome mix of little sad intro and rocking outro.. so the blueprint is there, but our original attempt was a little flat (i think) and the outro didn't really work for me.. i wanted more rocking, and less singing, i guess.

and Wilco's drummer, Glenn Kotche, that guy has such a good feeling behind the kit, it's always neat to try and channel some of his groove..

and also, emily and our fledgeling rose plant, enjoying the sun break.

Reasons On The Way 2

aaron@aaronmacdonald.com (Aaron & Emily) — Sun, 15 May 2011 15:30:00 +0000

Reasons On The Way 2 - with live drums

not too sure about blogger here, but it's free and has worked this long.. so we'll just keep the faith.

there used to be a story here about recording with Basho all day yesterday, full of gorgeous harmonies and some nice violin playing.. but i lost that post somehow, and then a few more.. blah blah. so i'm just gonna try and rebuild real quick.

Focus for Color 3 - more live drums!

aaron@aaronmacdonald.com (Aaron & Emily) — Wed, 11 May 2011 02:05:00 +0000

Focus for Color 3 - with live drums

more of the same experiment.. which i'm gonna go do more of tonight, fingers crossed. it's hard working odd hours, in a weird lonely room, but it's cool to record some drums.

Just A Ghost 2 - with live drums

aaron@aaronmacdonald.com (Aaron & Emily) — Tue, 10 May 2011 01:25:00 +0000

well here's the beginning of an experiment. at the practice space i've been spending time playing drums with stuff, working on things.. and most of it has involved the recent song a day 5 stuff, so i thought about fixing something, remixing some bits, and so on.. and i've been recording drums on most of the songs we just wrote.

it's not in the spirit of previous song-a-day stuff, but it's good to try some different stuff i figure.. and we'll see if i'm making things better or worse. or if it matters at all.

Just A Ghost 2 -with live drums

in this case, its pretty much only live drums were added.. i might re-sing it and add some guitars for the second chorus stuff, but i got distracted with other songs that might need drums. ha!