Monday, October 31, 2011

10/30/11

Today we continued writing, and made a minor performance for the class.
Also, I've recently started listening to Motown music.

another good old day in the band room

today we had another google day in band today. we came up with some pretty interesting and cool little parts and pieces. Now we need to work on putting them all together. :P

this. is. CONNOR

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

10/25/11

Continued working on new material. I realized that I can draw vocal phrasing from the poems I've written; this may help with writing vocal melodies.

Sunday, October 23, 2011

More stuff coming along

This is Connor

Sooo, asically, the band has started to speed up a little in the past few weeks. Friendships are tumbling and are being created, sleep is being lost, and a lot of half-progress is being made. Let me explain.
With the friendship situation: A couple friends have tried to pressure me to let them into them into the band, but I wont. Me, Alex and Christian work very well together and adding more people will make it too complicated. One of my friends even started to ignore me for a little bit because of this, but its all better now; he forgot about it.
With creating new friends, I have met a few people who work at the lakewood center, and can let us have our own gigs there!! How sweet would that be!
Sleep is being lost: Ever since finding that we can have our own gig, and that we have to present a few songs to the class, I have been working tirelessly on creating drum fills, guitar riffs, and writing lyrics that pop ito my head. Unfortunately, most of it only comes out half-way.....
We have a bunch of half-songs written that are very interesting and fun to listen to. We just need to get them to be full songs and BAM, we have an album.

Thursday, October 20, 2011

10/20/11

This is Christian.

We've been polishing our first Google Project piece (now under the working title "Broken"), as well as writing others. We've got some great ideas and a few half-finished songs.

For future reference, songwriting seems much easier with a full stomach; Connor discovered this.

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Getting Ready.

This is Alex.

Today, like most days, I played my guitar after school. Since the PSAT is tomorrow, I had no homework, and I played for about an hour. I created and quickly recorded many new guitar riffs that could easily go on to become full-fledged songs. I also played with tuning, such as going to Drop C, and keeping standard tuning but dropping the bottom E string down to a G. Look forward to many original songs coming your way very soon!
Tomorrow we plan on going to Connor's church and practicing with the professional equipment.

Afterthought:
You know, I could probably entertain myself endlessly with just a guitar. I never get bored with it; I simply run out of time.

Friday, October 7, 2011

10/07/11

This is Christian.
I've just read a number of poems by Jim Morrison, the singer/songwriter of The Doors. He seems to write disjointed, sporadic ideas; these are often brilliant. I've never been a Doors fan, but am intrigued by these poems and may need to listen closer to his music.

Thursday, October 6, 2011

The beggining of greatness!

Soooooo, today. I wasn't exactly sure what we were going to do, and I was super exhausted from the week of school, so I wasn't expecting much out of the period. It turns out, however, we somehow all got "into the rhythm" and wrote a song in about 20 minutes!
It started out as just a normal jam sesh, then I said, "hey Alex, play some simple chords." And so he did.
What he was playing just let me get into the rhythm, and I started drumming on the bongo to the beat. Soon after, Christian started singing just straight notes for the melody. It sounded so cool that we decided to start writing lyrics for this new song. WE HAVENT EVEN NAMED IT YET!
So, after we had completed a verse and a chorus, Mr. Matthys came into our practice room and said, "play for me." And so, we did.
He liked it so much! It felt really good to know that what you are making is something people will actually like.
I am so glad we have this google 20% project. It lets me forget all about the stresses at home and at school and lets me just expand my curiosity and creativity with two of my closest friends.

P.S. Click on the link in the post below and please give us some constructive criticism on our rough draft.

Song Written 10/5/11

Here is the rough draft. Take from it what you will.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Onw1jU25cok

10/05/11

This is Christian.

Today in class, we used our time efficiently. In just over an hour, we managed to write the major content of a song. Not finished yet, but the first draft of lyrics are essentially done. Will practice and post a recording at a later date.

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

What a Wonderful Day!

Alex here. Today went much better than expected.

During class today, Connor, Christian and myself secluded ourselves in one of the soundproof rooms of the band hall. For about an hour, we worked on creating an original song that we have not yet titled. I played a guitar part, Connor created a drum rythm for both the conga and the full drum set, and Christian wrote a set of lyrics that I consider to be outstanding given the speed and ease in which they were written.

We were able to construct a solid verse, bridge, and chorus, which we repeat as needed. We plan to incorporate a small instrumental section as well. We performed this 'rough draft' peice for Mr. Matthys, who was very pleased and stated that we were making a "perfect Google project." He suggested that we post a video here of ourselves performing the song for everyone to see, which we will do within the next few days when we are able to record it properly. I could post a very rough sketch now, but I do not want to lower the expectations of potential fans.

I learned today that if we sincerely open wide a new song and pour in our musicality, we can easily exceed our previous expectations of ourselves.