The Music of Jeff Beck (1944-2023): A Memorial

Incredibly, it has been eight years since I last published a blog post to this thing (I do see I have some drafts from more recent days that I just never bothered to publish, oh well). 

However, the passing of Jeff Beck seems like an appropriate occasion to revisit it. I frankly have way more to say about this than twitter or a facebook post could contain. 

Let me acknowledge the obvious. Those of you on my facebook friends list might be getting weirded out by the amount of Beck posts and shares from me. I fully admit this is odd to the normies out there, and I don't mean that in a stupid elitist way. I never met this man in person. At most I breathed the same air in the same building during concerts. Many of my friends and family have artists they like, but the loss of those artists wouldn't affect them other than a simple "oh darn, that sucks." This is understandable and sensible. 

I never like to assume anyone actually cares about my thoughts, especially on music ("sigh there goes that music snob going on again!"), but please indulge me as I try to explain why I feel the way I do. 

Well. How do I feel? On the day I learned he passed (Wednesday January 11th, as I was sitting in my office- just scrolling facebook, and I see the post by his family), I was emotional. I definitely teared up as I thought about his music, especially his more emotional material like "Where Were You" which seemed especially poignant. 

Note: by no means is this post meant to be *any* type of pity party because his actual family and friends are no doubt struggling with powerful grief, just be crystal clear on that.

Second Note: My family has been so sweet and kind to me. Again: this doesn't affect their life at all-, yet they've been so nice. Erica was very kind and Helena randomly came up to me simply to say "I'm sorry that guitarist you liked died." Its appreciated. 

But after that day, the actual sadness was gone. It was replaced by melancholy- not the overpowering, "I can't do anything" type, more just a weird pall that gently hung over everything. I'll admit here that for the past few months I've been struggling with my place in the musical world (once again, not in an overpowering "everything sucks" way, it's just been something I've been thinking about a lot). Ironically this was triggered by seeing this very artist Jeff Beck in concert in Chicago in October (sure glad I did that!). When I witness high level artistry, it kicks me in the butt. What am I doing with the guitar and music? Anything? That sort of thing. 

I've been processing this mostly in a healthy way: by playing a *ton* more guitar. Guitar doesn't put food on the table for me (at best a handful of private lessons keep it from being a drain), so it's easy for me to minimize it. From about Spring 2021 until last November my playing had been pretty minimal: playing in church and doing my few private lessons. Since seeing Beck I had been in guitar overdrive, playing as much as I can. Also, admittedly, I do what *all* guitarists do when they feel musically depressed but aren't gigging: buy gear. In my case, nothing astronomical: an inexpensive Epiphone 335 copy (one of the last body styles I wanted in my arsenal), and a pedal board mostly filled with cheap pedals. 

Random aside: since I don't normally follow celebrity news at all, I am aghast at the industry that is apparently devoted to cranking out click bait content the very moment a famous person dies. My social feeds are awash in the stuff: "Jeff Beck's devastating final interview" and "his LAST moments" as well as just "read the wikipedia page" style phony documentaries. Ugly stuff. 

Second random aside: My playing in the church band is a very meaningful experience that I am blessed to be able to do, which I want to make clear just in case! If all God wants me to do musically is blow off steam at home and play church music on Sundays, His will be done! 

I also ran off to the local record store in hopes of snagging the Beckology box set, mainly because it's a beautiful package and includes Jeff's early work with the Tridents, a rhythm n' blues band that played Eel Pie Island. There are a few more pre-Yardbirds artifacts out there: I think he did some stuff with Screamin' Lord Sutch and there was a band called The Nightshift. In the Lafayette area there are some awesome used record stores and sure enough, I found it, cheaper than the eBay scalpers were selling them for. 

Mostly, however, I've been thinking about his music a lot. Like, all the time, almost a constant loop. The melancholy remains, though I feel it slowly evolving into appreciation. 

Appreciation for what, exactly? It's time for an enumerated list! 

1. Jeff Beck was the bridge to jazz music and instrumental music for me. When I listened to Blow by Blow as a teenager, I was initially put off by it. I was listening to a steady diet of AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, and Deep Purple then (which was what made me initially pick up the guitar). Blow by Blow sounded so weird at first: funky chords, no vocals, the songs weren't just the blues played really loud! I had never heard electric piano before on a recording (I now absolutely love the 1970s Fender Rhodes piano sound). 

Funny thing though: sometimes when you listen to something you think you don't like, something sticks. I can't remember which one stuck first: the solo break in Scatterbrain or this lick from Cause We've Ended as Lovers, but they were both moments that didn't leave my brain once they entered. And of course Freeway Jam is a whole bop as the kids say. From there, the rest of the album opened up and suddenly it became an obsession. It was all I listened to for months. Better yet, I began the process of exploring the influences that Jeff had: John McLaughlin, The Mahavishnu Orchestra, Billy Cobham's Spectrum album. These were the first jazz records that weren't Django Reinhardt or the odd Wes Montgomery thing that I actually loved. 

Eventually this led to listening to Jim Hall's Concierto album, the first "straight ahead" jazz album I loved, and I was off to the races then, listening to Miles, Coltrane, Monk, etc. 

2. Seeing Jeff live. I saw him in Grand Rapids Michigan in 1999 with my good friend Tony. Holy crap, that was a concert. He was touring with Jennifer Batten, Randy Hope-Taylor and Steve Alexander. It was a great band. Seeing Jeff live is an experience that fails words. The best I can do is this: you just can't believe the sounds he makes. The music is astounding. The purity of tone, the adventurism, the pure emotional power of his playing is transformative. 

I didn't see him as much as I would have liked, but I can't complain on this score. I saw him again in Detroit, Milwaukee, and finally in Chicago last October. Each time was awesome. 

3. The Jeff Beck community. Jeff was never mega popular: popular enough to pack mid-sized venues, certainly. But not so popular that you felt his community as out of reach due to the sheer numbers of it. The center of Jeff Beck fandom was a website that was and remains delightfully "web 1.0." It has undergone a few host name changes over the years, but is now at YellowDeuce.com. It looks *exactly* like it did in 1998, complete with scrolling text.

Reading the latest "what's new" posting was always so much fun: not only did it have news of tours and music releases, but the site authors Bill Armstrong and the late Dick Wyzanski were true Beckologists, finding all kinds of rare artifacts and even interviewing musicians that played with Jeff on various side-projects and unreleased attempts at albums. Even now, it remains a treasure trove of material. 

The community then moved to an old yahoo email group, which lasted until Yahoo got rid of those, and is currently manifested in Sheila Melms' wonderful facebook page. To be a Jeff Beck fan is to be hardcore, and knowledgeable. As you might guess, probably most of us actually play guitar ourselves. 

4. Sharing Beck's music with others. Admittedly, Jeff Beck isn't going to be the type of music that you can hook lots of your friends and family on. At least, the music he did outside of the most popular stuff, the Rod Stewart Jeff Beck Group records, The Yardbirds, and *possibly* Blow by Blow. I remember my late grandmother being particularly disgusted with a concert from the Who Else! tour that I use to watch all the time at my parent's house. "That isn't music, it's just noise!" she said. Of course, happily, when Jeff launched into Angel Footsteps she did voice her approval. Beck's ballads have universal appeal. 

I had a lot of fun watching Jeff Beck videos and listening to records with my first guitar teacher, John. I'd go to his house, we'd smoke some cigars, and just *listen to Jeff's music.* Btw, when is the last time you simply listened to music as the primary activity in your home. Not a live concert, but actually sat in a comfortable chair and really listened to just music. This, to me, is a lost art. Even I don't do much of this anymore.  I'm trying to do it more, because a lot of Beck's music isn't great for jogging or for just "background work noise." 

The other group I shared his music with was, of course, other musicians! The first time I attempted to play Jeff's music was my sophomore year of college, playing Cause We've Ended as Lovers in the college jazz ensembles. We kinda sucked, although part of that suckitude was being nervous at the firing squad atmosphere of jazz education. I remember getting berated for playing in a seated position: "You can't play rock music sitting down!" (That was probably a merited criticism).

A little later on I would play Definitely Maybe as a regular tune in the fusion band I had in our live set. Shortly after graduating, I was invited to a rehearsal at the house of a trombone player who was trying to create an RnB showband type thing. I cooked up an arrangement of AIR Blower from Blow by Blow (saxophone, guitar, bass, drums, trombone). The group never got going, but one glorious rehearsal the trombonist, Mike, arranged for a ringer- a working pro drummer he paid to sit in with us- so we could have a rehearsal. He was a motown influenced player who sounded, well, utterly perfect, just like the record. For one glorious random evening in a Toledo area house, I played AIR Blower with fantastic musicians with an absolutely powerhouse rhythm section. That was special. 

5. Absorbing Jeff's musical ideas and musical ethics.

This is a tricky one. As famous YouTube guitar influencer Rick Beato put it, he is uncopyable. This isn't hyperbole. Jeff's playing style is such a marvelously odd amalgamation of things that are just about impossible to imitate well. 

What you can do, however, is imitate the attitude and what I'll call "musical ethics." What are those? Probably its own blog post, but in short, to be daring and improvisational, to be lyrical, to be technical but never, ever for its own sake. It is to keep getting better and better no matter how old you are. Jeff Beck at 78 was better than Jeff Beck at 50 who was better than Jeff Beck at 30 or 20. 

Because I use a pick and do not have the rockabilly influence, there is going to be a limit to how much "Beck" is in my own guitar art. However, I did record one track (around 2015, released in 2019) in which I can detect a strong Beck influence in both the playing and the musical content. The music is free-form and overly long, so I'll send you to a time-stamped version here: 

https://youtu.be/9dmRaANNYtY?t=120

I was particularly proud of this track for that reason. The lead lines are playful yet melancholy, which is definitely Jeff Beck's influence at work (and or course I used a strat-style guitar for this!). While not dedicated to Beck, the title, "Goodbye for Now," might as well be. 

So where do we go from here? I wonder if Jeff Beck will inspire "Jeff Beck Societies" in the way truly great classical composers have, or the way Django Reinhardt inspired things have inspired bands like the "Hot Club of San Francisco" and "The Hot Club of Detroit." If such things happened, I'd love to be a part of them. I think in the immediate short term, it's just a time to dive ever-deeper into the legacy. Strangely, I haven't actually transcribed a lot of Beck solos, so that is something I'll remedy (I've already assigned a guitar student a Beck solo, which means I'll be learning it first to show him). 

I have dreams of owning an Oxblood Les Paul, like on the cover of Blow by Blow. Alas, Gibson makes it impossible as these guitars are now selling for INSANE prices. I have designs on perhaps trying to build one myself from a cheap guitar kit (you can get oxblood guitar finish). 

But more broadly, and more importantly, the main thing here is to continue to express myself on the guitar and musically. I've doing OK with that, but I can do a whole lot more. I need to find the courage to play out in public, at least in the limited sense my life allows for. Most of all, I need to continue to get better and better and better at my own guitar playing. That lifelong dedication to craft: that is so vital. 

Finally, let me say something spiritual. Jeff never talked about that much, but as for myself, I am a Christian (another reason why I love "People Get Ready" so much, his one gospel tune!), so as I stated on my facebook page, I have faith that God collects all culture of the world and uses it in the New Creation (Heaven), so I do expect to hear Jeff Beck music there! And it will be glorious. 

Rest in Peace, Jeff. Thanks for the music. 

Classic Albums: "Birds of Fire" By the Mahavishnu Orchestra

Warning: if you hate jazz fusion, this blog won't be much fun for you. Many of my personal favorite albums are in this somewhat maligned, often misunderstood category.

This is one of the all time best.

Pretty much everyone enters the Jazz Fusion "world" via some fairly toe tapping, easier listening entry point. Mine was Jeff Beck's Blow by Blow,* yours might have been a Herbie Hancock album, or even stuff on the absolute borderline of the genre, such as early Chicago. Some are happy to camp out here, in the margins, confined to relatively simple harmonies and steady, medium funky tempos (no shame in that, it's still more demanding music than any Train album). Others, though, go a little deeper.

And it doesn't get any deeper than the Mahavishnu Orchestra.

Birds of Fire is probably their most famous album; and maybe their best, although at times I've gone back and forth between that and The Inner Mounting Flame. But for personal influence, Birds of Fire wins the day, as it was my first exposure to the band.

The album starts out with that famous gong - boooooooosh, BOOOOOOOOSH, then John McLaughlin starts up with that incredible distorted electric twelve string guitar... then, a watershed moment for fusion fans- that odd time signature riff on the violin and bass repeating again and again - then the lead guitar just EXPLODES- it's a shot fired from a cannon, played with fiery conviction at maximum volume. And oh yeah, melodically it also makes NO SENSE AT ALL.

The melody just builds and builds over top this spacey, bizarre chord progression, until finally at 2:50 or so the composition breaks into something resembling normalcy- the little resolution of the section. This track is followed by a bluesy and completely conventional "Miles Beyond," but my favorite cut is "One Word," which captures a Mahavishnu trademark- letting a groove sit and build, and build, and build, and build... until finally coalescing into an epic climax at the end. The trick with this though is you can't bore the listener during all the building- you somehow have to maintain interest, which of course they accomplish easily (greatly aided by the drumming of Billy Cobham, whose work on the toms in particular sounds like its own composition that could stand completely on its own).

The music overall is strange, weird, other worldy... but also very, very awesome. At age 19ish, this was pretty mind bending stuff. It also set the gold standard for how awesome jazz fusion, when practiced as an art and not some commercial endeavor, could be.

As far as my own playing, McLaughlin's electric guitar playing was, for a long time, second only to Jeff Beck in terms of influence. Unfortunately, my ability to play those ferocious tremelo picked lines has vanished along with my college era 4+ hour per day practicing regimen. But that's OK- I rarely have use for them anymore, even when I'm playing jazz rock by myself, I don't necessarily find myself wanting to play that way (I'd also really want a true Les Paul style guitar for it as well). You can hear me play this way mostly on the Paragon albums, What Is Paragon and Patience, and a bit on Zeitgeber. But even on those recordings I didn't do this type of playing as much as I did during live shows.

I can recall one college guitar ensemble chart, kicking on a distortion pedal (direct to the board! Yuck!) and playing a bunch of those tremelo picked McLaughlin lines, and the audience going nuts- probably one of the best reactions my playing ever received- and getting the requisite slight resentment from folks in the jazz program (you aren't allowed to play badass rock licks and get attention! It must be bebop stuff that nobody cares about!**). Something similar occurred at one of my gigs at the Easy Street Cafe on Main Street Bowling Green.

It was that type of response that tricked me into thinking that maybe more than ten people actually liked this type of music enough to pay a cover charge to see it- a foolhardy mistake that led me to pursue Paragon as a band (a really wonderful, fun, positive mistake that I'd happily make a million times over if I had to do it again, by the way).

In the early to mid 1970s, however, it was indeed possible to not only fill small clubs, but even large stadiums by playing this oddball music. After all, Jeff Beck toured in SUPPORT of Mahavishnu in the 70s, which is really hard to believe but absolutely true! People want to immediately assume drugs, as if that is the only reason why people would like music that isn't just three chords "and the truth." As I love this stuff while only high on caffeine, I would bet at least a portion of the original 1970s audience felt likewise.


*Which isn't to knock, at all, Blow by Blow - my favorite album *of all time, in any category.*
**To be fair, "they," being other students and other professors, rightly focused on the kinds of playing that you went to school for, and not impressed with the type of stuff you did on your own before you got there, a totally fair critique of my playing at the time.

Classic Albums: Lawrence of Arabia Original Soundtrack

You learn a lot about yourself when spending late evenings with an infant child, particularly when aided by Amazon's Instant Video service. When browsing this late one night while gently bouncing my youngest to sleep, I noticed "Lawrence of Arabia" in the freebie list. So I started watching it.

If you haven't watched this movie before, you might think your streaming service of choice has become broken, because the movie starts with an extended overture sequence; the screen is completely black as the soundtrack plays.

The soundtrack is the absolute standard of Western rendering of middle east music. The melodic content is sumptuous, romantic yet driving. It'll say locked in your head forever after the first hearing, and the classic film doesn't have to do any heavy lifting whatsoever- this music would be just as epic without Peter O'Toole. That Maurice Jarre also composed the music to Ghost is one of those bizarre aspects of a film scoring career, I suppose.

My recent watching of this movie reminded me not only of my love of the score, but how extremely influential it was on my own composing afterward. Much of my musical output afterward was just restatements of the main theme in various colors. I'm not ashamed to admit that- it's freaking terrific music.

And, of course, there were times I did this on purpose instead of accidentally. This was a tune called "A Lament for TE," which is obvious enough. It's a simple medium swinger (I have a lovely recorded version of it with Jason Gahler and Ben Wolkins) that was a staple of my non-jazz rock gigs in the early to mid 2000's, particularly when I played at Manhattan's in Toledo.

But the influence pops up in many other places. It's all over the place on Zeitgeber- The Big Hello and The Big Goodbye both have that moorish by way of Hollywood thing. It was and is a part of my improvisations as well.

That said, I got to lean on this inspiration in a big way when I was contracted to compose a video game score for an unreleased game called "The Broken Hourglass." The game took place in a fictionalized place but it was modeled after the middle east, so I basically got to compose my own "Lawrence of Arabia" score. It was great fun, though getting that music to you all is a little complicated in that it is technically Planewalker Games LLC's music, though I think if I pushed a bit I could convince the stake holders of that project to allow me to throw it up somewhere.

In closing, Jarre's score is perhaps the pinnacle of the operatic style of Hollywood film scoring, with big melodies you'd leave the cinema humming. Today underscoring and atmosphere is the rage, perhaps best personified with the "BLAHHHHHHHHHHHHHRGGG" of "Inception" - scores that are more kaleidoscopes of sound than stand alone musical compositions. I like some of that- it can be very effective, but I'm a creature of melodies, ultimately. Very occasionally, a series of films comes out the revives the Lawrence of Arabia style, most notably the Lord of the Rings movies with their fantastic scores by Howard Shore. But as great as Shore's Rings music is, it doesn't hold to the delicious depth and emotive content of Lawrence of Arabia.

*Note: if you are interesting in acquiring this music, here is a case where tracking down the original vinyl LP would be worth it. I did find a pretty cheap mp3 reissuing of the original, and it is OK, but ultimately this would sound best on a turntable with good speakers. Barring that, you should probably give one of the re-recordings a try. 

Classic Albums: John Abercrombie's Timeless

I'm pretty sure I picked up Timeless like I did many of the Jazz recordings I purchased while studying at BGSU for a performance major in guitar: from Finder's Music on mainstreet Bowling Green. I bought ridiculous amounts of music back then- it was my version of retail therapy. Have a great day, maybe a good performance on a Friday afternoon recital? Buy some music. Get shot down by the gal who worked at the gas station down the street? Buy more music. Bored and no gigs? More music.

I can't really remember why I bought Timeless, but it was probably because I had heard the upperclassmen play some of Abercrombie's music in a recital performance, music from the Gateway album.

Right away I was taken by the rapid fire nature of the opening track, "Lungs." I was still at a stage in my appreciation of improvised music that I needed a bit of rock n' roll to keep my attention, and the hot electric guitar that Abercrombie played hooked me in. This was fortunate, as this kept me involved as a listener, allowing me to appreciate the finer points of the interaction between musicians during later listenings.

It was also my introduction to the "ECM Sound," and no, I don't mean the writer for Gamefan magazine- I mean the label that would kind of define 1970s jazz - austere album covers (I loved the album design for Timeless so much that I essentially copied this for Zeitgeber) combined with music that sounded like it was recorded in large concert halls as opposed to tiny recording studio rooms with foam padding.

I'm one of those people who see music in colors, and Timeless to me always evokes a black void, with dancing lines of color exploding forth- the expansiveness of the "ECM Sound" fully at work. And oh, the sounds of Jan Hammer! Like so many things Jan plays on, he tends to chew scenery, but everyone is up to the task of matching him. "Red and Orange" is my second favorite track, which features Jan's organ work, which almost sounds like something from Rick Wakeman.

But to me, the thing that makes Timeless special is that it is unusually aggressive for Abercrombie. His style is pretty understated and after getting "spoiled" by the burning of Timeless, I went on a fruitless quest to find more of his work that was in that style- and was sadly disappointed (only "Gateway" would come close). It isn't to say that his playing isn't very good- but I wanted to hear him burn, and he just doesn't do that on recordings (though I did like his standards album with Scofield).

As for its influence on me, I think the constant ostinato droning and long form interaction had a huge impact. You probably hear it most on things like "Short Expedition #2" and "Short Expedition #1" on the Paragon albums, and you hear it all over the place on Zeitgeber, which in many ways was my attempt to do the ECM thing, though with much more of a rock edge. When I would play with guys at the Easy Street Cafe, we'd often to these long form jams just like on Timeless- trying to do those interesting interactions with each other- group conversations, not hampered by "changes" like in Bebop, but not throwing all the tonality out the window either- Free jazz with some rules to make it somewhat listenable.

Of course my friends and I couldn't really approach what these legends were doing, but it helped us grow as players to try. Later, when I did my brief attempt at grad school in jazz studies, I was really turned off by the student's attempts to "play free-" it just came off as aggressive chaos; I'd like to think that spinning this record a few times for them would have gotten them back down to earth.

It is finally here! Pitch to Pixel Volume 2!

FINALLY the page went live on CDBaby this morning!

So please do check it out! I spent some time listening to PtP 1 and 2 back to back, to compare. PtP 1 has some great moments, for sure, but I think I write with a lot less "fat" on PtP 2, as I've gained a bit more focus and discipline to my writing since 2010. Anyway, as any long time readers of the blog know, now begins the quest of "making back the money I spent to make it," which took something like 8 months or whatever last time. Here's hoping for a quicker turnaround!

http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/robhoward3

Pitch to Pixel Song Profiles: Fantastical Prelude

Fantastical Prelude was actually the very first song I completed. I had, of course, a certain JRPG series in mind (a "Final" sort of fantasy, if you will!), and I worried that I would be a little too imitative.

But after finishing this, I was really happy with it. Then something funny happened. The melody stuck in my head FOREVER. Just repeated itself over and over again. Which is exactly what you want (but you can't predict which melodies will do that).

Part of it is a particular VST (virtual instrument) I used: "monomate," a monochromatic synth that has a mini-moog type of sound: deep and rich. It also doesn't process faster passages very well, creating charming processing errors that actually sound cool!

For some reason, I got it in my head that somewhere somebody would want to use this track to highlight some powerful scene in a romance/drama type of movie, and I would get this massive royalty from it (hah!). I guess I thought that because of the pretty, but melancholy flavor that it has.

Pitch to Pixel Song Profiles: Open Dragon and Lightning Force

I open PtP 2 with a couple of tracks that signal the album's most distinctive feature from PtP 1: using 16 bit, Sega Genesis style FM synthesis. This was one of my "top requests" so I wanted to honor it.

Open Dragon is actually a homage to a new game, Capcom's Dragon's Dogma. The inspiration is a song they used for the title screen, called "Into Free" by a metal duo called B'z, a Japanese group. It starts slow, then speeds up, which is a simple musical device I like to use.

Lightning Force is, as you might suppose, based on the Thunder Force space shooter series from the Genesis "era" (roughly). These soundtracks had pretty amazing, synthesized heavy metal guitars. But, here is were I kinda go off the "chip" track: while the metal crunchy guitars are the appropriate FM synth sound, the drums are not downsampled here... and that's me playing that guitar solo. I felt an urge to lay down a old fashioned rock guitar solo, so, you know, why not? :-)

Finishing touches

So tomorrow, well, technically later today, I make the final touches, and upload this thing to CDBaby. It takes some time to process after that, so I don't think it'll be available until perhaps Saturday, or maybe Monday even, depending on how automated CDBaby's process is. Of course, I'll be uploading high quality .wav files, not mp3's, so it'll take some time.

I did a quick check on the mixes, putting it on some different speaker setups (with the car being most important to me, personally!), and tonight I'll be figuring out what my track order should be. This is important: even in the .99 cent a track "singles" era, having a logical album order is still important.

In the can and ready to go!

Uh oh, he hasn't posted since end of March, he's totally stopped making music again! Quitter!

Nope. Just, as I figured, moving house completely wrecked me for a good long while! But happily I've managed to bang out the rest of the tracks of Pitch to Pixel Volume 2! In fact, all I'm waiting on now is just infrastructural stuff I'd like to have in place before I roll out the new album. This includes art for it, and perhaps a facebook page, as well as a slew of blog posts locked and loaded.

I do believe this album will show growth in every area from Pitch to Pixel 1. Some specific goals for PtP 2 were:

1. To incorporate more 16 bit, specifically "Sega Genesis" type sounds. These sounds are in abundance on this album! It was a little tricky figuring out what sounds to use, as the Genesis basically used FM synth, which is very similar sounding to lots of other stuff from that era.

2. Songs that have a stronger resemblance to game soundtracks you liked. People really liked "Warrior" and "Shooter" from PtP 1 because they resembled strongly some game OST you remember. So I did that kind of thing a lot more here. Oh, there is always room for just "Rob Howard Compositions," that is, music that I create solely based on what I feel like making, but in general it is easier to write *for* what people like, instead of whacking them over the head with what you *prefer.* One thing I hope people have fun with is analyzing the song titles and figuring out where I'm getting my inspiration from (although if you continue reading this blog, I'll explain it all anyway).

Of course, I'm really proud of the first Pitch to Pixel album, so there is a whole lot I didn't change as well. Such as:

1. Using "chip" as a palette as opposed to boxing myself into what a particular game system or tracking program can accomplish. So, as before, these songs are made almost entirely with chip sounds (actually emulated via Virtual Instruments or VSTs), but things like reverb, compression, EQ, and other pro audio "tricks of the trade" are included to make the bass boom, the highs shine, and the mids glow with warmth.

2. Composing songs with plenty of melodic hooks, with solid verse-chorus-verse type structure. One thing I thought I brought to the table with PtP 1 that I wasn't hearing in the huge amount of high quality chiptune music out there already is a knack for songwriting, in the "pop" sense. The better chip stuff is generally modal and trancelike, with lots of repeating rhythm and static harmony. Obviously there is an audience for that, but the classic game OST's we listened to as kids, done by the likes of Koji Kondo and Yuzo Koshiro, were done by guys influenced by jazz, prog rock (early YES, Emerson Lake and Palmer, early Genesis, etc.) and popular music in general. When influenced by that sonic stew, you tend to follow very methodical song structures. It is these rock solid structures that gave that music its addictive appeal. 

3. While going to FM synthesis style 16 bit, I do retain a whole lot of NES style 8 bit as well, and I of course mix the two in some spots. The NES stuff sounded awesome on PtP 1, so I'd be silly not to have that included again. I find it especially effective on slower numbers, or the more classically oriented compositions, while the Megadrive/FM synth stuff is outrageously good for the techno pop, Streets of Rage inspired music that I was doing for some of the album.

4. I included a Christian hymn in the last one, party because I dearly love old hymns and partly because, hey, public domain. That one got as good a response as the video game stuff, so I included another one on this album. If I keep doing these, I might do a hymn only album! They really do turn out nice.

Did I take any risks, and do stuff maybe outside of what I collected from PtP's feedback? Sure!

I included... a real guitar solo! Yeah, on one heavy rock song, I felt it really needed a little extra, so I fired up my carvin bolt guitar, warmed up on some scales and let er' rip. And wouldn't you know it, it is probably one of my "cleanest" guitar solos I've put down on a recording. Of course, when I say clean, I mean in terms of execution... because sonically it is pretty filthy ;-)

Halfway Home!

Finally finished the Streets of Rage inspired track, called, quite creatively, "Streets" :-)

After a bit of a snag in mid-March (basically just got really busy with work), I feel like I'm picking up steam! Which is a good thing, because I'm probably going to be moving soon (and, for once, in the SAME TOWN)*, which will certainly keep me from creative duties for at least a week at the end of the month.

From previous posts, you know I had an attempt at the Streets thing go bad, but only in the sense that the style wasn't evoking Streets of Rage. The composition itself is fine, so I'll finish that out. Strangely, I think it sounds like a character select tune, which isn't a bad thing. Character select/menu musics have to be comforting, pleasantly accompanying your task while not being intrusive. This, in a way, is what I shoot for with the music I write: I definitely want to entertain you, cause you to tap your feet/fingers, but I don't want to be super intrusive either. It is hard to explain, but certain music can be engaging and great listening music but not really the kind of music you jam to while you work, or drive your car.



*Again, SAME TOWN, so in case anyone snoops looking for gossipy dirt and all that.**
**When you work in my field, you find people have an odd interest in your comings and goings.

Back in the saddle!

Woah. Last post, 3/2. Today, it is 3/30! That is what can happen to side projects.

My day gig has kept me pretty busy as of late, so that's part of it. The big news was my involvement with Bioshock Infinite (as a level designer working for Human Head, who helped them with development) was finally made public with the release of the game last Tuesday. What an experience that was, being involved in one of the highest rated games in the past year (including 2012) and what currently stands as one of the most acclaimed shooters of all time!

But back to the music! So I had started working on something that was supposed to sound a bit like a Streets of Rage track, but it wasn't working out. So I shelved that (I'll still use it, but as something else) and restarted with another attempt that is so far more on the money. Once I get those tracks done, I'll have 5 total, which puts me roughly at 50% (or higher, if I do an album that is less than ten tracks, but I don't like to do that).

Composition Live Blog 3/2

Ok, time to live blog more composition. Right now Pitch to Pixel 2 stands at 2 1/2 songs complete out of the 10 tunes I need.

9:00 am-ish. Got briefly woken up by my daughter proudly announcing that she "slept in her bed all night." She's five years old. Facepalm.

12:00 noon At some point I woke up "for reals," cleaned up, shaved (yes, you need to KNOW these details!) and here I am, tea in hand (alas, no more pumpkin spice dunkin' donuts coffee, ugh), ready to make music.

12:00 - 3:45 - After numerous interruptions to "GIVE ME ATTENTION!" (daughter), I managed to complete "Lightning Force," a piece based on the Thunder Force shooter series... but it is missing something. I think I may want to add (dun dun duuuuun) real guitar playing on it. Yeah, I know, that is certainly not "chip," but I wanted to mix in a little of my playing, in a few spots. But....... I only have one guitar cord, my second one is fried, so I gotta run to the store to grab one (I need two cords to make my setup work). 

3:45-5:58  Lightning Force in the can! Ugh, I can't be spending this much time on each tune or else this album isn't getting done, but man I had a lot of fun laying down a *real* guitar solo on this one. This one is the most "hybrid" track I'll probably feature, with Genesis style rhythm guitar and bass, realistic sampled drums, and real guitar.

The Oddball Awesomeness That is Dragon's Dogma's Theme Song

If you purchased Dragon's Dogma (which you should have, it was one of my favorite games of 2012), you fired up the game, expecting probably some nice orchestral classical sounding soundtrack music, but instead got your butt absolutely handed to you by screeching guitar, upbeat vocals, and pounding drums.

Gamer, meet "Into Free," the Dragon's Dogma theme song, a licensed track from Japanese power duo "B'z." Here it is:

Music composition "marathon," part 2!

Well, I wouldn't call it a "marathon" today, as it is already almost early evening. But I was a little disappointed in the 1.75 songs produced in yesterday's "true" marathon, so I wanted to do another live blog and push- hopefully I can at least have a total of three tunes ready (to recap, I picked some trickier tasks to work on, which took longer than I wanted).

4:50 - Church, A Good Day to Die Hard (left the wife and kid at home, had some "BROTASTIC BROTIMEZ" with a friend), some early dinner, the last of my awesome Dunkin' Donuts pumpkin spice coffee (sniff!), and a wee bit of Fire Emblem: Awakening (WHICH IS AWESOME). So here I am. I'm continuing to refine "Shining Fury." I have chords, baseline, basic drum part, a melody, and need to add some sweeteners. This is my first true "Sega Genesis" style tune so I'm a bit nervous making it!

5:29 added a "trill" part - there are a lot of details to making this sound work, I think! Wife and kid woke up from a nap. I haven't seen this since noon. I should probably say hello (and do a rapid fire round of cleaning).

7:07 Back from Sunday house cleaning. Kiddo got a long nap so bedtime is going to be (sadly) delayed, so time to sneak in more work! 

8:22 Success! Not only is Shining Fury finished but it is even mixed down! My first ready to publish track for Pitch to Pixel 2! 

Pitch to Pixel 2: Music Composition Marathon Live Blog

Look who's back! Finally!

So to quickly recap the past few years:

In early 2010 I published "Pitch to Pixel Volume 1." 

How has it done since? Well, slow, but steady sales (and let's not get crazy here, we're not even talking *four* figures yet), especially from the "streaming" variety (a few cents here and there). It is just encouraging enough to figure I can do more.

So to kinda get the ball rolling, I told the fam that today is a "music comp marathon day." All I'm doing to day is making music for the sequel to Pitch to Pixel (finally, at long last). Thankfully, quite a bit of legwork has already been done, such as:

-Getting my now ancient music composition software running in a modern, Windows 7 PC.
-Reacquiring all of the various VST plugins that I need to make things bleep and boop, including more 16 bit era type sounds (a common request after the last album).
-Sketching out various compositions already.

So here is the marathon-

9:00 am - wakeup. Biological alarm clock known as my five year old performs this function.
9:00 -12 noon - Embarrassingly, here is a fun fact: I am the anti-morning person, especially on Saturdays when my day job as a game developer doesn't force me to keep a more reasonable schedule. So that...... my goodness....... THREE HOUR time frame zips by, occupied by stuff like:
9:00-10:00 playing with my daughter (I don't feel bad about that of course).
10:00-12 Entering the blackhole known as "my bathroom" with a newly acquired copy of "Hyrule Historia," and a glass of Mio spiked water substituting for coffee.*

*Yes, I read/play 3DS/surf on my tablet in the john. I'm one of "those disgusting people."

12:00 noon- emerge clean and ready to rock! Well, except for a beard that is starting to get rather scraggly.
12:10- Fix lunch for daughter and myself, eggs and avocado, mostly so she'll be full and not beg for the cadbury eggs my wife so adores this time of year.
12:20 sit down at my "home office" in our basement. Finally.
12:21 shave mountain man beard while firing up the Pitch to Pixel blog.
12:30 Open up the norelco to gaze lovingly at the immense amount of beard shavings inside, and take a disgusting pride in this. Begin writing the live blog.
12:38 Band in a box, where I sketch tunes before exporting the MIDI to SONAR. Gonna start composing something classical, akin to the track "Warrior" from PtP 1 (Warrior got a big response, so I wanted to make sure to do more stuff like it).

1:57 Sketch completed for "Fantastical Prelude," which is a pretty strong hint of what it is going for. Taking into Sonar now to chipify and refine the arrangement! This is going to draw from mostly the 8 bit type of library.
3:49 Refinement and arranging complete! One song ready to mix down! I'm going to wait to do the mixdowns, as I want to do that when my ears are still fresh.

3:49-4:30 - taking my daughter outside to play as a pre-planned break/trying to be decent dad/stress reduction for wife.

5:32 - well that took longer than I wanted. Basically it was ye olde "it is impossible to get kiddos out the door" problem, compounded with a "honeydo" request of trash takeout and kitty litter scooping. Joy. But I'm back, complete with frostbit hands, dunkin donuts pumpkin spice coffee in hand (some of the BEST coffee in the world, but alas, I'm almost out!) and my next assignment:

A Sega Genesis sounding track that resembles something out of Shining Force. To the sketchpad!

6:14 - still sketching- I have a name for this, "Shining Fury," but man, as a side comment, the music to Shining Force is so amazingly good! Really really good!

7:03 - Finished sketching. Musical nerdery alert: the transition from A major to F# (VII to V to i) in B minor is a nifty sound :P

7:08 - Kiddo needs to start her bedtime routine at 8 or so- gives me an hour to take Shining Fury and refine it and such- can I do this? ENGAGE HYPER COMPOSER MODE!

11pm - Ok, didn't even come close to finishing this before the bedtime routine- so I did all that stuff, and we continue on...... WITH THE NIGHT SHIFT.

12:41 - Alright, gonna cry uncle here. I'm about maaaaybe 60-70% through "Shining Fury."

So let's do the math here-

Total "work time" = just under seven hours. So not quite a full "work day," which of course reflects the realities of doing a composition marathon when you are also a husband and dad.

Output: 1 complete song, ready to mixdown, and one song that is 60-70% away from completion. So let's call that 1.75 songs.

In my "fever dreams," I had hoped knock out as many as *five*. What happened?

Well, degree of difficulty. As far as composition goes, for me personally anyway, there are three degrees of difficulty:

1. Your own music. Your own style. Easiest by far for me to do. I just write the music in my head. The end. No worrying about trying to match a style.
2. Style imitation. You are wanting to create something original but something that clearly sounds like something the listener is familiar with. Both compositions today were that- "Fantastical Prelude" is meant to evoke, of course, Final Fantasy (in particular its prelude) while "Shining Fury" was meant to sound a lot like some Genesis era Shining Force battle music. These are harder to do because you have to spend time *learning* what makes these tunes sound like they do, and then implementing similar ideas while not, of course, ripping off the composers (pro tip: chord progressions are always, 100% fair game, melodies are not).
3. Outright cover songs. This may surprise people: imitation at its extreme end is way WAY harder than purely original composition, because you have to spend a lot of time listening and getting chords, melody, rhythm etc. EXACTLY right.

So today's tunes were firmly in the #2 camp. So they were harder to do and took more sketching and polishing time.

Yet and still, if I managed 2 (let's just round up to two) songs per week, every week, I'd release a ten track album every 5 weeks- a very very high level of output I'd wager!

Since I did want to get more done, I'll do a "marathon part 2" post tomorrow, though it'll start later in the day. Cheers and thanks for reading! 

shout out to the Bookwyrme

Very quick little update: a past musical endeavor, one I'm very fond of, is the work I did for The Broken Hourglass over at www.planewalkergames.net. It is an unreleased Baldur's Gate style RPG, for which I composed the score (not chiptune, but "real" orchestra, in this case*).

It was my first real work in the video game field and it was quite thrilling. I'd love to see the game get done, but TBH is a labor of love and those kind of things take a lot of time, for various reasons. One way or the other, I'd love for you all to hear the music, but my first preference would be for you to hear it.. in a game!

So anyway, while dropping by to check in on the folks both at planewalker and at pocketplane.net, I happened upon Bookwyrme's site, who has mentioned me before. She had some kind words to say recently, here:

http://bookwyrmeslair.blogspot.com/2011/03/broken-hourglass-paused.html

*Synthesized, but as real sounding as my rig could produce. I was fortunate to have purchased some ethnic music samples which came in super handy as well.

Pitch to Pixel featured on Gamewave podcast

Let's blow some dust off around here! Whew!

So first things first: yeah, I said over and over again that I'd be doing something new. Well, it has now been over a year since PtP was released, so obviously.... I lied. Blah.

But, my promises were always made on certain assumptions... assumptions that were dashed! Actually, being majorly cryptic here, some of those assumptions being broken were actually good things! Like, perhaps, a less crushing need to make every possible cent that I can!*

Actually, I'm very much interested in working music back in to life again, but I'm just not 100% certain how yet. One of the things I learned when I put out PtP is that you have to be very careful about what you do as side work, which is what this has always been for me.

Anyway, back to the point: The fine people over at Gamewave promised me a podcast slot, and they did deliver! Here's the link to them:

http://www.iimusic.net/gamewave/50.mp3

I still get the very occasional sale trickling in, so still by all means spread the word. And I'm probably going to keep this blog around... I need some kind of "front" for my musical activities, after all. Who the heck knows what I'm going to do in the future, though!


*No, I didn't win the lottery or get rich or anything crazy. Let's just say I've just taken a few good steps away from the ledge!

Pitch to Pixel scores a few more sales

Another few more sales dropped, I believe from Amazon.

While I haven't been able to do radical stuff like repay my student loans or anything, I think one thing that is happening is making me encouraged: people are stumbling onto this stuff, enjoying it, and buying it. This happens about once a month or so.

So the hope of this providing some real supplemental income is alive!

Fortunately, things are finally beginning to clear up a bit in the non-music life I lead, so new music can begin to occur.

Daniel Tidwell Rocks Out, Update

Long time no write! Well, I've been pretty busy in my life outside of music; but I still hold out hope that more music will be done sometime before the end of the year.

I've had a few more sales drop in but nothing spectacular. But hey, Pitch to Pixel is in the black, so that's good!

I wanted to give a shoutout to Daniel Tidwell and his amazing "vs. Video Games" album. 
I stumbled upon some of his work in iTunes recently and was really impressed. It isn't chip: he is taking the opposite approach, taking older stuff and putting modern instrumentation behind it. It sounds really great: guitar heavy, but without the over indulgent soloing that you'd usually expect. Of course, I say that as someone who would actually engage in the indulgent soloing (I'm a jazz guy... it's what we do!).

So definitely check him out.

And yes, I am also writing this to blow the dust off and get back to something like regular updating.

Zing! Another Sale!

Ok, more encouragement as Pitch to Pixel finally, at long last, enters the BLACK after one more sale (an iTunes album purchase). Thank you whoever it was, who bought the album last month or so!

The thing about sales is that it says, "make more music." It works like this:

1. I slowly, eventually get into the black, averaging just about 1-2 sales per month.

= "I'll eventually get around to making more music. Probably before the end of 2010, maybe."

2. I see about $25 per month of sales (about 3 or 4 albums or so per month)

= "Hmm, I need to actually plug my keyboard in and start writing a song, like, very soon."

3. I get about $75 worth of sales in a month (about ten albums)

= "I drop everything, this is my top priority, making more music for all these nice wonderful people"

4. > $100 in sales in a month

= "GO GO GO MAKE MUSIC DON'T THINK MAKE MUSIC NOW NOW NOW GOOOOOO!!!!"

So, um, yeah, that's how it works. :-)