Drip 6 ~ Revolution, the video

 New Songs, Rock Songs, Songs with Video  No Responses »
Mar 052009
 

After I saw how easy it was to make the Cupcake Blues video, I decided to try to tackle making a video/slide-show for Waitin’ On My Revolution from week 1. I like that song for some reason – granted it’s a bit cliché, but I think it rocks and it pokes the right people in the eye, so Mission Accomplished.

The thing that I did differently from the Cupcake Blues video was to download the video and then import it into my iMovie application. For some reason the Animoto site kept cutting off the end of the song and no matter what I did I could not get the site to recognize that I had more photos to render and a couple more seconds of audio to go. So I put a version I liked into iMovie and added a better quality audio track and then did some editing to the clip I had downloaded. I got rid of Animoto’s advertising (not nice on my part, but — hey) and added some MTV-like titles to the front and back.

Frustration sets in when I have to deal with technical problems. This has always been a bone of contention with me and my collaborative partner Sasha. We would do all of this creative stuff: improvising, writing music, arranging the parts – and then wham – we get hit with a technical issue that just bogs us down – my technical issue for this post was trying to get the video on my blog. I finally just uploaded it to YouTube (which I didn’t want to do) and embedded the file in the blog. But it took me about and hour and a half of technical hoo-ha to come to that conclusion. Anyway – it’s up.

By the way, I must warn you that the images are all stolen from the web, so if you are pure at heart, then you must turn your head so as not to view unlicensed material. If anyone were to ask me about the verity of this video, I would quickly take it down and cease and desist. But for now it’s my visual expression of the music and lyrics. I am not a filmmaker. ‘nuf said. Oh, also the Cheney picture is a shocker, but then looking at him always sent chills down my spine.

Let me know what you think – leave a comment!

Peace -

~dg~

 Posted by Darryl at 7:41 AM

Drip 5 ~ work for hire

 New Songs, Rock Songs  No Responses »
Feb 272009
 

I was asked to write a short piece of music for a promo-video on the web this past week. I always enjoy being put to the task of writing content-specific music: it’s a challenge to make the images pop and to get the feel of the music right for the intended purpose. This promo just happened to be for my wife’s latest book launch so it had to be right or else (finger slashing across the neck). Well not that drastic, but I wanted it to be special for her website and for the video.

I had come up with an idea and I played it for her, but on acoustic guitar. She said she liked it. It sounded upbeat and had movement to it. I was a little surprised she liked it, because as she was about to find out, I was hearing something completely different in my head. So I set to work on orchestrating it and recording it. I had worked about three hours on it when I called her down to the studio. As soon as I hit play I knew she didn’t like it for her video. She got that crinkle in her forehead and I could see she was searching for the right words to tell me: I hate it! But as the music ended she just said, no… and then she said come with me. We went upstairs to her office and she showed me the colors and the photos she was choosing and I headed back downstairs for take 2.

Both of these short excerpts are fun and could be expanded in to larger songs. The interesting thing is that the drum track is the same for both promos, I just cut off the front end of the second one to cut to the chase faster. To see the short web-video and hear how the music sounds with the images you can go to Sophfronia’s Book Launch and just scroll down ALL THE WAY to the bottom of the page. Here are the two promos entitled “Use Your Words” I & II. Leave a comment about which one YOU liked.

~dg~
“Use Your Words” 1.0

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“Use Your Words” 2.0

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 Posted by Darryl at 7:00 AM

Drip 1 ~ revolutionary idea

 New Songs, Rock Songs  2 Responses »
Jan 302009
 

revolutionWeek 1 ~ a fleshed out song

I’m a little nervous about starting this blog. It’s like a commitment. It’s like a first step down a dark road. I don’t know if I’ll keep up or if I’ll be true to the concept of this blog. But here we go…

This first drip is a reworking of a demo that I posted on my reverbnation site a while ago. “Waitin’ On My Revolution” was written in the Spring of the election season 2008. I had never written a political song or protest song before and I was just getting sick of it all. The rhetoric was chin deep from all sides and I just wanted MY voice to be heard. So, out it came in one sitting while I ranted onto a piece of paper. I had been playing around with the riffs and some chords that sounded like a hard rock song and also sounded a bit like a march. I liked the marching aspect of the song and thought it would fit the subject matter well.

The lyrics, as I said, came fast, but I had really been working on them for a while in my head. I had been wanting to use the story of Diogenes walking around in the day time with a lantern and searching for an honest man. I thought that that image was really powerful in these times where even the trusted are suspect, but I couldn’t think of a good way to use it and not sound preachy or goofy; then George Bush gave me a few ideas. I think we all need to have our own personal revolutions and rages against the machine and this is mine.

I like the form of this song. It’s very compact and tight and brings it in at almost 3 minutes on the nose. The form goes <intro – verse – chorus – verse – verse – chorus – bridge – solo – verse – chorus – coda>. I think it has a nice arch to it and grabs the listener right away. The guitar on the bridge was a very simple 3-note arpeggio in a Malaguena style, but with an in-tempo delay effect added, I got a sort of U2 vibe going and it sounds kinda cool. As I said this is a reworking of a previous demo so in this version I sped up the tempo and sang the vocals up an octave adding some Rolling Stones background hoo-hoo’s. I had been singing it in a kind of Leonard Cohen, deep vocal chant style that didn’t really sit right with the delivery of the lyrics.

So here is week 1′s drip – “Waitin’ On My Revolution”. Let me know what you think!

~ dg ~

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Waitin’ On My Revolution

Walkin’ down the road
Got a light in my hand
Sun is high in the noon day sky
And I’m lookin’ for an honest man

There’s gonna be a revolution
A revolution
There’s gonna be a revolution
A revolution
Waitin’ on my revolution
My revolution
And baby – heads are gonna roll

Big Brother’s steppin’ out
He’s got a twinkle in his eye
He’s got a hand in my pocket
He’s bleedin’ me dry
Call it war call it genocide
Call it what you will
People die Presidents lie
Blood and oil spill

There’s gonna be a revolution
A revolution
There’s gonna be a revolution
A revolution
Waitin’ on my revolution
My revolution
And baby – heads are gonna roll

Listen (to it)
Raise up your voice and
Shout it out (right in their face)
We’ve got no choice and
Take it apart
And throw it down
Against the wall
Who will be the first – the first to fall?

Guns and gasoline
Lay it on the line
Rip it outta my cold dead hands
Yeah baby I got mine

There’s gonna be a revolution
A revolution
There’s gonna be a revolution
A revolution
Waitin’ on my revolution
My revolution
And baby – heads are gonna roll

© 2008

 Posted by Darryl at 7:00 PM
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