Song: Saturday Night

Greg Whitehead - Saturday Night by GWGumby

Sometimes when I write a song, I get a musical idea and then try to marry it to a lyrical idea. Sometimes it's the other way around. Then sometimes they come at the same time, as with this song. The main line "Don't Go To Bed on a Saturday Night" along with the melody came at once. Then it sat and percolated in my brain for a long time. I liked the line, I liked the melody, but I had no idea why someone wouldn't go to bed on a Saturday night and why I should be telling them not to. So I tried to find other lyrics, but by then the line was so embedded with the melody, I couldn't make anything else work. So I went with it, and here's the result. Basically, it's a song about going out to have fun once in a while. Not very deep, but there you go.

As usual, "Saturday Night" was written, performed, sung and recorded by me.  This one is a bit less synthy than most of my other songs. I used my Roland digital piano for the main piano accompaniment and the electric bass sound as well. The organ sound was from a patch on my classic keyboard expansion card in the JV-1080. The slightly natural sounding drum was from a virtual plug-in instrument on my recording software. That just leaves a few flourishes and synth solo from the Korg R3. I added a bunch of post-effects to the solo which makes it nearly sound like a guitar, but it's all synth.

Here's a YouTube Video with the typical static image:

Song: Video Life

Greg Whitehead - Video Life by GWGumby
Yeah, I know. It's been a while. I haven't given up, I've just had other things to focus on this past year. I took a break after the last song I finished and then found myself hyper-concentrating on a quest to get myself into shape. I've lost 50 pounds so far this year, which has forced me to put some other hobbies on the back burner for a little bit. I just recently re-set up all my equipment in another room and finally sat down to try working on some ideas and somehow this song erupted out in less than 4 days. My hope is to finish a few more before the end of the year with the various holiday breaks coming up.

"Video Life" was sparked by my browsing through the back log of Netflix's "Watch Instantly" section. Once you get past the first few pages of semi-recognizable movies, you eventually start finding some really weird stuff. One title that stood out to me was a horror movie called "The Video Dead."  My mind kind of started riffing on the idea of video coming to life like what's being presented here or in the movie "The Ring."  However, not wanting to dwell on the horror aspect, I switched "Dead" to its natural opposite "Life."  Somehow "Video Life" had a great ring to it.  It brought me back to the 80s with the start of MTV and video shows like "Friday Night Video," and songs like "Video Killed the Radio Star" and "Living On Video."  So now with bands like The Buggles and Devo in mind (with their similar in rhythm song "It's a Beautiful World") I started sketching out the loose concept of someone from the 80s who has made a video that's going to premiere on a show called "Video Life," and how the whole world is now moving to video.  There's also some shades of today's world with reality TV and YouTube and how easy it is to capture and share your life through video.

Like the rest of my songs, "Video Life" was written, performed, sung, and recorded all by me using my usual equipment, the Korg R3 and Roland JV-1080.  (As much as I talked up the iPhone in my last post 11 months ago, it was not used on this particular track.)

The YouTube video is just a still photo. I am fully aware of the irony of writing a song all about video and then posting a static image with it instead. I hope you can all forgive me.