Song: The Balad of Bruce

Greg Whitehead - The Ballad Of Bruce by GWGumby

Gather 'round and listen to the tale of Bruce "Ash" Campbell and his battle against the Army of Darkness. Bruce has to struggle against his complicated problems when all he wants is just to take some time off to enjoy the simpler things in life.

This synthpop song was inspired by the events of "The Army of Darkness" coupled with the musical stylings of some of my favorite late 80s synth-based bands such as Underworld (mk 1), Stan Ridgeway, and even a little Martini Ranch. It also includes the debut of my first acoustic instrument, the jaw-harp.

The song started out as a synth improv a couple months ago, just some playing around to see if anything could emerge. Initially it was just bass and rhythm. I had a melody more or less in mind, but needed to find some lyrical inspiration. I'm not sure what made me decide to couple the music with "Army of Darkness," but right when the first line came to mind, "Crash land on a real long day," the idea of Ash literally falling from the sky and crashing onto the ground coupled itself to the music and that's when I knew I had a story to work with.

So next I recorded some initial vocals and a few synth bits. My initial idea was to do something akin to one of my all-time favorite bands, Underworld. Or, more specifically, Underworld Mk 1--the late 80's version of the techno band when they were more Alternative Synthpop closer to INXS. The chorus and overall rhythm is definitely a cross between two of my favorite songs of theirs, "Underneath the Radar" and "Stand Up." Also, the deeper vocals and a bit of the vocoder harmony hearkens back to them as well.

From this point I fumbled around trying to figure out where to go next. Playing around with different sounds, eventually I found that the more plunky, banjo-like sounds really worked with the music. I hadn't intended to go with the country jamboree-style feeling initially, but the idea amused me. It reminded me a bit of some other synth-pop-country crossovers like "Reach" from Martini Ranch and a lot of Stan Ridgeway's stuff such as "Camouflage" and "Goin' Southbound." So I pushed the song in that direction, adding the banjo, jaw harp, and some extra ambient noises to make it feel like it was being sung/performed around a campfire.

All the synth sounds came from the Korg M3, Roland JV-1080, and Roland FP-9 digital piano.

I now have enough music to put together an album. This will be the final song to flesh out a full release. Unless I get some golden inspiration in the next few weeks that forces itself onto the album. I'm not sure how I'm going to publish/release it. I'm still researching that part.

The video is basically a slideshow of screencaps from Army of Darkness that more or less match the lyrics of the song, especially the verse portions.

Song: Turn Your Back On The World

Greg Whitehead - Turn Your Back On The World by GWGumby
"Turn Your Back On The World" is an instrumental piece that I started writing on the piano over 15 years ago. I wrote it intending it to eventually turn into a full song, but never having the capability to do so (until recently), it eventually evolved into a solo piano piece. Now I've finally taken that piano piece and added synthesizer, drums, and other various noises to make it into something a bit bigger and more exciting.

This piece is inspired by instrumental 70s rock songs by artists such as Genesis, Elton John, ELO, ELP, and Yes mixed with more modern artists such as Air, Roger Joseph Manning Jr., and Chateau Marmont.

The sounds on this song come from my digital piano, the Korg R3, and the Roland JV-1080 plus a nice acoustic-sounding drum plug-in.

Once again, here's a static YouTube video alternative.

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.

Song: Another Fine Mess

So it's been a couple months since I've posted a song or anything to the blog. I haven't forgotten about this, I just have been focusing on a few other things, like a giant jigsaw puzzle that took over our kitchen table for a few weeks.

However, I'm still making music and here's the latest piece:
Greg Whitehead - Another Fine Mess by GWGumby

I've actually been working on several songs over the past couple months. One is a Mannheim Steamroller/Fresh Aire-style instrumental piece that I'm currently stuck on. The other is a bit more power-pop oriented that I've currently handed over to my brother (probably the only one who reads this) to see if he can incorporate some guitar with it. Then there's this one which I think I wrote and recorded in record time of about one week.

Once again, the song is written and performed entirely by me (Greg). All sounds are from my Korg R3 and Roland JV-1080. The Roland is used mainly for percussion, and the Korg for nearly all the other synth sounds. There's no great story behind the song, just a riff that came into my head and lyrics that seemed to work with it.

The bass line comes from a Clav sound on the R3 run through some effects in Sonar. I had a lot of fun building up the percussion track using the JV-1080's drums. The only other sounds are a sync-sound the acts as a filler, and a brass sound. Both of those come from the R3, while the brass sound is actually doubled with another brass sound on the Roland.

While making the song several other similar songs often came to mind. It was not my attempt to emulate them through this piece, but I'm sure they were each influential:
Yes - "Leave It", Jackdaw 4 - "Bipolar Diversions", Tommy Sparks - "She's Got Me Dancing", and The Fixx - "One Thing Leads To Another".

Once again I put the music to a YouTube video. All the images in the video are just random pictures found on the Internet of not-so-great situations. Again, there's not particular story behind the lyrics of the song. It's just words that seemed to fit as the melody came to mind.

Song: "A Fan's Lament"

Here's my latest song entitled "A Fan's Lament."

Greg Whitehead - A Fan's Lament by GWGumby

This song is dedicated to Underworld, Ben Folds, Genesis, Blur, and any other band that I really liked but took forever between albums before finally releasing something terrible and/or changing their style altogether into something I couldn't stand. Or almost as bad, break up altogether before they can produce something else (like Jellyfish, Imperial Drag, Sugarbomb.)

Of my recent songs, the first song that I posted was meant to feature the synthy-sounds of my Korg R3. The second one featured a lot more of the Roland JV-1080. For this one, the foundation is pretty much all built around my Roland digital piano.

I had this idea of a song about the joy that I have felt at times discovering a new band. There have been times when I've heard a new song where everything just disappears, time almost literally stands still, and the song holds my entire focus. It happened the first time I heard Jellyfish's "The Ghost at Number One" on the radio. When it got to the bridge "Mrs. Lynne the fruit of your labor..." I had to stop everything I was doing and just focus in on the song.

So after buying the album and memorizing all the songs, focus eventually shifts attention to waiting for the follow up. It seems like in the 70s albums were released annually. In the 80s closer to bi-annually. Then the 90s to today, it seems like 3 years is the norm. That's a long time to wait for another 40 minutes of music. So the song goes from the love of a band from the first album, to the excited anticipation of an announced follow up. Then it falls apart at the end when the fan finally gets the album, listens to it, and finds out the album isn't what was expected.

This happened to me when Underworld went from a pop band to a weird repetitive techno band that I just couldn't stomach. It also happened after Ben Folds went solo and after a great first album followed it up with "Songs For Silverman" three years later. The album was so disappointing and completely unforgettable that it serves as the main inspiration for the thoughts behind this song. (Ben Fold's has since somewhat made up for it with his last album, "Way To Normal," again released three years later.) Blur was another band that I loved but then shifted their sound to this weirder, harsher, experimental stuff that held little of what I originally loved about the band. I didn't discover Genesis until their "Invisible Touch" album which they didn't follow up for another 5 years with "We Can't Dance" which was quite a let down. Then 6 years later they released another album without Phil Collins, "Calling All Stations" which was even worse. (I've since discovered all their great albums prior to "Invisible Touch" which made up for their weaker later albums.) So these are all the pieces of my history that inspired this particular song.

I've been playing around with the opening melody on the piano for over a year now and had the opening verse in my head for sometime as well. I also had the chorus "There's a new album coming out" in mind as well. Though when I played it on the piano it never seemed to join up with the softer, slower verse part. When I started to work on recording it, I figured I'd just go ahead and put the two parts together and see if they fit. I think in the finished product they actually fit well, both musically and thematically.

As I said earlier, the main foundation of this song is recorded from my digital piano. I used an electric piano sound for most of the verses and a regular piano sound for the rest. I've never been a big fan of electric piano, at least not the adult-contemporary DX7 tinkly piano from the 80s. But I've enjoyed the sound from Supertramp, Billy Joel, Queen, and others in the 70s. I probably would have prefered to try and use a Wurlitzer if I had a good emulation. As it is, I think this one sounds pretty good without sounding to schmaltzy.

After working out the piano parts, I used a soft-synth for some brush-style drumming and used another soft-synth for the rest of the drums. I did all the drums by hand, and only used one loop for some tambourine during the solo. The bass parts are from the JV-1080, and then most of the other synthy background stuff and solo were done on the Korg R3. These were all a combination of presets, modified sounds, and sounds I built from scratch.

The distorted bass in the chorus is a direct reference to Ben Folds Five. I also took some inspiration from the sound of this song from Josh Fix and Ambrosia.

For the record, I've never bought a vinyl record. I had a small turntable when I was a kid where I used to play a Smurf's album and a Muppet rendition of "Bremen Town Musicians." I grew up mainly on cassettes until adopting CDs in the early 90s. For the purposes of this song I mention records, since I don't know anyone who looks fondly back at cassette tapes. I do still love finding a great record store--even if I only buy CDs.

The video, which is a bit more animated than my last one, is filled with images of a sampling of various albums that I've really loved over the years -- until the last verse where it's all images of albums I am less fond of.

New Song: Infinite In Between

Where have I been most of this month? Working hard on my second and latest song: "Infinite In Between." Presented here both through a static-image YouTube video and Soundcloud player at the bottom. Both present the same song.

This song is sort of my trippy pseudo-Moody Blues-inspired psychedelic synth odyssey. I used the JV-1080 a bit more this time and the R3 as more dressing, save for the lead parts. I also added a bit more piano; most of it is single octaves, but there are a few sections where I played a bit more.

Lyrically, the song was sort of inspired by the idea introduced to me way back in 9th grade, I believe, about how between any two points there is a theoretical infinite distance in between. For example, if you stand on the opposite side of the room from a wall, then walk half way to the wall, then half way again, then again, and repeat over and over again, you would theoretically never, ever reach the wall. There is an infinite amount of half-ways to pass through before you ever touch the wall. I coupled that idea with the idea of the undefined state. The point between ON and OFF. What is that point exactly? At what point does something stop being on and start being off? And what about that moment, however infinitely small where you are in between those two states which isn't defined. What if you get stuck there? As a programmer, I often get stuck there and it usually leads to unwanted results, like the infamous PC blue screen of death.

Anyway, once again, I wrote, performed, and recorded everything you hear on the track. The JV-1080 was used for drums, saxophone, and bass. The R3 was used for leads, vocodor, and various effects. I used a lot of presets and very few original or modified sounds. So any R3 owners might recognize a few of the sounds.

The main lead theme of the song, which is played in the intro and during the chorus, came about because I was trying to find a way to get into the song and while I was improvising I found the lead riff. It's actually a coincidence that it fit in with the chorus as well, since it was never in my head when I was originally composing the song. The instrumental break is also an improvised addition that I didn't originally plan on. I was going to just repeat the verse again with some type of solo over the top, but when I sat down to do that, the brassy fanfare popped up in my mind and I built something to suit that. Then added the vocodor and Moody Blues-esque swelling background chorus as well. I liked it so much I had to go back and end the song on it. Originally it would have ended right at the "I am the infinite in between" line at the end of the chorus, but instead I went back to this and faded out. The repeating high piano octaves that sort of add rhythm to several sections of the song came about due to how I have my keyboards set up. I sit near the top of my piano with my computer in between that and my R3. So my left hand which usually accompanies low note octaves could only play on the top of the piano. I was using it to keep time while I played around with the opening lead riff. I didn't intend for it to be part of the song, but then my wife commented how she liked it while listening to an early version of the song, so I kept that in there and through the rest of the song.

I'm still learning about mixing and I've heard a lot about compression so I put compression on everything. I don't really understand what I'm doing and as I was making the song, everything sounded really muddy and unclear. I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong. Then I turned off the compression effect I had on the whole track and suddenly everything sprang to life. I really need to figure out what I'm doing there!

The final song clocks in at almost six minutes. I'm not sure how it got that long. It's really fairly straightforward pop arrangement of: intro, verse, bridge, chorus, verse, bridge, chorus, instrumental, chorus, outro.

Anything else? I'll probably post the lyrics in a separate post later on.

Enjoy and leave a comment here or on one of the embedded files if you like it.

Greg Whitehead - Infinite In Between by GWGumby

Song: "Black Rock"

Here's my first fully original song that I put together with all my new equipment. The main synth sounds are almost all Korg R3. Some of the sounds are presets, most of the rest are either programmed from scratch or modified from the preset sounds. The drums come from the Roland JV-1080 as well as one or two minor synth sounds.

I've been playing around with the main theme for several months now, to the point that my 7 year old son has learned it and plays it regularly when he is on the keyboard. After coming up with the theme, I started to think of lyrics. Somehow after recently watching the terrible (and wonderful) movie "Troll 2" the idea of this poor dead ghost of a grandfather being forced to appear to his grandson to help him save his inept family from being eaten by goblins (not trolls despite the title) was on my mind and inspired the lyrics. They are only loosely based on the story, but since it was a source of inspiration, I included random images from the movie in the YouTube video. Feel free to ignore the video and just listen instead.

A link to the mp3 itself can be found here:

• Greg Whitehead - Black Rock.mp3
  

Finally, I have a lot of experience with writing music, and some of recording, but I have little-to-no experience mixing. So if anyone out there who sees this and has any comments to share in helping with getting a better final mix, I'd love to hear it.

Lots of News; Early Birthday!

In my last post, I wrote about my old Roland XP-50, which I regretted selling. My wife had asked me to start looking for potential birthday presents for next month, so I was searching for synthesizers on Craigslist and found someone selling a Roland JV-1080 synthesizer rack module for a really good price. The JV-1080 is essentially the same as the XP-50, minus the sequencer and keyboard but with extra expansion card slots and a few more audio-outs. I couldn't let a deal like that pass by, so last weekend we drove out to Plano to buy it and bring it home. The seller was also selling some expansion cards, only one of which I was at all interested in, the "Experience" card (SR-JV80-99) which is sort of a sampler card with some extra piano, orchestral, and synth-style sounds.

On the way home from picking up the synth module, we stopped at a music store to pick up an extra MIDI cable to control the module with, and we also decided to get a synth stand with a second tier addition. So now I have my Korg R3 and the new JV-1080 on a double-decker stand. I don't think it will work to keep them like this permanently, but it will do for the moment.
Before we picked up the synthesizer, we actually made another stop to pick up a package from FedEx. It was my Fast Track USB sent back from M-Audio. I mentioned a couple posts ago that it had broken. When I opened the box, I discovered they had sent me a brand new model. It looks different, I think the buttons are different, and it even comes with different software. So that was a bit surprising.

I've spent the rest of the weekend and this week just playing with the JV-1080 and connecting and disconnecting various cords and wires for audio, MIDI, and computer input. I think I've got things more or less to a point where I can start trying to make some music soon. So here's my semi-annotated current set-up:


To follow up with my previous Fast Track humming problems, I set things up with this new model and discovered that I'm still getting the same humming problems. However, I tried something new. I routed my MIDI cables through the JV, in the R3 and then back to the computer. Doing this eliminated the hum! In some of my tests, it still seemed like I was getting some audio looping this way, e.g. the metronome click faintly recording to the track; however I think I can get around that by either recording live without the MIDI cables connected, or recording MIDI first, and then turning off all accompanying tracks when I want to capture the final audio.

Anyways, I hope to be making some music soon! I'll post some more specifics on the Roland JV-1080 soon.