Dawg's Music

I don't claim these are necessarily any good, but I do think they satisfy the definition of 'music'. G4s is probably the best to listen to first.

G4s (v1) (good stuff) 2009: (ogg) (mp3)
Electric Latency 2010: (ogg)
Cowbell Beatdown (v1) 2010: (ogg) (mp3)
TechnoSpyra'ell (v2) 2010: (ogg) (mp3)
G4DH (v1) (virtual flowers) 2010: (ogg) (mp3)
Nazi Housewives (v1) 2010: (ogg) (mp3)
Darkness In The World (v1) 2010: (ogg) (mp3)
Rolling Echo (v1) (DMC EchoBack Two) 2009: (ogg) (mp3)
Boycott Torture (with fair use of liberty) 2009: (ogg) (mp3)
Street Mashing 2009: (ogg) (mp3)
TechnoSpyra'ell (v1) 2009: (ogg) (mp3)
Icy Lakes Of Beauty 2009: (ogg) (mp3)
Knight Of The Sorrowful Face 2009: (ogg) (mp3)
B.S. (v1) (first release) 2009: (ogg) (mp3)
Jam Sessions 2008+: the learning curve...

G4s (v1) (good stuff)

  • (ogg)
  • (mp3)
  • year: 2009
  • info: This was the song I wrote during my twenty four days vancamping through the western deserts as I quixotically migrated from California to Colorado. It was recorded during perhaps my first session under the roof of my new apartment in Aurora. No edits. I can still clearly remember the thoughts going through my mind during the one brief pause- 'wow, that sounded really good, what am I going to do now that doesn't just sound repetitive'.


Electric Latency

  • (ogg)
  • year: 2010
  • info: This is my first synth composition using tuxguitar. I then used Rakarrack to add f/x, utilizing the Angel's Chorus preset from Julianna Ibib. I also made particular use of the Global Wet/Dry feature that is presently my main visible contribution to Rakarrack. Specifically I opted with 50% f/x. As an interesting demo/example, I also went ahead and generated several other versions-


Cowbell Beatdown (v1)

  • (ogg)
  • (mp3)
  • year: 2010
  • info: This was my first synth utilizing Hydrogen for percussion, the routed through rakarrack for f/x. I utilized the Heaven Garden preset in Rakarrack, and also dynamically modulated the Global F/X Wet/Dry parameter throughout the track to demonstrate how that can be used for an interesting effect.


TechnoSpyra'ell (v2)

  • (ogg)
  • (mp3)
  • year: 2010
  • info: This is the second pass at the song whose pattern struck me as I was just completing the first draft of my novel. Just a simple pattern that can be abbreviated more or less in a single line of text.


G4DH (v1) (virtual flowers)

  • (ogg)
  • (mp3)
  • year: 2010
  • info: This is a very rough first pass at a piece that I wanted to get down before I forgot the idea. As far as listenability, probably it would be better to skip the first minute. It definitely has a lot of work that needs to be done for the next pass, both in practice and timing, as well as fine tuning the pattern. But there is something there that I think works.


Nazi Housewives (v1)

  • (ogg)
  • (mp3)
  • year: 2010
  • info: This was a first experiment with vocal poetry, while also making heavy use of rakarrack and dynamic global wet/dry. While the 'Dual-Corruption-Modulator' is still not done, here I faded between two effects. It does need to be redone with slighly less f/x on the first part, but it came out well enough the first time. Obviously the first half is a remixing of the Delmore Schwartz poem. The latter half is my own composition inspired by a perhaps misinterpreted story from my mother about the end of WW2.


Darkness In The World (v1)

  • (ogg)
  • (mp3)
  • year: 2010
  • info: This I suppose is fair use bait. I'm no lawyer, but I think this parody of Kiefer Sutherland's carreer, released just as the offensive and guiltily entertaining series 24 was ending, might classify... Nobody has complained yet...


Rolling Echo (v1) (DMC EchoBack Two)

  • (ogg)
  • (mp3)
  • year: 2010
  • info: This was my first real success with echo via my first interestingly customized rakarrack preset. The preset is now available in the default rakarrack bank. Originally titled 'dmc echoback two' due to the fact that it was my second jam session with the preset. I actually recorded an even better session immediately prior to this, and had thought I was recording, but then was very upset to discover the inspired piece was lost to all but my memory. Still, I tried to immediately recreate it the best I could, and I think I got something pretty good indeed. But not quite as inspired as that lost first session :(


Boycott Torture (with fair use of liberty)

  • (ogg)
  • (mp3)
  • year: 2010
  • info: This song was recorded and mixed on September 11th, 2009. In emotional response to the news article of that day which it quotes. The latter two of the three guitar pieces were actually played in the opposite order, though it should be clear why I placed them as I did. The last piece, though it is somewhat difficult to hear, provides a great glimpse into the real first time exploration of new sound spaces of the instrument. You can hear the process of me discovering a particular sound, then making sure that I'm able to recreate it. The song is meant to be hard to listen to and 'abrasive'.


Street Mashing

  • (ogg)
  • (mp3)
  • year: 2009
  • info: This is just some random stuff from the 2009-12-19 jam session that sounded interesting enough to keep around. It starts with an interesting effect I might call 'harley-ish', and ends with some, I forget what they're called, octave nodal point playing.


TechnoSpyra'ell (v1)

  • (ogg)
  • (mp3)
  • year: 2009
  • info: Also from the 2009-12-19 jam session, this was my first pass at recording the pattern/song that I was inspired to add inline with the text of my first scifi novel. Lots of mistakes, some editted without any smoothfading. But you can still hear the potential of what I'm aiming at.


Icy Lakes Of Beauty

  • (ogg)
  • (mp3)
  • year: 2009
  • info: From the 2009-12-19 jam session, this turned out to be a very inspired and emotional improvised piece, utilizing the Heaven Garden preset in Rakarrack.


Knight Of The Sorrowful Face

  • (ogg)
  • (mp3)
  • year: 2009
  • info: From the 2009-12-19 jam session, this is another improvised bit, capturing real exploration of sound spaces, including the discovery of things which I definitely need to practice, perfect, and use in the future. Primarily, an arpeggio harpsicordish kind of guitar playing that turned out quite well.


B.S. (v1) (first release)

  • (ogg)
  • (mp3)
  • year: 2009
  • info: This was my first recording that I considered good enough to call a song and post it on Dawg's Metaverse (back then it was Smiley's Website). Here you can hear me already playing around with the chord progression that defines my still best song thus far- G4s. This was recorded in early 2009 just before I departed on my quixotic vancamping journey east from Palo Alto through the desert to Denver.


Jam Sessions

  • the learning curve...
  • year: 2008+
  • info: Here you listen to several entire uncut jam sessions as I heard them as I was playing them. The final one stored here for instance got cut into four of the songs above. Earlier, on the 10-31 one for instance, you can hear me using some of my favorite TV theme songs as early educational motivation. In general, I started playing guitar very shortly after I saw the first announcement of Rakarrack go by on lwn I vaguely recall. It has been and continues to be a very conscious experiment with documenting the entire learning process, hopefully ending up with me actually being respectably skilled one day. And all without paying for any proprietary software, or expensive hardware amps and pedals.
Notes:

- The .OGGs are higher quality (bitrate) - please learn how to play back and use the open vorbis audio format/codec.

- This music was created entirely with free and open source software. No pedals, no preamps. Just my guitar plugged straight into my laptop. Then Guitar-ZyX, Rakarrack, and a smidgen of Audacity for normalization, and finally Ardour and SoX for a few splices.