Tripecac - Composed Pile

I wrote these lyrics back in 2005, probably in a piano practice room. It's sheer coincidence that they are about my desire to force myself to compose songs, which is the theme of the album. Funny, eh?

Well, the lyrics aren't. They're actually kinda 'tarded! They're so moronic, in fact, that I cracked up several times during recording, ruining several takes! Seriously, who can sing the "P P R R..." chorus with a straight face???

As for the music, well, it's all from 2008. My mini-rule to myself was that I had to compose the piano parts and melody before programming them in; I couldn't just wing it. I also had to have a distinct verse, chorus, and bridge. It ended up being cheesy to the max. Oh well.

The mix is too muddy, too crisp, too something. I don't like it. It just sounds fake, and very lame.

In short, this song is a mess. However, the silver lining is that this leaves me lots of room for improvement. This takes the pressure off, which is a great relief, since pressure is the last thing I need when I'm trying to focus on composing.

I figured it's time for some baby steps on the mandolin. This is my first attempt at using it in a Tripecac song. I really didn't (and still don't) know what I'm doing, so bear with me.

I mixed the mandolin and vocals completely dry, as an experiment. I wanted to see how "immediate" I could make them sound. The Triton's sounds all have a usual dose of reverb. The vocals are a little out of sync with the rest of the music part of the time, but that's what I get for singing to the mandolin rather than [just] a metronome.

As for the lyrics, well, lots of people seem to be having babies these days, including celebrities. It seems to be the "cool" thing to do. I wanted to create some cute lyrics exploring the "coolness", all based on a pun (do/due/doo). Hope you like it!

This song sticks to the "previously composed" theme by digging into my pile of unfinished song ideas. Both the chord progression and lyrics were scribbled down on separate scraps of paper over a decade ago. Within the past year or so, I had typed them into the computer, and recent decided to start going through those scripts for interesting ideas and juxtapositions.

The song title refers to commodities, and "commies", which relates to the "Russian" theme mentioned in "Moscowpie". Also, the song sometimes feels too busy, like a commotion. Hmm, okay, that's pushing it.

The music is atypical of what I've been doing recently. The chords are from 1996-03-06. They're very classical-sounding, reminiscent of "Moscowpie". Not very punky or bluesy, which I guess is a good thing since it will challenge (y)our ears. I kinda like the trancy, repetitive part at the end. Other that that, though, the song lacks punch. It's more like a soggy mess. With too muchf babbling. :(

The lyrics are very fragmented and don't make much sense, especially when thrown together. The first several parts (which rhyme) were written on the same paper as "I've Got a Thing for You", which was recorded in 1996, so I'm guessing those lyrics were from around then as well. The semi-spoken essay (which starts about 2 minutes in) is from 2007-10-15, when I had flown into SeaTac and was waiting for a shuttle.

The song might stink, but it sure is nice to tie up all those loose ends!

A couple songs ago, I used the mandolin. This time, I wanted to take my acoustic guitar for a whirl.

I sketched out the idea on a cassette a few days earlier (destined for Trex). It was a pure improv, but I liked the energy. So I decided to turn it into a Tripecac song.

The mistake I made with the mandolin song ("Baby Dew") was settling for sloppy timing. So, this time I used both a hi-hat and a thumping kick drum as a metronome while I added the guitar parts. I had to play some bits several times before nailing the timing. It's not perfect, but much better than before.

The lyrics are kinda dumb (since they were mostly improvised), but they're not the point of the song. Neither is accurate playing. The groove is the point. And that's kinda what the lyrics are saying.

The lyrics are from before 2005, probably before 2000. They are ridiculously stupid. To add some spice, I altered some of the lines to [hopefully] make them funny.

The music is all new. It's intentionally cheesy, to fit the lyrics. I also kept it sparse, as an experiment. I was wondering if I could get away with minimal instrumentation and still have it semi-interesting. Does it sound full enough or too bare?

It was less than a week before summer when I started this. The weather had been cool for the past month or so, mostly in the 50s. Over the course of finishing it, however, the temperature rose to the mid 80s, before settling back in the 60s. Exciting, huh?

Anyway, I decided to try another mandolin idea which I had sketched out previously. It's kinda repetitive, and pretty repetively, and a little repetitive, but I like some of the groovy bits.

Unfortunately, the mandolin is badly out of tune and time with the rest of the instruments. So it sounds horrible. I had to keep the melodic parts sparse because of the tuning, so ended up with 10 tracks of drums! The result is wayyy too drum-heavy, in my opinion.

Anyway, I'm glad the song is finally done (it took 2 weeks to finish) so that I can move on to the next once, which will hopefully be more stomachable!

This song was played on the 2008-07-13 broadcast of Mike Edwards' excellent In My Room podcast on.

I started the lyrics back in 2002 (when I had a concrete floor), edited them in 2004, and then put them to music in 2008. They're not very deep, but they rhyme.

The music was "composed" on the fly. It was, at first listen, catchy enough for me to not mind bending the rules a bit (about composing the words and music beforehand). Unfortunately, I never got around to writing a chorus or bridge, so it's the same thing over and over. I gradually got tired of it. As I always do with "mindless" songs (and mindless people).

In a way, this reminds me of "Red Rumor". I briefly considered adding background talking, but then decided against it. The music just isn't good enough to justify the amount of time it takes to synchronize old recordings to it. Plus, I already created "Red Rumor" once; why do it again?

On the positive side, the lyrics (which are composed) are kinda insightful, and in places, the groove is a kinda catchy. And some of the vocals sound kinda cool. So it's not a complete disaster. More like a pathetic dud.

The first version of this song was recorded for Trex exactly six months before I started working on this remake. The Trex version was airheaded garage rock; this Tripecac version is much darker and trancier.

The lyrics are about getting my first mp3 player up and running. I was testing the voice recording using the improvised song as a guinea pig.

The original version had acoustic guitar, but for Tripecac I switched to electric guitar and played completely different patterns. Really, except for the rhythm of the vocals, it really is a complete different song.

This is one of the few songs which felt better and better to work on each day. Usually I get bored of songs, but this one was a "late bloomer", if that makes any sense.

The title is a play on "delicious" and "de-leech us". It was inspired by a scene in Michael Palin's New Europe DVDs, in which a nurse puts leeches on him for a while and then kills the leeches. It seemed a shame to exterminate the creatures, but it's not like they could be "reused". Too bad they weren't just set free, though. I suppose they were "recycled" by being ground up into food for other leeches.

Do leeches really help the body? I don't know; to me, leech-therapy seems like a waste of time, and a waste of all those little wriggly lives. Maybe the world would be better if people de-leech themselves by abandoning old, wasteful traditions.

Musically, the vibe is very dark and aggressive. I didn't like it, so I made the bulk of the lyrics silly, so that the song is not too negative. Very little of the music was composed beforehand, which you can probably tell from the repetitiveness and lack of memorable melodies.

Overall, I this song is kinda dumb, the first real "dud" on the album. The chorus in particular is really lame. Yuck. Oh well. Time to stop working on it. This song needs to be ground up into food for other songs!

I started writing this in the local college's piano practice room on the eve of "Infinity Day" (2008-08-08). The title also refers to all the "infinitives" that I had been learning while getting up to speed with Italian.

The music starts off piano-based, very slow, very melodic. I didn't particularly like it when I started working on it, and I still think it's kind of boring now. However, it was an interesting change of pace from what I had done recently, and its contemplative nature fit the title.

More than 3 weeks passed until I picked it up again. During the interim, I was a bundle of nerves. When I returned, I created the second (faster) part of this song, which tries to capture some of that predictable, repetitive frustration. I stretched it out until it reached 8 minutes and 8 seconds. Can you guess why?

I wrote the main chords and melody for this on infinity day (2008-08-08). Roughly a month later, I started building the song for Tripecac. It's simple, understated, and a bit cheesy.

The name makes fun of Apple's simple, understated, and cheesy naming scheme: (e.g., iPod, iTunes, iLife, etc.) So, "infinity day" = "iDay". Get it? Yeah, well, there's not much to get.

One other note: I decided to keep this song "short" (relatively speaking) in order to fit more songs onto the end of the CD. I also wanted to see if I could finish a song in "only" 3 days instead of the usual 4 or 5. So, if this song seems to ends abruptly, now you know why.

This is another song that I started on infinity day (2008-08-08). The lyrics are about feeling exiled. Yes, this is very similar in theme to "Infiniteve". You can think of it as a sequel.

However, I tried to make the music more upbeat, so that the album doesn't end on doom and gloom. Just doom, no gloom. And a little zoom. Okay, now back to my room.

This song combines the final bunch of (somewhat lame) ideas that I had written down in the piano practice room the previous month. It crams them all together into a single song, even though one of the ideas (major waltz) doesn't fit with the others (minor reggae). The end result isn't very smooth, which is a shame, because it's the last song on the album.

Oh well. I guess the damage was already done when I wrote those ideas down. Time for a clean slate, a new album, and no more rules about having to honor previously composed ideas!