Tripecac - Dignored

I wanted something crisp and upbeat to start the new album. This is dancy and funky. The title is, of course, a pun.

I made it really long. Why? I don't know. I was feeling sick each day I worked on this, and I guess I felt like indulging in it. I also may have been procrastinating finishing it; you know, opening song pressure and all.

For some reason, the MIDI timing didn't feel right. When the bass is playing by itself, even when it's quantized, it sounds jittery at times. Switching from Sonar 4 to Sonar 5 seemed to help. Placebo effect, maybe.

The title is a pun on "common cold". I had a really bad cold the day I started it. I was supposed to take it easy, to do something calm. Oh well. So much for brilliant titles on this album!

I kept the same effects template as in "Rising Shine", but I wanted to shake things up a bit. So I made the time signature is 5/4. Weird, huh?

It was pretty fun to mess around with this, but I didn't feel like it was worth polishing very much. On to the next idea!

I started this on the first day of spring (or last day of winter; I thought the 21st was always the equinox). The title is a warping of "spring cleaning".

I didn't have any ideas for melodies or chord progressions (what's new?) so I decided to mess around with different sounds.

On the day I started this, someone (let's call him "R") got his first pet: a guinea pig. After we got the critter settled in his cage, it was time to eat (dinner, not the critter).

R's mom asked him to wait until after dinner to call his dad. R pretended not to hear her "in time" and dialed up his dad anyway.

During dinner, his mom asked him to stay at the table and eat. He kept getting up. By the time he finally started eating, his mom and I were finishing our meals.

R was eating a veggie burger. Or, at least he was supposed to. He proceeded to separate the vegetables from the patty and bread. He then ate the patty and bread, but left the veggies on his plate.

His mom asked him to finish eating. Instead, R left the table again, saying he had to go to the bathroom.

When he got down from the bathroom, his mom had to ask him 2 or 3 more times to sit down and eat his veggies. He finally sat down. But he didn't eat his vegetables. He kept talking and fidgeting.

Finally, I got tired of waiting for him. I said "this is the slowest dinner" and then went upstairs. R's mom also got tired of waiting, and followed me upstairs, instructing R yet again to eat all his vegetables.

Within a minute or so, R was supposedly miraculously "done" because I heard his mom intercept him in the hall and ask him, "did you finish your vegetables"? He said yes. She went downstairs and checked the sink.

R had stuffed his vegetables down the garbage disposal.

She asked him again if he'd eaten all his vegetables, and he said yes. She said "you're still lying???" At that point, I came down and she told me what happened.

So what do you think?

Was it utterly thankless of him to repeatedly and blatantly defy his mom minutes after she had just bought him his first pet? Or was he "just being a kid"? You can probably guess where my feelings lie. No pun intended.

The sad thing is that all along (from the minute I observed R separating his veggies from his burger), I suspected he would do exactly what he ended up doing. I even warned his mom a couple times (while R was in the bathroom) that I thought he would try to stuff his veggies down the garbage disposal as soon as we were no longer watching him. And yep, that's what he did.

So who's dumber:

1. R, for being so painfully predictable
2. his mom, for not being as suspicious/anticipatory as me
3. me, for caring so much about R's behavior while knowing I won't be able to do anything about it except gripe about it to his mom (and whomever else is reading this)

Oh well...

Back-seat parenting sucks.

Just like this song!

A "cavy" is another name for guinea pig. The first one we got (Donovan) kept hiding in his cardboard tube whenever we walked close to him. He seemed to derive comfort from burrowing into a cave whenever potential predators were detected.

I wanted the music to sound relentlessly paranoid (like the little critter), so I made it very repetitive and atonal. The tension builds and builds and builds, and there's no respite. Poor little thing.

The second day I worked on this song, we bought another guinea pig to keep the first one company. They starting playing (or fighting) almost immediately. I guess they're happy to have each other; it's hard to tell. We think they're brothers. They were in the same cage together in the store.

Well, the second one "caves away" just like the first, especially if we make loud noises or move quickly. So I renamed the song from "Caving Cavy" to "Caving Cavies". At least they can hermit together now!

Anyway, about the music...

There's yucky distortion in parts. I don't know why. Even at low levels the organ and synth solos were causing distortion. I wasn't doing anything fancy. Oh well.

You can pretend that the distortion represents the instinctive "friction" between two male guinea pigs. Yeah, that's right. And you can also pretend that these song notes are better written!

Guinea pigs (which are quickly becoming the mascots of the album) eat lots of hay. We've been learning about how to take care of them, including the types of hay to feed them. So we're students. The title is also a pun on The Fall's song "Hey Student".

Okay, punny title out of the way, let's talk about the music.

Hmm. Silence.

Okay, I'll try to say at least something about the music.

Uhhh.. Hmmmmmm.... Well, I wanted something dancy and fun. This is dancy and fun, right? Super-dancy? And super-fun? Hyper-diaper fun? Porcorning guinea pig fun?

G picked the title. It's another pun on the word "hay", and yet another reference to the guinea pigs.

I wanted to make the music sound "latin" but it ended up sound "craptastic". Well, maybe it's not that bad. But it certainly ain't latin!

E pluribus craptastica. Amen.

Coffee is one of our guinea pigs. I started this song shortly after he fell/jumped out of G's hands and hit himself against the cage. Poor thing! It was a traumatic experience for all three of us. Hopefully Coffee will be all right.

I wanted the music to capture some of his horror. Hence the screams and the uneasy screeching synths.

The rest of the song is pretty upbeat, though. I figured I already did a paranoid song ("Caving Cavies") so kept this one pretty light.

Folks on the guinea pig forum say we should treat our pigs for mites. The morning I started this song I heard faint sounds in/on our roof; it almost sounded like a mouse. Also, guinea pigs look kinda like mice. Sooo... that explains the title, all nice and neat, eh? I don't have to explain the pun, do I?

Musically, I wanted something gentle, mellow, and tuneful. Delicate's the word. Delicate's the nerd. Romping in the forest. With the forest creatures. Who are infested with mites. And mice.

The Sonar 5.2 patch came out the day I started this song. I installed the patch and gave it a shot. It's still not perfect (will they every get the metronome to stay in sync???) but there are some nice new features.

Sorry it breaks the guinea pig theme!

The music is trancy and light. I don't know if that's because of Sonar 5 itself or my enthusiasm about getting to use it again.

I started this on Tax Day, which was incidentally the day I first saw the inside of G's new work. Her desk was in a cubicle. She made it cute by adding plants, pictures, and a photo of our guinea pigs for her computer background.

I wanted the music to sound deceptively lulling, but a bit off. So it's atonal in parts. And the rhythm isn't always consistent. It doesn't feel quite natural. Get it?

Well, at least, that's how it started. I then added more groove. Lots of groove. Well, not too much groove. Just enough groove to make it typical Tripecac.

So, nothing wild and crazy here. Nope, not at all. Not much at all. Just another Tripecac song. In a grid of other Tripecac songs. Decorated with a few cute ornaments.

Are you a fan of Donovan?

I am!

Are you a fan of this song?

No!

Do you like the faux heart beat at the end? Sounds more like an elephant heart than a guinea pig heart, though!

The title comes from the sixth chorus of "Renewal":

they had the TV on

they had the blender on

they had the vacuum on

they said, "Yes, Travis, we heard it"

It also means I'm willing to continue to suck [at making music]. Well, as long as I keep churning out songs, sucky or not, I'm fulfilling my objectives. With that defiant note, I end the album.

Actually, the last note is sad and uncertain, since Coffee (one of our guinea pigs) was scheduled for surgery the next day.