Tripecac - Sunday Sampler

This is of course inspired by Dave Brubeck's 5/4 jazz classic "Take Five".

The word "sive" comes from a story I wrote in high school. "Sive" is supposed to be any number between any other two numbers that are between 4 and 6 (inclusive). Confusing and silly? Yes. Fortunately the song is much simpler.

This is a remake of the Master Anchovies' theme song.

I wrote most or all of the music. I used to think Jon Friesen wrote the sax part, but I'm no longer sure, since the first recording of "Anchovy Rock" was with Allen Foster on sax rather than Jon.

I like this solo version a lot. It doesn't have live drums, but it has a tight energy that the Anchovies never captured on tape.

This was my most serious attempt at writing a standard jazz song. I think I was trying to entice Jon Friesen (who went to the same college) to rejoin me in music making. My plan didn't work, but I like the song.

I initially wrote this for Anand, who told me he was getting tired of being a student. For a while it became a "theme song" for me, at least in my own head, especially whenever I wasn't feeling enthusiastic about going to work or classes or anything "un-fun". It's not about depression; it's about loving entertainment and not wanting to leave it.

The intro is actually the ending from the previous song ("IPECAC is Dead").

There are actually some more lyrics which never made it into the song. They explain the context a little better:

AT START:
  "tell me about it."
  "tell you about what?"
  "well, how's school goin'?"
  "pretty awful, to tell the truth."

AT END:
  well you say that every morning
  when you're head's still thick and sleepy
  and you'd rather just keep on snoring
  well, what if you kept on sleeping?

This is about a white-water rafting trip in West Virginia, at least on the surface (no pun intended). Deeper down you might find some sexual innuendoes, but they may be just coincidences. I'm not sure; I don't remember my state of mind when I wrote it.

People seemed to like this song a lot. I don't know if they liked it because of the adventurous subject matter, or if they liked the music. I thought it was okay.

This touches base with easy-listening jazz, which is my other "safe and easy" genre. It's a gentle and pretty little tune. However, like "The LoveFish", it seems out of sync with the rest of the BITLOTA songs.

Here we go!!! This is where everything "clicked" into place. It was my dad's birthday, and I think I recorded this very quickly as a last-minute gift for him.

Musically, I turned to simple, catchy piano-based pop which I probably wrote in half and hour on my parents' upright piano before scurrying off to my room to finish the song. The lyrics are simple and straightforward. There's no symbolism, no pretentiousness, no real effort... It all flowed very naturally.

Everyone liked this song, including me. My parents enjoyed the music but thought the lyrics were "sad".

By this time I think I started realizing that my parents just didn't "get" the point of many of my songs, which is that:

1. I enjoy being a hermit.
2. I like to talk (and sing) about myself.
3. I like to be funny when I write.
4. So, I often make fun of myself when I sing.

There is no "depression" in my life. There's no real tension, and rarely is there any stress. My life is fun and easy, and I like it! However, when it comes time to sing, I feel like I need something dramatic, some sort of conflict.

It's like making faces in a mirror (or on a video). I don't want to make pretty faces; I want to make ugly faces, the more grotesque and disturbing the better! That's one of the "fun" things about self-reflection.

It's the same way with lyrics. When I'm writing a song (about my favorite subject: me), I'm "looking" at myself and instead of posing "properly" or "handsomely" I prefer to look like the Biggest Dork Ever.

Right now, I'm in my room writing this, getting a total kick out of listening to my music and writing about myself and looking forward to a nice long jog or bike ride this afternoon... I love the control that solitude gives me over my activities. I am having a blast doing these things by myself, and I've always been like that for as long as I can remember.

Of course, every once in a while it's fun to actually talk to another human being. :) There's something inside me, either an instinct or something I was taught at an early age, that tells me to "socialize every once in a while". My guess is that this drive is natural (hardware), that most animals have a primal urge to seek companionship...

Regardless of its origin, for me, the drive to seek human companionship is usually nowhere near as compelling as the drive to accomplish things. For me, creativity, organization, learning, and exploration are the Big Satisfiers, both exciting and pride-instilling, and along with them comes (either naturally or through experiential associations) a desire for "daytime" independence from The Pack.

Of course, if The Pack actually shared 90% of my interests, then maybe I wouldn't "have" to be a hermit in order to pursue the Big Satisfiers. Maybe someday I will find a Travis-compatible Pack, but right now the easiest, most reliable way to have a Good Day is to plan to do things by myself.

If you don't believe me, listen to the music rather than the words. The music is un-selfconscious and FUN, just like my days in my room... It's joyfully indulgent! :)

I recorded this simple and gentle jazz/rock ditty for my mom on Mother's Day 1996. It's about her reluctance to bike up big hills. She actually used to say, "I don't do hills". The lyrics are repetitive (cyclical - get it?).

The bicycle noises are my spinning a bike tire and pedals. The wind noises are completely fake!

My family took a vacation to Vieques (near Puerto Rico) in December 1996. On a deserted beach we found an old, abandoned boat, half submerged in the sand and with "God Is Love" written on the hull. Dad and I decided to see if we could get it to float. With Jess's help, we spent about an hour scooping sand out of it and pushing it towards the water. I took pictures while Dad and Jess pushed it the last few inches into the water and got inside it. It sank almost immediately. I used a picture of the boat for the cover to Sunday Sampler.

This song tells the story. The music was specifically design to be "family-oriented", so it's catchy and simple. The vocals are gentle.

This was the second part of the "trilogy" that started with "The Ups". It has the worst title (since it wasn't really a "downer"), but the nicest music. It's longer and more coherent than the other two parts, and has a pretty instrumentation.

It was my favorite instrumental on the album for a few years. Dad liked it too; he selected it for Dad's Picks.

This is the sort of song I can picture my dad playing on his piano. When I was recording it, I pretended like I was listening to him play. I then added some light drums and bass.

I tried very hard to keep the piano prominent, since I didn't want the drums to dominate. In retrospect, I wish I either hadn't added the drums at all (which are sloppy), or had spent some time cleaning them up. Back then, though, I was using the Tripecac for sequencing, and didn't know how to edit very well.

This is the beginning of a really long piano-trance improv. It starts off pretty but later digresses into a pattern that continues for the rest of the song (14+ minutes).

Here's a link to the original version: listen

This is a swinging low-organ groove. I was probably testing the Triton's handling of a 6/8 time signature and/or triplet quantizing. I'm not sure how much of this is actually quantized.

The title refers to my attempt to stop being self-conscious and immerse myself in the music. Unfortunately, it's not as relaxing as I wanted it to be. The drums are sloppy and loud at times, and the organ muddies up too much space. Oh well.

Dad liked it, though, and chose it for Dad's Picks.

I started this song on the morning of 9/11, before I turned on the news. It was a light, repetitive test of Cakewalk, nothing special really. As far as I was concerned, it was destined to be Yet Another Unfinished Song. I forget what I called it.

An hour later, when I started work, I heard about the WTC and Pentagon bombings. I marvelled at how relaxed and blissful I had been just minutes ago, when I was working on music. I decided to rename the song "Memorial". I also decided to try to turn this negative situation into a positive one. I hadn't finished a song in years, and promised myself I would work on this one until I finished it.

It ended up taking me about a month. I worked on it almost every day. I wasn't used to having unlimited sequencer memory, so I kept adding sections to the song: solos, choruses, breakdowns, and more solos. I didn't want to delete any of the ideas, so the song grew and grew. It became an epic (easy-listening) jam, approaching the length of "Been Way Too Long", my longest song at that point. I had no idea how I was going to finish it. Not knowing what to do, I resorted to adding more solos...

Eventually I realized that I needed to set a time limit for myself or I would never finish. I decided to stop expanding the song, to switch gears and start editing it. Now began the endless hours of fine-toothed tweaking, mixing, and rearranging. I obsessed over almost every note, trying hard to make this a "masterpiece". By the time I had finished editing it, I think I had sucked most of the life out of it. It was super-listenable, but also super-bland. Dad liked it, however, and had me put a shorter version of it on Dad's Picks.

The good news is that I had momentum now. I was elated over having actually finished a song, and immediately started on the next one. Since "Memorial" had taken me exactly one month to finish, I decided to give myself the same time limit for the new song, which became "Renewal".

This was my first "real" song with lyrics since 1997.

The music is light funk, maybe even easy listening. I wanted something that didn't get irritating over the course of twelve verses.

The lyrics are an "epic" retelling of my musical history. They conclude with the song itself. The last bit is improvised talking. You can barely hear it, and the song fades out in the middle of it, but I've kept the lyrics intact because I like what I was trying to say.

This is probably my favorite Tripecac song ever! It's instrumental dance, with a dose of jazz and subtle sound effects (crickets, thunder, rain, etc.) I liked it so much I decided to record a vocal version ("Trail Running") to put on Renewal. Dad liked it too, and selected it for Dad's Picks.