Tripecac - Baby Talk

This long, repetitive jam sets the pace for Baby Talk, which is more relaxed and indulgent than Baby Steps. It's also more muffled (bad) but sounds more like a real band (good). My favorite bit is the bass line, which is most audible at the end. The title refers to a positive performance review I received on my one-year anniversary at my job (the day I started the song).

Here's another repetitive jam with muffled drums, a decent bass line, and not much in the way of melody. The songs on Baby Steps had seemed too electronic to me; I wanted to get more into "live" sounding music. One way to do that was to reduce or eliminate the use of quantization (aligning the notes to beats). The title suggests that either this song was unquantized, or that I had accidentally quantized it and wanted to unquantize it.

This electro-ditty has all of the muffling, but none of the live feel of the previous two songs. It was based on one or more of the Triton's rhythmic presets (hence the title). It starts off sparse and bland, but climaxes well.

We return to the "live" feel with this muffled, clunky EP-centered jam. It starts a little heavy-handed, but segues into a much more subtle and trancy groove. Most of the bits with a cool, light touch come from 2003; I never got that sort of subtlety using the Triton's sequencer. Either my tools (e.g., Sonar) are getting better, or my techniques are getting better; it doesn't matter much to me, as long as the songs keep getting better!

This is an ultra-repetitive 12-bar blues/funk with lots of solos, mostly EP and brass. It has that Triton-sequencer feel: heavily quantized patterns, full-blast playing (including full-blast wrong notes), not much finesse or warmth. This sort of music (which dominated Baby Steps) is too mechnical and edgy for my tastes. The drums may have come from a preset.

Here's some more stale, preset-based trance, dirtied up a bit via moody synths and aggressive toms. I like the drums in the middle, but overall the song feels too nervous. The title was inspired by an old version of the song in which the opening synth melody sounded really "crunchy". After this song, I stopped experimenting with presets.

I wanted to get away from mechanical dance/trance, so retreated into gentle new-age. This focuses on clarinet and ep, with some quiet guitar arpeggios. When it came time to finish it in 2003, I liked the melody, but wanted to "beef" it up. I added drums, which develop into an almost drum-and-bass thing, plus a brief organ solo. The song had a lot of energy by that point, but it didn't really go anywhere.

This is a funky, laid-back EP ditty with a "hooky" chorus. It's muffled (as are most of the "live" sounding songs on the album) and unevenly mixed, but has nice toms and some nice solos.

Wow, the mix really opens up on this one. We can hear birds chirping, crisp snare drum rolls, an accordion, bells, tamborines, french horns, and laughter. I wanted to make an orchestral ode to Colonial Williamsburg using "period" instruments. I didn't do any research, so I don't know what instruments they actually used back then, but that's fine, because Tripecac has always been about [imprecise] emulation rather than authenticity. The title comes from Duke of Gloucester Street, the heart of Colonial Williamsburg.

This is one of the few Tripecac songs without drums. It's just piano, bass, EPs, and a clav. Despite the lack of drums, it has a nice momentum; I wish I had extended it a bit more.

I had done a song about Williamsburg ("Dog Street Jam"), and now wanted to do something about Charlottesville. My approach was to represent the mix of "redneck" and collegiate culture by blending country/folk music and rock/dance music. The banjo, "slide guitar", and accordion represented the "country" side; the rest was supposed to represent the college. The result didn't express my point as clearly as I wanted, but it's listenable enough.

This is my favorite song on Baby Talk. It starts as raucous, funky trance, gets jazzier and quieter, breaks down into a drum+bass reggae beat for a while, and then returns to the noisy funk at the end. Most of the coolness comes from 2003.

This is simple, mellow jazz, with zero funk-factor. It's soothing, but boring; just like flowers. The title comes from the saying "April showers bring May flowers".

I figured if April could have showers, couldn't May have them too? Ugh, okay, so the title isn't that witty, but at least the music is upbeat. It's reggae/funk/jazz (standard Tripecac), not very polished, but with nice energy in spots.

This gentle new-age drone is a follow-up to "Sisters and All". I added the funky ending in 2003. The title refered to the idea of meeting the "perfect mate": someone who's separated from you in blood, but nearly identical to you in personality; you're twins in spirit rather than flesh.

I started this for my mom on Mother's Day 2001. I don't remember which elements were there from the beginning, but I do remember that when I finished the song in 2003, I wanted it to represent a little bit of everything that I had tried on Baby Talk. There's elements of folk, jazz, reggae, punk, and pop in here. It isn't all that memorable, but it ends the music happily.