Songs from the back of my hard drive

I was cleaning out my computer yesterday and came across some songs I did on my old laptop when I first came to Fukuoka.

It brought back some memories. I had come to Fukuoka with almost no money to start with and no job arranged, and was making ends meet with little part-time things. In winter, I started a couple weeks of unpaid vacation from my already low-paying main part-time job. I didn't have any money so I couldn't really go out, and it was cold and drizzling rain so I couldn't even enjoy outdoors. There was a girl I was dating, but she lived far away and had to work long brutal shifts for all but the last few days of the stretch. So I downloaded a music sequencer at a net cafe, burned it to CD and took it back to my internetless laptop, got some tutorials via long distance phone call from my friend Kunal in Toronto (he paid), and started programming little songs on it huddled under my blankets to save on heat.

The main claim to fame with them is that none of the riffs are pre-made loops taken from the internet; I put everything together note by note. Doesn't sound as good as if I had just used stock beats from a pro, but I'm prouder for having done it myself. I'm a little surprised by how quickly I learned to program the tracks and put them together.

Listening to them now, they sound pretty cheesy. The sequencer was consumer-grade to begin with and is already showing its age, and the keyboard sounds literally remind me of the muzak they play in low-end Japanese department stores. But it brings back memories.

And now you can download them...absolutely free!!

Without You

I think this would actually be good enough to play as muzak in a quality 100-yen store.

Good Times in Machine Hell

The distorted piano is *supposed* to be an electric guitar doing power chords(the software didn't have a guitar sound worth a damn). If you squint your ears and pretend that's what it is it sounds a lot better. The horns, however, are actually just supposed to be horns. I was inspired by watching the band play on Late Night with Conan O'Brien.

Saliva

Longer than the others, but probably my favorite. The main piano is supposed to be an electric guitar, and the big chords are supposed to be guitar powerchords. The lead piano line is supposed to be the vocals.