music journal

so I guess I had my songs-with-words phase for a while, so now I’m back to some instrumentals. I tried some alternate tunings on the octave tonight, doing ADAD (”normal” is GDAE, although I’ve been playing ADAE for a while). anyway, here are 2 versions of my ADAD jam. they’re both pretty much just improving around a general idea.

loud version

quieter version

I set out early this year with a goal of a small album of original instrumental tunes on my octave mandolin. I was hoping for 10 tracks by the middle of the year. Well it’s just now spring and I’ve got 8 tracks, and my interests at the moment arent on instrumentals, so I’ve decided to call it an album. so here it is:

http://BobWiegersSimpleSongs.googlepages.com/

it’s a short little album, but I’m pretty happy with it. I hope you enjoy.

another Simple one…so named b/c I miss my Michelle, Caleb and Alice right now…

so here’s Missing

there’s 2 slightly different versions of this one…

Midnight take 1

Midnight take 2

here’s a newer one that’s a little more upbeat and a little longer than my usual short tracks. named after Andy’s home town of South Portland, where I’m currently sitting.

so here’s SoPo.

this simple song is indeed simple and short. it’s minor and mellow too. named after the little cabin that I first discovered it, where Michelle and I got away to not long ago.

so here’s Cabin 10. it’s actually a little different than the original but that’s fine with me.

so I’m here in Portland Maine for a work thing, and when I have time I’m working on my Simple Songs. after a lovely pub dinner and a couple beers downtown I returned tired but ready to try to get a track down. the only problem was this rather noisey hvac unit outside, but thankfully this track isnt a very quiet one. but I did do a take in the bathroom just to see if it would sound better or not. so here’s the newly dubbed “Portland Waltz”. (I only yesterday realized it’s in 3/4 time, and I figured since I’m putting it down here in Maine, I might as well put it in the name for posterity).

here’s take 1 (in the bathroom) - less mistakes on this one I think

here’s take 2 (in the rest of the room)  - sound is a little more mellow I think

it’s a little tune I’ve been working on for a little while, and it contains 3 simple parts. usually I play the parts ABABCA but sometimes you never know how it’ll come out.

I think one of those takes will do for this one…on to the next!

here’s the 2nd track of my collection of octave mandolin tunes. this one is a medley of little lullaby tunes from our family. the first part is actually a composition of Caleb (our 3 year old) who made up this song last year. it’s called “Birdies Fly Away”, and he used to go around singing it in his cute little warbling voice. I’m very proud of his little song, so I wanted to capture it. the 2nd part is an old lullaby called “By Low My Baby” (or however that should be spelled) from when Michelle was a kid. it was apparently on an old record they had, and Michelle’s dad sang it to our kids this summer, and it’s become a nightly requirement ever since. finally, the 3rd part is a little ditty I made up when Caleb was a baby, called “You’re my baby (and I love you)”. I still sing it with the kids now and then. not really a lullaby, but a fun little thing we do. anyway, the last little tag is a bit from the first two parts, and if sung, it would say: “Birdies fly away. all through the night.” for some reason I really like that.

the medley is simple enough, but for some reason I couldnt quite it right when I was trying to record it. I did a bunch of takes and always messed up a little something each time. I guess that’s the trials of recording stuff. so I eventually gave up on getting the perfect take and took the best one and edited it a little. ideally I’d like to have a better version, but it was getting late. I also think I’m playing it a little faster than I should, but I think it otherwise turned out OK.

so here is my Lullaby Medley. as always, feedback is welcome. now on to the next track…perhaps something a little minor.

now that I’ve got my new recording device, I’ve decided to put it to good use and record an album of my little acoustic songs. I think I’ll call it “Simple Songs” since, well, my songs are pretty simple and low-key. so I took a crack at recording the song I’ve been working with on-and-off for a while. I’m pretty happy with the recording quality so far, and hopefully I can learn to bring out the best sound with it. I’ve identified a couple things I can do better, so I may go back and re-do this one eventually.

so here’s my first track called Be Still (which I’ve shared before in a different version).

I have no idea if a whole album of this kind of song will appeal to anyone or not, but so far I’m enjoying the process. I have a goal of putting down 10 tracks by July, and I’ve got about 15 “song ideas” to work with so far (and I usually come up with a handful more now and then). now on to identify which song idea I’ll try to polish off next.