Get Up!

It's morning time

Faux Luvas,

Gratify my ego and do listen to the new “Mixed Up File” song in the player above, would you please?

I loved this song and this recording when I made it in the early 2000s.

But I could tell there was something wrong.

I recorded this at home in the “old style” on my 4-track cassette player.

That is, without having any strict idea of what I was going to play or sing or how long it would last, etc., I would simply hit “record” on the tape player and then play guitar and sing into a single microphone for a while, and if it didn’t completely suck, I would keep that original take and start layering new tracks over it in hopes of creating some kind of grandeur with 4 tracks.¹

No metronome, no grid, no plan, no arrangement—just vibes.

Analog vibes at that.

And I loved the vibes on this one.

But I couldn’t figure out how to recapture the energy and vibe, if you will, to make a decent hi-fi arrangement of it.²

You miss a hundred percent of the random ideas you forget to hit the record button on.

If I had started out recording this song in the digital realm with a set BPM (beats per minute)³, I could have built on this original version and created a workable arrangement with “the vibe.”

Digital was a mystery to me back then, however.

But I did know someone who was making electronic music on a laptop at that time.

I went and looked over his shoulder for a minute and soon after acquired my own little iBook so I could make music on the grid.

It still blows my mind how music built on a grid fits so perfectly together.

You can just grab little sections and drop them in here and there and voila, you got yourself a song.

Now, I still struggle with arrangements and the fact that digital recording reduces sound down to “information” rather than actual electromagnetic zaps and vibrations, (which we are made of), but you gotta change with the times.

home made shrinky dink plektrum, just because.

I remain your humble servant,

OX&C,

Faux Jean

Here are the Lyrics for “Defined by V1 (4 track demo)”

Get up!

It’s morning time,

and it would follow reason

that you rise and shine

At night

at night

you don’t follow reason

no you don’t

you just follow feelings,

pass a note and you’re only reason why

you never follow reason

defined defined by love

Get down you never respond to reason

No you don’t maybe it just don’t feel right

Now you could use some advice

I know

At night you say goodbye to reason

You just follow feeling

You say goodbye to reason

You’re defined by love

1. Sometimes this method works, but often, you’re left wondering how to fix it, or what lyric you mumbled on the non-bridge-sequitur.

2. Ordnung muß sein!

3. and better microphones ;)