warts, and all

In the beginning of April, I got some friends and cohorts together to record a live ep, consisting of some of my "classics". following a delusional miles davis complex, i decided not to give the players anything to listen to of the tracks we were about to record, so they only had one rehearsal before the big day.

i specifically wanted something filled with "the human element", and i got exactly that. this was kind of my response to the sterilized studio environment at suny purchase, and i was very happy with the results...

1. ghetto queen (Christensen)
2. pathways (Christensen)
3. who stepped on diz's horn (Christensen/Wilson)
4. harvest (Christensen/Hovish)
5. if i could see (Christensen)

The players on this session were:

• Matt Wilson, bass, co-author who stepped on diz's horn
• Josh Ballard, piano/organ
• Rory Merola, drums
• Mike Spivack, engineering, production assistance

diary of a madman

• diary of a madman (Christensen)

higher than you

• higher than you (christensen)

new stuff, and junk

here's a couple of tunes in the usual semi-finished demo state...

1. lost
2. miss direction

and here's a bunch of junk...including the rough cut of a reggae version of Slayer's "Raining Blood" that we're working on in one of my studio practicum classes.

1. raining dub
2. zuperphunk
3. walking groove
4. smell the capital
5. pfunk garbage
6. desert groove
7. crazy bitch
8. i wear my shame like a wet towel
9. funkeee

freak out!

1. clusterfuck (Christensen)
2. moog indigo (Christensen)
3. in c (Riley)

new shit

"wondershank" is probably too high for me to sing properly, but you get the idea...

1. wondershank (Christensen)
2. if i could see (Christensen)

the lyrics are on the next page...

something new...

so, now that i'm formally studying again at suny purchase, i have lots more time to write, so hopefully i'll be able to update more often. this is a new tune that i'm pretty happy with, although the track itself is kind of overproduced.

1. i cuffed you a delicious bass (Christensen)

the lyrics are on the next page...

studio ear

as i understand it, there is a semi-legitimate condition called, "studio ear." basically, when you've recorded and re-recorded a tune approximately 3 billion times, you start listening to and nitpicking every little thing. that definitely happened with the first two tunes i'm posting today. i've been working on these tunes for a couple of years, and they've gone through several incarnations. i decided to post them because, especially in the case of pathways, i'm getting pretty sick of playing them.

1. pathways (Christensen)
2. ghetto queen (Christensen)
3. scattered thoughts (Christensen)

The third tune listed is a piano piece i wrote. it's probably going to end up split into two parts, to be played by two pianos. of course, finding Serious Pianists™ that would want to play them is another issue altogether. ;-)

the lyrics to ghetto queen are on the next page...

old stuff...

i thought it might be nice to put up some really rough original drafts of some tunes that i've done. most of these particular ones i haven't even recorded legitimately yet.

some of them are particularly hilarious because they feature larry's unique vocal stylings. sometimes i really think he's more suited to being a rock star than i am...now if i could just get him to play an instrument... ;-)

1. lot trash (Christensen/Hovish)
2. man tears (Christensen/Hovish)
3. harvest friend (aka harvest) (Christensen/Hovish)
4. Volcano (Christensen/Hovish)

vocal tracking is hard

i've been trying to work on more tunes with vocal tracks, as vocals seem to be pretty much the hardest kind of "instrument" to record. then there's also the additional fact that while i don't hate the sound of my own voice, i definitely feel uncomfortable listening to it. this is something i need to get over, and i guess there's only one way to do it.

I got a lot of help on this matter from the TweakHeadz site. There's all kinds of good stuff on that site.

anyways, this tune is another one larry hovish and i collaborated on. we kinda were going for an alt-rock kind of feel, which i believe we suceeded in. furthermore, my solo in this tune has a nice crappy-neil-young quality to it. okay, that was not intentional, i was just sick of protools, and i didn't feel like doing it over again.

• Ghost Train

Lyrics are on the next page.

rocking junk

So I've finally gotten a ProTools setup, after nearly two years of saying i was going to do it. My primary reason for doing so is that I'm applying to Purchase for the third time, and I needed to be able to put in some serious time behind the mike (or in my case, amp-modelling software pre-amp).

I had all these grand plans of getting this serious system, originally a Digi 002, or a motu 896HD, but although my new job affords me some excess of cash (at least, compared to the days of unemployment benefits), i still wasn't going to be able to get something like that in time for the auditions. I settled on the mbox, which only has two inputs, but they're pretty high-quality, and since i overdub everything anyways, it's working out.

I've also been using some royalty-free samples I got my hands around, and it's made my life much easier in the drum-sound department. This has, however, lent a distinct electronic/industrial flavor to some of my tunes.

1. Atmospheres (Christensen)
2. sample (Christensen)
3. light (Christensen)

protools nonsense

These are a series of tunes that I put together with the assistance of joel bouchard and his protools rig. We were just learning how to use the thing — for two weeks we drove ourselves crazy figuring out all its little idiosyncrasies. These are the fruits of our labor.

1. el-fago (Christensen)
2. Mr. Something-Something (Christensen)
3. psuede (Christensen/Bouchard)
4. pathways (Christensen)
5. harvest (Christensen/Hovish)
6. a rock song (Christensen)
7. Riviera Paradise (Vaughan)

tunes for enjoyment

These are some recordings that I put together with matt cole (drums) and rob pawlings (bass). We had a short-lived project called sesshomaru that we had a lot of fun doing, even though we really didn't have the time to do anything productive with it. We'll see what comes of it all...

1. Red Baron (Cobham)
2. Free Jazz for 'Heads => (sesshomaru)
3. A Go-Go (Scofield)
4. Blue Bossa (Dorham)
5. All Blues (Davis)
6. Who Stepped on Diz's Horn (Christensen/Wilson)
7. Cissy Strut (Modeliste)