Mike typically comes to visit, we make merry and write a tune or two. This particular tune was written on Christmas Eve, 2008. We were sitting around the piano having some lovely beverages and I eventually stumbled on the opening piano melody/descending bass. Mike started working on the words and Mica found a melody; the rest came together pretty quickly.
One cool thing is that none of it was done in the “studio.” Instead, we brought the mic downstairs and ran some headphones. Since the piano is a Disklavier, I just played in the vibes and bass from there. I think the drums were from some loop built-into Logic.
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Jomina started this tune back in March of 2006 and it’s been a tough one for me to finish. We were trying to do a kind of pop “Beyonce” thing and this is what came out. I was fooling around with some drum sounds and somehow stumbled into the main “beat.” Mica had a couple of lyric ideas and John got to work on the guitar. At some point, an “Eastern” theme crept in with some tabla, djembe and a whole bunch of other stuff I can’t claim any sort of competence with. So here’s our modern pop, surf guitar, Indian, Middle Eastern, synth pop, R&B tune! Enjoy.
(I have no idea what this image is, but I’m always amused by (and appreciative of) the image results I get from FickrCC when I type in a song name!)
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This is kind of an angsty (is that a word?) rock tune we did in March of 2006. Mica had the melody and words so she just walked in and started singing. I don’t really remember how the harmony came together but somehow, it did! John came up with some really cool guitar parts; I think my favorite is the double-tracked arpeggio thingies in the second verse.
We had to convince Mica to channel her inner Tina Turner for the bridge which came out pretty nicely. I got to practice some of my rock piano riffs at the end and I believe I may’ve cut myself on those glisses leading into the last chorus.
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This is another piece I wrote for Chimera, Bungie’s expansion for “Myth 2: Soulblighter.” It’s pretty much all VL1 except for the heartbeat sound. I was going for a creepy, demonic vibe and I think this captures it. The distant horn-like sound that comes around every now and then is purely serendipitous.
As the VL depends heavily on being “fed” controller messages to make sound, I think just started “drawing” a bunch of controllers into the sequencer. Once I started getting something that sounded “good”, I’d add another stream and see how that sounded. Eventually all the streams gave me this.
At no time did I cross the streams!
Here’s what it looks like in-game:
And here’s the audio:
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A 
Jomina started this tune back in March of 2006 and it’s been a tough one for me to finish. We were trying to do a kind of pop “Beyonce” thing and this is what came out. I was fooling around with some drum sounds and somehow stumbled into the main “beat.” Mica had a couple of lyric ideas and John got to work on the guitar. At some point, an “Eastern” theme crept in with some tabla, djembe and a whole bunch of other stuff I can’t claim any sort of competence with. So here’s our modern pop, surf guitar, Indian, Middle Eastern, synth pop, R&B tune! Enjoy.
This is kind of an angsty (is that a word?) rock tune we did in March of 2006. Mica had the melody and words so she just walked in and started singing. I don’t really remember how the harmony came together but somehow, it did! John came up with some really cool guitar parts; I think my favorite is the double-tracked arpeggio thingies in the second verse.
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